I bought a new vacuum cleaner. It’s a premium, deluxe, extra awesome Bissell that Walmart had on sale for $50. After ripping the box open, I found a motley crew of plastic components inside complete with a instruction manual translated into fifty languages. It was pretty easy to assemble because all the pieces were there, unlike trying to put together Lego sets you buy from Goodwill.
Right now we are trying to assemble support for our MMS Aviation apprenticeship. There’s all kinds of different shaped pieces that must come together to make our pilot/apprenticeship possible. Unlike a vacuum cleaner, this doesn’t come with an instruction manual. God laid it on my heart to do this about eleven years ago but it took me this long to finally become convinced that God was directing the desire, instead of myself. Here we are, a year after we began the support raising process (we were invited to join the program in November of 2017) and we are only a little over 20% supported. There are a couple families raising support right now and none of us are putting the pieces together as fast as we should so MMS Aviation, as an organization, has been trying to help us come up with an instruction manual so we know what to do next.
Phil, the CEO, has strongly recommended that we attend a specific support raising “boot camp.” It’s a two day workshop where folks who are way more experienced than ourselves teach us tips on how to assemble support quickly and effectively. It’s basically like buying an instruction manual to the vacuum cleaner you’re putting together. You know how you try for an hour to put something together and then you finally give up and read the instructions? That’s kind of what we’re doing now, and we need a little help. This program has been used by very successful Bible translation organizations and other mission aviation ministries here and abroad. It has a track record of success and so Phil wants us to go do the workshop and see how it affects our support raising. We want to raise support faster so that the folks who began supporting us first don’t get tired of doing so. We want to be effective, full time missionaries and this will help us get to 100% support faster so we can start this process!
I’m explaining all this because MMS Aviation has allowed us to use support funds to pay for the traveling expenses and for the course cost. That means our supporters have a right to know about it. One thing I want to do as a missionary family is to live transparently, honestly, and simply, and I’m going to start doing that now. The workshop travels around the country and unfortunately there is no local option so we’ll be attending the classes in Colorado Springs, CO on November 27 & 28.
We want to be missionaries the rest of our lives. Support raising is a foundational thing to learn and we’ll use the principles learned in this class the rest of our lives so it’s worth the cost.
We’re planning on going to South Carolina and hanging out with Andrew (Janice’s brother) and his wife Stephanie to celebrate Thanksgiving. Some other siblings will be there too (well, we think so. You never know with this family). Then, on the way back we’ll stop at Indianapolis International Airport and fly to Denver. Flying from Indianapolis to Denver were actually the cheapest tickets we could find. Then we’re going to rent a car and drive to Colorado Springs where the classes are located. Janice has a friend that was involved with New Horizons Ministry (located in Canon about 50 minutes away from Colorado Springs) and so we’ll be staying with her. Plus then we have a baby sitter for Adi while we attend the classes!
Thanks for all your support as we learn this process of raising support so we can be more effective in delivering the Good News to isolated people through missionary aviation.
Ten Second Prayer Request: Pray for safe travels as we attend the workshops in Colorado Springs. Also pray that we’ll learn how to raise support effectively and in a Biblical way. Pray for boldness so we can apply what we learned.
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