Well here, it is - our first official blog post... ever! What God has been doing in our lives
recently, and where He's directing us to go is something we want to tell the
whole world. Over the past 3 years, God
has been actively molding us more than we've ever encountered. But just like clay in the Potter's hand, it
has been and will continue to be a stretching journey of faith for us. So we invite you to follow us on this journey
by staying tuned to this blog. We have
no idea where this journey will take us, but we know the One who has every step
of the journey laid out in advance.
But before I tell you about where God is directing us, let me tell you
about how He has brought us to where we are right now. It's always interesting, as you journey through
life, to look back over the valleys (or lowpoints of life) that you've come
through. While it is difficult or
unpleasant to go through those tough times, it's at such times that God is
closest and most at work in us.
In the summer of 2010, I (Jason) somehow managed to rupture a disc in my
back. I have no idea how I did this - I
don't recall any injury or doing anything abnormally stupid. This injury was causing a tremendous amount of
pain – so much so that in the end, I couldn't sit down for more than 5 minutes,
and was only getting 2 to 3 hours of sleep a night. But after 2 years of trying every medical fix
and finding no relief, it became clear that our last option – surgery – was the
only option. So in June 2012, I
underwent a microdiscectomy surgery to fix the issue. Praise God that the surgery was successful
and corrected the problem.
Jason and the kids on the morning of surgery
Leading up to surgery, I really had to depend on God for a source of
strength. Only by His strength was I
able to survive for months on only 2 to 3 hours of sleep per night. We also learned to rely on God to sustain us
through the rough times. As Christians,
we are not promised an easy comfortable life, but we can be assured that God
will be with us “for better or for worse.”
We also saw God provide for our needs in some amazing ways. With high medical bills and extended time off
of work, we had no idea how we’d make ends meet. But we saw firsthand that we can trust Him to
take care of us and provide for our needs when the math doesn’t add up.
Then after surgery, I was required to take a month off work for
recovery. I was able to get some much
needed R+R during that time, but most importantly we were also able to spend a
great deal of time in Bible study and prayer.
This was such a beneficial time in our life because it gave us the
opportunity to evaluate if we were where God wanted us to be, and doing what
God wanted us to be doing. We began
talking about the passions God has given us and the skills that He’s blessed us
with.
God has given both of us a real passion to minister to those who are in desperate
need of His love, grace, and mercy. For
over 15 years, we’ve been using this passion in Youth Ministry at our local
church. In the past several years, He’s
also given me (Jason) a real passion for flying – particularly small airplanes. Combine those 2 passions with the fact that I
studied 10 years of foreign language in school, and that equals missionary
aviation! It’s a wonder we didn’t see it
before, but God’s timing is perfect and He knew that we had to go through that
valley in order to be prepared for service as missionaries.
In our next post, we’ll share about our process of discovering what exactly
missionary aviation is, and what we needed to do to be a part of that.
