It has been quite a couple of months! In short, these past 2 months can be summarized in the following bullet points:
I visited family for the first time in nearly 5 years in Tennessee. VERY happy times.
Then, returned home to visitors in and out of the house for a few weeks before...
I went to Colorado Springs for Pre Field Experience Training for a week! (What a time this was!)
There, it was confirmed to me that we have reached the 45% minimum funding goal needed in order to be sent out!!! Hallelujah, Praise the Lord and Big thanks to you all who have committed to prayer for this and giving or planning to commit to giving.
I began my ICCT (how to learn a language class)... It is quite intense and informative. 10/10 would suggest this to anyone learning a language.
Am getting ready to head out to MI for a weekend to celebrate my dear friends' wedding a year after their marriage! (Congrats you fools in love!!!).
And I have started doing some formal/informal language study through a language school outside of Boston a couple days a week.
I have called the Consulate every couple of weeks for updates about when to apply for my visa. We are still in the waiting on this you all. Please pray for Japan to open up in the Lord's timing that I can get this done. (and that I won't get in trouble for calling these poor people at the Boston Japanese consulate every two weeks to have the same conversation).
Helped speak at and make new friends in the New England District "Sent Ones Gathering" to help speak into the lives of people exploring God's call on them into ministry and beyond.
Preached at a few churches from MA to NH
Lastly, I am sure to be forgetting something that happened this past month in this bullet point summery, but that's life.
Points for Prayer:
Pray in thanksgiving for God's provision for meeting the funding goal! Let's celebrate!
Pray for the Visa
Pray for the people of Japan as they are facing the rising Covid numbers with the Delta Variant and the vaccination rates. Prayer for the Japanese in general, for open hearts and minds.
Prayer for continued reliance and growth in Christ as I am struggling in the waiting (for those who know me, I am not one to sit still very well).
A prayer for us all to grow continuously closer to God and with each other.
Prayer for language study and my ICCT class.
A Little Bit More Detail:
As I am still in the process of simply getting to Japan, I can't help but feel that God has taken me hiking to the edge of a cliff. He has instructed me to wait here until further notice. I am to jump off this cliff and in the past few months have found time to do necessary tasks such as purging my belongings, researching life and living in Tokyo, researching shipping, putting final touches on fundraising, stretching my mind through reading, writing and now beginning the study of Japanese, and yet the one thing I need to do anything significant towards taking those real action steps to departing I am in the waiting for. That thing is, of course, my visa. That is, to work with the analogy of jumping off of a cliff, my parachute. I need it to depart, plan a living, send whatever I have planned to pack, and land in Japan. That is part of the reason for my delay in publishing an update.
I had hoped to get a clearer answer sooner concerning this waiting period, but all I have to offer to you (as God has been keen to remind me) is patience in faith. That is not to say that God hasn't seen other huge obstacles moved.
That brings us to this lovely announcement. If you read the quick summary, you may have discovered that GoD hAs MEt ThE fuNDinG GoaL WE NeEdED In OrDEr FoR Me tO GO. Excuse my excitement, but we did it. We have reached the 45% needed in order for me to depart. For those who are beginning reading my updates here, I encourage you to read the page on FAQ's on the funding change in the Alliance, but in short, I am required to raise 45-65% of my monthly compensation, benefits and housing in order to go to Japan. What a big Praise the Lord! We have not only reached the minimum 45% in order for me to launch, over the past month that number has increased to somewhere between 50-55%. It is well clear to me, as my good friend Sue often reminds me, that God works wonders and in my life particularly he has set it to himself to put me in high faith filled risk situations only to throw me to where I need to be or give what I need in the last minutes. I did not know if I was going to meet the funding goal in time. God saw that I not only met the goal, but exceeded it a day before the new system temporarily crashed and we were in the blind for over a month.
In other good news, I had found precious time with good friends and family and the ability to celebrate life events here and now that I will miss once I make the final trip to Japan for the next 4 years. I got to celebrate my best friend of 14 years becoming the good Doctor of Audiology. I got to see and spend precious time with my Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, 1st Counsins once removed, and my dear, sweet, darling, most wonderous Gwandmama in the southern beauties of Tennessee. I was rescued by my sister Tehillah who listened to my SOS voicemail in the presence of her coworkers (as one ought to). Her humor and joy in life always helps set my soul to take joy in our God even through the rough patches. I was able to spend a sweet time on my birthday with my superheroes, my siblings, who, when they convene on a movie theatre, become better than the feature we pay to see. Finally, I will be able to spend dear time with my Michiganders celebrating my friends' wedding.
This is just it. The waiting hits me as a time to bear against stagnancy. My good friend, the infamous J.T., had told me as I was leaving to take advantage of this time in transition, a time where he told me is a chance for the greatest amount of growth if I seek it. The longer it stretches on the more it stretches my soul. It stretches me to rely on God who remains the same through the chaos, and yet somehow calls me to faithful pursuit of discomfort in the comfortable and convenient. I can't sit still, and yet God has called me to it. Then I sit still, and I don't want to be content to it. It is a weird place to be in, but as I have recently found out, I am not alone in this weird place.
Of the many blessings of attending Pre-Field Experience, one of the best parts was being able to make new friends with others who are going out to the ends of the Earth through the Alliance. Many of us were asking the same questions, often eliciting the same answers: "I don't know." We don't know when we are going. We don't know when our countries will reopen. We don't know what will happen once the houses sell, the cars are gone, the kids pulled from schools, and the jobs have been quit, but we do know God is taking us places and he is stretching us in weird and unimaginable ways that this one guy named Al Stombaugh said best in answer to my own "I don't knows": "Ah" He sighed with a whimsical smile, "the missionary life!" And how true that is! We had time to learn many of the ins and outs of transition, of saying "good goodbyes" of crossing cultures, learning languages, caring for one's soul, building belonging, and maintaining friendships. I had the blessing and joy of soaking up teachings from a few people like Jessie Ritchie, the Westergrens, the Steinerts, Tim Crouch and quite a few others you may or may not know.
Through it all God had made all the joys and pains of these transitions quite clear and somehow quite exciting. I always loved reading a story I couldn't predict what was going to happen next. This is going to be a fun waiting season. The stakes are high; the wind is blowing; and I'm still waiting on that parachute, but there is a thrill in the preparation, a sense of wild adventure on edge with boredom and the ever-present sin nature stalking at my door. With this, I feel it best to end with a quote from a Hobbit and a verse to reply it:
"Its a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." -Bilbo Baggins
"Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing."- James 1:2-4
LOVE YOU MY DEAR SWEET BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER JESSICA!