On Monday we head to MTI (Mission Training International www.mti.org) for
five weeks of cross cultural and language training.

It should be a great experience - we’re looking forward to being in Colorado
Springs and being more relaxed. Being away from the house and the packing
should be nice!

Please pray for us, though. Especially for the kids. They also have
classes to attend and will be in care/school about eight hours a day while
we go to our school. The program sounds great, but it’s a big change from
their full days with me!

Especially pray for Quinn, to find a good bud to hang out with at “school”
and to enjoy the school enough to not even mind separating from us. Please
pray for Naomi to meet good friends to share the experience of entering the
mission field with. And also for her to be able to eat the food there (she
has such a hard time with food away from home and this is a long time!)
Pray for David and I to meet great friends who will be just what we’ve been
needing, to soak up exactly what we need to, to have wisdom with the kids
through all the transitions.

I guess we just need prayer all around. Thanks!

Well, here we finally are to the really fun part of being a missionary,
raising money.

It’s quite funny because last year David swore that if he EVER went into
full time ministry, which was clearly not going to happen in the first
place, he would NEVER raise his own support.

Well, we’re not exactly raising our own support. Actually we’re paying our
own way. Well, to be totally honest, the Navy is paying us to go. We’re
using our retirement pay to cover our salary there! Great deal, huh?

We had that all figured out until our sending organization informed us a few
months ago that they don’t let anyone pay their full way. It’s just not
good for your prayer support. As you can imagine, where people’s treasure
(read, money) is, is where their heart is too. World Harvest wants at least
a few people to have their treasure invested into our ministry so that when
we’re in the boonies of Africa, their hearts (and most importantly prayers)
will be with us.

So we started to pray about the money angle and God gave us this brilliant
idea that our church could pay half of our support needs (we were asked to
raise about a third of our total financial needs, we’re still using the
retirement pay for the rest). Didn’t matter that everyone we suggested this
to thought we were crazy to even imagine it happening. We were convinced.
God gave us a number to ask for, $1000, a full half of our monthly support
needs. We figured we had to ask even if we ended up looking like fools.
Course we weren’t allowed to ask until after our approval so we kept praying
and sat tight.

Well, we had that all figured out when out of the blue, before we even had a
chance to be approved, our church approached US and told us they’d like to
pledge $2000/month and cover our full support expenses. They want to BE our
sending church. !!!!!!! We basically just sat down and cried and realized
that we really had so little idea of what God was doing in and through our
lives . . .we really are fools but in a different way than we thought. He
blew us away. Can you imagine what God is doing in our church? And what He
WILL do through their step of obedient faith?? We’re psyched up about it.

So then, we couldn’t believe that here we were back to where we began, with
no financial needs. It was so great. Then came Assessment and Orientation,
along with the news that we actually need a lot more money. Almost $50,000
to be exact. For deployment. This money covers the cost of a new vehicle
upgraded safari style ( absolutely necessary as we are eight hours from the
city across TERRIBLE roads, and must make bimonthly trips in for supplies).
Plane tickets into and out of the country. Upgrades to the home we will be
living in, including the cost of necessary furniture, a really good water
purification system, and repairs/new battery for the solar panel.

The really neat part of this is that we only have 10 weeks to raise this
money, if we stay on the current timeline. Since this seems to be the
timeline that God has for us, we’re moving forward towards it unless he
slows us down.

So here we are. THIS is a BIG mountain. Even the people at World Harvest
who see lots of people raise support think so. Even they aren’t sure it can
happen. And that’s what makes me excited. Here God has given us this
timeline knowing all along what our expenses will be. Imagine what
surprises He could have in mind - and there’s no doubt He’s going to bring
big time praise to Himself.

So that’s what we’re praying for. We’re praying for clear communication
from us to all of you out there. We’re praying that this will be about His
story in our lives, the tiny threads that we are that are contributing to
the making up of the big gorgeous piece of tapestry. We’re praying that as
we ask for money God will show everyone in beautiful and magnificent ways
His character and his presence. This is all about Him, we know that, He
knows that, may this be a chance for everyone else to see that as well.

(Over the next day or two we will be adding a link to a summary of our
expenses and where the $50k will be spent, so check back!)

The great news is . . . We have been approved!!

The even better news is, God is continuing to teach and grow us through this
process.

Surprisingly, the process of approval brought with it it’s own set of
doubts and fears. Once we had the official stamp of approval, we had to
once again examine whether we really were willing to continue moving
forward. Once again we found ourselves in the position of asking God for
more . . . More confirmation, more signs, more encouragement. I am so
thankful that God is patient with our continual need to be reminded of his
plan. We so often live in the moment and not in sight of eternity past and
present in our lives.

Perhaps the reason for this hesitancy, post-approval, is that the people
here really know the work in Bundibugyo, really know Africa. And they are
very realistic about the challenges we will face. They are asking us to go
into Africa for the first year simply to learn and observe, listen and try
to understand both from the team and from the people and from the place.
Actually that was already David’s heart, to be first a learner and then see
if he has something to contribute. Our sense from our short visit and the
strong opinion of the sending staff here is that Africa is completely
complex and never truly understandable. That Africa will take far more than
we can give and offer far more than we know how to accept. That in four to
five years we will begin to understand how much we do not know.

That’s a challenge, I think, because it asks us to be willing not to “make a
difference”, not to bring progress to Africa, not to have an agenda. It
asks us to look past what we think are our great gifts that we have to offer
the people and instead to offer them simply our lives, our love, our hearts
open before them as we live out God’s grace in our lives. To know that our
lives are strikingly dissimilar to theirs, to know that our move will bring
significant hardship, to know that this doesn’t make a lot of earthly sense,
but be willing to go simply to live out grace-filled lives in their
presence. To eat with them and as we do to offer them the bread of eternal
life, simply through our presence. Once again we are being SO stretched.
There are so many reasons that Bundibugyo does not seem like a logical
choice to us, but so many compelling ways that God has matched us to this
place. Again, faith.

This is not the first time over the last several weeks that I have found
myself with the image of Peter, walking on the water to Jesus, in my head.
I feel that I have found myself out in the middle of the water and I am
realizing that it is only faith and the One who I trust in, that holds me
up. And it’s not necessarily an easy realization!! I want to get back in
the boat!! Walking on the water is spectacular but it sure is scary.
Safety, especially when there are children involved, feels so much, well,
safer! When you realize that you have truly abandoned your own
understanding to trust the path He is giving, well, you want to run back to
your own understanding.

As someone prayed over us yesterday, and as C.S. Lewis originally said, “God
is not a safe God but he is a good God.” We are trusting that God. We have
once again asked for his confirmation and He has given it to us; through
friends who prayed and spoke His word into our lives, through the teaching
of a wise and gifted man here at World Harvest (Terry), and most of all
through being reminded of what has happened in the last six months. When we
look at the extraordinary ways that God has brought us to Africa and back,
all of the prayer that He confirmed by opening doors (SO many opened, more
than we dreamed of), never a closed door, more and more of a heart for
Africa and for a sojourners life, an amazingly great connection to the team,
a church that supports us 110%, believer after believer that has prayed for
us and sought God’s will with us and is convinced alongside us, children who
have grown in their faith and joy through the process, our hearts being
stretched in beautiful ways, individuals that we have never met being
changed for eternity. (more on that later).

Once again, He is showing us . . . “My plans for you are good and not evil
plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and great
hope.” We lean into His character, the character of a dangerous but very
good God, who loves us beyond our understanding and knows us as his
amazingly special children . . . . and we are satisfied.

This week we are here in Philly undergoing assessment and preparing for
possible orientation (should we be approved.)

The process involves understanding the organization and its history, meeting
all of the staff at the sending center and going through team building
exercises. Of course there are lots of interviews to talk through our
application and the results of the phsychological and personality tests we
have taken over the last of several months.

The process of interviewing is an interesting one, on the one hand, a really
neat opportunity to speak with interested and informed people about all the
amazing things God is doing in our lives. Chances to share our vision for
ministry, our understanding of grace, and personal call are always welcome,
especially when the audience are people who really “get it”. On the other
hand, interviewing can be unnerving, threatening, and difficult, as the same
couple of issues are dragged out over and over again and reassessed by
people who barely know us. There is a great deal of vulnerability and
openness on our parts merely in filling out the applications along with a
personal bio and then of course in being willing to answer question after
question related both to the bio and our own marriage, weaknesses, faith
history, etc.

Of course this is all water under the bridge anyway as we are here in
response to God’s call on our hearts, in full trust of His plan being the
best, and with a heart to receive from Him what the staff here has to say.
Should we not be approved or approved conditionally, we can be thankful that
once again God is speaking into our lives and offering us His best as we
lean on Him. This all started with Him, it can all end with Him.

Of course once you are this far into the whole thing, jobless (David retired
from the Navy two weeks ago), already divesting possessions, home in the
process of sale, it is hard to imagine receiving a negative response. Not
to mention how many people have heard our story and know what we expect of
our future. From a mere standpoint of pride we have much to lose should the
staff here not feel us ready for or called to the field.

Again that is where trust comes in, where the faith life is lived. Where we
know that His opinion of us in the one opinion that truly matters. Where we
remain thankful to hear from him despite whether or not He is saying what we
expect.

God spoke to me this morning from quite a few verses in Isaiah but I would
like to share just a few:

“But you are my witnesses . . You are my servant. You have been chosen to
know me, to believe in me, and understand that I alone am God . . . . You
are witnesses that I am the only God. From eternity to eternity I am God.
No one can oppose what I do. No one can reverse my actions.” Isaiah
43:10-13