In May we had a visit from our agency director Phil and his wife Marilyn. They strongly encouraged us to consider coming to the conference but again, we just didn't feel the timing was right, we couldn't imagine leaving the kids in Italy, the cost of the trip wasn't in our budget, we wanted to be engaging locally rather than travelling internationally, etc, etc. We didn't even bring it up for discussion with our sending church ministry team for these reasons.
But for some reason back in August, after receiving another email about this conference and the topics they were covering (some amazing seminars that will be so empowering for us) we started to feel like we should prayerfully consider the possibility of attending. Shortly after we started praying about it, friends and ministry partners told us to look into flight details and keep them informed.
After researching flights and discussing the opportunity with our church leadership team they encouraged us to attend the conference. As we researched flights and looked at the expense of flying to Canada for three days, we saw that for $200.00 more per ticket we could have a multi city itenerary with a home visit to debrief with our team. This added an immense value to the trip as our first six months in the field had been an intense time of observation and seeking to discern our direction for the coming year and it is really hard to communicate a lot of the dynamics of our experience via a monthly ministry report.
As we researched the few flight options we had to route through Saskatoon either prior to or after our conference we discovered a flight that let us add Saskatoon to our itinerary at no extra cost to our Rome/Toronto return tickets. And within hours our friends had booked the flights for us with airmiles. Our 3 day trip had been extended to an 8 day trip with a home visit to boot.
In the weeks following our decision to attend the conference things started to move like lightning for us on this end. Our prayers for the right opportunity in the right location with the right ministry team and the right dynamics for our family started to be answered like popcorn in flight. If there was ever a time we need to sit down in person with our team and debrief on our journey to this point and the crossroad we find ourselves at, it is right here, right now. Our Divine Day Planner of course knew all this and had us being exactly where we needed to be when we most needed to be there.
As an extra special love token we realized a few weeks ago that the dates our tickets had us stopping over in Waldheim were none other than Thanksgiving weekend. This of course does not show up on our Italian calendars and was not on our radar at all. Not only do we get to have an in person debrief and ministry planning meeting with our team, but we get to celebrate a Canadian holiday on Canadian soil, during Canadian fall with our Canadian peeps.
Thanks, God.
