Christmas Wishes
As this year comes to a close we know that many of you have gone through major transitions of your own. 2020 has been the year to remember for sure. We however can’t begin to express our gratitude for each of you that have chosen to come alongside us this year. We would not have been able to get through this season without your prayers and support. Your love and encouraging words have been a huge comfort and a place of stability for us this year. From our Family to yours. Merry Christmas!
Training the Trainer
Let me paint a picture for you. Imagine your spouse is sitting in the car beside you trying to teach you how to drive without you being able to look out the window. Now for some of you, this picture is enough, there is no way in the world you would ever entertain this idea, especially from a spouse because you already know the outcome, but alas I will continue. It doesn’t take long for you to build up confidence that you’ve mastered this as you are driving straight down the wide 2 lane road keeping your speed perfect and the car right between the lines. About this time your spouse gets the genius idea to drive through this random neighborhood. Oh, look honey it’s our dream house, BABE, your driving in the ditch, ouch that was one of those brick mailboxes. Nevermind that this whole time you were never supposed to see outside and they were supposed to be coaching and cross-checking you not searching for dream homes. Now you are flustered and the equilibrium in your inner ear is all messed up and you can’t quite get back on track again even though you are out of that neighborhood and back on that wide 2 lane road. If we take away something that we take for granted, like sight reference, it makes the task that we could probably actually complete without seeing it very difficult to recover from something unexpended without that reference. Learning to fly an airplane on instruments is much like this, I took for granted the sight reference that was always able to reacclimate me to straight and level. While flying an airplane on instruments your equilibrium can get messed up but you have to fight the urge to listen to what your body tells you and trust the instruments. Thanks to Josh my patient flight instructor for bearing with me while I take us all over the sky. Climbing, descending, left turning, right turning, and rarely straight and level. At least he gets to smile in pics while I am struggling to keep the airplane headed in the correct direction. (Photo included for all your viewing pleasure)
Do We Really Trust God to Follow Through
From the beginning, we set a launch date goal of January 2021. We knew that this would be a lofty goal just on its own. We prayed and felt like this was the goal we wanted to accomplish, surely it wasn’t something a little hard work could overcome. Then a pandemic hit. Nothing could have prepared us and anyone around us for the year that 2020 became. Any and all resources we had access to, just didn’t have the info or experience we needed to develop partnerships in a pandemic. There was no other path but to trust God. So we set out this year trusting that if we were going to hit the goal of being able to launch in 2021, God would provide. And provide he did. We have seen some amazing things happen this year. God has provided and we have reached 60%! This is amazing considering the circumstances and could have only been the work of God. Now I know what you are thinking. Um guys 60% is not 100% and you would be correct. In October after we had worked so hard to try to get the remaining 40% we were beginning to think that we would not be able to make our January goal. We had been praying and asked everyone we knew to be praying that God would provide but we just didn’t see how we could make 60% of our budget work. We were disappointed but hopeful that God’s timing was best. At the end of November, we were surprised again by God’s provision. The remaining 40% for the year 2021 was covered by a one time gift. Now we are not at 100% of our monthly giving budget but this means that we will be launching and beginning our work at SOAR in January of 2021. We were shocked. I laugh as I write that sentence because if you notice at the beginning of the story I said we prayed for God to make this happen. He did. Why are we so shocked when God gives us what we ask from him? Is it because we don’t actually believe he is God or that we don’t trust that he actually will provide what we need. I don’t know, but we are overflowing with gratitude for the goodness of God. Now notice I said that we still have 40% of our monthly giving. So that means we still have work to do but now Seth is able to finish his training beginning in January and we have time to finish building the remaining partnerships with a little more breathing room in our schedule. Pray for us in this season of change for our family. We are nervous and excited to see what God is going to do with 2021.
Praising God:
• Jordis’ surgery was successful and she has made a full recovery.
Ways you can be praying for us:
• That God will continue to provide the remaining partners needed.
• That our family stays strong as we continue to transition into our new schedule.
• That the transition into our new jobs goes smoothly and we are able to clearly see the direction that SOAR needs to be heading.
