Support Video - Please Watch!

Visit from our team leader

This was not lunch today.  This was two years ago when Susan and I had dinner with the team during our visit to BulgariaToday, Susan and I had lunch with our team leader, Jonathan Taylor.  We hung out and talked for 3+ hours.  Time really flew by.  We caught up on each other's families and talked about future plans for Bulgaria.  We have had questions about Lomidol Resource Center, so it was good to get an update from Jonathan.  Essentially Lomidol is sitting inactive and waits for us.  For those of you who were unaware, the center was being run by a Bulgarian couple, but for various reasons including finances, they have resigned.  I am personally excited about the direction in which Jonathan wants to lead our team.  He has been wrestling with a lot of ideas and as he talked I began wrestling with the implications and the questions that relate to my family's part of the puzzle.  We talked about setting a new departure date and strategies to raise the last 34% of our support.  We decided to aim for February 1st.  This was not as soon as I had hoped, but it is more realistic, if not aggressive.  I have my work cut out for me.  With a decreased workload with the school system, I am looking to spend a lot more time working on potential avenues of support. 

 Please pray for our ministry, that God would raise up supporters and lead us to them.   Pray that as we redouble our efforts, we will remember the God who has called us to this.  It is easy to get busy with ministry, but we can't forget to be still before God.  It is He who will sustain us and make our efforts  fruitful (Psalm 127:1-2). 

Reflection and looking ahead

Over the past few days I have been reflecting on the lessons of pre-field training and preparing for the changes ahead.  One of the last things we did in New York was develop a learning contract (LC).  Yesterday, I got away for a few hours of prayer, Bible reading, and planning.  A big part of planning involved reviewing Susan's LC, as well as my own.  I've looked at Susan's before, but this time I was looking for areas of commonality.  I made a list.  They included such things as reviewing Living in Grace materials to help us work on handling criticism biblically and being intentional about getting involved in the lives of others.  One of my "Thinking Strategically" objectives is to establish a review process to measure the success of our planning, so we established a schedule for achieving our objectives and regular review.  Accountability is very important.  We will be meeting regularly to help each other in that way.  Please feel free to ask how we are doing with our learning contracts - you can keep us accountable, too! 

As we sat down to talk, I asked Susan, "What is the most important thing we should be doing now?"  She said the thing that first came to my mind the day before, "Support raising."  It's not the most important thing, though.  We need to diligently work on support raising, but our priority is the same as that of any other believer - to remember God.  Before we went over our LCs, we read the Bible together and prayed with our eyes open.  

Praying with our eyes open:  If this has you curious, I would advise you to go to the following link and click the speaker or MP3 logo next to "Pastoring People to Christ 2006:  http://www.wts.edu/resources/media.html?paramType=audio&filterSpeaker=19 

It is a lecture by John Leonard from Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia.  His talks during pre-field were some of the most challenging.  The link will take you to one that was very similar to one we heard in New York.  It will explain PRAYING WITH YOUR EYES OPEN.  I hope it impacts you the way it impacted me.

In the Midst of Change

As Susan sent out our last update with our blog address on it, I figured that I needed to get on here and give current information. We have sold our house and are very grateful to close friends who are allowing us to live in their pool house. I am finishing my last week of fulltime work with the school system and will be staying on parttime to alleviate the pressure of our department temporarily losing another therapist who has taken maternity leave. I am excited about moving forward with support raising. When I reviewed our update and saw the number - 37%, it shook me a little. This has been a long, time consuming process. Often it has felt like things were moving at a snail's pace, but seeing 37% was encouraging as it has shown us how far God has brought us and how close we are to going.

Please continue to pray for our family. While this has been an exciting time, the frequent changes have added stress. Our kids seem to be handling it well, but they need your prayers. Our time in New York really highlighted for us the need to have regular family devotions and so we have fought for that time. Being still before God has become an important part of our days. We need it always, especially when life is moving fast.