My Call- Part 3: Encouragements

I guess by now, it has been figured out that I am anonymous for security reasons, as the area that my family and I will go is level 3 security with the IMB. And S.A.M. stands for, not very hard- South Asia Missionary. Once we are in our city, I will continue to blog, more on what God is doing in the people of our region and less about us. I think it is important to put our calling into print for others to see, so that they can be encouraged by our story. Because we are simple, ordinary followers of Christ, and He has forgiven, matured and grown us in our faith and relationship with Him, and prepared us for this time in our lives.

With our house on the market, and our application to the IMB in progress, we now prepared for our mission trip to South Asia with our church. The format would be the same as before, except we only taught at one training school. God had my wife and I on this trip, to further encourage us to press on to what He had called us to do. We met a family of six in one of the cities we stopped over in, that were from the U.S., working for IMB. 4 kids ranging from 2 to 15 years old. We were able to see that it could be done. This family was amazing. We fellowshipped with them and had dinner at their place. We knew that God put us in contact with them for a reason. We then traveled to our city, all 7 of us, 5 men and 2 women. We were welcomed by Thomas who took us to our check-in site. We were also introduced to another family working for IMB. This time a family of four, with kids 14 and 11. Another encouragement to us that we could do what God was calling us to do. We will team with this family when we arrive. They are a blessing to us and they will be when we get there!

Our travels through the city were interesting to the ones who had never been. I loved seeing the reactions of those because of the stories I had told them about my first trip. I wondered what they were thinking as we traveled. We visited a village, prayed over and worshipped with the new believers there. It was amazing to see these native people in this village who had been healed of their spiritual blindness by the truth of God's word. It also put into perspective what the team members were preparing to teach, and who they would be teaching. (Man, I need to work on my grammar!) The format was the same as before. We shared our testimonies, and heard some incredible stories of how Jesus had changed some of their lives. We began to teach the CP's who had come from their local villages to learn. We were able to teach on servant leadership. One of our young team members was led to speak, and to model, foot washing. Feet are regarded very different in this region. Everyone takes their shoes off while visiting someones home, but touching the feet seemed off limits in this culture. However, we let God lead, and we washed the men's feet and prayed over them. It turned out to be an incredible example of servant leadership, and it was powerful and emotional for everyone in that room. Not one eye was dry in the room while we did this. It was the most awesome event I had ever witnessed (besides both my children's birth). We thanked God for showing us that He could do anything, anywhere. How could we top that demonstration? God is working on it for me!:)

We came back from the trip again on a spiritual high, and now had crunch time to get our completed application into the IMB. We had 2 weeks to the deadline, and a lot of work to do. We had spent so much time preparing for our trip, we neglected our application. Nothing like waiting to the last minute to prepare for a test! We got everything in, just a little late, but we were approved for the conference at ILC in Richmond at the time we targeted. This is where we would select our job description and get our final interviews out of the way, and receive our OK from the company. What an incredible time! 85 people who had been called to service overseas were there. It was such an outlet to be able to talk about missions and about the area we were led with others who felt the same! Now, we have very supportive church family, but I sometimes get the feeling people don't want to talk about missions as much as we do. Kind of sounds like me before this whole thing started. 3 days of prayer, fellowship and more prayer deepened our encouragement. MLC is the place where our 2 month orientation will be.

God is so good. He prepares us and calls us in His time, when He has prepared us sufficiently. Our next hurdle is to sell our house and unload our debt before leaving. I know He has it sold already. It is just so hard to trust, with it being for sale 9 months, and it hasn't sold. How is it that we need more and more proof that it is Him we need to trust and not ourselves. We do have an offer, one that is very shaky, one contingent on the sale of the buyers house, which has been pushed back a couple times. Another offer fell through because of financing. We have 4 months, and maybe it is God's plan that the house sell just before we leave. One last test, before the real work and trust starts, I guess.

Thanks for listening to this story, which actually is only the beginning! Lots more ahead, and we thank the Lord for our calling and know that all is worked out already, and was worked out before we were formed in the womb. Stay tuned...