Unsettled

I sit here struggling with how to express what is on my heart. Almost exactly one year ago, God reaffirmed in our heart the calling to pursue long term mission work. Last year, we spent a lot of time in prayer and seeking God what this would look like.

We pursued it. We walked through the doors as they were opened. We prayed. We doubted. But God re-confirmed. We kept walking. The doors closed.

But God keeps working. We found out toward the end of last year that we couldn't just pick up and start raising support for a number of different reasons. We started to doubt if that was really what God was calling us to do as a family. But God keeps reaffirming our call to serve him in the mission field as a family. We still feel a strong calling that one day, we will be working with families and church-building somewhere in Mexico. I won't go into all the details for now, but obviously we are not there yet. We have been feeling unsettled. We haven't really made sense of all this yet, but we know that God is calling us as a family to serve him. We know that His word commands it regardless of where you are living. To glorify him in your life daily and point others to Christ.

God keeps opening doors. Last fall, God brought us to another family that are at a smiliar place in their life. They know that God is calling their family to missions, but are not sure how that will play out. We started a home group together "Families with a Mission." It's not super structured, but our goal is to bring our families together as we seek God's will in Missions. We've had reflections from John Piper's book "Let the Nations Be Glad."

Well, from there, we talked about putting together a summer group to serve together as families. We ran it past the church to get their support, and started praying about where God would have our families go to serve Him. Dalton, Georgia is little smaller than Harrisonburg with a very diverse community and a growing Spanish-speaking population. The church we connected with there has a Hispanic outreach program and offers service projects to community members. With the support from our church, we started making plans to go. This will be the first trip our chuch is sponsoring for families to serve as families.

Then we found out we were pregnant. The baby will be about 6 weeks old, depending on the birthday. After six weeks, it is usually "safe" to go back to work, being there are no health problems. We feel that God is leading and these are the first steps in learning to serve as a family. We are going, instead of waiting till the time is right. When will that be?

Please pray for our family. As the time draws nearer, I am more anxious to go. Anxious as in nervous, serving with a newborn, and anxious as in excited, to see how God will work. Pray for how God will use this trip to prepare us for our future and how he is calling us.

"How Beautiful on the Mountain are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, Your God Reigns."

Isaiah 52:7