Transitions, part II

The last blog entry detailed transitions that had already happened or were on the verge of happening. Those transitions were largely personal and had a bit about the family's transitions as well.  In this entry, I [Chris] would like to detail the transitions that we envision during our year of furlough in the United States, with a particular focus on the work side of life.

Retooling is a word that I've used a bit already in some of our presentations that we've done since being in the US.  As I understand the word, it means to update something.  Our retooling is not going to be updating in the form of a different focus, but will be more of an addition of capacities...more like development or growth of what we're able to do on the field for when we return to Cameroon.

One of the additions is going to be in the area of trauma healing.  I'm looking forward to taking a class entitled Arts & Trauma Healing at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics in Dallas during months of January/February.  Trauma healing is already happening in our location overseas, given the needs of people fleeing neighboring countries that are in the midst of terrible events.  I anticipate being able to add to the work in Cameroon with our special brand of trauma healing containing an arts component - sort of like art therapy.

Another transition that is going to happen is in my own professional growth.  About a year ago, I put together a growth plan with one of my mentors with the goal of attaining the status of Arts Consultant within our organization.  There are many pieces and parts to the process including some continuing education, some research, some publishing, some independent study, etc.

As I move toward consultant status, the work in Cameroon will change a bit as well.  In our next term overseas, I will be working in more areas of Cameroon and, potentially, the Central African region.  This will be done with an eye of transitioning toward the development of nationals to take up the work.  As an organization, our mission has the value of elevating people to do the work within their own communities.  With this in mind, one of my projects during our furlough is to get one of our key EthnoArts training classes set-up in French so that we can train and develop more Africans to continue arts ministry.  Our goal is to have local leaders developed so that things continue smoothly (hopefully even more smoothly) for decades after we have left the field.

Thank you for praying over our transitions, both past and future, personal and professional.  We expect to learn a lot and we want to have the eager expectation of seeing how the Lord will use transitions to teach and grow us a bit...or a lot.