Relief!

I didn't know it, but I needed the Lord to refresh my vision in moving to Alaska and our need to be in Port Alsworth.  We have a place to contribute to the community and a role in the outreach to other Native Alaskan villages.

It was refreshing to be with friends. It was encouraging to have them share and enter into the process of helping us find housing. We are sad to be leaving our great community in College Station but we are going to great community and friendships in Port Alsworth.  We belong there...

The house we have been spending or summers in is perfect for our Biblical Outdoor Leadership Adventures. It is across 3 miles of water from the village of Port Alsworth and offers solitude which is perfect for the leadership trips. But we have been looking for a place that would allow us to be part of the village community during fall and winter months when life slows and people have time and energy to connect.  Durring the late fall and winter crossing the 3 miles of lake can be a tenuous commute at best, and impossible at worst. Some parts of the year you can cross in a boat; some on a snow machine; sometimes neither. Thus, the need for a second option during the winter.

Housing options tend to be slim in the bush. Building is so expensive off the road system that if you build a house it is probably one you will live in year-around; or it is built as a fishing/hunting cabin not usually built for the deep Alaskan winters.

Our dog Kodiak, in Anchorage the day before he

got “tutored”…hope he can forgive me some day!

On Wednesday afternoon I flew back to Anchorage from the bush and that evening I began to call through the short list of “hey, you should call so and so…they may rent”. I got to the last name on my list and left a message...the next morning as I sat in Starbucks reading Ephesians I got a call back from that last contact and heard "yes we would love to rent you our house in the winter." I was sitting there with tears of thanksgiving filling my eyes trying unsuccessfully to look innocuous...especially when I called Julie and told her the news.  Relief.  Thanksgiving.  Gratitude.  Did I say relief…?

The family we will be renting from is a really cool Christian family who is going to Botswana, Africa for a couple of years to fly medical evac from bush villages to the city. What a great blessing! Julie and I are so relieved! The kids will have the opportunity to go to the Port Alsworth school and we can begin to put deeper roots into the community.

The Gospel needs to go out to SW Alaska, how privileged that we might come alongside and play a role in helping...

Thank you for praying! This is truly an adventure and we are so grateful to have people praying with us.

I got home on Saturday afternoon in time to help Josh and Sam tie their ties for a dinner banquet and dance.  They took a cotillion class this winter and the ball was this past weekend.  They are studdly men!     

    

North to Alaska

Thank you for praying for us…I can honestly tell the difference.   I have had a couple of people tell me this week that they have been praying for us and I can say with all sincerity that “I know.”   Have you ever had a time when the Scriptures, the sermons, the words spoken in passing seem to all kind of say the same things?  It has only happened a few times to me…but it has happened to me this week. 

Faith

Answers…I want answers!  This journey is a journey of faith, when I get ahead of where we are at I feel anxiety.  BUT, when I rest in God’s provision and in His goodness and in His blessings through Christ and in the indwelling of the Spirit there is the real answer.  I love being in a place where I can hear God, I honestly just wish it weren’t so uncomfortable!!!!  A good friend of Julie who spent a number of years in a very difficult country in Africa told her this week “the harder it is, the more glory God gets.”  Wisdom.    

Tomorrow I get to go to Alaska!  I am going to get things ready for our summer leadership trips and work on details for our move.   I know so many people who have wanted their whole lives to go to Alaska…don’t want to rub it in, but at 3:57 CST tomorrow afternoon I will be on my way to Alaska!  Pretty stinking cool!  I’m excited to see good friends, mountains, cold weather…and Kodiak, our dog. 

Pray that I will have discernment in finding a home for us to live during the time that it is not safe to cross Lake Clark to Port Alsworth; our property is 2 ½-3 miles across the Lake from Port Alsworth.   We want a place to rent for a few months early in the winter as I will need to travel some still during the academic year as I will be continuing to do staff development with our teams working at military schools.  Long term our heart is to have a part in helping to see the Gospel go out from our village throughout SW Alaska and being a part of the community throughout the winter seems pretty valuable.  There are a few other options that we are open to but from what we know today, which I’m sure is just a fraction of the big picture, we would love to rent a place in Port Alsworth during the freeze up time.  There is a ton we don’t know yet and will learn over the next few years for sure…

The kids are doing well.  This is Sam reciting his poetry this morning in school.  He did a great job, as usual.    Kaitlyn got a 103 on her spelling test which means she gets to go out with me for frozen yogurt this afternoon.  Not a bad deal, she has motivation to work at spelling and I get to have a date with my daughter—maybe I should get her a flower and make it a valentine…

Thank you for praying for us. We are so blessed to have so many who care and encourage and pray for our family!  Pray for us this week that the Lord will clearly lead and that I will clearly listen!

True Truths and a Handful of Lies

I have read a number of missionary stories over the years; many of those stories have stirred my faith. Every good story has a protagonist who overcomes, someone who brings about a good in the midst of other unspeakable evils. In the missionary stories, it is someone who has faith beyond circumstances because they have "seen" The Lord and will do anything to make his name and work paramount. While I know that a biography might scratch at a unbelief or doubt it will rarely portray what that person really felt as they moved away with all of their belongings packed in a simple wooden box, which became their coffin when they die of malaria.

I am not that person. We are leaving much here in Texas, which is becoming more difficult to come to grips with but people move and leave all the time...actually, what I find to be difficult over the past months and has begun to weigh me down is that I don't know what we are moving to. Simple in most places in the country...but the bush of Alaska is not like anywhere in the country. We have a wonderful property that is on a lake 3 miles across from the village we want to build our lives in. Problem...

This winter there is no ice on the lake and has been relatively uncrossable. Next problem, the town of Port Alsworth does not have condo units for rent...I am stressed especially as the time gets closer. Where are we going to live? Are we making a stupid decision to move? We are leaving and going...Lord, where?

In the midst of personal doubt Julie and I have done what all of humanity does in times of crisis; prayed...a lot! We have also sought the Word as True Truth counter acts doubt and self. I am learning much, which actually might be the Lords point in all this waiting for answers of what our life might turn out to look like...Ephesians has leapt off the page to me in the past weeks.

My life is identified in Jesus. In the first chapter alone the word "IN" is written something like 14 times in context of being "in Christ" "in the Beloved". Where do I belong? I belong IN...

Then the question why? It is simple and complex... God loves. His love is knowable and unknowable; unknowable because it is too big for me; knowable because He chose to make it known to me--even before the world was made.

The last truth that I have been clubbed with...he blesses us. No, not in the Joel Osteen way...his blessing is in the heavenly places. What? How does that give me comfort in moving my family to Rural Alaska and not having a place to live? Mark Driscoll said it like this (paraphrased) "this world is as close as a Christian will get to hell; conversely, it is as close to heaven as a non-believer will ever get". My blessing is not just in the here and now...thank God! It is worth it for us to go and give our lives so that those who will never know anything better can know the reality of Ephesians 1:3 "...every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places."

I still have anxiety. I am flying to Alaska next week; please pray with us that through being there we might find housing during the winter months. Pray for us also in the midst of these doubts that the true Truth of God will be what we are listening to, that we will seek him and listen. We need people to pray with us during this time...thank you!