Seven years ago, when Kristi Swarbrick first told her husband of her dream to make an extended mission trip to Africa, he didn’t rush to pack his bags.
“I mentioned it to him and he said, ‘send me a postcard,’” she recalled with a chuckle.
But she was serious in her intent; it was an idea that took root while she was teaching a unit on Africa and the desert to Grade 1 students at Abbotsford Christian School.
Rather than write the dream off, Kristi put it on the backburner, patiently waiting for the day her husband, Daytona, would come around, occasionally reminding him it hadn’t faded.
The wait paid off.
Next month, the White Rock couple will bid adieu to their seaside home, send their cats to stay in Edmonton and head to the northeast corner of South Africa, to begin a year serving with Hands at Work. The non-profit Christian organization works in the poorest communities of eight sub-Saharan countries, where HIV/AIDS, poverty and the number of vulnerable children are highest and support is lowest.
“Basically, they take the ‘scaffolding’ approach. They’ll specifically look for villages that don’t have aid,” Kristi said, of what sold her on the organization.
“It was important to me there wasn’t a focus on evangelism.”
For Kristi, 35, the trip means putting her job as administrative assistant at White Rock Christian Academy on hold. She has held the position for the past five years; for the last three, she also co-ordinated the school’s annual service trips to Guatemala. There, the Grade 11 students work on projects geared to helping the locals, including their peers at Vida y Esperanza, WRCA’s sister school in Santa Lucia.
Kristi told Peace Arch News last year that such trips are life-changing for the students.
Last month, she said she expects her upcoming experience to be even more profound.
“There’s going to be very powerful times that lie ahead,” she said, conceding that the conflict and poverty that the couple will most certainly witness over the coming year will be difficult to see.
“But seeing the hope as well… seeing justice being brought to difficult situations, that is what excites me,” she said.
Her 36-year-old husband – whose stance on making the trip was swayed after travelling to Guatemala on one of the WRCA missions, and then to Jordan separately – said he expects the mission trip will be “different, and a little bit jarring.”
In preparation for the journey, the couple – who have been married for 15 years – set up a website detailing their plans, along with their efforts to raise money to cover their flights and living expenses. They intend to blog about their experiences, which will begin with a two-month orientation in White River.
From there, they could be tasked to projects in any of Hands’ eight target countries. They won’t know exactly where they’ll end up or what they’ll be doing until they get there.
They do know their efforts won’t change the world.
“And it may not be something we physically see the effects of right away,” Kristi said. “But it may be a seed that will grow.”
Kristi admits that the scene and situation that await her and Daytona may not be what she is expecting; what she has been dreaming of. But she can’t imagine looking back on it a year from now with regret.
“I probably have a romanticized view and I know that’s probably going to be turned upside-down,” she said.
“Both of us feel very much at peace about it. We both didn’t want to look back and say, ‘hey, this is what we wanted to do and we never did it.’”
They leave Sept. 9.