About
“One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect,
the whole world feels like home for a while.”
— Nobel Prize-winning, German writer, Herman Hesse
Hi! We are Ryan & Nicole with our three daughters: our oldest, Harmony, who loves singing; our middle, Joy, who was born with a amazing comic sense; and our youngest, Hope, who has a vivid imagination.
Our World Edventure was born out of a crazy dream shared by Ryan and Nicole — that someday we could travel the globe with our daughters to provide them a truly world-class education by allowing the world to be our classroom.
A couple years ago, we sat down and did some figuring. We lined up each daughter’s age and grade in school until our oldest daughter would, in all likelihood, head confidently off to college. With a shock, we realized, “AAAAAKK! We don’t have very many years left with all of our daughters together!” That was the day we stopped dreaming and started goal setting and planning.
Along the multi-year planning process, myriad details have come together to make the school year 2016-2017 the year of Our World Edventure. Our daughters will be in 9th, 6th, and 2nd grades, respectively. This is, for us, ideal timing. Harmony will only be beginning high school, so a study abroad year like this will only be an educational asset. Joy will have one year before beginning her Confirmation studies with our church. Hope will be old enough to travel easily and make use of the opportunities for meaningful memory making.
Ryan has served as Pastor of Worship and Outreach at the same church for 10 years. After prayer, careful discussion and planning, the Church Council voted to approve his request for a 13 month planned leave-of-absence. We are so appreciative of the leaders and people of Good Shepherd to extend us this time! Nicole’s work is currently location independent, thanks to her fantastic business partners. This enables us to take this time to worldschool our girls.
Thankfully, Ryan has prepared and led in such a way as to equip fellow staff and lay ministers to be ready to lead various outreach ministries in his absence. This has been a great confirmation that this is the Lord’s Church and it is truly God who raises up and equips normal people to serve as Christ’s hands and feet in the world.
We are aware no one will ever hand us 13 months and all of our daughters together again. So, while it is crazy to think of traveling around the world in one year, it would be even crazier for us to stay home!
We are off on Our World Edventure and are thankful to have you along for the journey!
P.S. “Harmony,” “Joy,” and “Hope” are not our daughter’s real names, but, rather, their “blog names.” Our daughters have lovely names which they can choose to post all over the internet once they are older, but out of respect for their safety in the world and online privacy as minors, we are choosing to use pseudonyms for them on our blog. We also ask that friends, family, and guests respect our daughter’s online privacy as minors on the blog by referring to them as “Harmony,” “Joy,” and “Hope” instead of their legal names. Thanks!