Did Someone Say Shawarma?

Well I’m sure many of you are wondering what is next for the Hanes’?  It has been a while since we updated y’all and I’m sorry for that.  Don’t worry, we are still alive and doing our thing, even though we don’t really know what “our thing” is. 

2012 flew by as every year seems to do.  It was full of unknowns, questions and uncertainty.  We had just spent a year travelling around the world serving others so a natural question arose…now what?  How do you top that?  Well, slowly by slowly, as our Kenyan friends like to say, we just fell into life.  We traveled around the states visiting friends and family that had supported us the year before.  We spoke at a few churches who had sponsored us.  We just kind of floated around not really knowing our place. No matter where we went we would always get the same question.  What is next for the Hanes? 

Wow, what a question to be asked, especially when we're not sure of the answer!  Do any of us really know what will happen tomorrow?  Most of us have a pretty good guess at what the next day, month and even year may look like.  But for us it's been a little different.  We haven’t found a "career", we don’t own a home or have any debt, and although it would be nice to have some structure and stability in our life,  it looks like now is just not the time. And we are okay with that.

  

2012 was a transitional year I guess you could say.   We worked off and on as substitute teachers. (a bit of a reminder of how not ready we are to start a family and have kids!)  We lived in Central America for 3½ months over the summer serving, vacationing and just living.  We tried to live life as "normal" as we knew how. You know...normal...taking bucket baths when there's no hot water, lighting candles when the electricity goes out, walking everywhere, sweating endlessly and trying to communicate via charades. That is normal, right??  

  

Anyway, with 2013 in front of us we have decided to do something a little different, yet again.  Justin and I will be teaching English at a University in....wait for it.....SAUDI ARABIA!!  Yep that's right, Saudi Arabia. Home of falafels and shawarmas, deserts and sandstorms, Islam and Arabic, and much much more as I'm sure we will see.  We know that it sounds a little crazy.  It will be totally different than anything we have experienced thus far, but then again, I guess that is why it appeals to us.  

There are still a lot of unknowns; we have been working on the application for visas for about a month.  We do know that we have been hired and that we will be leaving in January, but we don’t know exactly when or where in Saudi we will be.

       

So what will you be doing in 2013?  Whatever it is that you are doing, we hope that it is something that you love, something that challenges you, something that helps you prioritize your life the way you feel you should be, and something that allows you to be surrounded by people you love.