We’re learning to live with a little bit of in-between.

Unfiltered is our data-rich attempt to keep those of you who are pretty deep into our lives and work adequately informed. It’s a little bit like a digital machine gun and not very much fun at all. You should not feel obligated to read it unless you are in fact its intended audience.

A little bit of choppy air as we descend into Connecticut

• Our assignment under United World Mission is a double one. We live and work out of the Biblical Seminary of Colombia in the city of Medellín for half of each year (July-December). And we live and work out of Cromwell, Connecticut for the other half of each year (January-June).
• In theory, we dedicate our Colombia half of the year to teaching and mentoring our Latin American students and younger faculty at the seminary and otherwise caring for our seminary and mission communities. Also in theory, we dedicate our Connecticut half of the year to leading and developing the Theological Education Initiative (TEI), which identifies, recruits, places, mentors and develops missional scholars who serve in select theological communities in the Global South. In various ways, we work together to care for and empower these gifted missional scholars and their families.
• In practice, both of these jobs have demands that cannot be turned off like a light switch when it’s time for the other half of the year to begin. So there’s a lot of multi-tasking.
• Candidly, the move back to the States in December and the settling into an apartment in Cromwell, Connecticut has been demanding and complex in ways we never saw coming. We’re finally getting settled into a sustainable life-and-work pattern, but we’re already halfway through our Connecticut stint and leaning into moving back to Colombia around June 15.
• Big picture: this double footprint is mission-critical and, we think, long-term viable. But in many ways, this first full cycle of two locations has been a dress rehearsal for doing it well next year.
• We now rent a small apartment in Medellín and a modest apartment in Cromwell. After being ‘big house’ people for the first run in our marriage, having a light footprint is not an unpleasant adjustment. We have given  away and tossed out tons of junk we never needed but didn’t know any better.
• When you see us in the USA, we are not on furlough, Home Ministry Assignment, on vacation, or simply lost. This is where we work (half the time).

• Our health is good.
• Our spirits are high.
• We love both Colombia (more new for Karen, less new for me) and Connecticut (more new for me, less new for Karen).
• Our work on both jobs is thriving. That doesn’t make it easy, but it sure makes it fun.

• Karen continues to live a season of discovery and blossoming.
• She is in her second year of training in spiritual formation and loving it. The list of individuals who seek her out for mentoring and/or coaching is growing steadily, as are the skills that rotate around what is obviously a gift.
• United World Mission has asked Karen and me to embrace robust care of all TEI missional scholars and their families. This means that for the first time we are working together around common projects and the same people. Don’t try this at home.
• After years in which Karen’s identity for many people was ‘David’s wife’, I am now reveling in being ‘Karen’s husband’.
• We are working gears in the United World Mission’s team of regional leaders, with the exception that our region is not defined geographically but rather in terms of those UWM individuals and families who have a TEImissional scholar in the house.

• I love the opportunity to teach and mentor, research and write again as part of my job as a professor at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia and a part of what I need to model to my TEI missional scholar colleagues whom I am attempting to develop and support as life-long learners.
• I am working on a Spanish-language commentary on Isaías (Isaiah). After watching my students’ reaction to the challenging biblical book of Eclesiastés (Ecclesiastes), I have placed a commentary on that book next in line for my book-length ambitions.
• I had expected to get a lot of writing done on this Connecticut leg of the journey. However, that objective has been sacrificed to the relocation growing pains I mentioned above. Delayed but not discarded.
• I’m working with a literary agent on publishing a collection of biblical reflections that I’ve written for my blog Canter Bridge over the years. Watch this space for news.
• I’m endorsed and am editing (respectively) two books coming out of long-time friendships in the Middle East.
• ‘Spending many, many hours on our BibleMesh Hebrew in Spanish project at the Seminary, along with two Colombian colleagues whom I’m coaching along the way. ‘Must tell you more about this immense project eventually.

• We are in love with the Biblical Seminary of Colombia community. It’s more a community than any place we’ve lived or work heretofore.
• This doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Yet the love and care we extend to each other in the midst of the challenging city of Medellín is extraordinary and a source of great resilience and uncommon joy.
• Our students and staff come from Colombia, Costa Rica, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the USA. I’m probably missing some countries. In and around this international mix, our community is deeply rooted in Colombian reality and is in every sense a Colombian institution.
• We are a university-accredited institution with a deeply Christian soul. The school is exceptionally well led, incredibly well staffed, deeply enmeshed in Colombian realities like the fact that some 14% of Colombia’s 48 million people have been displaced by civil war and violence, and a pleasure to serve.
• This very week my seminary colleagues will host peer visitors from the Colombian Education Ministry. If this visit goes well, the path towards launching our M.A. in Biblical Interpretation will have been opened. This was part of the draw to us in moving to Colombia.
• The lines have fallen to us in pleasant places.

• People who care about us ask ‘Are you safe?’
• The short answer: Yes, we are safe.
• Colombia’s reputation for unfettered violence is about 10 years out of date. The government and the largest guerrilla group have signed a peace deal and are working through the difficulties of making the thing hold.
• The drug cartels do not run the country, as they once did. Being really self-referential here, North Americans are generally not targeted for kidnapping or other harm. Corruption and violence are still around. We feel perfectly safe during the day and do not go out at night.
• So part of our sense of well-being comes from the fact that Colombia, mercifully, is not what it once was. The other, more significant, explanation is that God has called us to serve in Colombia and we are in his hands. That sounds overly pious, I know. But it’s just the truth.
• The paisa people (from the region in and around Medellín) are the single warmest group of human beings we have ever know everywhere.
• We are privileged to be loved by friends and family who care about us. So it’s with no trace of sarcasm whatsoever that I always want to ask in return, ‘Are you safe?’

• If you’ve somehow read his far, you’re our hero.
• And if you’re in some other way (prayer, financial participation in our work, just loving us) concretely involved with us, we really feel the privilege of that as well. We’re grateful, more than we know very well how to say.
• If you are a person who prays, here are some things to bring before our Father.

1. that we’d have energy, resilience, and flexibility that are adequate for the relentless demands of cross-cultural living.
2. that Karen and I would take care of each other half as well as we seem wired to take care of others.
3. that our authentic needs would be met and that the others would be let go.
4. that Christ’s mercy would flow through us in the myriad tasks, conversation, and unexpected encounters that are our daily bread.
5. that we’d know how to love our dispersed family as we live this in-between lifestyle.

Much love,

David and Karen