Dream Expectedly Fulfilled, Unexpectedly

Our dream to go to Guatemala to teach the impoverished children there came true. We reached our goal, but in unexpected ways. No miraculous donation of $10,000 fell in our laps as we'd secretly hoped. No overwhelming support from one source or incredible moments of charity inspired us to believe that God was with us and making this happen. No...our faith was built like any other structure--through hard labor and perseverance.

Oh, there were miracles. Every time someone gave us $5 believing that our cause was noble, or sacrificed an hour of their time to help us wash cars, or thought to open their mouths to ask a friend for help on our behalf, we experienced a miracle. There were those who were more than generous in their donations, or spent more than a few hours of time asking for help--for their efforts and heart, we are extremely grateful. Yet the real miracles were all the small stones, the sand and mortar that piled up to a staircase just high enough for us to stretch out tenaciously for the goal, and risk the fall.

God provided the money for us to buy our plane tickets, then we had to decide how much our dream was worth to us--how much we were willing to risk, personally.

We counted the cost, adjusted the goal, and decided we could sacrifice a week from work instead of 2. We did not raise the money we'd hoped to give to Bill, but we do have faith that there is a reason God said no to that prayer. Maybe this is another opportunity for a miracle. Maybe God wants Bill and his family to move to America and strengthen churches here. Maybe there will be another situation that will allow him to stay in Guatemala and glorify God. I don't know--but I believe that God blessed the desires we had that were according to his will.

1 John 5:14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

The 40 Days of Faith

So, today is day 34 of our church's "40 Days of Faith." I wish I had thought to blog the entire 40 days, but it is only occuring to me now, so I will try to summarize my experience so far. If you're not familiar with the 40 days of faith, it's basically a focus we've been having at my church, and every day we pray for 3 hopeless cases of ours, and read a scripture and a thought about faith written by a different person each day. It's been great, but so far, we've all had our unique obstacles and challenges to our belief that our "hopeless cases" won't be so hopeless in 40 days.

Chadd and I share a hopeless case--our 4th hopeless case, if you will--which we have been praying and working towards for the past couple of months. Our dream to go to Guatemala and conduct a 2-week drama/educational enrichment program actually began in the early summer of this year, but our efforts were not concentrated until recently.

So what's our prayer? "God, help us raise enough money to get to Guatemala responsibly, and to help Bill Ellis pay off all his debt." Bill Ellis is an American man who went to Guatemala on a mission 12 years ago, and stayed to help lead the church there. He is now married with 3 children. He was only able to stay as a missionary by starting his own book-store business out of his home, but this past summer, his entire house was flooded by raw sewage, destroying thousands of dollars of inventory. He and his family have had to put everything on their credit card to get things cleaned up and fixed so that they can live there again. It's left them over $5,000 in debt, and now their source of income has been shot.

In any case, we're having a car wash on Saturday, to raise money, and so far, we've had a total of about $500 in donations. Anything could happen in these final days--can't wait to post some miracles!