Monday, October 8, 2012

our next adventure


God has been revealing a lot to us…especially within the last month. Before I begin to tell you what He’s done, let’s back track a bit…

Since we've been married, we really haven't been living out the Gospel. Not to say we have been straying away from our faith, but to be quite honest, we have not been pursuing God in an intentional way. It’s very easy for us to live life filled with routines; Routines are not bad at all – it's when we've become defined by them and allow them to dictate how we carry on life versus asking God for guidance. Within the last year, we decided it needed to change: we got more involved with church, viewed our jobs as ministries not as identities, and viewed these pauses/delays in our lives as God's way of preparing us something beyond what we know.

Over a month ago, Brian and I were asked if we wanted to lead a team to Mozambique through Vanguard University. Obviously, my desire is to go back, and I would've said yes right away. But since Brian and I have been in this season of waiting on God, we knew we needed to pray about it. Not only did we pray about the trip, but prayed about where God is leading us. During those same weeks, Brian and I had really tough conversations about next summer; we knew we wanted to go on a missions trip, but we both had conflicting hearts when it came to it: I wanted to go back to Mozambique (leading or not leading), and Brian felt more opened to going on a missions trip outside Mozambique via ROCKHARBOR (rockharbor.org), but still had Mozambique in the back of his mind. There was the possibility that if Brian didn't felt called to go, I could lead the team by myself…or we go somewhere else. There was also the stress of requesting three weeks off; it’s not often that companies would allow for an extended vacation. So imagine two weeks filled with lots of praying, crying (well just me, of course), talking and talking…and you get the gist of it all.

At the end of those two weeks, God answered. He called us back to Mozambique; He called us to lead a team there; and He called us to do it together.

By God’s will, we were able to take off 18 days; the conversations we had with our bosses were filled with ease, and not so much of what he had predicted would happen. We both felt that even though the idea of going somewhere else was something we were opened to, we knew that God was opening a door for us to return back to Mozambique this upcoming summer. Since we’ve been together, I had always imagined both of us doing missions together. VBS, in a way, was the stepping stone we needed to get back into ministry. It definitely reawakened our desire to do God's work in our community, but also reawakened our heart for ministry overseas.

So for the next nine months, we will be preparing for this adventure. Excited? Yes. Anxious? Yes. Nervous? Absolutely. But we know that this is where God is calling us; He wouldn’t have given us something that we couldn’t handle.

We don't know how involved in missions we will be – be a missionary, help send people to missions, or lead small trips. Either way, we are confident that ministry is a huge part in our lives, and we want to obey God in all of it.

For now, this is where He has us.


We're heading back home.

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