Sarah and Keane

You would not recognize this apartment. All the parents were in the past week and made a massive dent in the great packing challenge. My parents are staying this whole week and then driving my car back to North Carolina, so they have been hard at work doing everything from packing to cleaning the bathroom to taking us out for one last meal at Mai Thai.

Sunday night, however, we were planning on taking a break from packing to go out to eat in the city with my parents and our good friends Jim and Caitlyn. They needed to make a “quick stop” at a friend’s house to pick something up…which turned into a huge, beautiful, German-themed going away party for us! All of Keane’s frisbee friends from the past 5+ years were there. There were brats and polka music and even an accordion! Our hearts are so full. Thank you, everyone, for making us feel so loved! A special thanks to Malz and Chris, who were the most amazing party hosts ever.

We will miss you all!

Hello dear friends and family,

It’s been a little while since we gave y’all an update on support raising. We have that and a couple other things to announce as well!

We are at 55% of our monthly support needs! Two weeks ago we were at 37%, so this is really encouraging news, and we are so grateful for the ways in which God has been calling both friends and complete strangers to join our support team. There is still a long way to go until we can purchase our plane tickets (we need 90% for that to happen), but we know that God is in control and we are praying for his will to be done in this and every situation in our lives.

We were greatly encouraged by a weekend retreat with our church’s young adults group. We were up on a lake in Northern(ish) Wisconsin…surrounded by lovely nature and wonderful friends…it was a good weekend of games, reading by the lake, tubing, and eating meals and s’mores together. This weekend, we are really looking forward to seeing both sets of our parents in the same place!! We will be getting lots of help from them in packing up our apartment as we anticipate moving out at the end of July.

We have two very quick announcements to make:

1. We are speaking at our church’s prayer meeting this Wednesday at 7pm! Please email us for more info: keaneandsarah@gmail.com
2. We are thinking about putting together a group of people that we can email on a weekly basis with prayer requests. We love sharing some general prayer requests with everyone through our newsletters and blog posts, but we sometimes have very specific things that we need prayer for that week, and so we would like to be able to email those things out to people every Monday. If you’re interested in that, please shoot us an email at keaneandsarah@gmail.com or leave a comment on this post and let us know!

This past week, Keane and I took part in Teach Beyond’s orientation for its new missionary candidates. We gathered with over 80 other people to cover a wide variety of topics pertaining to moving, living, and serving overseas. Every day a different Teach Beyond staff member led us in a devotional, and a few of the other sessions felt more like devotionals than seminars. Here are a few of the passages that were covered this past week. Can you find any themes?

I will lead the blind by ways they have not known,
    along unfamiliar paths I will guide them;
I will turn the darkness into light before them
    and make the rough places smooth.
These are the things I will do;
    I will not forsake them. (Is. 42:16)

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom. 8:31)

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. (1 Cor. 1:27)

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions,in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:9-10)

For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power.Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him in our dealing with you. (2 Cor. 13:4)

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. (Eph. 6:10)

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. (1 John 4:4)

What do these passages have in common? We are weak; God is strong. What immediately pops into my mind is that old Sunday School song, “My God is so big, so strong and so mighty! There’s nothing my God cannot do for you!” And in my memory, I hear a multitude of children’s voices shouting those lyrics with all their might, maybe just enjoying the singing and the motions that go along with the words, but also able in that childlike-faith way to believe the words and to know God is big and strong and mighty.

I don’t think there was a single person in our orientation group who did NOT identify with this topic of feeling weak. I know I did. And every time I was reminded that God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness, I felt a resounding YES swell up inside me.

What struck me mid-week, though, is that this shouldn’t be a new feeling. This awareness that I am weak and that God is strong should not be a phenomenon that accompanies moving to a new country and raising support. It is reality. The problem is that, most of the time, I actually feel pretty okay. We are a married couple with two incomes and no kids; we lead a reasonably comfortable life; we have a nice emergency fund stored away; we have health insurance and life insurance and (tiny) retirement accounts. And before I quit my job and started focusing on going overseas, if I wasn’t careful, I could have gone days without recognizing my need for God and my own weakness. There is a huge disconnect in my mind between my physical needs (financial security, etc.) and my spiritual needs, and sometimes it isn’t until the former is impacted that the latter comes to mind. Is this a culturally American thing? Is this a human nature thing? Or just a middle class thing? I don’t know. But this past week I was prompted to repent of my so-called self-sufficiency and to rejoice in this new awareness of my weakness. Truly, this weakness is not new, but I thank God that I now recognize it. It brings a certain gladness, knowing that “Christ’s power may rest on me” and that, as blind and weak as I am, he is leading me along the unfamiliar paths.

 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. (2 Cor. 4:7)

Earlier this week, my good friend Katie stopped by to help me sort through the stuff in my closet (she has become proficient in this over the last year), and before she left to go home, she prayed for me. In and of itself, her prayer was so encouraging and caring, but one specific part of her prayer really hit home. She thanked God that, during these times of struggle when we face the unknown, we learn so much about God’s character.

I’ve been having a hard time with raising financial support. (Maybe no one has an easy time with it.) I find myself feeling envious of other missionaries who raise support and then go to the field; we are raising support and going to the field with a deadline, which probably isn’t that much more stressful than regular support-raising, but to me right now, I am feeling the pressure of wanting to arrive at BFA before the beginning of the next school year. And I don’t know about you, but when I am in difficult, stressful circumstances, there are times when I realize that I have begun to subconsciously doubt the character of God. It’s not that I don’t think he is faithful or loving or powerful; it’s that I assume that a faithful, loving, and powerful God would do things a certain way (read: MY way) that would preclude me from experiencing the pain and frustration and confusion of waiting for his provision. After all, this is what he asked us to do. After all, this is for his glory.

I don’t mean to slip into this kind of thinking. But I sometimes do. And after a while, a passage from the Bible or a well-timed word from a friend will stop me in my thoughts and remind me of the truth. Just because God calls us to something does not mean it will be easy; in fact, the opposite is probably true. He doesn’t flatten the mountain before us; he gives us the strength to climb it. My family experienced many truly difficult and painful things when we lived overseas–sickness, spiritual attack, loneliness, loss. He delivered us through them, every time. That is faithfulness. And those times enable us to help those who walk through the valley behind us. As I was reminded by my dear friend Emily today: God isn’t safe, but he is good.

I hope this encourages you today in whatever trial you may be facing. I love you, friends!