Ray and Sandra Update – News!!

Dear friends,

We’re sorry that this announcement had to come through e-mail, but we wanted to get the word out quickly!

We have decided to move to Asia! We’re making a commitment of being there for 2-3 years. Ray will be travelling throughout Asia, but we will base ourselves out of Taipei, Taiwan for now.

Surprised? The decision came pretty quickly and it was certainly a tough decision to leave behind our friends, community and life here in Toronto. However, at the same time, we’re more and more confident each day that God is calling and leading us to take this step of faith.

A Little Background

We’ll be starting a blog to outline more details of our journey – past, present and future. The journey leading up to this decision certainly started long ago. However, it has really been in the past year and a half that we’ve seriously been thinking, considering and praying about China and our identity as a Chinese Canadian Christian. The journey with friends in the preparation, experience, reflection and contemplation of our short-term mission trips to China has really solidified a lot of thoughts and questions for us. Over the past year, we’ve felt a strong conviction to learn Mandarin; consider our role as Canadian born Chinese Christian as part of the global Chinese Church; and learn more about just being Chinese.

Why do we want to go to China? Well… it’s a long story, and perhaps the reasons for going will become more apparent in our future reflection. Here are a few reasons:

· To truly experience Chinese culture in a deeper way;
· To learn Mandarin;
· To learn to live a Christian life in a Chinese context;
· To learn to serve and minister to Chinese in their context;
· To take a step back from our busy life and ministry in Toronto in order to reflect;
· To build some foundations of inter-dependence in our marriage and relationship; and
· Many others… too numerous to outline or articulate…

In short, while we feel that we could have achieved many or all of these objectives in Toronto, for us, we felt this was an appropriate time in our lives to be called out of our comfort zone. We pray that these 2-3 years will be a time of education, reflection and experience.

What Will We Be Doing?

Ray will be working for Ernst & Young Asia. God has really provided through EY. After four months of discussions, we feel that the firm has really recognized what our personal objectives are for being in China. We feel that God has blessed Ray with a job that will be challenging yet consistent with his spiritual gifts and interests. While opportunities for Ray are not ideal today in mainland China, we feel that the job on the table today is truly a blessing from God.

Ray will be splitting his time between the EY Asia Learning Team and EY Taiwan. His 50% role with EY Asia will be the lead coordinator of the implementation of EY’s new global audit tool. He will be working with implementation teams in all 11 countries in the EY Asia area (including travelling to them all!). This means working primarily with mainland China as well as Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippians, Singapore, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Guam! For his other 50%, Ray will be the Learning and Development leader for EY Taiwan. This is a newly created role where Ray will lead the L&D team in developing the firm’s learning and development strategy, understand and address the learning and development needs of EY Taiwan’s 2,500 professionals, etc.

We haven’t figured out what Sandra will be doing, but this is one of the most exciting aspects! While we were a little uncertain at first, we feel that this uncertainty is allowing the flexibility to explore many different and exciting options. Some obvious options are to do language studies, pursue a graduate degree in education or teach. However, as we start contacting the many different mission organizations in Taiwan, we are discovering that the opportunities are endless. Just as God has blessed Ray with an opportunity that is so well aligned with where he would like to learn and grow, we trust that God will provide opportunities for Sandra to use and grow her spiritual gifts and interests.

Lots of different ideas and thoughts… but we’re going to take our time in making sure we pray through what to get involved in. For sure, we, like the early tentmakers in Acts, will be learning to live full Christian lives in the workplace and our community. There are already a number of interesting ideas and opportunities that have been raised!

So… now what??

Ray will be leaving the middle of October to start his EY Asia role and build up his relationship with the key contacts across Asia. Sandra will complete her commitment for this school term. Ray will return to Canada for Christmas and we’ll be targeting our final move to Taipei on January 1st!

Over the next few weeks we will be starting a blog. This will be our mechanism for further updates and more importantly, a vehicle for reflection in our journey.

We also plan on inviting all of you to an open house sometime in September where we can share more personally about our move. We definitely hope that we will have more opportunities to share with you in the weeks and months to come.

In our journey and decision making process to date, friends, family and community have resonated as the most valued blessing in our life. It has been a tough decision to take a step away from our life here in Toronto. We will miss so many things – friends and family, church, ministry, co-workers, etc.! We wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you to each of you for being an influence and blessing in our lives.

If you would be interested in continuing to support us as we take this step of faith in our lives, we would love to have you on this journey! We’ll explain more in the weeks to come. In the meantime, if you know of any contacts, friends or churches in Taipei, we’d love to hear about them!

Check out rayandsandra.blogspot.com in the weeks to come!

Ray and Sandra