Halfway There

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Rosalie

The one who calls you is faithful, and He will do it.
-1 Thessalonians 5:24

50 yard line I am bursting at the seams to announce that we are officially halfway to our goal! Next we’ll be invited to Essential Missions Components, the next required training at our mission agency, so long as we complete our assignments in time.

This has felt like a long time coming (two years since we started building our partnership team but who’s counting?).

Now we are praying to be fully supported by the end of 2013 so that we can be on our way to the field in 2014.

If you are part of our financial partnership team, thank you! Your contribution is the literal moving sidewalk that will get our feet on the ground in Spain.

If you pray for us regularly, thank you! Your prayers have enabled us to meet people, share our ministry in unexpected places, kept us encouraged on prefield, and set up a hedge around us to protect us from sin’s desires.

If you have written us or called us to encourage us in our walk, thank you for blessing us with words. Prefield can be lonely because partnership meetings trump any other kind of outing or get together, so your words of encouragement reminded us to keep our priorities in line.

If you have recommended books, classes or resources for church planting, thank you! You’re helping us fill a toolbox that will make us effective long-term missionaries.

If you read this blog, thank you! Sometimes it seems like I send words out into the universe and they just turn to dust.

Finally, if you’re interested in being part of our team in some way – through finances, prayer or any unique way (we have lots of ideas!), please contact us.

Joyful Dependence

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Rosalie

As you know, my word for the year is depend. Throughout my walk with him, God has given me opportunities to depend on him. In college, I learned to depend on God for wisdom when speaking to agnostics, hostile atheists, and seekers. As a new career woman, I learned to depend on God for victory over anxiety. As a plain-ole-disciple of Jesus, I am learning to depend on Him by memorizing more scripture this year than I ever have before. But never have the opportunities to practice dependence on the Lord been more abundant than in this season of my life: new to motherhood and preparing for the mission field.

Although I often fight it or whine through it, I see now that God is fostering a heart of joyful dependence in me as we wait for God to build our partnership team. I know that one of the lessons of this season is that what is accomplished is not my own doing. We might make phone calls, write prayer letters, give church presentations, but God is building the team. As I wait for Him to do it, I pray. I pray for the people I know are meant to be on our team, and I pray for the ones I don’t yet know. Then, when we meet them, God has already answered my prayers. One of our partners had supported a missionary to Italy previously, and had been praying about where to put that support once it became available again. Others have been job searching, and I pray for them often. I pray they might experience the same joyful dependence the Lord has given me.

Our field is going to be much, much more discouraging, challenging, and even pressure-filled than prefield. We go to our home church often, we speak the language, we live in the same home we made before God called us. When I battle the enemy on the field, he’ll use those things against me. But I will remember the Lord’s faithfulness to me while we waited, and I will depend on the Lord (hopefully with joy) for deliverance, answers to our prayers, and courage.

I’m linking up with Christine over at Grace Covers Me today as she releases her book, The Church Planting Wife: Help and Hope for Her Heart, and collects heart stories from church planting and ministry wives. Join us? Also, stay tuned for a giveaway!

Poor, Rich and Everyone In Between {Day 26}

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Rosalie

What does it look like to love justice and mercy? Certainly it means being generous with the poor, caring for widows and orphans. The prophets and Jesus both make that abundantly clear.

Isaiah 58 is a chapter of correction and defining true worship. God says that he is not impressed with the fasting of “religious” people, who are doing it just to be seen (‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’ Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers. vs 3)

“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you;
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
(Isaiah 58:6-8 ESV)

A fast that pleases the Lord is one of sacrificial giving. Sharing with the hungry, being relational with people. This is the kind of fasting I want to do.

Serving and caring for people less fortunate than ourselves is not a spiritual gift. I am not exempt from these commands because my calling to the mission field is oh-so-spiritual. On the contrary, I must study these scriptures, pray for wisdom for how to minister this way in my field, and be obedient. This is the (earthly) work that frees people (the heavenly work having already been done on the cross).

When rich people meet Jesus, they see how poor they are without Him. And when poor people meet Jesus, they realize they are rich. Hungry or full, physically, is meaningless without the perfectly satisfying salvation of Jesus Christ. My burden is to see this cross-section of physically blessed people acknowledge their spiritual poverty and accept the true riches of Jesus Christ. As I endeavor to share God’s love with them, I must also show his love to the poor, the destitute. I must give feet to my faith. Sharing the Gospel and making disciples is so important. The church is God’s plan for meeting the needs of people, and I believe the church is failing in this area. Our priorities look no different than the rest of the world’s and they should stand out as a beacon on a hill. The number one need people have is for grace. God’s grace. If we can spread it by fasting the way Isaiah describes, then true freedom will follow quickly when we share that ultimate gift.

This is not just a prayer for a missionary, though I desire to remind you we struggle with the same selfishness that plagues us all this time of year. This is a prayer for the church. This is my prayer for myself. I plan to spend the next few months looking at different areas of my life and culling. I will be asking God to show me where I can cut back and fast in a way that benefits another. Then I’ll share my experience here.

This post is inspired by 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess.

Get Kids Involved {Day 19}

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Rosalie

Yesterday we were privileged to teach the first through sixth graders at Eastgate. After sharing a bit about our ministry in Spain, pointing out Spain, Madrid, and Alcalá on a map, and answering questions, we all did a craft together to encourage the kids to pray for us every day.

Prayer Wheel for Spain

Materials

This image, printed to be about 6 inches
2 basic paper plates
1 brad
Scissors
Glue stick (represented by double-sided tape in my picture. That’s all I had.)
Crayons, markers or colored pencils
Stickers and other paper decorative items (not pictured here. If you like glitter, go all out!)

Instructions:

Cut out the wheel and color the images.

Using the wheel as a guide, mark lines on one of the paper plate and cut a slice out of it. (Be sure not to cut all the way to the middle, where the brad will go). You can also decorate this plate however you like.

After the wheel is colored, glue it to the center of the whole plate (try to avoid getting glue right in the middle of the plate, where the hole is)

To poke your hole, layer the cut plate on the bottom, poke a hole in the plates using a dowel, and then put the cut plate back on top. Finally, attach them together with the brad.

Turn the top of the wheel each day to pray for a different person or aspect of church planting in Spain six times a week. You can write some specific requests in the plate’s border.

Strength

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Rosalie

Source: etsy.com via Rosalie on Pinterest

We believe that missionaries should be focused on evangelism and church planting. While meeting physical and social needs is extremely important and saves lives, it isn’t what matters at an eternal level. Making disciples saves lives for eternity.

Here’s why I think this philosophy of missions is Biblical and it works: it can’t be done authentically by a person working without the Holy Spirit. Feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, caring for widows and orphans, curing the sick, educating the oppressed, even freeing a slave, can all be done alone. Anyone can do it (and many do) successfully. But one cannot make disciples without Christ. He is the main event, and He does the hard work.

We just carry the message.

We will not be successful in Spain because we have a lot of experience with youth ministry. We won’t be successful because we love high school students and want to see them come to know the Lord. We won’t contribute to the growth of our church, the calling of a Spanish pastor, or the salvation of our friends and neighbors because of anything we bring to the table. It’s all because of Christ. Anything good that we do is because His love flows out of us.

Please pray for us. Pray that we would spend more time in His Word, more time cultivating our friendship with the Lord so that more of Him would pour out of us.