Hey Family & Friends,
We know you’re probably wondering why we are writing you a letter. Well here it is: God has called us to Guatemala. Yes, that’s a pretty big statement, so please keep reading while we explain our story. We just can’t hold it in!
About five months ago we felt an “itch” for something new. We weren’t sure if this meant we should start a family, maybe move somewhere, or just get over the fact that our four year intervals are over. You know, four years of high school, four years of college, first four years of work; all over. So we started praying fervently for “God’s Will” in our lives. As many of you know, we’ve grown up in the church. We’ve been taught to love people no matter what, pray without ceasing, go to church every Sunday, and seek out God’s desires for our life. We aren’t claiming to be perfect, in fact we know we aren’t, but these values are what we try to live by. Recently we’ve become very involved at our church’s second campus Life Park. We’ve served in technology ministry (David of course) and with the Kids Park program (obviously Kristen). We have been involved together with youth and yet we still felt this desire for more. We asked some people to pray for us while we were doing the same. A few months later God showed us that missions might be part of His plan for our life.
“Missions” is a big word and we got nervous almost immediately! We thought that surely we’d heard wrong. We felt sure God was just trying to teach us not to take what we have for granted. So, we just reassessed our many blessings. Here we are 26/27 years old and well on our way to the “American Dream.” We have two great and stable jobs. We have two reliable cars and a perfect house. Both of which we can afford. We have two great families right around the corner. We both have a college degree & David has a masters. We have a great network of friends. What more could we want? A family of course, but the door is closed right now in that area. You know what they say: When one door closes another one opens. Well, that “itch” for more didn’t go away. It actually began to grow. We couldn’t get away from the idea of missions. So, we started looking into it. We toyed with the thought of long-term missions. You know things that would involve job changes and possible relocations to foreign countries. We found quickly that doors were closed in that area as well. We aren’t ready for that right now and don’t really know if that’s exactly what God is trying to tell us. Here, however, is the open door: a short term (one week) trip to Guatemala with our church this summer. Almost immediately we knew that this was it. This is where God is leading us. This is how we can get our feet wet to see how this word “missions” fits into God’s plan for our life together.
We are very excited to see what God has in store for us on this trip. We are confident that there is a purpose for our taking this journey and we can’t wait to keep hearing from Him. We’ve learned that God is faithful to answer prayers. He sometimes answers “out of left field” and that’s ok. We never thought an answer to our prayers would lead to a foreign country, ever! We do, however, feel confident that this is his direction. How can we say no? We heard it explained like this: Christians have been given the command to “Go and make disciples of all nations. Matt28:19.” So what we have to figure out is whether we should support from home or actually go. In our case, we’re going.
So here’s the real reason you got a letter. We aren’t in the practice of randomly writing letters to family and friends out of the blue. Actually, we need something. We need support. First, we want to thank you for being the people in our lives that we are comfortable enough with to send this kind of letter to. In some capacity you have made an impact on us. Out of obedience to God’s calling we are hoping to make in impact on the people of Guatemala. Please consider helping us this summer. The most important way of helping is prayer. You can pray for our safety and for us to know exactly how to help out in a third world country. You can pray for the language barrier and the food differences. The second way you can support us is financially. As you can imagine, a trip this far away will be expensive. Our trip will cost roughly $4,000.00 together. We will be taking this trip July 15-23, 2011. All monetary donations can be sent to our church and will be tax deductible. See details below.
Again, thanks for being someone that we feel we can share this kind of story with. Thank you for having a positive impact on our lives. And, thank you for reading all the way to the end! We love you!
God Bless,
Mount Pleasant, SC 29464
Memo Line of Check: Acts 1:8 Fund for Patrick’s
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