Problems

Wow… We have had so many problems and difficulties. It’s been a hair-raising last couple months. Problem after problem after problem… We have had many people counsel us that God was closing doors on us. I’ve prayed and listened, and prayed and listened about this, and honestly feel like God is calling us back. And in that case, of course there’s going to be difficulties. The higher the calling, the more you’ll face problems. But God often does work through circumstances… I don’t know; I guess I’ll find out soon enough whether God was calling us back or not. That’s another one of those problems – you’ll never know if it was God or not unless you try. You’ll always be stuck wondering if it was God if you don’t step out on it. Anyway, here are some of the problems we’ve gone through in our attempts to get back to Africa:

Letters of Invitation: This problem started in December and lasted until the week before we left. We needed a letter of invitation from our organization saying that we were working with them in the country. With this letter, we could apply for year-long visas. When the person in charge of the letters didn’t do anything, we asked someone else to take care of it a couple months later. Then we asked someone else, then someone else… After 4 months of not receiving anything, we started getting a little desperate – we gave up on the year visas and were just happy getting any kind of return visa. We called people and called them, and towards the end, I was sending e-mails and calling someone in country every day. Finally, 10 days before we had to leave, we got our letters of invitation. We thought about sending the letters by Fed-Ex to Washington DC, but we didn’t have a peace about it (there are so many things that could have gone wrong, aren’t tickets weren’t changeable or refundable, and there was so little time) so I jumped on an airplane and personally went to DC (see earlier post). We finally got 3 month visas.

Court Hearing: I’ve got a court date when I get back to Africa because I fired this guy who was really corrupt. Unfortunately, it turns out he was a state senator and very powerful, with connections in the courts. I was kind of ok with that. Then I got an e-mail later from one of the people in Dondo saying I could be put in jail for up to 8 years and/or get fined $8000. I kind of flipped out. I’d been evangelizing in the prisons – they’re not somewhere you want to be for 8 years! I couldn’t sleep and got physically sick from the info. About 24 hours later, I asked myself what God could be doing in this. Well, I had no idea, but I definitely knew my reaction was a telltale sign that I wasn’t trusting him. Philippians 4:6-7 are interesting verses. They talk about prayer, but in a different way than we usually think. Prayer is actually not the subject of those verses – rather, it’s worry and peace. Paraphrased; don’t worry, instead you should pray and give thanks. Then God’s peace will be on you. The promise isn’t that our prayers would be answered; rather, that we would have peace and trust in Jesus in the midst of the circumstance. I prayed for something like 4 hours straight, but afterwards I had a peace about the situation. Every once in a while, I have to pray again to fight off the feeling of impending doom, but for the most part, I’m ok with whatever happens. It was only after that that I found out the government doesn’t usually throw Americans in jail – they raise too much of a stink. Oh well… I guess God wanted me to trust in him no matter the possibilities. We could still be charged way more money than we have, so we could still use prayers about that.

Funding: A week before we left, we were something like $2600 short. I thought we were $2000 short, then one of my friends cut me a $2000 check! Another $600 poured in that week from friends and family, and it was only the night before we left that I realized we still needed to get travel insurance - $600. Anyway, yeah, God’s taking care of us. By the way, most of our life is lived in that first sentence – being short and having no idea how God will break through. I think He enjoys it when we have to exercise faith.

Friends Leaving: Our best friend was asked to leave the ministry for extreme sexual misconduct – forcing female workers to sleep with him etc. This one hurt, a lot. He was the only person we really got to pour into while we were in the country the first time because he spoke English. We thought he was an incredibly godly man, and always wished the other local church members were like him. If HE could fall, what chance did we have at introducing the rest of the culture to a lasting relationship with Jesus? Had I done any good in the country if the person closest to me could have fallen so far away from the gospel? Were people just lying about him because they were jealous? In that case, could I still work with the people who did that? Right now, there is no resolution to this problem – we’ll see what happens when we arrive…

Taking Our Baby: This one just begs a lot of unknowns and worrying. Malaria, cholera, AIDS, foot worms, random diseases, spiders, snakes, rats, cockroaches etc. etc…

I really wish faith in circumstances was something that God taught you once and then it was over. But in our life, it just seems like more and more problems; deeper and deeper faith. And honestly? My desire for opportunities to show more faith died a couple years ago. I am perfectly happy sitting at the amount of faith I have, but apparently God’s not. God’s call to faith is extreme… We usually think of praying to Him in troubled times or times when we need to make a decision as faith, but I don’t think that’s always the case. When the disciples were in the boat with Jesus and there was a storm, the disciples ran to Jesus and called out to him (that looks a lot like praying to me!). Jesus rebuked them for their little faith then calmed the storm. That begs the question – what would faith look like in that situation? It would probably look like Jesus, who was sleeping. He trusted God so completely where naturally it looked like he was going to die, that he could sleep in the middle of this insane storm. I keep thinking I’m there, but then bigger and bigger storms come my way. Jesus, give me strength to face them like you did…