You never know what will happen when you pray about something. God doesn’t always answer your prayers in the way that you would expect. Of course, He is God. We aren’t.
We are excited (and surprised) to announce that we will be returning to The King’s Lodge YWAM base in England in January. Up until about one month ago we thought we would be announcing a trip to New Zealand and the Philippines, complete with training in a school of family ministries. Taking such a school seemed so “perfect” for our ministry to families through the work of missions, but, the more we asked God about our plans, the more we realized they were not His plans for us. From a personal comfort standpoint we definitely liked the idea of being in New Zealand during their summer rather than being in England during its winter, but God has a way of making one warm no matter the temperature outside whenever you obey Him.
So, we return, delighted as children on Christmas morn, eager to see what’s behind the doorway God has prepared for us. It’s not without difficulty, because we must leave our home, our families, our poodle, Liberty, and everything and everyone we know so well. But we’d rather be where God wants us to be than any other place.
The base has many exciting things planned for us to do as we serve as staff. If you don’t know this about YWAM, all YWAMers are volunteer and must raise their support. So, we will be working hard, but all of it is work toward a mission without any pay from the base. In fact, we must pay the base room and board. So, our dear friends, family, and even people we’ve hardly met support us financially and in prayer as God leads them to do so.
Our main focus will be facilitating others joining us for a short-term mission trip in the summer of 2008. The exciting thing that The King’s Lodge is doing next summer is a “Mega Outreach.” It will likely involve over 100 people from all over the world doing mission work in four different locations. There will be teams going to China, the Philippines, South Africa, and to an economically deprived area located near The King’s Lodge in England. We participated in the Mega Outreach during the summer of 2007 and saw God do amazing things, some of which I wrote about here, here, and here. In fact, if you just go to the July or August 2007 archives of this blog, there are many stories and pictures from our time on Mega Outreach in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City, on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines.
We will also get to be a part of a new ministry locally to families who are underprivileged. We are very excited about that. Moreover, The King’s Lodge, because of its fantastic leadership and dynamic outreach work, is growing. In fact, it has outgrown itself and they are planning to add on to the lovely manor house. The leadership there has asked me to work with them in helping make that happen, through communications, support raising and other things that will need to be done to accomplish their goals.
So, we ask for your prayers. We ask for your encouragement. And, we ask that you pray about God’s call on your life, as ambassadors for Christ and as ministers of reconciliation, as you consider how you might support and work in missions.
Here’s a picture from the King’s Lodge’s website of the grounds and house in winter and one of the sunset from the Lodge.
