Do you ever wonder where people come from, what makes their history. Well here is ours...........
Mark and Zana met on a blind date in 1993. Soon after that date, Zana moved 2000 miles away and after a very brief long distance relationship, they were engaged and Zana moved home. the wedding date was moved up because Mark was being transferred. So on Feb 19, 1994 we were married and had to be in Singapore on March 1st where we lived for 3 years. At the time Mark was an IT manager for a Financial company. We travelled throughout Asia and Australia. Our first months in country we attended an NTM missionary banquet and met some wonderful missionaries, John and Jerrie Gorenflo from Indonesia. Thus began our wonderful time as a missionary host home. We had so many families in our apartment. We developed a passion for ministering into the lives of missionaries and how special they are and how sometimes they are forgotten. One of my favorite things in life was to provide air conditioning and cookies:) Somehow randomly in about 1995 we became familiar with Mercy Ships.
When John would come visit, he would challenge Mark as to when he was going to "give all this up and serve". We had the opportunity to work with missionaries from many organizations. There are many computers with parts throughout southeast Asia from Marks handiwork.
It just seemed like the perfect way to serve for us. You see, Mark has a 10 year history in the Coast Guard, the ministry needed IT professionals, and every hospital ship would need nurses. So we began to REALLY pray about what God would have in our lives. Thus began a long preparation for service. We had some things we wanted to get in order to prepare to serve. Historically an interesting point is that Zana's family protested our marriage because no one could see Mark ever wanting to be a missionary in Africa and it was something that Zana had dreamed of forever.
Our oldest daughter was born in Singapore and we moved home. We had a home we had rented out in Plymouth, Ma. We moved back in there and had another girl. We knew that we wanted our kids to be school age when we were going to serve, just believed that was what God would have for us. Then we began to pray about just how God would have us to serve. And in 1999 decided that Zana would go to graduate school to be a Family Nurse practitioner. Not sure what we were thinking. The kids were very young and Mark travelled so much. But we endured and She graduated in 2002 with a Masters in Nursing as a Nurse Practitioner. We knew we needed to continue to get ready to serve, financially, emotionally, spiritually. We were in a wonderful Church with wonderful friends, but our kids knew that we were meant to serve the poor and needy.
During that time we had one of those very pivotal moments. It was 9/11/2001. That day is frozen in our minds. Mark was in New York that day and watched the planes fly into the towers. he went down to the street to try to help, and ended up running for his life when the first tower fell. Life is short and you need to always know you are serving where the Lord wants you.
So in 2003, Mark was working for an IT company, making VERY good money, the kids were well adapted and homeschooling, and Zana was working as a Nurse Practitioner, making GOOD money. We had everything, but longed to let it all go and serve. In the fall of 2003 we attended our Intro to Mercy Ships class and made some wonderful friends. We set things in motion, you see the year before in 2002 we thought it was time to get ready to go, we put our house on the market and everyone thought the house would sell so fast--well it did NOT. And we both knew it just was not time. So now in the fall of '03 we knew it was. Believe it or not, we put the house on the market on the friday of Thanksgiving weekend. Everyone kinda felt sorry for us and wanted for us to be prepared for it to be hard to sell the house that time of year and in that market. Well our house sold in one showing on the Sunday and we moved out Christmas week. Our realtor says it was his last good sale before things went downhill, and we recently learned that the house had foreclosed and resold for $110,000 less than what we sold it for, so we were very blessed.
We moved in with wonderful friends and their 5 children and lived in the third floor of their house. We called ourselves the Tonelliotts (Tonello+Elliott). We were so blessed. We worked and lived there with them until April. Throughout that spring, we gave away our things. We had sold the house, but most everything else we gave away. We stored some special things into the basements of family members, and then in April we packed up our minivan and headed towards Texas.
We knew without a doubt it was what God had for us and our lives, could not tell you why except that we had so much peace with our decisions.
So our journey continues to the same theme song as it did when we went to Singapore:
Stephen Curtis Chapmans: The Great Adventure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrrjbTc0urk
Our life has been a wonderful adventure that continues.So Mark serves and loves the poor and need yof Africa. He lives on support with no steady income and would not go back to his previous life. Now trusting God for every day.
