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Soon after college, I married a good friend of mine, Ron Lockwood '86 in Santa Barbara in January of 1990. We had gotten to know one another a bit through our church involvement in college, both in Bible study and choir/handbells. We had also both gone on overseas trips to Papua New Guinea in the summer of '86 and had prayed together prior to that. We kept up our friendship through letters once he left for a four-year army tour and cemented our "friendship" during a visit to Europe following my graduation.

Michelle and her family on vacation in Alaska

After our honeymoon, we returned to Germany while he finished out his term of service. He got out just prior to the Persian Gulf crisis in which his entire battalion was called up for duty. We decided to go to Colorado to begin life stateside. Both of us desired to serve God overseas full time. After our trip to PNG we just assumed we would end up there. With Ron working as a software engineer and me as a bank teller, we planned another trip to PNG (1992) and I took classes that would help me eventually get another degree in nursing. (My degree was in Religious Studies.) I felt like we couldn't just help people spiritually without ministering to their physical needs as well.

Soon after I was accepted into the nursing program at the University of Colorado we learned I was pregnant again, the first having ended in a miscarriage. Long story short I ended up withdrawing because I felt my call to being a mother needed to come before a degree. We had also learned that PNG would be too isolated for me to serve long-term so our ultimate destination was in the Lord's hands and may never require a nursing degree. With nothing more to hold us back we decided to pursue full time overseas work.

We began raising support and trying to get a sense of where God wanted us. We were both pretty open but thought working with Africans in some context is what we would enjoy most. Near the end of our linguistic training we began looking into places in Africa, but doors kept closing. Either they weren't ready for us yet or the government's stability would not allow for a definitive start date. During this process I kept thinking back to Germany and why God had taken Ron there and helped him learn German knowing God often uses such things in our future. I decided to see if any language-related work was going on there. Surprisingly enough there was some work going on, but it was not for the country of Germany but rather for displaced projects, working with people from restricted access countries. In this way God led us to begin work in a completely new area. In 1999 with three children (Christopher, 5, Cameron, 3 and Andrea, 1) we headed off to the Philippines for Field Training.

We spent the next three months in the Philippians, both in an island phase and a Manilla phase and learned many lessons dealing with culture stress, practical field needs and coping in such assignments. We then headed to England where we lived from 1999-2000 and learned the national language of our focus country. In the summer of 2000 we moved to Mainz, Germany and began the process of identifying people who had fled the country and who might have a heart for their mother tongue. God was so gracious to us and in a short amount of time we had a small team of colleagues with whom we worked in linguistic development for a regional language (we'll call it Elegant) of our focus country.

Fast forward to today...We now live in a small town in the Black Forest and continue our work with many team members, both nationals and expatriates. By God's grace, Scripture materials are now available in the language, a grammar of Elegant will be published shortly and many other works are still planned. Our kids are growing up rapidly with Christopher leaving for college next year, Cameron being a high school freshman and Andrea in the 8th grade in a German school. I can't believe they're all teenagers!! Ron loves his work and I love being a support for him and engaging in various tasks both with our organization and among the German community that we're a part of. At times I still can't believe I live here; I never even wanted to travel prior to my first overseas trip and now I've visited more countries than I can count! What is exceedingly clear though is that whatever we do, when we are following God's plan for our lives, He is always faithful. There's nothing better than being a part of His body around the world!