Halfway done Halfway to go!

Hello family and friends! Thank you for checking out our blog. If you clicked on the link from my Facebook, you are probably thinking – 2 MORE years in Korea?!?! Yes, that is the truth and please let me take the time to explain why we’ve come to this decision.

Our first week in Korea!

Let’s start at the beginning:

So… exactly 2 years ago, my husband Cory and I anxiously arrived in South Korea. At that time we
were married for 2 months. We decided to come to South Korea for a multiple of reasons.

1. The opportunity to work overseas for a period in our life
2. Make payments towards our student loans
3.  Experience a new culture
4.  Travel!

Since I graduated with an Elementary Education degree and traveled to 4 countries before Korea, I developed a desire to teach in another country. When I was around 16 years old, I remember praying at a church retreat where God gave me a vision of children all over the world coming to thank me for impacting their lives. At that time, I’d never left the United States. It’s amazing to see the faithfulness of God.

Also, Cory felt a calling on his life saying he was, called to the nations. He never truly knew what that meant, but also never forgot it either. We actually never shared our “visions” with one another until we were dating for over a year and a half. That’s when Cory’s friend told us about the opportunity of teaching in South Korea!!! Everything all started to make sense.

We decided to look into South Korea more and everything with our heart’s desires became much clearer. We went through the entire (long) process of applying to teach in Korea (while planning a wedding!), got accepted, and are now living out our callings. It’s an amazing feeling.

The “Plan”

Our initial plan was to come and teach in Korea for 2 years. After Cory and I graduated, we knew we would have a LOT of school loans, but we were pretty SHOCKED when we found out just how much. Here we were…. Newlyweds with a teaching degree and youth ministry degree…and now almost $100,000 in school loan debt! Luckily we didn’t have any other debt… but still that was a big chunk of change!

We realized Korea would give us the opportunity to really make some serious payments towards these loans! In Korea, our housing is free and all other costs are very minimal. Therefore, my entire paycheck and half of Cory’s goes to these loans each month!!! I am happy to say that after 2 years of being here, we’ve been able to pay off $27,000!!!

So with all that being said, we are very happy with the amount we’ve paid off, but we really don’t think we’d be able to live at home comfortably with $73,000 in school loan debt. Not to mention; an apartment payment, car payment, insurance, gas money, electric bills, etc. We imagine that we would both have to get 2 jobs and hardly ever see each other. Now, that doesn’t sound like a very fun life especially because we love spending time together. That’s when we decided a third year would be best. As of today, we are actually in our 3^rd year teaching contract! We are happy and excited to start another year.

So why 4 years?

Another perk to teaching in Korea is when you leave you will receive an accumulated amount of severance and pension pay. After our third year, we really could move back home – but our ENTIRE severance/pension pay would go towards our loans. It would bring us down to about $24,000 in school loans and not a dime in our pockets. OR we have the opportunity to stay a 4^th year and move back with $0 in schools loans and possibly some money in our pockets (fingers crossed!!!) After we figured out our math (and hopefully our math is correct) we really had to ask ourselves what would benefit us more. What would benefit our future family more? Getting $100,000 paid off in 4 YEARS sounds unheard of, yet we have the opportunity. We kept asking ourselves, how can we pass this up?

Homesickness has really taken it’s toll with living on the other side of the world, but luckily both of our families are so understanding and know that this is not an easy decision for us. I really believe that the Lord is teaching us Diligence through this experience. Slowly but surely we will meet our goal and what a happy day that will be!!!

The reason why I am sharing all of this is to simply give you an update on our lives and to ask for prayer. Prayer for homesickness, peace, comfort, diligence, obedience, adventure, travel, safety, and making memories that will hopefully be an inspiration to others!

Thank you to all who’ve supported us and followed our journey. I know we have missed out on so many things back home, but I promise we will be reunited someday!! We are looking forward to seeing you on our next trip home to the USA!!! January 28^th – February 24^th. First 2 weeks in Iowa and second 2 weeks in Illinois, so mark your calendars!!

Love you all and thanks for reading! ~ Cory and Michelle

Some pics we took to celebrate 2 years living abroad