Well by now most of you know
about our decision to take a trip to Africa. I wanted to share a little about
what spurred our decision to do this.
As most of you know I had
been going to Dallas for foot treatments back in May and June and I did that
for about 2 months. I’m sure you can imagine I had a lot of alone time on my
trips to and from. From the very beginning of those trips I made a decision to
use this time to be with the Lord and for most of every trip I just spent time
in prayer and listening to sermons. Really most of it was spent confessing my
sin and really thinking deeper about ways that I was falling short in my walk
with the Lord, but the Lord, like He always does, used that time for such great
purposes. Among a lot of other things that He revealed to me during those trips
were my idol of comfort and lack of obedience.
To backtrack a little --I
have distinctly felt the Lord telling me that I needed to be more missional for
at least the past two years. ‘Missional’ just means intentional activities that
we do to make sharing the Gospel a natural part of our lives. Josh has been aware of this calling and so we
put some things in place to ‘do our part’ in the mission world. Maybe you guys
remember when I went to Peru before I had C.H. and we actively supported a
couple of missionary families that were doing work overseas. We have felt good
about our decision to give to missions in this way but on my road trips I
distinctly felt the Lord telling me to stop ignoring Him and GO! Reflecting
back on it, I think I thought that by doing these other mission-minded things
that it would be good enough so that I wouldn’t have to face the fact that I
thought He might be calling me to do something more. I think I thought if I put
it off long enough and gave to these missionaries, then the Lord would quit asking
me to go. Not that He didn’t recognize our giving to missionaries as a genuine
offering, but He wanted more from me.
On my last trip to Dallas (which
I didn’t know it would be my last trip at the time – funny how God works), it
hit me like a ton of bricks. I distinctly felt the Lord calling me to go. To do
something that demanded a larger sacrifice from me. This reality was hard for
me to accept at first. Aside from being scared, I also realized that I knew for
a fact now that He had told me to go and I couldn’t hide from it any longer or
it would out right be defiance on my part.
So, I came home with lots of
tears and talked to Josh about it. Not really sure where to go from that point,
we met with our pastor. He talked us through some starting points on how to
really understand if this is what the Lord is calling us to do. Josh and I are
really working through some of this stuff. Looking for local ways to be
missional, praying, reading books, etc.
With all that said, I had
already been in a little bit of contact with Josh second cousins’ wife (Darbi),
in Zambia, because I was interested in the orphanage that they were running. It
occurred to us that this could be a really great option for us to get our feet
wet in a missional way. We contacted them and talked about the opportunities
available. We prayed that if this was an opportunity that we should take that
the Lord would open the doors. I will say there was plenty of opportunity for
this not to work out and we saw first hand that the Lord opened this door for
us.
So, that’s the long version.
We honestly don’t know what this means going forward. We don’t know how the
Lord is going to use this trip but ultimately I just pray that He uses it for
His glory no matter what it means for us. We could come back from Africa and
think we aren’t cut out for this or
maybe not. WE DON’T KNOW! What we do know is that we are continuing to pray
through this and I hope you all will pray for us as well. If I was being real,
I’d tell you that I think this is scary and risky and even crazy. BUT I feel in
my heart that I have to be faithful and obedient to what I think the Lord wants
me to do.
