7. An Exercise in Trust

If you ever want to know real trust, ship a car.

First you do a google search for shipping companies, phone a few at random, then contract the one with the nicest-sounding receptionist and/or the best price. Because they don't take credit cards, you transfer £900 quid from your bank account into theirs. In return for this you get an email of a scan of a photocopy of a shipping note, of which you must download and print out two copies.

Some time later you drive your car to a warehouse complex next to a harbour in Kent, where you follow a set of hand-written signs to 'export' past disused buildings, piles of rusting scrap, and burned-out cranes. When finally you go past the last sign you find yourself in a carpark next to a portacabin where a burly man in a ripped fluorescent coat waves you to the back of a disorderly queue of stationary vehicles. You hand him your illegible shipping note and he scribbles something equally illegible on the windscreen in dry-wipe marker.

You leave the keys in the ignition and go home. And that's it. If you remembered to take a spare copy of the shipping note/illegible smear then you can get one of them scribbled on by the man with the marker pen by way of a receipt.

You just have to pray that by some quirk of fate, your car accidentally finds itself on the right boat at the right time.

Then, once it is under way, you google for customs agents in the destination port, email a few at random, then pick one equally at random (because this time you can't even speak to the receptionist). You send them your bill of lading, which hopefully you have been emailed by now, followed by a transfer of £700 from your bank account because, naturally, they don't take credit cards.

So by this point you are down £1600 plus the cost of the car and the stuff in the boot. If it were a poker game you'd be throwing in your chips, finishing your drink, and going home with a worried expression. But you can't. You just have to hope for the best. This small part of your life is completely under the control of other people whose methods you don't understand and who aren't contactable in any meaningful way.

Now call me a control freak if you like but that is no where near my comfort zone. However it does make for a good metaphor.

Last week I did a presentation on the Africa project to thirty or so people at work; lots of people had asked why I was leaving so I thought it would be good to do a dinnertime PowerPoint. The presentation was ok, people asked good questions, I'm told I got the message across. Apparently two (non-Christian) colleagues were talking afterwards and one said "I had no idea they were self funding...I thought they were being paid. That takes real faith..."

I've been thinking about this a lot since. I never really considered that I had real faith, I've always just thought of my life as a bit like driving through fog: basically I see things when I hit them. Long term views are all very nice and so forth, but in my opinion you can't beat a bit of ignorance for improving your outlook. So I just haven't been worried about this stuff at all. What I have come to realise in the last few weeks is that I am faithful, in a very real and tangible sense.

I've heard faith described in terms of a devolution of self-reliance, of a weak and cowardly ceding of control and personal responsibility to a Higher Power. I don't recognise that definition of faith. For me faith is more like flying: I can't fly by myself, no matter how much resourceful self-belief and arm flapping I engage in. To fly I must step on to a plane, trusting in the engineers who designed it, the technicians who built it, the mechanics who service it, and the pilots who fly it. There comes a point in most things you do when you just have to accept that you can never be fully in control, and that you need to have faith in the people pulling the strings further up the tree. In no way is that cowardly: it's simply pragmatic.

For Christians, that higher power is, you won't be surprised to learn, God. We just accept that there are some things we can't do alone. I reckon with a following wind and a lot of free time I could have raised our budget in the six months, but I am absolutely sure that I couldn't do it alone, while working full time, and without directly asking people for money. Unless, that is, the wheels were being greased. You'll know from previous blog posts that we haven't asked anyone for sponsorship, yet we're now sitting at about 98% of budget.

There are generally quite valid naturalistic explanations for almost everything, but the confluence of things that have just happened perfectly in our preparations leave me feeling that we are being aided. There's no ceding of responsibility there, we've worked very hard: but, like flying, the pilot gets you to your destination but you get yourself to the airport.

It is that trust in the wingman that has enabled us to get where we are now.

Now the observant among you will note that it is six weeks since our last post. This tardiness is because in the last six weeks we've been unbelievably busy. In that time we have shipped a car, sold a car, wound up and left two jobs, organised two birthday parties, opened three bank accounts, redecorated the house, found tenants, chased and received our visas, packed stuff for storage, arranged medical insurance, got international driving licences, practiced for and sung in three choral concerts, closed down nine mobile phone contracts (long story), found fish-sitters (ten koi and eight tropical), and said goodbye to our friends in Poole, all the while maintaining perfect marital harmony (eh??? - ed.) and passable parenting. Christmas at the opposite end of the country alternating between two large families half an hour apart with thirty of our closest relatives was something of a welcome break.

For the first time in eleven years we're homeless and unemployed, and about to embark on a three year voyage of uncertainty.We fly in six days.

Apart from the odd twinge of recent anxiety, this all feels normal and right. Rationally, from a western capitalist viewpoint, it's an utterly bizarre thing to do, but we are so convinced about it that doubt doesn't feature. I guess you could call that faith.

Judaism has a concept of "places where the veil is thin": physical locations where the people felt they were closest to God. Personally I don't believe God is more in any particular physical location than in any other, but where we are, waiting for the next phase to start, the veil sure feels insubstantial.

All my adult life I believe I have been following God, but on a looping, chaotic trajectory; sometimes close, more often far. I feel that now, having taken the first steps, we're finally on the racing line. We're doing what we have been called to do. It feels indescribably like everything that has gone before has led up to this moment.

Just one more anecdote before I close. A few months ago we realised that our mortgage period was coming to the end. We searched around and found somewhere that offered great terms for people letting on a non-professional basis. The contract stipulated the mortgage should be held for six months before we could let out the house, and at the time that was fine. In the event the switch took longer to process than expected, leaving us with a month of no cover for our costs. To try and head things off, we went into a branch to talk to a mortgage advisor. He was great: sympathetic, personable, and helpful. He collated our evidence, submitted our application, and told us all would be well.

At the end of November we got an out-of-hand rejection. Not only were we not eligible to rent our house, we couldn't even APPLY for eligibility until we had been with them for six months. That would have killed the whole scheme for us, and remember that by this point we had both quit our jobs and were in the run down to finishing.

Claire phoned the company and talked to a call centre who reiterated the information in the letter ("I'm sorry, madam, that you have been given this misinformation and that it causes you a problem...", "PROBLEM, I have left my job on the basis of this INFORMATION..."). She phoned me at work in a panic. I grabbed a couple of guys to pray while Claire tried again.

Five minutes later she was through to a UK manager who was both sympathetic and apologetic, and moreover bypassed the whole system to give us permission to let from that moment. Just one more door opened for us.

And so here we are. Planning stage complete. The next post will be from Africa as the next phase of the adventure begins. Until then we're in limbo, but, standing here where the veil is thin, the view's awesome.

6. Feeling the pressure

A number of people have asked that Jason hands the baton for writing the blog to me [temporarily! - ed.], and for me to give insight into my thoughts and feelings of the next chapter in the story. I’ve been assured that this request is in no way a slur on Jason’s writing skills – just in case you were wondering. I confess I’ve procrastinated over writing this – I’m certainly feeling the pressure of following in his footsteps, although I have had minor, albeit crucial, editing rights to the posts; statements such as ‘you can’t possibly write that!’ have come from my lips on more than one occasion. 

So where am I at? To sum it up in a couple of words I would say I am ‘at peace’ with our decision. I’m also really excited about what we are going to be doing, about the positive impact we could make, the relationships we will develop, and also about allowing the very rough parts of my personality to be honed as we adapt to life in a new and very different culture. And I confess that I’m really not going to miss the English weather.

What am I nervous about? Well at the minute I am bizarrely daunted by the task of writing Christmas cards. We have so many good friends, and so many people to thank, that writing cards this year is going to be tough. The annual writing ritual in our household generally requires me strapping Jason down with a list of people and a large glass of wine, then feeding in more wine as appropriate until he stops moping with his head in his hands, declaring he can’t think of anything to write. 

What can we write? I wish I knew. There are those close friends who have walked with us, prayed with us, laughed with us, wondered with us, and cried with us since we were asked to work with J-Life. There are those who have given encouraging words when needed, there are those who have challenged us (in love), there are those in the foreground and background who we call our ‘3am friends’ – those rare and valuable people who you know you can call on at 3am when you need help, knowing they will be at your door at 3.10am. There are those who have helped practically in large and small ways, those who will be supporting us financially in the short term and the long term and those who have committed to pray for us regularly throughout the next 2.5 years. Of course I include family in this, especially our parents, who are truly wonderful. The list is long, and I confess I’m welling up as I write this even now, but it’s safe to say that we are going to miss a lot of people when we go and writing cards will not do justice to the love and respect we feel for them. Without their encouragement the journey would be much more difficult, and I am already dreading the 23^rd of December when we say goodbye to friends in Poole, and the 4^th of January when we leave our families.

But I’m definitely looking forward. The house is now on the market for rent, and whilst our visas haven’t yet arrived, we’ve been told they will be processed in December – so at least we haven’t been rejected yet. We’re still sorting out banking and lots of other bits and bobs, but it feels like things are coming together – we just need someone to rent our house and the visas to come and then we are on our way. And I shortlisted candidates and interviewed for my own job last week – now that was a weird one. Oh and for those following the 4x4 saga, Jason is now driving it around Poole ‘just to test it’ of course. 

As people have been praying for us, we’ve had a few encouraging verses of the bible sent to us to ponder, they will be important in the tough and potentially lonely times. 

That’s it really for this blog, no great philosophical ponderings, no great words of wisdom, no great wit, just and honest and heartfelt thanks – those who love and support us know who they are – thank you.

5. Confessions of an environmentalist

My name's Jason, and I'm an environmentalist.

Really. And not just a green-wash environmentalist either, we actually try to live it out. It is probably my parents' fault: they were vegetarian before it was eco-chic and mainstream, before Quorn was even thought of, when it was all lentils and tofu. And of course I'm married to an environmental scientist, so it kind of goes with the territory. We have solar panels, and a log burner burning scavenged logs (three years and we've not paid for wood yet). We put our bin out once a month, use terry-towelling nappies, and have a compost heap. Now I'm no Al Gore or anything, but I would give us seven out of ten on the right-on-o-meter

For years we were a one-car family. When we had just one kid I did the nursery run every day with Daniel in a bike trailer on my way to and from work, rain or shine, sleet and snow. I can tell you're impressed. Only when Reuben started nursery did we get a second car, and I bought the cheapest, smallest, most efficient second-hand town car I could [And how many times has he cycled to work since? Zero - Ed.]

Like many environmentalists high on their own sense of smug self-satisfaction, I have a real chip on my shoulder about urban 4x4s. Our diesel Ford Mondeo gets 60mpg on a long run. Try beating that in your X5. It's a standing joke that I can't stand 4x4s that never see mud, where the closest they get to going off road is bumping up the kerb at Waitrose. For the benefit of people outside the UK, Waitrose is a posh supermarket which sells, amongst other middle class basket-fillers, Waitrose Essentials Polenta. Since when has polenta been essential. Really.

So it is a source of some merriment to people around me that for half of this year we've owned two of them. Two 4x4s have been sat in the drive, staring at me reproachfully as my credibility dissolves like a marble statue in a shower of acid rain. And not even proper 4x4s either, the cool kind with checkerplate panels and a winch. No, the kind we have are the kind driven by hairdressers and estate agents. I'm talking, of course, of the Toyota Rav4. Plural.

Now I will admit one thing: I have always wanted a 4x4, always. However my enviro-credentials would never allow it, so when we made the decision to move to Africa it was a perfect opportunity: Zambia has a lot of sand roads, so a soft off-roader is perfect. Toyota is popular in Africa, and the Rav is the smallest and most efficient of their 4x4 range. Simples. I did some research and found that it is cheaper (and by cheaper I mean it is half the price) to buy in the UK then ship to South Africa and import, so I went out and bought a nice Rav4. Perfect. Until Claire pointed out that the boot had about enough room for, let's say, a handbag. Maybe two. If we were transporting false nails and shampoo a couple of kilometres to work then it would be perfect. For a family of four with the contents of a house to transport 1200 miles across 4 countries, well, not so perfect. Apparently I should have noticed this when I bought it.

So as a result, the next weekend I went out and bought another, larger, one, wiping out all our savings. I believe the words I used were "oh, we got such a good deal on that one it will sell in a week, probably at a profit!". Indeed. That was in May. And since then it has been a big silver turbo-diesel millstone around my neck.

Four weeks on eBay followed by two weeks on GumTree followed by six weeks on Autotrader with not even a nibble. I had three haircuts in that time. Continents have moved faster. Eventually I cracked and asked a friend to sell it for us. It sold the next day. Go figure.

So that's where we are now: back to being a one-4x4 family. And what else, I hear you excitedly ask, is going on?

Well, we fly in ten weeks. Even writing that down doesn't make it feel real. Ten weeks. It doesn't seem long since we were first asked to do this, yet it's a full year ago. We've sent almost all the stuff we need: a crew of 60 people went to South Africa from our church recently and they each took a plate or a pasta maker or a towel or something, which was amazing and has saved us a fortune in shipping. The rest of our bits will go in the boot of the car when it goes on the boat in December.

We've applied for our visas for SA, a process which involved well over 100 pages of information and, as I can only presume therefore that it gets weighed in as part of the first sifting at the consulate, we used 100gsm paper just in case.  As for Zambian visas...after spending a month unsuccessfully trying to negotiate the Zambia High Commission website we decided it would be quicker and easier to just drive there and do it in person. Prayers for speedy visa resolution would be appreciated.

Our flights are booked and paid for, Daniel's school places in South Africa and Zambia are confirmed, and we've kicked off the process of getting our international bank account and credit cards. We've been vaccinated against every disease known to medical science, the meds being so numerous and in some cases so unusual that we had to pre-order the vials and close off half the roads in town so the bulk container could be delivered by articulated lorry. We have so many needle marks that we're afraid of being taken for a family of drug addicts.

On the plus side, my eBay seller feedback is approaching 800 as we've sold the collected junk of 10 years of home ownership, the proceeds of which have bought, amongst other things for Africa, the iPad on which I am writing this blog and which will be our primary means of communication in Zambia. Oh yeah, and we both quit work. Claire finishes in five weeks, I in seven. We're incredibly sad to be leaving our companies, but both have said they would love us to reapply when we get back.

And our funding: we're still a touch short of what we need but what a blessing. If all the money that people have pledged comes through we'll have almost 85%.  When I explain to non-Christians what we're doing, it's that fact which most grabs their attention. It's another incredible validation of the calling God has given us and of the relationships we've built up over the years. Our sponsors are trusting us with a significant investment, which comes with a massive responsibility: we really have to make all of the investments count.

We'll do our best to make sure they do.

4. There's a lion outside

This post is going to be intentionally reflective. Over the next three months I'll be talking much more about the practical stuff and how we're getting ready to go, but I hope you'll forgive me a bit of a philosophical muse on where we are right now.

This whole affair really kicked off in November 2011. John Abrahmse, the aforementioned persuasive leader of J-Life, stayed with us in our home. Every morning we were treated to a voice shouting from his bedroom "Daniel: there's a lion outside! A LOIYON OUTSOYDE!" in what I can only assume was an attempt at a British accent. Think Dick Van Dyke on an especially unconvincing day, shortly before sacking his voice coach. Nobody could really work out why he did this but in the end we decided he was just being South African. At any rate he provided some useful data to my cultural study.

Anyway, that is not the point of the story. The point of that story is to give me a neat lead into my current thesis. I want to talk about all the things that threaten to hold us back.

You may never even have picked up a bible, but I will put down good money that you have quoted from it: an eye for an eye; at my wit's end; pride goes before a fall; by the skin of your teeth. On the other hand (actually that one's not from the bible) I'll put down equally good money that you have never quoted Proverbs 22:13. Funnily enough, this particular proverb is of limited utility to the average urban westerner:

"The sluggard says, 'There’s a lion outside! I’ll be killed in the public square!'..."

You might wonder why a Northern Israeli would be worried about a lion, but that is where you (and I, I must add) show our ignorance. According to Google (to which I have now outsourced almost all of my intelligence and memory), lions were common in Israel at the time Solomon was penning the wise words which became the book of Proverbs. It was technically possible, though unlikely, to be killed by one in a public square, which would be a charismatic way to die but nonetheless inconvenient if you were on the way to the bank. This, too, is not the point I am trying to make (I find some points are best approached cautiously from many sides before finally settling cosily into their warm embrace).

The point of the verse is to warn against the dangers of making excuses to avoid work. Solomon's sluggard is one who is habitually lazy and indolent, someone known to be  work-shy, someone looking for any excuse to avoid what they have been asked to do. Now an actual lion outside is probably a fair excuse to postpone buying the milk, but like Solomon's sluggard, we find it very tempting to make superficially plausible excuses to avoid the things that bore or scare us. It is all too easy to be held back by fear: how many opportunities do we miss because of our own lion outside?

I'm happy to admit I am scared of what we're getting in to. Not so much scared for myself, but scared for Daniel and Reuben. You know how you can get close to the edge of a cliff yourself without too much difficulty, but if one of your kids does it you freak out with fear for them?

So I'm scared of so much for them: I'm scared of malaria, scared of hijacking, scared of kidnap, scared of them being used against me, scared of losing them. Now those things can and do happen here in the UK, but in the UK we're not unusual: just an ordinary middle-class family in a middle-sized house in a quiet area. However in Africa we are exposed by being exactly the things that anonymise us in the UK: by our choice to move to Africa we increase our boys' exposure, and hence the danger to which they are subject, however unlikely that danger is. It's the same feeling we have had while giving the boys their African vaccinations: a small but present danger of side-effects to which they would not be exposed if we just stayed in our own country like sensible people.

We have, time and again, wondered if we really should be doing it. Who would blame us if we didn't? Who would blame us if we just waited until the kids were grown up? Ahh, but then we'd be higher up in our careers, and we'd have elderly parents, and there'd be grandkids on the way, and then we'd decide we were too old to make a difference...you see where this is going? There's always going to be a lion outside.

As a Christian you don't have to prove anything, you don't have to earn your place in heaven, you couldn't even if you wanted to: you already have the suite because Christ booked it for you in advance and paid your bill. That's not to say that your place doesn't come with responsibilities: it does, and one responsibility is to make the best of our talents. We're being funded on this trip by the goodness and grace of friends: do we have to do anything to earn their sponsorship? No we do not. Do we have responsibilities as a result of their sponsorship? Of course we do. Same with Christianity. We don't have to do this for any reason other than that God has called us to do the best we can with the talents we have been given.

Yes, we're scared. But the point at which we decided to go for it was the point at which we realised we were more scared of not doing it than we were of doing it: scared that if we didn't take this chance we'd hit seventy and look back and wonder what we did with our lives. Scared that if we missed this opportunity we'd always be thinking "what if".

There will always be lions outside, but I think you either face them or stay forever looking through of the window wondering what it's like out there. We got tired of wondering. Hopefully when we step outside the lion will be looking the other way.

3. Live Life as a Sojourner

In the last two posts I've talked about Who, and Where, and What For, but not really Why. So here's the Why.

Everyone has some thoughts about what the Point Of It All is, this thing we call life: if by a lucky happenstance you are born as an affluent Westerner you get about 80 years of relative comfort clinging precariously to a rock hurtling through space, then you die. If you're an average African, you die 30 years sooner.  Whenever it happens, you die, and if you're particularly lucky a few people remember you for a few years. Then they die. And so on. The writer of the book Ecclesiastes said all this was nothing more than "chasing after the wind".

So most people think there has to be some point to it all: some reason why getting through those 80 years isn't just a futile exercise in stoicism. People's reasons are different, doubtless you have your own.

For some people it's money. For some it's fame, for others infamy. For some it's longevity, for some service, for some experience. Some want to tell good stories, some want to go along for the ride. Some want to leave a big legacy, some want to die penniless philanthropists. Some want to change the world for the better, some for the worse. There are probably as many reasons as there are people who reason.

A wonderful and stately couple who mentor us have a corkboard in their kitchen. On the board is a map, and stuck in the map are lots and lots of pins that show where their kids have served as missionaries. The couple themselves give almost all their time and energy to teaching relationship skills. They live to serve others: it's something which has really inspired us. The whole family epitomises living as sojourners.

A sojourner is someone who is passing through, someone transient. In The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle ('Conan Doyle!', I hear you shout, 'Surely you are mistaken, for undoubtedly that was Michael Crichton!'. To which I reply, 'Pah! Get thee and thy literary inexactitude behind me, fool!')... Where was I? Ah yes, The Lost World. As the protagonists are setting off into the unknown, one says "...to go and take a sporting risk, young fellah, that's the salt of existence, that's the worth of living, to not be dull and soft and comfy...", this written at the time of the great explorers, and enshrining the spirit of the age: to explore, to travel, to discover, to risk...to sojourn.

So what does it mean to live life as a sojourner? To me it means holding things lightly, treating everything we have as temporary and liable to be recalled. It means giving up a good job to do something cool, giving up a nice house to move somewhere exciting, and giving up a large and well-appointed comfort zone (with a coffee grinder and colour-matched scatter cushions) to step out and serve others. By no means do Christians have a monopoly on this kind of thinking, but I kind of think we find it a bit easier, a bit less of a wrench. Christianity, in its purest form, calls for sacrifice: giving up yourself for the benefit of others. I'm not talking about religion or denomination here, just the simplicity of Christ's life: love and sacrifice to spread a message of hope.

So everything we have is transitory. At best you have it, whatever 'it' is, money, experience, fame, for 80 years. Then it's gone. Pow. The sojourner recognises that, and treats everything, every moment, every opportunity, as temporary. The sojourner makes each minute count, takes every chance to make a difference, seizes crazy opportunities to do something brilliant. They do this because they know that wherever they are, they are simply on the road to somewhere else, and where they are going makes this short time look like a dull warm-up act.

That's what we aspire to.

2. In Africa they call it yOHghurt

I thought it would be nice to introduce the family, starting with Daniel and his wise words.

A couple of weeks ago he was telling his friend about our Africa trip: "What language do they speak in Africa?", said Matthew. "African!", said Daniel, in a tone of such authority that I swelled with fatherly pride. "Wow! And do YOU speak any African?". "Well, I really only know one word in African: in Africa they say yOHghurt, but in our country we say yOghurt."

Daniel's like that all the time. He's 4-and-a-half, sharp and observant. When we got hopelessly lost in a hedge maze a few months ago Daniel was so insistent he knew the way out that we finally humoured him and let him lead the way.  We were out within two minutes. He knows what a quetzal is. And a triceratops. And he uses words like 'dehydrated'. Mind, he also uses words like "Can you come and wipe my bottom?" at least three times an hour so it's not all Proust.

Next there's Reuben. He's our younger son, 20 months old and just starting to talk. He's not said quetzal yet but he has said "veuf" (that's the French for widower, by the way), which made me very proud. He's incredibly cheeky and has a smile which would melt the heart of the Ice Queen. I guess it will come in handy in Africa if we ever need to store any butter: we'll just get Reuben to put it in his mouth. It will never melt. He can get away with anything and he knows it.

Claire is the brains of the operation, she's 34, smart, and hard-working. And I mean really hard working. She has a couple of degrees in environmental science and works for a consultancy. She's very methodical and detailed, and where I take a shotgun approach to life, she's a sniper rifle. We complement each other perfectly. She has a head for figures and plans, and knows where she's heading. She's like the tether on the hot-air balloon of our lives - absolutely critical to keeping us the right way up with our feet on the ground. At work she's a project manager, and she's good at it.

Then there's me. I'm 35, two metres tall and I get mistaken for Louis Theroux. I'd have preferred Daniel Craig, but you have to play the hand you're dealt. I'm a life-long engineer: even as a kid I was always fixing things and my folks used to joke that there was nothing in the world I couldn't mend with hot glue and Lego. I still use a record player I once fixed with hot glue and Lego. I own two hot glue guns in case I ever need to fix one of my hot glue guns using hot glue. I use about ten percent of my degree, but all those years spent forming interesting scars on my knuckles with molten goo and extracting danish plastic from down the back of the sofa using a ruler covered in Sellotape seem to have stood me in good stead for a career in engineering.

Ever since we've been married we've wanted to do some mission work which used our combined skills of engineering and project management: we lead incredibly privileged lives, in common with so many people in the West, and we feel that we are obliged to give back the things given to us: to use our skills and our resources to help others. So over the eleven years we've checked out a lot of organisations; Christian Aid, VSO, Engineers Sans Frontiers, Habitat for Humanity, and others. In 2006 we went to Bulgaria for a week as part of a mission team but didn't get the feeling that it was our calling. By 2010, after pushing on so many doors and never feeling a strong pull towards any of them, we'd started to think that our "mission" was to teach and equip Daniel and Reuben to serve when they grew up.

Then J-Life happened.  As I said in the last blog post, I did a short stint with them in 2010 and really got caught up by their vision. I don't remember this but apparently in the airport on the way back I said to a friend "you know, I could go and work for J-Life for three years". If this teaches you anything, it is that you should be careful what you say in case someone or something takes you seriously.

So it may seem crazy to quit two very good jobs and move a settled family to a different continent with an unknown culture to do something enormous with no money for an organisation we are just getting to know, and on the face of it, put like that, it is. But we've been planning and praying for this for a long time and we trust God's got it sorted.

So, yeah, it's mad as a box of frogs and scares the life out of us at times, but at the end of it, in three years or thirty, we'll have impacted a few lives, we'll have left our comfort zone to see what is on the other side, and we'll have a good story to tell. That's worth the risk.

1. It's sunny all the time and there are pretty butterflies

It's sunny all the time and there are pretty butterflies.

So said our four-year-old when we asked him why he wanted to move to Africa. Fair enough. It's as good a reason as any.

Our reasons are slightly different. Now I don't want anyone to imagine that I don't like butterflies: I do, I enjoy their colourful flitting as much as the next man, it's just that I don't regard them as a tenable reason to move to a different continent.

So, while regarding the sun and butterflies as something of a bonus, we're actually going to Africa to work for a charity called J-Life, an opportunity we've been seeking for a long time.

The story started ten years ago. Claire and I are coming up to our eleventh anniversary, and for most of that time we've been looking for a mission opportunity: a chance to use our skills to serve people. We have, so to speak, pushed a few doors over the years but always had the feeling that it was "not this and not now".

In 2010 I went to South Africa for two weeks to project manage a small renovation for this charity, J-Life. During that fortnight I spent time with John Abrahamse who, amongst other things, is the leader of J-Life and also the most pursuasive man in the world. You might be able to talk the hind legs off a donkey, but only John could pursuade it to go for a walk afterwards. And, by the way, if you recognise the origin of that quote then you're a geek and you know it.

One day John and I took a drive through a township. Faced with the endemic poverty I asked John if it frustrated him that he couldn't change the world. His answer was "I can. I am. I'm starting with Africa". Oh.

Skip back a bit for an explanation: J-Life is a Christian charity, and they train youth leaders. They're not a church, they're not a theological college, they're not evangelists. At least not directly. They simply take seriously Christ's call to discipleship, and so they train and disciple young people from African communities in leadership skills. Those people then go back to their own communities and start youth initiatives: sports ministries, schools work, youth clubs, the list goes on.

J-Life's idea is simple: in order to change the world you change its youth. Look at the events of the "Arab Spring" - multiple revolutions in the Arabic world, and youth movements played a big part in all of them. Conversely if you neglect the youth, you perpetuate a cycle of hopelessness and decline.

J-Life is not about westerners telling a bunch of Africans about Jesus then leaving them to it, far from it. J-Life is about investing in youth, then supporting them as they invest in their communities. J-Life trains leaders in the leadership skills Christ modelled - and whether you believe in him or not, you can't fault his leadership style. Whoever or whatever you think he was, his message started with twelve uneducated guys and spread to two billion Christians in two thousand years.

Stretching that into a pithy statistic in a manner which would make Ben Goldacre weep tears of frustration into his cappuccino, that's a million people for every year since Christ died. Not bad for a movement started by a carpenter from northern Israel.

For J-Life, Christ is the method, as well as the answer.

So it's about social change on the grandest scale. I'm not an evangelist, and I never will be. But I am a project manager, and so is Claire. And project management is what we have been called to do: J-Life are building a new training centre in northern Zambia and we are going in as project- and operations-managers for about three years. We'll be getting the centre finished, getting it running, and getting it financially self-sustaining. Along the way we'll be growing maize, training youth, and hopefully starting to build a school. Exciting times.

We're leaving in January 2013, and taking our two boys, Daniel and Reuben, who'll be 5 and 2 when we go. We've got six months in South Africa for our own training, and we expect to be in Zambia around June 2013.

Naturally we're worried about it: Zambia is a very poor country, Malaria is endemic, and you can't drink the water (not even if you're Zambian). But it's politically stable, the crime rate is very low (nobody has anything to steal), and the people are lovely. We'll be living in Ndola, a largish city, and we have each other. If we were completely calm about the whole affair I'd suggest we should be incarcerated for our own safety, but we do have a huge amount of peace. We're certain we're doing the right thing despite the risks.

At the very least it will be an interesting ride.

So this opening post sets the scene. We'll update regularly as we prepare and while we're there, and over the months we'll put in more about our family and the journey we've been on. We'd love you to connect with us as we start this new chapter of our lives.

Jason, Claire, Daniel, and Reuben.