Itsara

I realize up until now I have only given you a taste of our plans via the FAQ. These next few posts will be a little more thorough (and therefore long). And of course keep in mind that it is God who has called us out, so He will determine what actually happens. I know at least Cindy and I tend to think of this in three phases: (1) before we move, (2) before we build the orphanage, and (3) the unforeseeable future. This is what we think will happen in the first phase.

Phase I (from Present to The Day We Move)

The main things we need to accomplish now are getting passports and visas, handling our condo, and transitioning Coast to a new worship pastor. These things will largely determine our departure date. So we want to leave in February or March, but if these things take longer than we think they will, that date could be pushed back.

There are just tons of different types of visas you can get to stay in Thailand. They want to know the reason for every foreigner who is there and they want proof of that reason. And many of those visas require a “visa run,” meaning the foreigner has to leave the country (and return) every 90 days or less. So in the next month or so, Cindy will be getting the docs she needs so she can apply for Thai citizenship and a Thai passport. Once that is done, I should be able to get a visa for the reason of “supporting a Thai wife.” I don’t think the marriage visa requires visa runs, but it will require getting an extension every year where I’ll have to prove means of support. We’re not certain what sort of visa Sean will be able to get yet, though he might get a student visa. At the moment, I think Sean will probably have to do the visa runs, but in talking to Cindy’s family it seems that the government is highly favorable towards the sort of work we intend to do, so maybe they can give us a break somehow.

Ideally we will rent out our condo. In the interest of flying in the face of the American “don’t talk about money” taboo (you know, the thing where you’re not supposed to talk about how much money you make or how much you bought your house for, etc.), I’ll just tell you that we pay about $1,500/month for mortgage and HOA fees. I’m pretty sure we can rent it out for at least $1,800 and maybe even as high as $2,000. Subtract $100-200 to pay our property manager (we haven’t decided on one, and we don’t know exactly how much we’ll be paying them, but we have two options and they are both good friends, which means good deals), and that translates to $100-400/month for us in Thailand. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but to help give you some perspective, our friend in Thailand recently told us about a 5-bedroom house she found being rented for $375. So we probably can’t live on that amount, but it’s a very good start.

The advantages of renting the condo out are that we will have at least a partial income that we can count on (as much as we can count on anything) and we’ll have a place to live if we ever come back. If for some reason we can’t rent it out, then we’ll just sell it. The advantage to that being the gigantic amount of money we’d have to live on (I think if we sold it right now we’d have nearly $200,000 to live on in Thailand).

Then there’s the new worship pastor. My last month as the worship pastor at Coast will be January (that was only official very recently), so Jamie and I have three months to identify candidates, interview them, choose one, and transition everything over to them. I have mixed feelings about all of this, but mainly I’m not looking forward to it because (a) I love what I do and I don’t want to leave, (b) I feel like I’m just getting good at it, (c) I worry about how people (both worship team and congregation) will react to whoever we choose, and (d) apparently I like control and I want the new pastor to do things like I’m doing them. The first two are part of the sacrifice of following the call of Jesus. I’ve done this kind of thing before and I have complete faith that He will let me use the gifts He’s given me again. And the last two are based on fear which, I’ve learned, is a poor thing to base a decision on. Knowing that doesn’t change how I feel, but it does change how I act.

The way this sort of thing works at Coast is that the pastor is chosen from the community and the process is done as transparently as possible. I’ve seen stuff like this messed up too many times done the other way. Our community is our family, and bringing someone else in to lead worship really feels to me like paying someone to be my friend. And hiding the process just leads to gossip and rumors when things happen that aren’t understood. We’ve made our fair share of mistakes in that area, and transparency has always seemed to work to fix them.

Once we pick a date (or maybe just when it’s January), there will be other things to do too: find a place to live in Chiang Mai (our aforementioned friend can help us with this), find someone to do the Branch lunches on Saturdays in our place (we’re actually looking now), determine what we will take with us and how to get it over there, start raising support, quit our jobs, and a hundred tiny details that we’re bound to forget. Sheesh, it’s like planning a wedding!

And in the midst of all of that, we’re not allowed to check out. So we will continue to do our jobs, both for the church and the world, to the best of our abilities. And then, finally, we’ll move and everything will change. In the next post I’ll talk about what we plan on doing when we first arrive. In the meantime, please ask any questions you have!