Come visit our new website

We finally have our site up and running. all of the archived posts from blogspot have been moved over and there is a bunch of new ways to stay up to date on what the Schandorff family is up to these days. There are even some great pictures.

Come visit is at www.SchandorffFamily.com

Tim Schandorff

Waiting, growing and more waiting

So the reason that it has been so long since my last post is that I have been trying to get our actual web site up and running. I like Blogspot but since we are planning on spending a large amount of our careers overseas we thought it would be best if we had a place all our own. What I have found is that in the world of web development everything has changed since I made my last web site. So in the mean time I will post a couple more times on here so that I can keep people up to speed on the changes or lack there of on our situation with MAF.

In my last post I mentioned that we hoped to attend the candidate class for MAF training in January but were doubtful about that happening. It turns out that we are now hoping to attend the July candidate class. The house that needs to sell is still on the market. But as everyone knows, this is not a great time to be dependant on selling a house. Please keep all of the parties involved in that process in your prayers as it is a cause of stress for several people. The good news is that the day that sells we are on our way. It could be that it sells tomorrow we may end up going to the January candidate class of 2010, but we are increasingly sure that God has it under control. As we have been waiting it has been a huge encouragement to see God work through people we meet to show us that we are on the right track. On several occasions we have had people ask how they could support us when we move to the next step. These all seem to happen when we are feeling like the waiting will never end.

We are also seeing some changes in MAF. Because of political events around the world the situation in a couple of countries has changed since we started talking with MAF about our role there. There is no telling how these changes will impact us but it is almost certain that they will in one way or another. In the meantime it is equal parts, frustrating to wait, and amazing to see God's plan come together. We try to remember the very applicable verse Proverbs 19:21 "Many are the plans in a Man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails."


Tim, Liz and Jacob
Schandorff

Wow, it's been a long time since I wrote anything for this page. A lot has happened in the past few months. Many of you probably received our first newsletter that explained where we are at with the whole MAF process. If you didn't, I will give a quick review of what God is doing in our lives these days.

A couple of months ago MAF looked at our financial situation and decided that they wanted us to sell our house before starting the candidate class in January. In order to make sure we were going to be accepted for candidacy MAF fast-tracked our application process. for a couple of weeks we had meetings with the Candidate Committee and a psycological evaluation among other things. At the end we were extended a formal invitation to join a candidate class. Shortly after finding out that we needed to sell our house sooner than we thought we also found out that Liz's parents were thinking about buying our house when they sell theirs. This has been an enormous blessing and has taken a huge amount of pressure off of our family.

So where do we stand now? We are working on completing some Bible Study work to meet the requirements of MAF and waiting for a house in Seattle to sell. At this point we are realizing that while we would like to go through the Jan. class and get started on this adventure, it looks like that may not be realistic. Increasingly, it looks like we will probably go through the candidate class in July instead. At that point we will quit our jobs and start full time support raising with MAF. We still do not know where we will end up when we go overseas. The latest info on that front is that we have spoken with the Regional Directors for Africa and Central Asia, and they have both shown some interest in bringing Tim on in some kind of a management trainee position. While those are large regions, the most likely places in those regions would be Lesotho, or Afghanistan.

Please keep us in your prayers as we see where God leads in the months to come.
God bless.
Tim, Liz and Jacob

also, if you are reading this and did not receive our newsletter please e-mail us your information. We need your mailing address, phone number and e-mail address. Also please indicate if you would like us to send you newsletter via e-mail or regular mail.

another month gone by

So I'm not sure if anyone has been visiting this site, but just in case they are I thought I would put another post up, since it's been about a month since the last one.

Liz and I had the opportunity to meet with the Regional Director for Southern Africa at MAF lasat month and it was a very encouraging meeting. We have been blessed several times by encouragment from people at MAF or friends and family just when we started feeling like we would never progress through this long process. We talked to Fran (South Africa RD) primarily about how we could be used in Lesotho and what life there is like. There is certainly a great need for people there and administrative/management people especially. We still don't know any more specifically where we will end up but it was fun to learn a little more about one of the possibilities.

The other major event of the past month was that I (Tim) fulfilled a longtime dream which was to go through a Wilderness First Responder course and get my WFR certification. I took the class at Boise State University. The class was made up of 9, 10 hour days and homework every night. It covered everything from how to diagnose illnesses in the backcountry to how to build a traction splint for a broken femur. We did simulations almost every day where we took turns being the patients (theater blood and everything) or the primary WFR. It was exhausting but everyone in the class passed. Most needed the certification for camps or to be river guides. me and two other people were just doing it for the experience and the knowledge.

Not much else to say about the past month. we are spending time working on house projects and updating our mailing list. Mostly these things help us to keep our mind off of the fact that we still don't know where we are going, but we should know before to long. In the meantime keep us and our sanity in your prayers. As soon as we get our mailing list finished we will send out a letter explaining what we will be doing and what steps lay before us on our journey.

Tim, Liz and Jacob
Schandorff

Just a quick update

So this won't take long because there hasn't been much happening these days. The process of moving forward with MAF is in a holding pattern for at least several weeks. We did however have our first meeting with our recruiter. Normally this meeting would have taken place at the beginning of the process but we are, as usual, abnormal. We've been told that our application has been circulated among the powers that be and they are discussing how best to go about working with us. We are way outside of the norm for their usual applicants so our process will need to be developed as we go. Hopefully this summer our recruiter will be communicating with managers in the field and we will start to get a better idea of where we will end up.

At this point we are learning to trust God and MAF with our unknown future. We are also trying to stay busy with outdoor activities and getting some house projects done so that it is ready to sell. We are able to fill some of this time with little things that MAF wants us to have completed by a certain point in the process. The most important of these is our mailing list. We have been told that we need a very large number of people in our support network. This is not only so that we can raise money, although that will be a factor as well. It is also because we know how valuable it will be for us to know that we have a great network of friends and family that support us and are praying for us. So please send your mailing address, e-mail address, and phone number if you want to either teschandorff@hotmail.com or timandliz@gmail.com
Thanks for your continued prayers
Sincerely,
Tim, Liz, and Jacob

our first blog

So I just created this blog space for the family so that we could let everyone know what is going on in our lives and not just those who are on the myspace network. In the future we will be seeing many changes in our lives and I hope to keep this fairly up-to-date.

Right now everything is fairly mundane. Liz is working full time with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) and I am working 3 days a week or so at REI in Boise. I am enjoying getting to spend time playing with Jacob as the weather warms up. As I write this I am listening to him talk to himself in his crib, instead of taking a nap. We have actually kind of found ourselves in limbo for an extended period of time. As I mentioned earlier we are expecting to see many changes in the future so I will explain those for anyone who doesn't already know.

Last June Liz started working for MAF. MAF (www.maf.org) is a Christian NGO that flies missionaries, relief supplies, and helps with medical evacuations among other things, in very difficult to reach parts of the world. For example, they were a very large presence after the tsunamis in Indonesia and are still flying in supplies for that effort. For several reasons last year MAF moved its headquarters from Southern CA. to Nampa ID. As Liz learned about the organization and their needs we started to feel that this was an organization that we could be part of. After many meetings with regional managers, directors and other leaders in MAF we found that they were as excited about our interests as we are about theirs. In recent years MAF has realized that they need to recruit people who are not pilots or mechanics to run bases and do administrative work overseas. This allows pilots do use their training and do what they went there to do. What this means for us is that when MAF learned that Liz and I both went to grad school for International Development they got really excited.

There are many different ways that my career with MAF might play out but in general it will look something like this: The first term we will go to a larger base, some options are Lesotho in South Africa, or Indonesia on the island of Papua. I will either spend my first 3 year term being trained as a base manager or doing some kind of administrative work. The end result will be the same however. the plan is to work toward base management or section management (i.e. manager of operations, etc...). We have finished our applications and are planning to go through candidacy in January of 2009. After that we will begin a period of full time support raising. All of MAF's missionaries raise their own support for their living expenses and for the operations of the organization. Although we had not planned on hooking up with an organization that works this way, we have seen how supportive MAF is throughout this process. We also have the assurance of believing that this is exactly where God has lead us and what he has prepared us for.

Until January we are making small steps in the process but we will not know much more until then. The most pressing thing that we have to work on right now is to get our contacts in an orderly and up to date fashion. Because of this some of you have already had me ask you for your contact info. If we have not asked you for it though PLEASE SEND IT. We know that this is going to be a major event for our family and it is very important to us to keep in touch with our friends and family who have always been such an encouragement to us. Please send your mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address. This will insure that you get the newsletters that we send out in the future.

Well I think that is just about all I have to say. This has been a long post but I think future ones will cover less time and so they'll be shorter. thanks for stopping by and please keep in touch. We'd love to hear from you.
Tim, Liz and Jacob Schandorff