United World Mission

Dear Friends and Family,

When I first felt called into missions, I imagined that by the time I set foot in Latin America I would have developed some serious holiness. Now that we are less than a year away from deploying, I’m not exactly that saint I had hoped I would be! Nonetheless, I suppose that the God who made his first apostles out of tax collectors and murderers can still work some good out of a guy like me. :-)

Notwithstanding God’s ability to work with cracked vessels, I’ve decided to make some significant changes to my lifestyle these past several weeks. I’ve cut back on the number of hours I spent working every week in order that I can get home earlier to help Judah learn Spanish and to spend more time just playing with the boys. As we prepare for the field, I want to enrich the bonds within our family so that (as one missions pastor put it to me) “the boys’ strongest relationships are the ones that they take with them to South America.” But beyond that, I have realized how much of my sense of identity is wrapped up with work, achievement, and the future, as a result of which I often neglect relationships in the present. These changes in my schedule represent a corrective step, and I’m grateful to many of you have encouraged me over the last few months to reassess the way that I work.

Of course, further schedule changes are just around the corner, since our new baby is due in just a few weeks; hopefully the next update you receive from us will include infant pictures!

Peace be with you all,

Christopher, Michelle, Judah and Asher Hays