Pieces of the Puzzle ~Part 3

Part 3

The last week has been an amazing time of seeing what God has been doing behind the scenes. So full of confirmation that what we are working on is what God wants us to be doing. But first let me tell you what God did to bring us to this point. The story is long so we will be breaking it up into parts. To start at the beginning go here

For the next several years the missionary thing got put on the back burner and all but forgotten. We had babies and jobs and ministry work. Life was busy and good. Every once in a while Jose would mention to someone that we wanted to be missionaries and I would nod and smile and think it was never gonna' happen. 

In 2007 the pastor from Lima our pastors had visited 5 years before came to Powerhouse. He spoke about Peru showed pictures of the people. Something inside of me broke. I was in tears the whole time he was speaking. I realized that I had hardened my heart toward missions even though I spoke a good game I had no intention of ever doing it. That was the beginning of the end for me. I told my mentor what was in my heart and Jose and I began to talk about going to Peru in earnest. 

Suddenly the future became crystal clear and for almost a year everything fell apart in our lives. We lost material things, friends and family left our church and relationships changed, and our business failed. The enemy tried to destroy what God had called us to do. This was just another piece of the puzzle. 

At the end of 2008 we were just beginning to recover. We still had embers of our vision burning. Jose invited his dad to attend an Encounter and in the beginning of 2009 he did. Jose was his small group leader and it was an awesome time for them. After the encounter Jose's dad told him that whenever we end up going to Peru to start the work he wanted to go with us and be a part of it.

We started making plans to visit Peru as a family including Jose's dad. Jose says he knew that this would either make the desire unquenchable or put it out. One month before our trip he had a meeting with our pastor. We knew that if this was God it would be confirmed by our spiritual authority. He gave us some direction about who to contact in Lima and asked us to report back after the trip.

In August we took a 10 day trip to Lima. Jose and I fell in love with Peru and saw the great need here. We both knew we could never go back to living the "American Dream."

In Jose's follow up meeting with Pastor he said "this is it, we want to move to Peru and plant a church." Our Pastor said he knew and he had just been waiting for us to level out after the shaking we had undergone the previous year. At that time we said we will leave in one year.

We started planning out how we would get there and what we would do. We planned to sell everything except what we could carry in our suitcases.

In March of 2010 our Pastors invited us to accompany them to the Remnant conference hosted by Pastor Larry Stockstill. One of the speakers was Robert Morris. We had heard of him as the pastor of one of the most prosperous churches in America so our mindset was that he was going to talk about money and how to have a prosperous church. Instead he spoke about the heart and having a heart of sacrificial giving. He had written a book called "The Blessed Life" which was basically about being willing to give up everything for God.

Let me just pause and tell you something about how Jose and I operate. We are both givers. We love to bless other people and are known to be a little bit out there in our willingness to give. However I'm usually quite a bit more reserved than Jose. I know that anytime Jose leaves the house anything on his person is subject to being given away. I'm more likely to figure out what the needs are and go from there.

So when we were sitting in this session God told me we needed to give our stuff away. Not sell it. This does not make sense. We planned to buy our plane tickets and maybe fund ourselves a little bit with the sale of our furniture and other personal belongings. But I knew what God told me to do. So before I could push it back or ignore the thought I whispered it to Jose right there. This only served as confirmation for Jose who had been feeling the same thing for a little bit. So that was it. We were going to give everything away.

Part 4 Tomorrow

Dream On

I've been thinking a lot about dreams lately because I have some pretty enormous ones. The funny thing about dreams is that not everyone has the same ones. Some people dream of being rich and famous. Some dream of accomplishing a great athletic feat like running a marathon or becoming a professional athlete. There a millions of kinds of dreams and they are as varied as the people that have them.

I know that most people think my dreams are crazy. Who would dream of giving away everything they own, moving to a third world country, (away from most of the people they love) and living totally by faith in God? Not many at all actually. It has to be a God given dream. I can't imagine ever having dreams of being famous, a politician, an athlete...those things seem crazy to me. Necessary (I guess) but crazy. But that's not my dream. Maybe it's yours.

Living your dream, no matter what it may be takes work. Hard work. Sometimes you will feel like it's impossible. Sometimes you will doubt if that dream is really the right one for you. The thing about dreams though is, if it's worth doing it won't be easy. Athletes aren't just born good at their sport. It takes years of hard work and practice to build up the skill and strength to be good. It takes the perfect balance of skill, discipline and talent to do what they do.

Even something like being a parent can be a dream. But any parent will tell you becoming a parent was (for most people) the easy part. Raising kids requires decades of self sacrifice, discipline, and lots of hard work. Which seems to me like its the recipe for living any dream worth dreaming.

A long, long time ago, I tutored 2nd graders. In those class rooms I would always see signs that said things like "go confidently in the direction of your dreams" "if you can dream it you can do it" "DREAM BIG" "Shoot for the stars, if you miss you will still reach the moon" and tons of other little statements about dreaming. I loved it. I'm a strong believer in dreams. I'm a dreamer. But the real world is hard on dreamers. The real world says "be practical" "be normal" "how can you even think of doing something like that?" "Maybe you should rethink this" Strive for a big house, a good job, a nice car (or 3), 2.5 kids and maybe a dog. Or as my Pastor says "get all you can, can all you get, and sit on the can" People long for comfort. I'm not going to lie, one of my dreams involves an ocean view with a bay window and a good book.  Total comfort dream. But I know that God made me for greatness and that is not going to happen if my only desire is to be comfortable.

So if you wonder how I feel really. Overall about everything we are doing. This is the answer. It's hard. Really, really hard. But I am living my dream and I love it. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

What's your dream?