A Little Taste of Heaven

Only two days left until we leave! Its crazy to think that this has all come together in just a months time! We were so blessed tonight by a sending service from our missional community. We ate a delicious meal together, hung out, sang a few songs and then everyone laid hands on us and prayed for us. Many of the kids had prayers for us as well. What an encouragement and blessing to know that we are so loved and supported by our amazing church family. This is just a taste of what heaven will be like! Brothers and sisters dwelling together in unity :) Here is a picture of us all from tonight.

Please pray for us as we prepare to go! I have found myself especially short tempered with the kids because I am constantly running around trying to get things done and frankly they are feeling pretty neglected! I have baby sitters lined up to help out over the next two days so hopefully that will help. But please pray that both Jody and I have joy, patience, and love for one another and the kids during this packing/planning phase. Also, please pray that our border crossing would go well. We have all our documents lined up, but I have never left the country for more than a short time of travel so I would appreciate prayers that the agent would have favour and understanding of our situation. I look forward to my next post- which should be coming in from Kona Hawaii!!!

Not by power or by might

 “I've hit a wall...planning to take my whole family to foreign countries for 6 months on 1 month's notice has gotten the best of me and I'm officially burned out.”

That was the beginning of a blog post from about a week ago. I was running around like a crazy lady planning fundraisers, getting travel vaccinations done, visiting friends that one last time, calling cell phone providers, dropping kids off at preschool, and on top of that trying to keep my house somewhat in order and putting some sort of food on the table each day. I felt completely done and in all of this chaos realized I had spent barely any time in prayer or in the scriptures.

Then one day I put the kids down for a nap and decided that I needed to leave the mess alone and take the time to seek God. I decided to start playing and singing some worship songs at the piano. The song that came to my mind was “The Joy of the Lord” by Twila Paris. As I began to sing and play I also started to complain to God. “Lord, I don't have joy, I only have burdens! We only have a few weeks to go and only $5000 in our bank account. I am going to look like a complete fool when this doesn't come together and we have to come back to Canada early with our tails between our legs.” And then it all started to come out...

“God this is too HARD! I don't like feeling out of control.” And then it hit me that this is exactly what we had been praying for. We had been praying that God would take us to the place where we had to rely on his grace and mercy, not on our own ability to do life as we see fit.

I took a little break from playing the piano because Jonah, our 5 month old had woken up. I sat with him on the couch and he started smiling up at me. We had what seemed like several minutes of just staring into each others eyes and smiling at each other. The thought hit me- Jonah knows nothing more than that I am his mother and I will always care for his needs. He has complete trust in me and doesn't even know what it means to be self-reliant. Of course I knew that God was speaking to me in this moment and telling me that his love for me is even more complete than my love for Jonah. Just as Jonah knows nothing other than trust in his mother to meet his needs, so I need to have child-like faith in God to provide for mine. God was saying in that moment, “Just trust me daughter. Know that I love you and care for you and that you actually don't have to have it all figured out. Your faith pleases me and you don't have to be perfect for me to take care of your needs.”

I went back to the song “The Joy of the Lord” at the piano. Luckily Jonah loves music and was happy to jump in the jolly jumper for a long time while I played and worshiped God. One of the lines in the song says “The joy of the lord will be my strength. I will not waiver walking by faith. I am surrounded by mercy and grace.” I felt such a burden lifted from me in that moment. I realized that I had been believing a lie that I had to get this all together and make this all happen in order to please God and that He was just watching in some far-off corner to see if I could do it or not.

He spoke to me so clearly that this is all about faith in HIM, not in myself.

      This is about becoming like a child who just trusts in her

      heavenly father to take care of all the details. 

           This is about knowing that “if God is for me, who can be                        against me,”

                 And trusting that I am surrounded by mercy and grace.

And here we are a week later, just 9 days until we leave for the greatest adventure of our lives. So many details have come together in miraculous ways. From finding our dear nanny Katie, to having awesome friends rent our place while we're gone, to selling our second vehicle and so much more.

Jody and I just finished adding up all of the money from our fundraiser plus all of the extra money that we had from our own income and other donations and we are absolutely astounded at the generosity of our brothers and sisters and the amazing faithfulness of God. In just one month God has brought $22,500 in to send our little family out to be a light unto the nations. We estimate we need around $30,000 Canadian in total by the end of our first 3 months and I have no doubt that God is going to bring the rest of that together as well. If you have been a part of making this all come together we want to say a huge thank you. And if you have been praying for us, we want to say an even bigger thank you, because it's,

“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.” -Zechariah 4:6

We need a nanny?!?

Wow, there is so so much to do to prepare to leave the country for 6 months on 1 months notice! But God is definitely meeting us where we are at and helping us to get it all done. 

I want to take the time to share a story about how God miraculously provided for one of the many details that needed to come together in order for this DTS to happen. 

When we originally started looking into YWAM we had no idea how it was going to work with the kids, but we just sort of assumed that I would be looking after them or that Jody and I would switch on and off looking after them while the other was in class. However, after talking to the director of the DTS he informed us that they really believe in both husband and wife taking the classes together and that its very important that we are both on the same page spiritually before we head out into the mission field as a family. The only way to make a DTS work when you have young kids is to bring a nanny with you to look after the kids during class time, which is 8am-1pm Monday to Friday. He said the best option is to try to find a young person in your church who would want to raise their own support and come with you as your nanny. 

When we first heard this we felt pretty discouraged, because A- our church has no young adults! We are a small church of mostly young families, and B- how were we going to find anyone to raise their own support and join us on this crazy adventure on such short notice?!? As Jody and I began to think and pray the same person came to both of our minds- a young lady named Katie who has lived with our friend for the last 3 years helping her out with child care and house work. My main hesitation was that my friend would probably not want to give up her own nanny for 6 months to come with us! 

With a bit of anxiety, I sat down with my friend and told her all about the journey that God had us on and how we felt he was calling us to the mission field and to do a DTS. I didn't mention anything about Katie or the need for a nanny. I thought I would start with first things first and maybe not even bring up the idea of bringing Katie with us for another few days. But when I finished telling my friend about what we were doing her response was, "I have one thing to say...can you bring Katie with you?" Well, after that I got the craziest goose bumps because God clearly had the details all worked out for us! 

It turns out that my friend had been praying about the next step for Katie and that YWAM was one of the things she had been thinking of. Katie has always had a missionary heart and has been wanting to do a missions trip for a while. Nothing had really come together for her for the fall so she figured she would just keep doing house-keeping and nannying for my friend. But when we told her about the idea of coming with us to YWAM as our nanny she was so excited. So, on a month's notice we now have an awesome nanny to come with us to our DTS. Although she will be watching Jonathan and sometimes baby Jonah (Asa actually gets to do his own mini DTS/preschool program when we're in class, which is really cool!) when we are in class each morning, she will still get to live in a dorm with other students and take in all of the amazing guest speakers and open sessions that happen at the campus on afternoons and weekends. She will also get to join our team on outreach since we don't officially need a nanny for that part. 

We were so excited to learn that God not only had a plan for our family in sending us on this DTS, but he also had a plan for Katie! Pray for Katie too since she is also fundraising and trusting God for finances as she heads off on this big adventure!

Welcome to our new family blog!  This will be a place where we will fill you in on what our family is up to and what God is doing in our lives.  Ready for a big shocker??? 

For the last year and a half God has been speaking to both Jody and I about the idea of being “luke warm” in our Christian walk. When Jesus calls us to himself we know that he calls us to lay down every area of our lives to him and commit to follow Him wherever he leads us, no matter the cost. As Jody and I have been examining our lives we wonder, “have we really committed to following God in this way?” When we look at our lives we see that we are more dependent on a pay cheque than on Christ, and that we often find temporary satisfaction from the things of the world instead of the things of God. We brought this before the Lord and asked him to show us how we can break out of the rut of our complacent Christian walk. The next day as we were talking we realized that God had brought the same idea to both of our minds- Youth With A Mission (YWAM)! YWAM offers Discipleship Training Schools for youth and adults with the intention of discipling Christians in the way of Jesus and showing them how they can fulfill the great commission by spreading the Good News throughout the world. The DTS we have chosen is called Trailblazers and is a 6 month program that focuses on intimacy with God and reaching unreached people groups with the gospel. The first three months will take place in the YWAM base in Kona Hawaii. This base is one of the few bases that is well set up for children and families. Here's what YWAM says about DTS:

"DTS is a unique time with God where you can grow in intimacy, learn how to listen to his voice, and make his ways known to others. You’ll be encouraged to engage with his dreams and daily seek his face. It’s a time like no other — a time to be deeply transformed and radically ruined for the ordinary."

For the second phase, which is outreach, we will be traveling as a family to either Thailand and Laos or Uganda and South Sudan to connect with the local people, learn about their culture and lifestyle, and share the gospel with unreached people-groups. What an amazing honour to be able to share the good news with people who have never had the opportunity to hear it before!!!

When we initially began thinking and praying about following God in this way we imagined that we would take our time to plan and prepare, but the more we began seeking God and talking to others who had done this before we kept hearing the same thing- “Do it now, don’t wait!” and “Just say yes to God!” After talking to a friend who is already at the YWAM base in Kona, she let us know that the next school starts October 1st and that she has specifically been praying for more Canadians to come to the school to join in bringing the gospel to the ends of the earth. So with much fear and trembling we have decided to step out in faith and say yes to God. Since saying yes, we have felt an overwhelming sense of peace that the Lord is going to come through and miraculously supply our needs to make this journey happen. We are currently working towards raising half of the funds required through selling vehicles and other possessions, savings, and through Jody working lots of overtime. We are having a garage sale this Saturday as part of our fundraising and to get rid of as much of our stuff as possible. If you have anything to donate that we can sell we would really appreciate it!  Message me or give me a call and we can work out the details :)
 

We will leave you with this verse that has been a great encouragement to us as God has placed us on this journey of radical faith.

“It’s impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that he exists and that he cares enough to respond to those who seek him.” Heb 11:6 msg