I’ve always loved those little milestones in life: crossing
another state line on a long road trip; chapters in a book; progressing years
in school. They always seem to
carry a confirmation of progress but with a fresh start on something new. We’ve hit such a milestone in the last
few weeks and it’s great to be moving to the next phase.
The milestone is that we have essentially completed our
partnership phase. We have reached
our goal of monthly financial backing and can now proceed with our move
overseas. We do still have a small
amount of outgoing costs to cover, but knowing how the Lord has provided thus
far, we have no doubts or fears of swift completion in that area as well.
Doing the work of financial partnership has been interesting
to say the least. It has taught us
a lot about our reliance on God for our very breath among all other
provision. It has taught us a lot
about commitment and faithfulness.
The stories that we’d love to share about this are many.
I can’t say that we’ve seen “everything” there is to see,
but it’s been an eye-opening experience, to say the least. We’ve visited churches that have a long
and rich history of missionary affiliation. We’ve visited some to whom our endeavor is new. We’ve enjoyed showing the possibilities
of engaging the artistic and cultural life of a community to be a carrier of
the gospel message. We’ve enjoyed
encouraging people to see worship as a global endeavor and arousing curiosity
of what brothers and sisters in Christ do to express their worship half-a-world
away.
Many times, our methods and results didn’t line up as we
expected. We enjoyed our most
prosperous times while speaking mostly to grade school kids about African arts
or geography. We saw the words of
some dedicated advocates pay greater dividends than our own polished
presentations. I can say it was
fun most of the time and always interesting.
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| Passports are ready...now for the visas. |
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| I need those red areas at the top of my application to become green! When they are all green, we can schedule our interview at the consulate in Washington, DC. |
