"...anxious, eager, excited, hopeful, nervous, thankful, humbled and hugely blessed: These are a few of the emotions I have waded through today as our family waits to hear from the board regarding our applications for career missions with Reaching and Teaching. Would you pray with us while we await that call? Also pray for our family and that we would be obedient to go wherever God leads us, even if it involves us {gasp} staying right where He has us. Thank you friends!"
Well, I am so excited to share that as of December 11, our applications for appointment as career missionaries to Ecuador have been approved. In light of this new information, I think I might need to update my Facebook status to something like:
"...anxious, eager, excited, hopeful, nervous, thankful, humbled and hugely blessed: These are a few of the emotions I have waded through today as our family heard from the board today of the approval of our applications for career missions with Reaching and Teaching. Would you pray with us while we follow His lead through the next few steps of this journey?"
It's funny, you know, because when David and I discussed this desire to serve in foreign missions and realized that God was leading us to go ahead and move forward with the steps needed to make that happen, I thought to myself "If the Lord will just get us through the application portion, I'll be good to go." (Meaning that I believed I would calm down, be less nervous, have more confidence, feel like I had a little more control; I could go on and on.) The Lord, indeed, saw us through the application, but then came the period of waiting for a response. The waiting, I quickly learned, was more intense than submitting the application! "Oh, if the Lord would just give me the patience I need to get through this period of waiting, then I will be ready to rock and roll," I thought. And He definitely was gracious to give me the patience I needed as we waited. Now, we have been approved and again I see my need for the Lord. This is just not something we can do on our own. He has called us to this, which is so far out of our comfort zone it is unreal, but at the same time there is a peace in knowing that He has not left us to figure this out on our own. He is constantly providing and encouraging us along the way.
In the meantime, as we seek to get things up and running would you commit to pray for a few things for our family?
- That we would get plenty of helpful information from Dr. Sills when we Skype with him on Tuesday afternoon.
- That we would be able to get our own personal website up and running.
- That we would be able to make some contacts with local church leaders who may be open to letting us share our vision for the people of Ecuador with their congregation.
- Please pray for us as we are prayerfully considering an "official launch date" to start support raising.
As always we appreciate your prayers! And we would love to pray for you as well. Leave us a comment, even if you just say "hi" so that we can pray for you and your family in general.
all for His glory,
David and Lindsay
That [Soon to Be] Family in Ecuador
