"Endings are for gratitude, beginnings are for faith" – John Piper
We came across this quote recently and thought it applied well to our situation. On December 20, we officially completed our state-side training with New Tribes Mission!!! Looking back, four and a half years seems to have flown by.
Endings are for gratitude
We’d like to give you a few examples of how God has displayed His faithfulness to us throughout this time.
- When we began Bible school in Michigan, we had no real direction as far as a field of service or even what type of involment in missions we would have. Now we are thoroughly convinced of the need for the Gospel to be taken to tribal people who have no access to God’s truth. We are heading to Papua New Guinea (PNG) to serve the Lord as tribal church planters.
- At the beginning of 2006 our support level was about 1% of what we need to get to PNG. Currently, we are at 20% of our recommended support!
- As we were planning our return trip to PA from MO, we knew we had more things to haul than would fit in our van. The plan was to rent a small trailer to pull behind us. After figuring the cost and effort that would involve, we made a crazy decision – pare down our belongings and only take what would fit in or on top of our van! As we got closer to the day we were going to leave, we had more things than would fit. We were prepared to just leave some of it behind, but God graciously provided two couples who were also going through PA and offered to haul some boxes and odd-shaped items for us – like Luke’s red tricycle (click here if you haven’t read the story). But we still had several boxes of books that wouldn’t fit. We decided that we would mail them. After packing everything in the van, saying goodbye to people and finishing up cleaning our apartment, we finally left about 3 hours later than we had planned. We then stopped by the post office to mail our boxes. Bart got in line and right behind him was a friend from our Sunday School class. As Bart was about to pay for the boxes, our friend said "put those on my bill". What a blessing! And we thought we were late!
So, as we look back on the end of this phase of training, we are filled with gratitude for all the Lord has taught us, for friendships that were formed, for the Lord’s provision and guidance, for the hard times that we experienced and for God’s amazing faithfulness.
Beginnings are for faith
Now we are beginning a new phase – partnership development. That is NTM lingo for raising support. As the term implies, we are part of a team. The job of planting a church among tribal people is too big for one couple or even one team of missionaries. We won’t be able to do our part without people back home faithfully praying and giving. We are trusting that the Lord will continue to burden the hearts of individuals and churches to partner with us through prayer, financial gifts and encouragement. If you would like more information on partnering with us, please use the comments link at the bottom of the page.
We are not sure how to gauge when we might get to the 100% mark that we need to be at before going to PNG. However,` we are asking the Lord to provide 100% of our support in 2008 and then to get us to PNG by or before the summer of 2009. That still seems like a long way off! We know that the Lord could work and we might have our support in just a few months. But He also might want us to wait.
So, with faith that the Lord will continue to direct our path, we embark on a new beginning. Bart will be working at our church as the custodian to help with our needs until our support is enough that we can live on. We will also be visiting churches to share with them the need for and the work of tribal church planting. Just as we are thankful for all the Lord did in 2007, we are excited to see what He will do in 2008!