Velda and I want to apologize for not doing a good job of keeping everyone updated on what is going on with our quest to serve as missionaries. We realized how poor of a job we had been doing when two times this week we had people tell us they thought we had already moved to Africa. To make a long blog short, I will put it this way, "We are still here". To now make a short blog longer, we have sort of been living in limbo over the past few months as we prayerfully seek the place of service God has for us. When we began this process, we told people we had hoped to be on the field by now, but as happens many times, our hope and God's plans were not the same thing. This, along with our two week vision trip to Malawi and the fact that we sold our house last summer has added to the confusion of whether or not we were still here or in Africa.
Once again through this time of waiting and seeking, we have seen the sovereign hand of God at work. After selling our house, we moved in with my mother. In January she became very sick and spent several days in ICU. When she returned home, it was a blessing for us to be able to take care of here while she as gone through the past few months of strengthening. As I mentioned in our previous post, we have learned a lot about what it takes to be missionaries in a third world country, thanks to our vision trip and talking with others who have done it. We have been able to complete some required training in this time as well. But most importantly, God is teaching us that we are to focus on Him daily and serve Him where we are. We realized that He has told us to "Go" but He never told us when, He never told us where, and He never told us for how long. As much as I may want Him to, it is not in my best interest for God to spell out His plan for our lives in detail to me. We do not need to know where we will be or what we will be doing in Two weeks from now, two months from now, or two years from now. He wants me to seek him for right now, today. I know me...If God were to spell it all out for me, I would hit the ground running and focus on the plan and not the one who gave me the plan. We hope to be able to officially announce our place of service in the next few days. We will know the "where" at that point. The how long?...We hope to spend many years of fruitful service on the mission field, but that is God's call not ours. He has the right to keep us there 1 year or 20. As for the "when"?...Well, that is up to Him as well. We go to for training at SIM in July at what they call SIMGo. It is there we will find out what our support requirements will be as well as receive other vital training. When we return from that we will begin raising our support team, those who God lays upon their hearts to partner with us as we serve together to fulfill The Great Commission.
We look forward to our official "where and what" announcement in the coming days, our training in July, and then seeing God build up our ministry team of supporters. Will you pray for us?
- Pray that there will be know last minute hiccups in our placement and that we will be able to move from "candidates" to "appointees"
- Pray for our faith to remain strong
- Pray that God will continue to speak to the hearts of those friends, family, brothers and sisters in Christ, and Churches who will become supporters through giving and/or praying for us.
Thanks to so many of you who have been encouragers to us over the past few months and years. Your prayers have been heard and felt, your notes, emails, cards, and facebook post have been used by God many times to strengthen us. We love you and look forward to continuing this journey together. Please let us know how we can pray for you as well. We are always blessed to be able to lift up our friends in prayer.
Serving Together,
Paul and Velda
