TEAMspinella: December 2010

Thursday, December 30, 2010

[TEAMspinella] Financial update and the everyone one hundred TEAM email blitz

The end of the year is upon us, and I'm getting emails and letters from ministries reminding me to give. It makes me wonder if I should be writing a similar email. What do you think?

You probably know our ministry is supported financially by ministry partners. Our ministry includes partners who are family, friends, coworkers, and four sending fellowships. We enjoy these partnerships not just because of the ministry we get done together, but because we love the relationships with all of you. Thank you one and all!

We've just completed another year of ministry. We especially thank those of you who have partnered with us in our ministry! Ministry has been our primary focus since at least 1990. In these 20 years we have almost entirely forgone for-profit contracts and work in order to focus on international ministry. This is way cool from our perspective and we are grateful. We have not gone hungry either!

What about 2010? We all know this has been a hard year economically. For us, it's also included a transition--we've just returned to Colorado for a global member care ministry after almost 15 years in Taiwan.

Bottom line: Our ministry accounts dropped about $11,909 in 2010.

We still have some reserves, but over the last year that's been dropping $992 every month. The ministry we left behind in Taiwan, the Center for Counseling and Growth, is also wondering how they will make up the shortfall created in part by our departure, including a financial shortfall I just heard the acting director estimate at about $1000 per month also.

Indirectly we are also supported by our sponsoring non-profit, TEAM. While our ministry partnership contributes administrative monies each month toward infrastructure expenses, TEAM raises and spends more. Last year we were looking at a large deficit in TEAM's current funding for international administration, leadership, and public relations. Someone suggested if each ministry partner involved with TEAM personnel gave an extra $100 we could make up that shortfall. This morphed into the "everyone one hundred" public relations campaign. We designated an extra $4000 from our ministry funds to TEAM's international administration on behalf of the 40 regular ministry partners in our ministry. What do you think, should we do that again?

As you might guess, TEAM's focus is not just on funding, but also on intercession and information. This year the "everyone one hundred" is also being linked to the "one hundred days" in 2011 before Easter. Laura and I will be tracking with this and we invite you to join us if you're interested.

We also want to invite you to partner directly with our ministry. The most direct way to partner with us financially is to give a gift to TEAM with a note asking them to apply it to "the ministry of Steve Spinella." You can do this by phone, online, or by mail, by check, credit card, or various other ways. If you want, you can send a note to us telling us or we can just find out when TEAM processes your contribution. One note: TEAM does not bill anyone and neither do we. If you stop giving or lose your last receipt and reply form, you can restart whenever you want or even call up TEAM and ask for another form, but we want to leave the initiative with you in how, when, and if you decide to give. We invite and welcome your partnership, but we also believe you are the one to best decide what part in ministry everywhere and anywhere you want to take.

We're having a great time with our kids and also Laura's parents. We expect to say goodbye to Joey and Robby Saturday, 1/1, and to Sarah Tuesday, 1/4. We're still praying about living arrangements going forward in the new year, but for now we are once again with Laura's parents, Bob and Martha Ramage. Let me take this chance to also especially thank Bob and Martha and also Sarah, Joey, and Robby for the unique contributions and sacrifices they each make for our continued ministry!

With love from the mountainside, Steve and Laura

PS How to participate in the Everyone One Hundred campaign:

Signing up is easy! Just go online at www.TEAMeveryone.org and fill out the form. Or, if you prefer, send an email with your contact info to helpnow@teamworld.org and ask to sign up. You can ask TEAM anything else you want at that same address!

PPS Well, there's our letter! What did you think of it?

Dr. Steve and Laura Spinella

9685 Otero Ave, Colorado Springs, CO 80920, 719.528.1702, cell 719.355.4809
TEAM, PO Box 969, Wheaton, IL 60187, 800 343-3144
<spinella@alumni.rice.edu> <lauraspinella@alumni.rice.edu>

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Thursday, December 23, 2010

[TEAMspinella] Christmas in Colorado, transition underway

I'll make this quick!

We're back in Colorado, catching up and debriefing as a family, and preparing to start a new year in a new ministry role. We left Taiwan after 15 years. My new title is Global Ministry Care Consultant for TEAM, based in Colorado. Laura and I both expect to travel to ministry areas around the world and also receive people from around the world here in Colorado. While our focus will be on TEAM, we hope to care for people beyond TEAM as well.

"How are we?" We're doing pretty well, I think, but we came back to some family challenges as well as the biggest transition we've made for a long time. We're probably still in the shock and/or honeymoon phase of the adjustment. We spent three nights in Breckenridge, CO, right after we got back to have some time just as a family of 5, and easily saw more snow stacked up and falling than we've seen in the last 15 years in Taiwan and Houston combined. (Well, not a very good comparison, but we did see a lot of snow.) Joey and Robby both skied a bit while the other three of us stayed warm.

"How did we leave?" It was difficult to say so many goodbyes, but Laura and I savored the chances to remember and celebrate the good things, the changed lives, and the unique lifestyle we enjoyed in Taiwan. We know we are missed and we are definitely missing people there.

"What do we need?" We continue to depend on our ministry partners for our ministry finances. As from the beginning, this allows us to serve people who are serving others in that same way. We enjoy doing that, but we know we can't do it without our ministry partners. We still need your support in every way. While living costs are somewhat lower in the US than Taiwan (yes, believe it!), there will be increased travel costs and a less compelling story to tell, making funding harder. Somehow the Taiwan rap has not yet been replaced!

We will also need to build community here in Colorado. We have lived here before, but we're realizing this is going to take some work and some time. Keep us in mind over these next months especially.

"How about the kids?" Well, the emerging adults are wonderful to us, but they do have their challenges, too. Sarah has completed her first semester of the Counseling Psych PhD at Texas A&M and she has felt this to be a more challenging transition than her going to Rice four years ago. She is beginning to feel more adjusted and has threatened to buy me Aggie gear for Christmas. Joey is enjoying his Mechanical Engineering major and Agape leadership role at Rice, and looking forward to a summer internship in Austin, TX, with NI. Robby is challenged by his history major at Rice and also involved in Agape.

Merry Christmas! Thanks for caring enough even to read this! The care we have received encourages us to also care for others.

With love from Colorado, Steve and Laura

PS Yes, I'm dropping Sarah, Joey, and Robby from the tag line, though we still love them! And yes, when we said we hope to receive people from around the world here in Colorado, we meant to invite you! Talk to you more in the new year!

Dr. Steve and Laura Spinella

9685 Otero Ave, Colorado Springs, CO 80920, 719.528.1702, Steve 719.355.4809, Laura 832.755.4261
TEAM, PO Box 969, Wheaton, IL 60187, 800 343-3144
spinella@alumni.rice.edu lauraspinella@alumni.rice.edu

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

[TEAMspinella] the first must be last

Today is the last day. Tomorrow our plan is to meet a van in the Morrison Academy parking lot, downstairs from my sister's 7th floor flat, at 6:30 Taiwan time, which would be Tuesday 3:30pm Colorado time, and leave behind our alien residence in Taiwan for an (alien) residence in Colorado. So if you're in Taichung and you want to say one last goodbye, come see us tonight sometime around 8:30 to 10:00 at 7a in the Morrison Towers (DaLo), because tomorrow, my friend, will just be too late. We welcome you to come if you'd like.

I say the first must be last because every international (m, tck) person knows in their soul that the last day is coming when they live the first. Well, at least I think that way. From the time I made the (second) major move in my life, from Livermore, California, to Mesquite, Texas, I have had that slowly rising consciousness that life, my friend, is a series of transitions. And we are in one now, oh, how we are in one.

Saying goodbyes, or not saying them, here in Taiwan, it's been a recurring theme for me that the other people who grew up internationally feel the moment more painfully than I might expect. I hear the phrase, "I don't like to say goodbyes." Matt added, "But I know now I must. Otherwise all those unsaid goodbyes just stay inside."

Taiwan has a tradition of saying goodbye with a meal. Well, actually Taiwan has a tradition, more or less, of saying everything with a meal, but that's another story. I find myself somewhat unsure of whether we are significant to those around us--a quality of life, my friend, just a quality of life--or maybe an issue for counseling? Because of this inner wound, or perhaps withdrawal, I have savored every one of these meals, which, by the way, I don't have to initiate! That will soon change :-).

Yesterday had to have been the peak. It was a traveler's triple. I am beginning to think about what's next, and part of that is travelling. In order to connect while travelling I at least sometimes schedule around the meals, because that's when others are most available. So the traveler's triple is to eat three different meals with three different groups of people. I tried to watch my habit of nervous eating! Being in Taiwan, I had the three basic food groups: Western, Asian, and Chinese. In this case, it was actually blueberry pancakes and coffee, Thai food and milk tea, and a Hakka feast with homemade plum wine. Now that is fine eating and something to remember!

But I gag on the goodbyes even now. They are precious, each one including both the said and the unspoken.

The irony is that the Father has been taking us down this path for some time. Dave Pollock either made up or popularized R-A-F-T as a transition mnemonic. Reconciliation, about which I have written much in these updates, Affirmation, of which most us can never get enough anyway, Farewells, to people, places, patterns, and particulars, and Thinking of Things to Come, because no transition journey is complete unless it has a destination. (Remember, this can be read anywhere and everywhere in the world, so I try to use personal words, which are not meant to lie, but to require a person to read them and make sense, rather than a machine--if you don't know what "m" means or who "the father" is for us, just ask--we certainly don't mind talking about it.)

Complicated transitions, of course, have features that make a transition harder, and these come in many kinds. We are thankful this transition is not sudden, and that we can take some things with us. I've never ever taken so much in any of my international transitions! We're taking a ton of stuff--more or less, that would be 900 kg on pallets, and perhaps 200 kg more on the airplane, minus the 100 plus kg we're bringing back for someone else, so, yes, it's a ton of stuff! Don't worry, it's value is much greater in our eyes than in the eyes of any inspector that may open those boxes in route or in customs. And some of it is only valuable to one of us, not both of us! If you've ever moved, I think you know what I mean.

I'm glad we're taking a ton of stuff. This is making a huge difference to my wife, who did not grow up anesthetizing herself to the pain of transitions and watching her stuff get strewn and discarded across three continents. And yes, she has still had her losses, too, as have we all. Let's not compare our griefs, as we'll only end up devaluing somebody's and I can't imagine that helping! Actually, don't tell anyone, but I'm actually beginning to let myself think that I might see some of the objects to which I have become attached in Taiwan after I leave!

For me, one of the complications is that I've never lived one place so long as this, and perhaps I never will again--although the trend has definitely been to stay longer than I'm used to, so who knows? Could we end up staying in Colorado even longer? If we live so long? We don't think of ourselves as old, but there sure are a lot more younger people around than there used to be.

I'm beginning to think about things to come. And that's why it hit me that the first must be last in this particular way: those of us who are entering a new place, a new time, or a new community, must first be last, experiencing things for the last time, whether we know or accept it or not, in order to make room to experience things for the first time. The first must be last.

So whether we see you again (even today or before we go through security at the airport tomorrow,) we wish you a deep and sincere goodbye as alien residents of Taiwan, asking that we be reconciled, at peace with our disappointments and struggles, affirming that these relationships including ours with each one of you, whether here or not, have mattered very much in this place, and anticipating that there will be new life and new possibilities in Colorado, and, in fact, that more people will visit us there from around the world than have showed up in Taichung! And, if we haven't told you yet, you are invited to come!

Like any goodbye, even the longwinded must stop, and if you're still reading, you should probably ask us to put you directly on the list for our email updates if you're not there already!

With love from the far side, Steve and Laura

PS All our contact information is below, and next time the Taiwan lines will be missing! Maybe we'll wait a little longer before we take our emerging adult children out, just to space out the transitions a bit? We'll be seeing them when we arrive in Denver, as we all arrive the same day at the same airport. Then we'll be spending a couple weeks together, the first few days just the five of us, then all of us with Laura's parents for a Colorado Christmas. I predict we will see snow.

Dr. Steve and Laura Spinella, Sarah, Joey, Robby
Da Yi Street, Lane 29, #18, 2F-1, Taichung 404, TAIWAN
011 886 4 2236-6145, wk 2236-1901, fx 2236-2109, cell 9 2894-0514
USA: 9685 Otero Ave, Colorado Springs, CO 80920, 719.528.1702, cell 719.355.4809
TEAM, PO Box 969, Wheaton, IL 60187, 800 343-3144
<www.team.org.tw/spinella>, <www.team.org.tw/ccg> <spinella@alumni.rice.edu> <lauraspinella@alumni.rice.edu>