Spring 2006 - Applying to OMF - analyze me

ChinaJim

Welcome to the first of our online blogs. We hope you find it helpful. Having felt a call to live and minister in East Asia, we have been in the application process for OMF International for about one year now. Apparently we are being fast-tracked through the process!

I don’t know who first suggested that OMF stands for “One Million Forms” but I think they were probably gifted with understatement! We’ve filled out so many bits of paper about ourselves that I wouldn’t be surprised if OMF was planning to publish our biographies.

We’ve answered questions on our history, our theology (which has probably changed several times since we completed the forms) and our personalities. Then we had to get six references each! Feeling naked and exposed after all this, we were then given a deeper probing at our physical medicals! As I recently said to a retired OMF missionary, it’s not like the old days when they let any old person go out on the field!

We must have bluffed our way sufficiently through the forms because we were invited to be interviewed by the Scottish Council of OMF. This used to be a group of clerical heavyweights but now consists of about twelve more ‘normal’ people. They asked us all manner of questions based on our forms. “How have you enjoyed your time at Bible College?” Not a hard question to answer when your missions lecturer is on the Council! “What will you miss most about life in Scotland?” ‘The OMF Scottish Conference,’ I cheekily answer.

Having won the Scottish Council over with our charm, we now have to go to the European Candidates Course at Sevenoaks for two weeks. More on this next time…

ChinaJane

Here’s some more emotions-based chat on what God’s been taking us through over the past while. As my esteemed husband has been saying, the application process has been quite long, often draining and occasionally a little bit frustrating. Imagine what it’s like explaining to everyone you know that you’re going to East Asia, but won’t be leaving for another 18 months because of all the different stages in OMF’s application process. People inevitably ask what all the stages are and why they’re necessary, and we start to feel a bit like Noah trying to explain why he needed a boat full of animals in the desert.

Our Christian friends have been very supportive and encouraging, and our families seem to be quite relieved that we’re not leaving for a while yet, but our non-Christian friends generally can’t understand see why we don’t just book a flight and leave next week. Why does it have to be so complicated to go to another country?

Despite this long ‘limbo’ experience, two things have kept us going. Firstly, when God started challenging us about leaving Scotland, and we eventually visited East Asia (last summer) to confirm what God seemed to be saying, we were certain that our next stage was to apply to OMF. We knew that God would confirm whether he wanted us in East Asia or not through OMF’s reaction to us. Even though the process is long and difficult to explain, we’re exactly where God wants us. Taking any other route to East Asia would be disobedience to God, and we know the story of Jonah too well to try that.

Secondly, we trust OMF. They’ve got a lot of experience of getting people to East Asia and helping them to stay there. We know that in the years to come, when we’re living in East Asia (hopefully!) and finding things hard, this long, probing application process will be a source of comfort and confidence for us. If we make it through, it will be because an awful lot of people are certain that we’re physically and psychologically strong enough to cope with living in East Asia, and that that’s where God wants us working for him.