We booked our flights yesterday. The range of emotions this involved defies explanation. Awe, excitement, fear to name a few, and not necessarily in that order. This is real. We are moving to Italy on March 17th. No turning back. When we got the green light to book our flights from our leadership team and the Evangelism and Missions Team at our church my heart started to beat out of control in my chest and the wind was pretty much sucked right out of my lungs; like standing at the gaping exit of a plane at forty thousand feet, catapulting along, time to jump.
The need for trust just sky rocketed to a new level of challenge. As much as it feels we have needed to trust until now, it has been toddler's play compared to the depth of trust these next stages of obedience are going to require of us. And yet, with the challenge, comes the awe of getting to experience the beyond fathomable faithfulness and extravagant blessedness of being children led and cared for by the King. Today I get to add two new stones, weighty and wonderful, to my altar of praise.
If you have spoken to us at all along this journey you will know the struggle that support raising has been for us. Not in the sense of dreading it, but in the sense of struggling to have clear conviction, discernment and clarity on the specific approach God has wanted us to take. There are various philosophies of support raising, no right or wrong, and the whole time we have been weighing each and trying, trying, trying to hear from God on which approach He wanted us to take. The one most common is to make a list of every person you know, arrange one on one meetings with them, share your call and invite them to partner with you. The other extreme side of the spectrum is to commit your needs to the Lord, continue to walk in obedience and commit to trust that HE will invite people to be part. It still requires sharing your call, but not for the purpose of solicitation. If any of you know the biography of George Mueller, he is the poster missionary for this approach.
For months we prayed, discussed, sought God's clarity and HIS will for our attitude and role towards support raising. While we did do the work of booking missions spotlight presentations in about 12 different churches, we did not have peace about "making the list" of every person we've ever met and sitting down with them to invite them to partner. But we also struggled almost daily with what we should do as for months our support hovered at about the $1,700 a month level (and that in theory since the $1,100 monthly support our church is providing for us out of their general budget will not actually begin until we are on the field).
Still, every time we would contemplate more aggressively inviting people to partner with us we just didn't have peace about forcing it. With TRUST being the word God has challenged me to take on for my growth word of 2015, and Pietro confirming it, we just didn't see how "managing" things to that extreme was not trusting in our own power to create a desirable outcome. So for long months, we waited and sought a clear voice from the Lord, saying "this way" or "that way" but to no avail.
Finally one morning about a month ago, our church visits now winding to a close and it being time to seriously evaluate how we were going to get to the next marker in this journey, that being full support of $5,500 a month when we were only at just over $1,500 it was time to get serious with God. I woke up one morning really early, which is unnatural for me, with the conviction in my heart that I was to lay a Gideon fleece before God and that He desired to answer directly. So I did. About a week before I had sent out 5 pilot letters, personal letters to the first 5 people in our inbox, in the traditional missionary style of connecting (each letter was personal, not a form letter) and inviting them to prayerfully consider partnering with us. The fleece was that if God wanted us to make a list and sit down with all our contacts one of those people would contact us that day saying they wanted to support us. If God wanted us to continue TRUSTING and WAITING on Him to do the work of raising up financial partners for us that we would be contacted by someone that same day who was NOT on the list of people I had personally contacted.
Not two hours had passed before I received a text from someone not on the list, expressing their decision to support us financially. When I shared with Pietro we both had absolute peace and a spiritual thrill of confirmation that God was saying "I've got this. I know this seems like a huge stretch for you, to be able to go from $1,700 a month to $5,500 a month, but for Me this is tiddlywinks. Watch and see." And from that point, the calendar I kept with little cliff notes of provision and support had a new name added to its boxes daily, sometimes multiple names, and our support base doubled in less than a month.
Once our support was within $500 a month of our "essentially needed to survive" level (we will start out living with Pietro's mom which allows us to cut $1,500 a month expenses from our budget for the first term as we can start out without rent and utility expenses) we knew it was time to start planning the big leap of faith. The booking of our flights. Essentially this was a vote of confidence in God that He who has begun a good work will be faithful to complete it and to say "God, we trust that in 5 weeks time, you will have provided for our essential needs enough for us to step into the river and trust the water will part. So yesterday we waded in with hearts in our throats. The story of how God provided for our flights is a second stone that literally seems to hum with a supernatural charge in my hand.
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To decide what flight itinerary was going to be practical and feasible for our family was a roller coaster of considerations. At first we had two criteria. One layover, one airline. It seemed sensible for our family of 8 with 16 pieces of luggage to want to have the least amount of time transferring through various airports and worrying about our luggage making it from one carrier to another without complication. We did find an amazing flight, for an amazing price, that flew out of Calgary to Heathrow, and then to Rome, the downsides being 1. the 6 plus hour drive to Calgary on this end, and 2. the 10 pm arrival in Rome, which was still 2.5 hours drive from Florence and would require us to rent a vehicle and find accommodation for night at a huge expense. The plus side was that all eight of us could fly for $4,500 which was less than HALF of the price we hoped and prayed and expected to get.
But after much consideration we decided that it was better to get an extra layover and be able to fly straight out of Saskatoon, and straight into Florence. While it raised the price to $5,700 and the itenerary time from 15-21 hours the convenience of a 1:50 pm arrival time in our actual destination city won out. So we bit the bullet and reserved seats on that flight. Meanwhile, supporters of ours told us that they would be willing to look into covering some of our travel expenses by airmiles if they could work it out to get a credit issued from their provider and transfer it to our missions travel agency reservation. They prayed before calling in that God would give them favor with an agent who would agree to issue them a credit, which is something they usually resist doing because they want to book and pay for the flight in house.
While on the phone the agent at first could not locate the third connection of our itinerary and that seemed a good thing, because if she couldn't find it she couldn't book it and would be more inclined to issue a credit. But after searching another data base she found it and for a moment it looked like there might be a challenge, but literally as she was looking at it "poof" it disappeared from her screen and was not on the database anymore! She promptly agreed to issue the credit, our supporters called our agency and were able to apply airmiles to cover 100% of our flights. This is the extravagant grace and provision of God and His people. This is one of those things that reminds us that we are his kids, and He's got our tab. This is one of those things that causes me to stop dead in my tracks, grope around in the grass and come up with a stone for the altar to commemorate His greatness along the road.
Of course we have never "arrived" when it comes to trusting. It's not a one time thing you GET and have forever. It's a daily invitation to believe that the God who has invited, the God who has provided, will continue to be faithful and true. Pietro's devotional reading from this morning gave us goosebumps. "Your path is difficult. Difficult for you both. There is no work in life so hard as waiting, and yet I say "Wait." Wait until I show you My will. It is proof of My love and My certainty of your true discipleship that I give you hard tasks. Again I say wait. All motion is more easy than calm waiting. So many of my followers have marred their work and hindered the progress of My kingdom by activity. Wait. I will not over try your spiritual strength. You are both like two persons, helpless on a raft in mid ocean. But, look! There comes toward you One walking on the waters. When He comes and you receive Him it will be with you as it was with my disciples when I was on the earth, that straightaway you will be at the place where you would be. All your toil in rowing and all your activity could not have accomplished the journey so soon. Oh wait, and trust. Wait and do not be afraid."
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