Oh yeah, I know.

I am learning rather quickly that I do not know as much as I think I do.  It’s going to be hard living in Africa…oh yeah, I know!  Mongu is extremely hot…oh yeah I know!  You will miss your family…oh yeah, I know!  Guess what…I didn’t know.  Experience is the best teacher.  Only people who have been married know the commitment it requires to stay married.  Only women who have been in labor know the pain/happiness it brings.  Only the ones who have nothing to eat know, starvation. I am realizing that even as I  witness the poverty here in Africa, I can’t honestly say that Americans are any better off.  I haven’t ever been to the deep Louisiana bayou, or the slums of Detroit, or the inner city of New York.  What do I know?  My prayer is this, I will love people no matter how they live or what they believe.  I will not make assumptions based on ” what I know”, but I will love people based on who I know!!   Jesus loves us, this I know!!

What a beginning! We have been in Zambia for 18 days and each one of them has been rather unique. In the past 18 days, we have visited and shared in two different orphanages, were welcomed by a Zambia Government Cabinet member, purchased a truck and learned to drive in Zambia, saw a few elephants,

moved to Mongu, helped with a big event with over 80 youth at the youth center, ate a traditional Zambian meal as well as Chinese, Korean, and Curry (serving with a multi-cultural team has many advantages), celebrated a birthday, our anniversary, attended some great church services, and got extremely hot…

The heat has been one of the biggest adjustments for us. The two weeks we were in Lusaka, were not too bad as the elevation there is high and the temperatures are cooler. But now that we are in Mongu, it is a different story. Saturday, during our big outdoor event at the Mongu Youth Center, it was over 108 degrees. Mongu is located just on the edge of the Kalahari Desert and is very sandy and dry. It hadn’t rained here in many months, so it just draws the moisture out of you. When we got home, because we have no air conditioning, the only relief we could find was to wet a Chitenge (a piece of material women wrap around there waste and wear as a skirt) and lay in front of the fan. I have heard people say, “You’re about as fun as a wet blanket.” Just let me say, we were thankful for a wet blanket that day.

Setting up for the Skills Challenge event at the youth center

Trying to provide protection from the sun

Today we were waiting for Laurie while she did some work at the Bible College and Velda quickly made a few new friends and began to play. Children seemed to just come out of nowhere and began marching, jumping, twirling, and saying, “I love Jesus!” as she invented new games to play. I am always amazed at how although their is a language barrier, the children can understand Velda’s heart and love for them. It’s a beautiful thing. I am a blessed man!

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Another Step Forward; One Huge Step Ahead

It's still hard for us to believe...in less than a year we plan to be moving to Zambia to serve with SIM as Coordinators of Short-Term Associates. When we started this process a little over a year ago, that seemed like some distant reality. With each step in the process however, it has become more and more real. Last month we took a big step toward that reality when we spent two weeks in training and orientation at SIM USA. It was an awesome time of meeting other folks who are of the same heart, going through the same things as we are. (This includes our new friends Randy and Mary Anna, who will be serving in Lusaka with us, and Missy who is a Doctor who will be serving at Mukinge Hospital in Zambia. See the picture) The experience, training, and wisdom of the staff there was great and we learned a lot about working in a multi-cultural environment, field safety, how SIM cares for its missionaries, and how the whole shebang works. It was a lot to absorb, but we came away feeling well prepared for the HUGE steps that lie ahead.
 So, what are these huge steps? We are glad you asked. You see God has called us to the most awesome ministry. We will  help people come to Zambia from all around the world to serve anywhere from a few weeks up to two years. Doctors, nurses, pilots, aviation mechanics, teachers, construction teams, evangelism, youth outreach, HIV/AIDS education and ministry, Bible college teachers, orphans and at risk children ministry, discipleship, and so much more...coming to make and impact in countless lives and we get to be a part of all of it. Is that cool or what? As if that were not enough...building relationships with the people of Zambia, encouraging those on the field, working in the local church, and handling all the required administration of getting a short-term missionary to the field. (Whew, I just realized how busy we are going to be.)
When we get on that plane and takeoff for Zambia, that is going to be a big step . However, we have a HUGE step to take before we can do that. While we were at training and orientation last month, one of the things we received were our support requirements. You see SIM is what is historically known as a "faith mission". What does that mean? Here is the description we like:  “The Mission looks to the Lord for the provision of its needs. Each missionary acknowledges that his or her dependence is upon God and not upon the Mission. Recognizing the biblical principle of stewardship, the Mission and its missionaries make such needs known to God’s people so He may guide them in their giving. Whatever is received toward an approved need is accepted as a provision from the Lord.” Thus, as missionaries sent by SIM, we are looking to God to meet our needs through His moving in people’s hearts to give.
So what are those needs? We have two major kinds: Monthly Support and One Time Needs.
Our monthly support requirement is $4675. That includes the following;

* Salary–This is the amount of money we can spend on living expenses each month.  These expenses include food, clothing, toiletries,  and household items from cleansers to bug spray (very important!)

* Insurance–This includes medical emergency evacuation insurance in the event that we need to be evacuated to a country with better medical care in an emergency. Co-pays and deductibles are paid out of our salary.

* Retirement–This is a small amount to be contributed to a 403b.  This is something the mission encourages as retirement savings become necessary in the U.S. 

* Taxes–Missionaries pay something equivalent to FICA, called the SECA tax.

* Travel–This portion of our monthly support is set aside month by month, accumulating until we need to buy plane tickets and make travel arrangements for our home assignment in the U.S.

  * Administration & Services–This includes many things, like help in navigating the world of visas, passports, and other legal aspects of international travel and living, team training and consulting on the field, operating expenses for seven international sending bases and an international headquarters office, resources to help us share our vision and the vision of SIM, and attention to our emotional and spiritual needs in the event of a political or medical evacuation…to give you just a sampling! 

  * Housing–This amount is for our rent, both for a home on the field, and provide for renting a place to stay during assignments in the States.  Utilities and repairs are paid out of our salary.  

Our one time need is $42,000. That includes language school and language acquisition course, our first months salary, airline tickets to the field, purchase of a 4-wheel drive vehicle so we can travel to all the various places of ministry, and setup of our home as we have sold  everything we own and will have to purchase furniture, household items, linens, appliances etc. It's more economical to purchase the items there as opposed to shipping them over from here. (It's like starting from scratch)

Well there it is.One HUGE step for us, but the smallest of things to our ENORMOUS GOD. We have a target date of June 2013 for getting on that plane, but that doesn't happen until we have faith promises from people that total $4675 a month and have met the one time need of $42,000.

So how do you get involved? How do you join in what God is doing and the impact we can have serving together? We are extremely glad you asked! First and foremost PRAY! We need at least 400 people committed to pray for us regularly. You can sign up for our prayer letter and updates at 

Subscribe to our newsletter
We also ask that you prayerfully consider being a financial partner as well. You can make a faith promise of whatever God lays upon your heart and be a part of our monthly support. We would love to hear of your commitment at paul.rikel@sim.org. Better yet, we would love for you to start that commitment now. By starting now, your gifts go to meet our one time need until we leave for the field and then it switches to monthly support. You do all this by clicking here.
Maybe you want to help meet those one time needs, you can do that by clicking here
Thank you for praying, thank you for giving, thank you for helping us respond to needs, proclaim the gospel, and equip the church in Zambia to fulfill the Great Commission.
Radically Dependent,
Paul and Velda
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God's Gift: The Desire of Our Heart - Zambia

Psalms 37:4-5 Says "Delight yourself  in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
  Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass."
Throughout the years, God has used this verse to speak to Velda and I. In 2007 God put a desire in our heart to serve Him as missionaries and a love for the people of Zambia. Since then, we have been waiting on the last part of this verse, "And He shall bring it to pass". If we delight ourselves in the Lord, trust in Him, and commit our way to Him, why would He delay in bringing it to pass? You see, when we become His children, He gives us many desires; serving Him, worshiping Him, glorifying Him, desiring others to know Him, etc. These are all good and noble things, but I do not believe these or any any other desire is what this verse is talking about. In Matthew 6:33 Jesus says "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.". I believe God will not only provide for our needs, but He also delights in giving us our desires. Now before you throw me under the "Prosperity Gospel" bus, let me say that He delights in giving us our desire when we delight in the things that He delights in. (i.e. worship, serving Him and others, glorifying Him,...) It is not a matter of desiring these things more, it is a matter of desiring Him more! I realized that serving in Zambia, should not be the desire of my heart, God should be. The first part of of both these verse say " delight" and "seek", if I delight in Him, if I seek Him, if He is the desire of my heart, He will give me the desire of my heart, which is more of Himself to delight in! Isn't that a beautiful cycle? If God is THE desire of my heart, then God's desires become my desires, and all that God desires comes to pass.

So what does this have to do with us going to Zambia? When we started this whole process, we always said we would love to serve in Zambia, but we want to go where God wants us to go. We did not want to choose Zambia, we wanted God to put us there if that is was the desire of His heart. So when asked by SIM where we felt called to serve, we stated we loved Zambia, but we just want to go where God wants us. As we began the placement process we started with Zambia and how we might be able to serve there. Initially it did not sound too promising due to different circumstances, but then SIM Zambia expressed interest in us filling the position of Short-Term Coordinators. We were excited about the possibility of serving in Zambia, but were apprehensive about filling a role that was not what we had initially envisioned. We envisioned being church planters, so we continued exploring other countries and opportunities. That exploration led us on a vision trip to Malawi. It was an eye opening trip for us and you can read about it in a previous blog post, but in a nutshell, God used it to show us that He had another role for us. We were now faced with the realization that we not only needed to be obedient to "where" God wanted us, but also to "what" He wanted us to do. As we prayed about the where and the what, God kept pointing us back to Zambia. While in Malawi, we got to have a long talk with the Short-Term Coordinator there and got good insight into that position, we met some wonderful short-term missionaries and saw how God was working in and through them. We  also realized how well we were always prepared and taken care of on our trips and how short term missions impacted our lives. We asked the Zambia filed to consider us again for the position of Coordinators of Associates, and they graciously accepted us. Now we get to do another desire of our heart and that is seeing the impact God can have in and through short term missionaries and teams.

 So what did I learn from this? When we delight in the Lord, when He is the desire of our heart, He brings to pass all the desires He has placed in our hearts. In His time, In His way and for His glory.

Officially Appointed Missionaries!!!!

So where in the world are you guys going you ask?....Well, in 2007 we made our first mission trip to Zambia, Africa. We fell in love with the wonderful people there and our hearts were burdened to stand in the gap for them. When we left, it was as if we had left a big part of our heart behind. Over the next four years we made an annual trip to Zambia, and each time, we seemed to leave more and more of our heart behind. God is good and we are excited to announce that God is going to unite us with our hearts as we have been appointed to serve Him in ZAMBIA!!! No more leaving a piece of our heart behind, but serving Him and the people of Zambia wholeheartedly for what we hope to be many years of fruitful service.
Please pray for us as we begin this next chapter of our God adventure. We have much to do in the next year as we prepare to leave in June 2013. More on that to come...
Please remember not to mention anything to Velda's father about us moving to Africa due to his struggles with dementia. Please pray for our parents as well.
Stay Tuned For:

• How God placed us in Zambia
• How we will be serving in Zambia
• How God will get us there

Thank you for your prayers, love and support,
Paul and Velda

WE HAVEN'T LEFT YET

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