Welcome!

Hello and welcome to our blog!  I’m assuming that most, if not all of those reading this are our family or close friends, but in case you do not know us, I’ll do a quick introduction.  We are Brad and Janelle Draayer, a couple in our late 20s and have been married for three (awesome!) years.  I (Janelle) am the official author of this blog, and I’ll probably be doing most-all of the writing as I enjoy it more than my lovely husband, but perhaps he’ll make a cameo. J  In effect, the specific thoughts will be more my own, but the content will also be meant to represent the both of us. 

One of the first things that you should know about us is that we love Jesus!  We are Christians and are committed to following God’s path for us in life.  Speaking of that path, it is getting a little windy lately.  We have recently taken a huge leap of faith and are trusting in God as he leads us in our new adventures abroad.  Since our first date, Brad and I have often discussed our mutual passion for travel and discovered early on that we both independently believed that God had a calling for us to live abroad for a period of time.  (I may go more into depth in a later blog on my path toward realizing this passion, but that can be another time.) 

Though we have had wonderful lives in small town Washington state for the last few years with jobs as a high school history teacher (me) and accounting controller (Brad), earlier this year we felt called to leave our jobs and commit to traveling, living, and working abroad for a while.  When we committed to this, we didn’t know where we would be going or what we would be doing (and we still don’t entirely know), but we knew God wanted us to take the leap.  At the time being, we do have some initial plans in place.  We are going to move to Sydney, Australia and hopefully obtain work.  En route, we are first going to be visiting China and Thailand.  Somewhere in there, we’d love to do some other traveling if possible.  Other than that, the details of our planners are conspicuously empty.  But I think this background lends itself to an explanation of the title we chose for our blog, “The Broken Compass”.  In taking this leap, we are not sure exactly where it will lead us, or even for how long.  In our hands, our “compass” is broken.  We do not have our path figured out; we are fully and delightfully at the mercy of our Compass, our heavenly father.  His direction and expertise is critical toward continuing on the unknown journey He has destined for us. 

Thank you for taking a few moments to at least check out our blog, and we hope that we can use this blog to stay in touch with all of you who are near and dear to us.  We covet all your prayers and look forward to sharing the all the pit stops, attractions, diversions, highlights, unexpected surprises, challenges, and lessons of our windy road abroad!