T- minus 15 Years – Stumble upon acquaintance at Hamilton airport and become inspired. Start setting aside $100 a month.

T-minus 8 years (early 2016)- Start deferred salary. I’ll get into budgeting in another post. This had Aaron’s school board setting aside 10-15 percent of his salary.

T- Minus 4 years – Hang up maps! For Christmas of 2017 we bought and were given maps, travel books, and planning journals. We used the laminated maps to record interesting locations we have heard about in podcasts, books (fiction and non-fiction), and movies. The old Nestle map below helped us when learning about history and acted a good reminder that borders move. This is when we really started talking with our kids about it.

T-minus 3 years – Contact Missionary support services to ask when to contact them. Heather had taught English in Japan for four and a half years with LCMS so we reached out to them.

T- minus 2 years – Contact LCMS Missions and postpone everything because of COVID. Contact Aaron’s HR and extend deferred salary.

T-minus 1 year – This is when we really had to commit. With COVID ever looming and the stress of jumping into the unknown we had a decision to make. Cash in the deferred salary or start preparations.

T-minus 8 months – Buy plane tickets (Nov 17), order new passports, and get our gear. Christmas of 2021 had us buying travel gear as presents. We took a lot of excitement in the fact that we were able to colour match our gear. We each have our own colours (Aaron is red/orange).

T-minus – 7 month (January 2022): Skype calls with Missionary coordinators in the Czech Republic and South Korea. We are now starting to narrow down the countries we might visit (here). We also purchased a WorkAway.info membership. The WorkAway membership and Wwoofing membership will help us find locals that we can stay with and learn from.