Timeline

   

FROM PAST TO FUTURE: upstream and downstream   

 　

MARCH 2004: Prelude   We met while helping out at the Youth Group at Sierra Pines Church in Oakhurst, California. Cortnie had just returned from her five month Discipleship Training School with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) in Lakeside, Montana. There, she had studied for three months before going on an outreach to England, Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Ireland. Andrew had been helping out at the Youth Group for some time, mostly playing worship music (he was fiddling around on the grand piano when Cortnie first saw him). We became close friends during a weeklong trip to the San Francisco Rescue Mission where we had a great time handing out meals and blankets, praying for sick cats, and protesting in front of the Strip Club next door.

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 JUNE 25, 2005: Wedding Bells   Married at The Little Church In The Pines at Bass Lake, California. We had a Celtic-themed wedding with Irish music, hand-fasting (an ancient ritual from which we get the expression “tying the knot” ), traditional Celtic vows, and a traditional Irish Wedding Feast.

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 AUGUST 2005: Becoming Teachers    Attended T.E.S.O.L. (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), a school at YWAM Montana. We spent a month with long lectures, lesson plans, a practicum almost every night, and some of the greatest folk we’d ever met. We traveled from Oakhurst to Montana with our good friends, the Lehmans (who were also newlyweds at the time—married four days before us), and it was here that we also met Vern Maculey of Eden House.

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 SEPTEMBER 2005: Starting a journey   We returned home with a few visions for the future, they included: a local churchplant in our hometown, a possible future trip to Thailand (strongly on Cortnie’s heart), and a desire to go to the Himalayas (on Andrew’s heart.) We elected to stay in Oakhurst and learn firsthand the ins and outs of churchplanting (a vital part of fruitful and sustainable evangelism during potential missionary work abroad). We joined our friends at The Journey Vineyard church in Oakhurst, taking ministry slow at first (as we were still newlyweds) and then slowly adding on new duties including: College and Youth leadership, Worship, Media, Secretarial, Jumpstarting a Community Meal with our homeless friends, and supporting Missions.

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 OCTOBER 2006: Passage to Bangkok   With the support of The Journey and our great friends, we flew to Thailand for a month—a country, a people, and a story that had been on Cortnie’s heart since TESOL, more than a year before. God showed up in Bangkok’s new international airport (the day after it opened) when he miraculously allowed us to run into our friends Vern & Audrey Macauley when we really needed help.  We learned our Thai numbers while trying to buy food and water on the train. We ate rice and fried eggs and spicy red curry for breakfast—and loved it (of course, right?). We ate ‘mystery-meat’ on a stick and narrowly avoided countless traffic accidents at the hands of foreign strangers. We stayed at the Macauley’s home for girls rescued from at-risk situations. It’s called Eden House, located in the small city of Chiang Rai—and oh, how we miss those girls, and Vern and Audrey, and Jazzy the dog, and Jake the cat. While in Thailand we also met up with Vineyard church planters in Chiang Mai, and we walked the streets of Bangkok searching for the Vineyard church there holding their services on top of a roof in the middle of a slum. (We eventually found it on top of the “Mercy Center” after wandering around with our limited Thai, speaking “Merc-y, yoo-tee-nai? Merc-y, yoo-tee-nai? Where is Mercy?”) While in Northern Thailand we stayed with a young couple our age who came to Thailand as interns and never went back home. They now practice C.H.E. (Community Health Evangelism) in a small village called Mat Ai where you can eat pig blood soup for 25 cents. Their holistic take on community development, sustainability, spirituality, and evangelism has left an indelible mark on us, and has brought reoccurring vision and purpose to everything we’ve done since Thailand and the plans and dreams we have for the future.

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 SUMMER 2007: Students of community.   Trying to understand and put into practice our own little piece of Christian Community and sustainability, we buy chickens, we get a roommate (Kristen, ‘we love you and miss you!’), we dress up like hippies for Halloween, we bake Christmas cookies, we listen to awesome music. 

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AUTUMN/WINTER 2007: We feel called to work on our missionary training and experience. We apply for the Fall 2008 Missionary Training School at Global Frontier Missions (GFM) in Oaxaca, Mexico—a nine month-long school, with possible internships in community development, and outreaches to Thailand. Our friends, Dave & Rhonda were there and encouraged us to pursue our previous visions to become full-time missionaries somewhere in Asia. We apply to that ambitious school, seeing if God would open any doors. We’re accepted to the school, and within weeks discover that Cortnie’s pregnant and due to have a baby on September 8, 2008—the exact day the school in Oaxaca was scheduled to begin. We decide this is God telling us to hold off a bit. We get another roommate in the form of Andrew’s dad, Tim, we get an awesome A-frame cabin in which to spend the next year, and we begin releasing ourselves from many of our ministry commitments in preparation for a new baby.

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SEPTEMBER 5, 2008: Boy, oh Boy Eoghan is born; 7lbs, 1oz. Healthy and Handsome. His full name is Joshua Mac Eoghan Brooks, a name with many meanings and much significance and in tune with the style of our wedding, it’s gaelic.

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SUMMER 2009: Return to TESOL After a yearlong sabbatical from ministry, Cortnie was asked to return to YWAM Montana as staff their TESOL school. So we left our jobs for two months and headed back to Lakeside, Montana, this time with a baby. Everyone there loves Eoghan, we love everyone there. While staffing the school we receive some heavy visions for the future regarding Asia, namely the Himalayan regions of Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan. God also redirects our plans at that time of moving to Washington D.C. to finish school, and directs us toward Portland, instead. When T.E.S.O.L. has finished and we’ve said our many goodbyes we head to Oregon to check out this city called Portland. We had already fallen in love just from the visions God had given us while in Montana, but these are only confirmed once we spent a few short days there. We talked to some young church planters, we went for walks, we sampled the coffee, and we had an unexplainable interaction with a lady on the street who explained to us how Portland was dark, and spiritually-disconnected. ‘But I can see that you are different,’ she said. We claim Portland as our new home, and we drive back to our former home of Oakhurst dreaming many dreams for Portland. (And we stopped in Redding on the way down to see Andrew’s brother, Ian, who made us amazing eggs for breakfast and encouraged us on our way! “You’re a servant, Ian”)

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AUTUMN 2009: We return to our jobs and begin working and saving money to move to Portland. We dress Eoghan up as a monkey for Halloween (underneath his costume he’s wearing his Spaceship pajamas—so maybe he was a space monkey). We collect acorns to make flour, just for fun. We start saying goodbyes to our many friends.

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WINTER 2009/2010: On the Move   We arrive in Portland on December 1st, and we find a little apartment in the Northwest District. We get busy settling in, finding jobs, making friends, and preparing for whatever God’s got lined up for us. We believe He’s in control and we’re excited to go along for the ride.  

 

SUMMER 2010: Staffing TESOL in Montana   YWAM Lakeside made for another great summer in Big Sky country!  We had the great opportunity to teach part of course this year.  Flexing those teaching skills is always so much fun.  Also, Cortnie was able to co-lead the school with our awesome friend Jeff Wilke–that gave her some good experience for leading TESOLs  in the future.  Jeff had asked us to consider coming onto full-time staff in order to help them expand their TESOL pragram there, and that is still a possiblilty–if we decide to do it.  It would mean leaving behind everything we’ve come to know and love here in Portland, raise enough financial support to sustain our small missionary family, and jump into the great unknown (so to speak). There are many exciting aspects to that proposition, many of which we’ve longed for since before we were married.  But it’s not something we take lightly either.  Would you please pray for guidance for us, that we’d make the right decisions and that we wouldn’t forsake anything God might have for us.  We’re more than willing to follow Him to Montana and beyond, or to stay with Him here in our lovely little neighborhood in the midst of this great city.

   

Union Station at night in Portland.

 

-  >>>WINTER 2o11: She’s Having A Baby  Sometime in January we should be having our second baby! We’re super excited that Eoghan will have a brother Finn to read books to, to dance and sing songs together, to dig holes in the ground together, to take rides on eachother’s handlebars, to grow old together.  

We’re moving back to California for a short time until the baby is born. This will give Cortnie and the baby all the support they need for the difficult last month of pregnancy. Also, it’ll be very refreshing for us to see our friends and family during the holidays, and it’s important that we get to share the birth of the new baby with them. After the birth, we plan on returning to Portland as soon as we can, then continuing our jobs as we also start our new classes as official Oregon residents.

This should be an exciting time as we reacquaint ourselves with old friends and family, discover the face of the love growing inside Cortnie for the last seven months, and return back to Portland more than a year after we first arrived—this time with a fourth Brooks family member. There are still many plans and ideas we have beyond our return to Portland, but for now we’re content with just waiting and enjoying every moment until then.

-  >>>SPRING 2o11: Back To School  Now that we’re Oregon residents, the universities in Portland are quite affodable.  So we’ll be signing up for a few new classes, when we’re not working and taking care of the babes.  Pray that we have the necessary time to do everything we set out to accomplish, and that we do everything well.

- >>>2011 and Beyond: What we know We still have hopes and dreams of doing overseas missions for a long time to come. Whether these take place entirely overseas, or if we’d be based out of the States for some of the time, is something that we’ll leave up to God’s choosing. That is still a while from now, and many things need to take place before we can know for sure what we’ll be doing exactly. We’ll probably be doing many of the same things we’re doing now, including building community among our human brothers and sisters, seeking God’s Spirit to breakthrough into our day to day lives and show us his Truth and Life, and loving people the way Jesus has shown us. Those are the “knowns,” beyond them is only the comfort of unknowing.