Next Stop: Denmark and Sweden

We taste to learn

"How did this second career begin for you guys?"  This is a question that we are often asked.  Our second-career life is fun - getting to see the world from the perspective of missions: experiencing new cultures, traditions, and languages.  Here is how it all started.

Before we retired several years ago, we had already developed a deep interest in missions.  We had traveled with short Work and Witness teams to Australia, Romania, Belize, Albania, and Germany.  Those trips became eye-opening experiences, and we were addicted.  As a result, we decided several years before retirement that we wanted to spend our resources to experience more deeply the world of missions.  We wanted to go and stay longer.

Our desire became reality when we connected with Mission Corps, a program with the Church of the Nazarene that sends volunteers all around the world.  This would become our open door.  We retired in 2011 and waited.  In 2012, we accepted our first assignment, which was to Ecuador.  Our second assignment in 2013 was to Switzerland/Germany.  Our third one in 2014 was split: Costa Rica and Dominican Republic.  Then last March, emails began trickling in pointing to Sweden and Denmark. Were we interested in volunteering in coffee house/cafe ministries?  After interviews and paperwork and prayers, we accepted this assignment.  Starting in late summer, we will fly into Copenhagen, Denmark and travel a short distance to where we will work and  serve in the Arrie Kulturhus Coffee House, which is located in Southern Sweden near the city of Malmo.  In the meantime, behind the scenes, we have become liable to several personal projects.

Do these really work?

      First, in an effort to begin educating ourselves for something we love, but know little about, the intentional making and serving of exceptional coffees, we recently attended a "coffee workshop" in Gilbert, Arizona.
It was educational in that we learned how much we didn't know.
We have high hopes (for the sake of our clientele) that we will get some hands-on barista training during the early stages of our assignment in Sweden.

Aprons for Denmark and Sweden

   
Secondly, we are working with an organization, Threads Mfg, an extension of Lutheran Social Services here in Phoenix that places refugees and trains them as seamstresses.  Our friend, Cindy Kjos, who owns Threads Mfg, hires those trained seamstresses, allowing them to earn a living as well as fulfill their professional goals. When our friend told us about Threads Mfg,  Jim and I hired them to make 24 custom-designed aprons for the two Nazarene coffee house/cafe ministries in Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmo, Sweden. You have probably experienced how God trusts each us to stand on a bridge that links two ministries.  Many of you have helped to fund this effort when we invited you to "support an apron" for $30.00 each.  Thank you!

As we now count down the days until we leave, we again invite you to add us to your prayer list and pray for us as we desire to serve a lot more than specialty coffees.  

The coffee house in Sweden

• Safe travels and extended good health
• Engaging Friendship Evangelism outreach
• Support to the missionaries on the field in Denmark and Sweden
• Sensitive and obedient to the spiritual needs that will exist around us
• Really….that we will make good cups of specialty coffee that will invite the community back
• Sensitive to the doors of opportunity that only God can open
• Strengthen our patience and marriage as we experience social and cultural adjustments
• Good stewards of the resources that God supplies 

Keep Looking Up...and thank you for reading our blog
J:m and L:nda

"Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.  Amen"  ( Ephesians 3:20-21)