This has been a
very challenging couple of months to try and really trust God and His
providence in the midst of extreme busy-ness and life fluctuations. It has also been a time of great successes in
the ministry and great excitement and joy in life. Some of it is just that I am overly busy
right now, and some of it is that I need to trust God to take care of the
things that He promises to take care of in the Bible when we surrender them to
Him; some of it, though, is that I am currently seeing in real life that the
harvest is plentiful, and the workers are few, and that can be difficult to see
when it affects real people whom I care about.
As to the
busy-ness, life is currently full of some VERY excellent things for me—they are
work intensive, but very exciting. For
instance, I am right now in the middle of wedding planning along with my
fiancé, Tella. We are getting married
August 10th at 2:00 p.m. at North Oak Community Church, and if you
would like to come (and you are reading this), you are invited! I apologize if you do not get an invitation
in the mail and just get the invitation in this newsletter, but in this day of
cell phones (and thus few addresses in the landline phone book), we just
couldn’t find addresses for everyone whom we wanted to invite! As such, please do consider yourself invited
if you are reading this newsletter and wish to come join us! We will have a reception following at the
church with cake and punch until about 5:00 p.m. Though very time-intensive as far as planning
goes, this busy-ness is extremely exciting.
In regards to
very exciting but very busy things, I am also closing on a house July 30th. Since I must be fully out of the house I rent
by the 31st, that leaves very little moving time, but we should be
able to get it done! I’m knee-deep in
everything that goes into buying a house for the first time in life (private
party sell); I’m also trying to figure out how to work boxing and moving in
with everything else. Again—it’s an
EXCELLENT problem to have, but it is still time spent and financial craziness
as money shifts accounts every which way and budgets are entirely re-designed. This is all hitting in the middle of the time
that I usually go out and promote The Welcoming Event (formerly ‘Get Plugged
In’) to the various churches and college ministries, and all of the usual ministry
stuff is still going on or starting back up near the end of summer break. As such, it has honestly been almost
overwhelming at times—especially if I focus on the immense lists of what I have
to do. However, when I am able to ask
God in prayer to help me step back and surrender my worries to Him in prayer
(and then when I actually follow up and do so), I can look around and truly
enjoy what is going on around me. This
is a time of intense adventure and super-exciting new life experiences. I cannot wait to be married to Tella—she is
such a blessing in my life, and we are both very excited to start off our new
life together! I am also excited to have
a new place to live, just her and me (and a renter downstairs, but that will be
separated by doors). I intellectually
understand that in less than 3 weeks I will go from living with just guys in a
dirty, run-down house to living with my new wife in our own safe house, but it
is such a huge change that I really can’t fully get it through my head until I
am there!
In the midst of
all of this, my bachelor party really helped highlight God’s providence in my
life; while I was out with a bunch of good male friends and my dad shooting
some targets in the country, I took a moment to look around and let the moment
sink in. I was surrounded by real friends
who were a blessing in my life, I was enjoying time with my dad, and I was
enjoying a variety of excellent blessings all day. It struck me that God has answered (or is
answering) all of my major prayers from my time in High School. Back then, I was always the ‘nice guy’ who
everyone liked, but I had very
few if any close
friends. It was easy to feel lonely, and
some of my largest prayers were 1) that God would help me love Him more, 2)
that He would provide a spouse for me, and 3) that I would one day have close
friends. As I looked around at this
group of guys, I realized that He had long been teaching me to love Him more—ever
since the difficult step out to become an in-state missionary/ministry leader. He had also provided me with true friends
along the way, and He even blessed me with a spouse who is beyond my words to
describe (as far as how much of a blessing she is and how amazing of a woman
she is). What a humbling and astounding
thing! Though I often didn’t see Him
answering my prayers when I was younger, and even at times wondered if He was
answering my prayers, He was faithfully answering them even when I wasn’t
listening or following well. What a
sincerely amazing, loving God we serve.
In truth, I feel blessed beyond my words’ ability to express it, and I
really can’t pen down my emotions, gratefulness, or feelings of being
inadequate to the blessing received (which, in the sense that none of us have ‘earned’
them, we all are, though His choice to love us makes us valuable enough and ‘adequate’
to receive them). This feeling is
accompanied by an almost bashful joy that He would love me, and all of us so
much. It is a truly blessed period of my
life.
This is,
however, certainly a rollercoaster time of highs and lows, for in the midst of
such joy, I have also had to struggle with trusting Him in various fields. There was a time of uncertainty that the
house would go through, which was very stressful; I had to spend substantial
time praying it into His hands and trusting Him to take care of it either way. We also had to officially cancel the Mexico
Mission Trip due to lack of attendance/sign-up.
Though several have already committed to go next year and though this
time ended up being truly needed for wedding planning and house-buying, it was
still difficult to have to miss seeing the children and staff there for another
year. Also, I started up The Gamers
Guild next to the dojo (it is a card and board game shop). As I explained in the last newsletter, it
costs a few extra hours each week but opens up MANY new fields to develop
relationship and love people. This has
been a pretty huge success—I see more new faces each day than I can truly get
to know. This has been VERY encouraging;
we have also had a few visits by local ministry leaders who came to hang out
with us during Game Night and develop relationships. Unfortunately, due to how busy they are, they
cannot regularly come at this time, and I see the truth to the fact that the
harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.
We are getting many more new faces in the door than we are getting believers
who wish to come and get to know the life stories of those faces, develop
relationships with them, love them, and live life with them. I truly pray to the Lord of the Harvest (as I
request you do as well) to send more workers and to share His true nature with
them (and with us, too)!
Anyway, this has
been a crazy, rollercoaster couple of months, but I thank you for reading this
newsletter and for praying for me and for us. PLEASE do keep us in your prayers; it is
through His providence that so many amazing things—more than I could oversee
myself—are all happening at once. Thank
God for who He is, and thank you for your prayers and financial support in our
ministry endeavors. Please pray for more
baristas and/or people willing to step in and help lead and serve at Unite Game
Night. Please pray for The Welcoming
Event as I am promoting it among the churches and college ministries a bit
later than usual. Please also pray for
[alt] as we seek to put together a leadership team for it and to see how it may
ultimately look this year. I am excited
for what lies ahead, but I ask God to help me enjoy and ride in the now. May He bless us and help us all continue to
see His hand, providence, and trustworthy nature in everything around us, and
may He help us seek first His Kingdom (living in the Spirit, surrendering, and
loving daily) in all that we do! Amen!
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