Life is fun for sure! When I picture the doors that we’ve knocked on or opened in our time, they’re never plain ol’ doors…
When we diverted our journey to missions 10 years ago, we always knew that the road with the brightly lit signs would be waiting for us to jump on again. There’s no doubt that we were created for a life called away from the ordinary. It’s just that getting back to that road has been a bigger task than we thought.
We’ve had many people asking about our status, so here’s the current update:
Recently, a door opened to help serve within our community to start building the base we needed to launch ourselves out for wherever God needed us to go. Since we had more juicing in our lives than we wanted, we looked to share the knowledge and healing power with others. There are so many people in our lives now who need some serious healing. I don’t mean superficial healing, I mean deep-rooted, death-is-on-your-radar kind of healing. From this, we developed a business plan for starting a juicing cooperative effort where people could get quality nutrition and the workload was evenly distributed. Since we are overwhelmed in our own lives with the work of Sy’s therapy, this seemed to be an answer where we could both serve and have some weight taken off our shoulders. Not only would this be an opportunity to help people heal physically, but to really focus on asking people questions about their spiritual health as well. Again, super amounts of encouragement and enthusiasm from others, but when it came to gather people together, it was not the response we needed. Ok God, you can see that we are trying here. We asked the question and you gave an answer on this one. We will move on.
Do we give up now? No way.
As you probably know from our previous
post, the door before us has pointed us to look at the need in Dominican Republic and see if we can find a spot for our hearts to be poured out there. As you know, we took the trip and
whoa, baby! God showed up and revealed the need for help there. Our skills lined up, we were received with open arms, and there were endless possibilities to live the life the Bible clearly speaks about. Both our hearts leapt as we saw a spot we could easily (relatively speaking) fill. Back in business, right? All doors were wide open, except for one.
Organic produce is something that we certainly take for granted here in States. We asked and looked in the local DR town for produce that would fit Sy’s needs. No luck. We spoke to workers in the local hospital about where to get it. Bummer there. We have contacted friends in another DR town to get their knowledge. Another dead end. I’ve contacted an organic farm on the north coast to look at visiting there to get the information we need. No response. I’ve been in communication with the country’s Department Of Agriculture with a list of Sy’s needs. How about a no. We’ve contacted missionaries in the same organization to get information on the produce. Not looking good there either. We are looking into aquaponically growing what we need, but root veggies are still an obstacle (considering that carrots are the bulk of what we need, that could be an issue since we run through about 75 lbs per week).
Do we give up now? No way.
There are voices that are whispering to just give up and to live a normal, quiet life until we die. I’m sure many of you are thinking, “Why don’t you just stay where you are for right now?” Honestly, we would love it! We live in sunny paradise… We dearly love our family, friends and church here… This is home and this is comfortable. But for us, we wrestle between our flesh and spirit every time we open the Bible because of the personal convictions that God has placed on our hearts. When we hear His voice in our lives, we know He is calling us out for more. It’s hard because often times we’d rather just stick our head in the sand and ignore it. However, the call to go out and seek who we were really created to be is way too strong.
I can also see that not being willing to radically shake things up is exactly what the enemy wants. We live in a great community where a great song has been written and those that are here are singing it with excellence. However, it has been laid on our hearts that there is a new song that God wants to write and that He wants us to play a part in that. Maybe a small one, but a crucial one. The second issue is that staying where we are isn’t working either. It’s embarrassing to say this as a man, but the truth is that a firefighter salary doesn’t work well when supporting a family of six. I firmly believe that God opened doors for my career and has given me crucial medical knowledge that I will continue to use for His glory–I’ve even had the priviledge to take part in saving lives. I also have a side business that is small and growing, but it’s hard to develop a business with no capital and risk taking the focus off Sy’s healing. We will juice in a box on the side of the road if that’s what it means to keep our boy healthy.
All of this typing finally gets me to a point. Whenever doors start closing on us, we hear the creaking of another one swinging open. This post is too long already, so that’s for another day.
So as another door possibly opens, please pray for clarity and wisdom. We have stood before God and said that we are truly willing to do anything and go/not go anywhere. We just want to live in obedience however scary that may be. I look at Heather and each of the kids and I want to help encourage them to bring the Christ out of their hearts for the world.
