Veteran missionaries have repeatedly told us that “Partnership devlopment is a time where the Lord teaches you many of the things you’ll need for the mission field.” And, well, they’re right. March’s blog theme, the 2nd generation, is exactly the push for me to share one of those lessons that I’ve been wanting to share for a long while now.
I’ve always considered my testimony to be, well, boring. I’ve never been in jail, never used illegal drugs, and always generally behaved myself. I dreaded testimony times because I always felt the need for more “excitement” in the story. Along came Pre-field orientation with NTM, and what do they ask us to do? Yes, we all shared our testimonies. Great. My testimony — and Katie’s is very similar — is basically that our parents are believers who modeled godly behavior and they introduced us to Christ at a young age. We accepted Christ when we were young and we’ve grown up spiritiually as we’ve grown physically.
The conversations that followed showed me just how much I’d taken for granted growing up in a Christian home. Katie is a 2nd generation believer; her parents where witnessed to by friends and we’re still praying today for much of her extended family’s salvation. For myself, I can recount testimonies going back at least 3-5 generations on both sides of my family. One of our coworkers told me I needed to start my testimony with that information! How cool it would be to be in a family that worships the Lord together! It struck us then, this is exactly why we’re serving in foreign missions, not simply to save individuals but entire families. We desire to see not only this generation reached, but enable them to reach the next generation and them to reach the next. We desire to see a church that spans generations.
One of our prayers is that our four children will see the blessings of Christian parents, see Christ in us, and see Christ work through us for others. Another prayer is that we see Christ work through our children, that they also would be a blessing to those they encounter.
The most recent big step in our journey was selling our house…will you be praying for our family’s next generation as we go through this big change? You can read most of the details in our last update letter here.