Omot Family Adventures

 So we did a thing. We starred in our first video as a fam.  Before you can watch, you gotta pray for us :) kidding, but really.  Christmas morning at Auntie Mimi's! We are so grateful to be surrounded by people who love us and lift us up in so many ways. The Body of Christ is a pretty big deal. As we continue to transition back to a new normal with Friday going part-time at church, me back in school, and a lot of steps to take towards moving our family overseas, we are so appreciative of your prayers and encouragement.  Friday is home with kids a little more and balancing how to "do ministry" part-time. There is grace and we are grateful to have an amazing church body and leadership to walk with us through this journey. Could NOT imagine doing it with anyone else.      -Prayers for routines with kiddos      - Prayers for monthly financial partners     -Prayers for rest     -Prayers for our Church as they transition t...

‘the act of mourning in advance, outcomes that are not guaranteed ' I heard this word for the first time at our training in Georgia. They shared it simultaneously with post grieving. You could tend towards one or the other or both. I didn’t apply it to myself. I was living the excited train of adventure that this enneagram 7 loves to ride: new places, new things, new people, unpredictable. I don’t mourn things or places, I just keep going, believing that mourning means I don’t trust the Lord or the outcome is not the right one. Yet, the past few months, I’ve been mourning everything! Loving on my work students, my friends, last time doing this, or last fall for a while, raking leaves, walks with mittens, our only too regular walks to Starbucks for cake-pops and coffee. I’ve learned that the one  outcome is guaranteed for us in this upcoming season, it’s change.    Change isn’t really new. It’s something that is required in order to grow and learn and be a better human, a ...

AIM  Africa Inland Mission.  We are a part of this sending agency. They have brought us so much joy, wisdom, and direction as we've worked through this process of moving our little family to East Africa. The process has been and is long. It has been tedious. It has been hard work. It has also been filled with joy and peace.  Our journey to Africa started long ago, we didn't understand that the process of prayer and readying our hearts would take so long, but man, are we grateful for the time. Prior to Friday and I knowing each other, our hearts were both already intertwined in prayer for different people groups in East Africa. We were learning, growing, and praying in our understanding of "Missions" and how we individually fit into that picture.  (Peace and Reconciliation Training in Gog village in Ethiopia) I was pursuing Teaching English As a Second Language degree, traveling in the summers, teaching in a small town of many languages,  and exploring and prayin...

     March 3rd, 1989 in Renk, present day South Sudan a young man was born on a Friday. His parents named him Friday. He grew up in the heat and with the scorpions. The firstborn son of Jay and Elizabeth, from the beautiful ethnic group called the Anyua or Anuak. His ethnic group was one of the first Nilotic groups to become Christian. Missionaries went in the 1960's to teach and train. He spoke only Arabic though and grew up in a town with one road through it.       This road eventually led his family to seek shelter from fighting and war in a refugee camp in Ethiopia. He travelled as a 6 year old, walking the three day journey on foot, while his new younger brother was carried. They travelled at night and slept in the day. His 6 year old body was tired and weary, on the look-out for soldiers and dangers of the road. They were eventually found by soldiers, the good ones. The ones who would help lead them to a small Anuak village, where he embarked on ...

 We are the Omot's! Thanks for journeying with us. This is a journey that started in 1960's when young missionaries and their families, Harvey Hoekstra and Don McClure, went to serve the Anuak people in South Sudan. This was an unreached people group, coming out of years of animism and desiring new things. There was a young Anuak man named Akway. This man was a new follower of Jesus, disciples by the missionaries. He travelled with the missionaries, helped them with language learning, and he was equipped him in how to teach and share with his tribe in a way that missionaries couldn't. He started Christ-centered churches, discipled others, and lived a long life that honored God. A man mobilized by missionaries to take Jesus to his own people. -Pastor Akway and his wife in 2015- Fast-forward to 1989, when another young Anuak man was born in South Sudan. He was named after the day he was born, Friday! He came to the United States when he was 9 years old out of a refugee camp i...