The Insurmountable Debt

On Sunday night, my friend Jon shared this story with a group of missionaries gathered for our monthly English church service.  I have since then shared this verbally with 2 other missionary friends that I work with.  It was such an inspiring story of God’s faithfulness, that I asked Jon if I could share it today on my blog.  You can find the original post on his blog as well as read some of his other posts about living in Costa Rica here on Jon’s blog.

From August 3-12 my dad Ken Dahlager, my oldest son Jonathan, and I went to Cuba to participate in the sixth annual Assemblies of God Pastors’ Kids retreat. Our Costa Rica PK team helped start this ministry in 2008 and we have helped to make this event happen each year since. 500 young people participated in the 3 day event. The Lord’s presence was felt in every event, and we heard many stories of how God has used this ministry to change the direction of many young people, their families, and their churches.

We are still unpacking the many stories we heard in these amazing days, in a country where financial resources are very limited, but the Christians have incredible faith. This is one of those stories.

The young man in the photo below is Adriel, who is 19 years old and competes in the track-and-field event of hammer throw. As we were chatting one day he told me an amazing story. A year and a half ago his parents took out a $100 loan to buy 5 sheep and fatten them up to sell. All 5 got sick and died, leaving the family with a debt they had no way to pay off with their $20 a month salary. He said he had never asked anyone for money before, but he felt a special connection with me and asked if there was any way I could help. As missionaries we normally do not do cash help like this, as it can negatively impact our relationship with the people, but I told him I would think about it and give him an answer the next day.

I have been preaching a message from Matthew 18 about the man who was forgiven a debt of 10,000 talents, about 200,000 years worth of a worker’s salary, but who throttled his friend for a debt of 100 denari, or 100 days’ wages. Like the forgiven servant, I have received so much from God’s grace — perhaps it was my turn to help.

That night I felt the Lord speak to me to help Adriel, sensing that this was an act of faith the Lord was asking me to take. The next day he told me he was leaving the retreat early, since he got word that an aunt had died. I pulled him aside and told him the Lord had directed me to give him $100.

As soon as I did this, he put his strong hand on my shoulder and said “now let me tell you a story. When I was getting on the bus to come here, a little old man got on in front of me who had one arm cut off above the elbow. He didn’t have the 40 pesos (about $1.50) to pay, hoping the driver would let him on anyway. The driver was about to throw him off the bus when I felt God tell me that if I paid for the man, God would provide this week so my family could pay off their debt. I took out the only spending money I had for this retreat and paid it. Now you have fulfilled God’s promise to me.”

The crazy part is that we also have some huge financial needs this year, and I gave him the money sensing God wanted to provide for us as well. The first day I was back home I got emails telling me about special gifts that would pay for two major ministry events. This is a huge response immediately after I gave Adriel the $100, and I’m quite sure that God is big enough to provide for everything we need.

Insurmountable financial challenges are all relative – $1.50 for the old man on the bus, $100 for Adriel’s family, thousands for another. God is able to provide for all of them.

I love stories that build faith and inspire me to trust God more.  It does not matter if your insurmountable obstacle is a pebble or a boulder or a mountain, God is able to make a way for you.  Today I am praying for several missionary friends who are not sure they can survive until the end of this month or the end of the semester or the end of the year.  God is able.  If He can feed Elijah with ravens and the Children of Israel with Manna, then God can provide for your needs too.  Trust Him.

He’s Always Been Faithful to Me

I chose this song today to remind myself and to testify to you:  God has always been Faithful.  He is our provider.  He is our source.  Times might look scary, but you can trust God.

He’s Always Been Faithful

By Sara Groves

Morning by morning, I wake up to find the power and comfort of God’s hand in mine.  Season by season, I watch Him amazed in all of the mystery of His perfect ways.

All I have need of His hand will provide.  He’s always been faithful to me.

I can’t remember a trial or pain He did not recycle to bring me gain.  I can’t remember one single regret in serving God only, in trusting His hand.

All I have need of His hand will provide.  He’s always been faithful to me.

This is my anthem.  This is my song.  The theme of the stories I’ve heard for so long:  God has been faithful- He will be again.  His loving compassion it knows no end.

All I have need of, His hand will provide.  He’s always been faithful.  He’s always been faithful.  He’s always been faithful to me.

 

Taxes and the Rapture

If there’s any subject 100% certain to cause me stress, it’s money.  When I was a child, my family was in financial distress all the time.  There was always talk of not enough and of the grand-daddy of all money woes:  Taxes.  My parents’ business owed back taxes, so this word was always floating through their conversations.  They didn’t realize it, but I was listening, always listening.  I didn’t know what taxes were, but they sounded so scary!

I had another great fear as a child, also due to a mysterious word floating through the adults’ conversations:  The Rapture.  In the type of church that I grew up in, the preacher often taught about the Second coming of Christ, also called the Rapture, when all the believers would be snatched up to heaven in “the twinkling of an eye”.  There were songs written about it, sermons preached about it, and even movies made about it.  From the movies, I had the idea that we would all fly upwards naked, leaving our pile of clothing as an ominous indicator of whatever activity we were engaged in at that singular moment.  I was OK with flying naked into Heaven, but my major concern lay in the final destination of my blankie.  If we weren’t bringing any fabric to Heaven, then what would become of my beloved blankie?  I wasn’t sure I could enjoy Heaven without it.  This caused me deep anguish.

As an adult, I have out grown my blankie-love and it’s accompanying fear of loss, but I still carry tension where money is concerned.  I have over and over again experienced God’s faithfulness in providing for our financial needs, but it’s a hard lesson for me to retain.  I seem to have to learn it over and over again.  I’m like those block-headed Children of Israel who wandered in the wilderness for 40 years learning and forgetting how to trust God.  Learning and forgetting, relearning and forgetting again.  So last night when my husband said, “it’s another bad month for us” my heart clenched in my chest.

Our livelihood, every penny we need, comes from supporting churches and individuals back home.  And when times are tough back home, times are tough overseas too.  Month-to-month we are thankful for our faithful supporters who don’t forget that we are still “out there”, who don’t abandon us.  And month-to-month, God stretches the money somehow.  We’ve cut corners, eliminated luxuries (from an American’s perspective), and pinched pennies.  It’s just tight all around.  And it’s tight around my heart too.

We do what we have to do to survive.  This week I accepted a teaching position at my kids’ school.  Due to the kind of visas we have, I can’t actually receive payment, but I worked out a deal with the administration to convert what I would get paid into free tuition for my 3 kids.  This is huge for us!  Schooling isn’t free overseas.

We have made tough choices for our family.  We feel responsible to our supporters and want to respect their sacrifices as well, so we are careful about how we spend our money.  We chose a school that fits within our missionary way of life, yet is not the most expensive school there is.  We don’t have our kids in the expensive sports clubs.  They just have the after school activities that meet in the dusty old barn of a gym at their school.  They don’t get expensive music lessons.  We pay a friend to teach guitar lessons.  We are careful with how we spend our money.

My point is, we do make tough decisions, just like many of you have to make.  We make sacrifices to survive, just like you do.  And I have to remind myself constantly that God has been faithful to us… just like you have to remind yourselves of this.  Ultimately, the style of life that we have chosen is a life of faith.  We believe, though we don’t see it yet.  We believe that God will pull us through at the end of the month, but we don’t see it until the last minute.  Just like we believe that Jesus is coming back for us, though we haven’t seen it yet.

The Christian life is a faith walk… it’s meant to be.  It’s supposed to challenge us.  It’s designed to teach us how to remember- through repetition we remember the lessons of how to Trust in our Faithful God.  These are the faith-building stories that we tell ourselves and tell our children.  God has been faithful, and He will be again.

Busting through the Brick Wall

Part 4 of how we became missionaries.  If you missed the last 3 days, you might want to go back and read them too.  I hope this is an encouragement to someone.

We came home from our life changing trip to Mexico and took a few weeks to pray before we talked to anyone about becoming missionaries.  We knew that this could be just a “high” from being on the missions trip, so we wanted to let our emotions cool a bit.  When the idea just wouldn’t go away, we started the application process to become missionaries with our denomination.  We knew this process could take months, so we didn’t plan to tell anyone until we were well on our way.  But the story leaked out.  Our family was shocked and not at all happy.

We finished out another year of youth ministry before we were “officially” accepted as missionaries.  Then the fund-raising began.  We spent 21 months raising our funds for a 3 year term in Mexico.  At the 18 month mark we were stalled out.  Josh was working the phones for 12 hours a day, we were traveling every weekend to preach at different churches and ask for support, but nothing was working.  We were discouraged.  To top it all off, we had been trying to sell our house for the last 3 months.  It had been shown many times, but no offers yet.

Then one day we got a phone call that felt like a kick in the stomach.  It was July 1, a Thursday.  Our Head Quarters called us and said if we don’t make a significant improvement this month, we’re done.  I raged.  I cried.  I panicked.  I punched pillows.  How could they fire us?  We’d worked so hard for so long, it wasn’t our fault that churches weren’t picking us up.  What more did they want us to do?  But the day needed to continue, so Josh and I agreed to go about our day like normal and pray about it while we worked.

That day while I prayed I thought about Gideon who asked God for a sign.  He spread a fleece on the ground and asked that the ground be wet in the morning but the fleece be dry as a sign that God was really asking him to do a risky, crazy thing like tear down the household idol.  God made it happen.  So Gideon reversed the test the next day, just to be sure.  And the next morning the fleece was wet with dew but the ground was dry.  So there he had a clear answer- God wanted him to do the crazy, risky job.

When we came back together that evening, I shared my thoughts with Josh.  I said, “I think we need a sign that we are still on the right path.  I feel like there is a brick wall in our path and I don’t know if it means this is the end of the road.  I feel like the road continues beyond the wall, but I don’t know how to bust through the brick.”  So we decided to ask God for a miracle to show us that we are still supposed to go into missions.  We asked that our house would sell… that weekend… on 4th of July weekend.  Even though no one had looked at the house all week and it was a holiday weekend.  It was crazy, no one buys a house on 4th of July weekend!  We prayed.

The next morning we got a call from a real estate agent.  Someone wanted to see our house!  This was it!  I just knew it!  This was going to be the sign.  By the end of the night we had accepted their offer.  We sold our house.  We were still supposed to go into missions.  Somehow God was planning on punching through that brick wall.  Now we knew we were still supposed to walk this road.

All excited about the miracle, emboldened, we asked for another miracle.  Our missions agency wanted us to raise $500 in pledges by the end of the month.  We asked God for $500 in the next week.  But the goofy thing was that we were going to be spending a week up at a District Family Camp and we wouldn’t be making any phone calls all week.  Without making a single phone call, by the end of the week, we had $500 in new pledges!  God did it!

Again we asked for another $500 for the next week!  That week we were scheduled to be touring churches in Iowa and we would not be making phone calls that week either.  We prayed, and BAM!  God did it again!  Another $500 in monthly support came in.

The last two weeks were ear marked for packing and garage sales since we had to be out of our house by the end of the month.  No phone calling for those weeks either.  Yet we prayed again and each of those weeks we ended with $500 more in pledges.  Our deficit was filled.  Then one day I was standing in the garage selling junk and opening the mail at the same time.  There was a card from a little old lady that I had met at a church over a year ago.  My mouth dropped open.  Inside the card was a check for $10,000.  Our cash budget was blessed also.  God thought of everything!

We spent the last 6 months jam-packed into my parents’ basement again- homeless- as we awaited our December departure date.  We were on our way to Mexico to be missionaries.  Not only had God punched through that financial brick wall for us, but He had boosted our faith beyond measure.

Many times since then, we have gone back to that point in our history and remembered how God came to the rescue and was faithful to finish what He started in us.  Since then we have never doubted that God was leading us.  It was just too clear that His mighty arm was leading and sustaining us.  He doesn’t work the same way twice, but we’ve never been in such desperate financial need either.  Lesson learned:  Trust God, He can handle it.

Great is Thy Faithfulness!  Great is Thy Faithfulness!

Morning by morning new mercies I see;

All I have needed thy hand hath provided-

Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!