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.