We have been in Mississippi doing hurricane (Katrina) relief work since 2006. To see how we got started doing that, see http://davefields.blogspot.com/2008/05/katrina-relief-beginnings-nov-05.html
We've know for some time that our journey here in MS would be wrapping up around June of this year. For one thing, Crossroads Church in Colorado (they send the volunteer teams down to us) had told us that they would be winding down and sending their last team in May of this year. Secondly, Covenant World Relief (sends the money for the construction materials) was also coming to the end of their Katrina funds. Lastly, all of the people that the Lord had lead us to work with were pretty much in their homes and back on thier feet. While the recovery effort is by no means done here on the Gulf Coast, we really felt that the Lord was releasing us from our little part of it.
Marinajo (my wife) and I were sitting in our trailer in January (we live in a 34' 5th wheel travel trailer down here) discussing our future and a real epiphany hit me. I told Marinajo that we were sitting here in this trailer and we didn't really need anything. We couldn't go out and buy anything because we wouldn't have any room to put it in our little trailer. We didn't need a lamp, or a sofa, or even (shudder) any new books, because we simply didn't have any place to put them. If we moved back to our house in Colorado, we'd have to buy new furniture (in fact I'd already been making a list of all of the new things I was planning on buying in anticipation of moving back in this summer) since we sold most of it before leaving to serve in MS. Not only that, but we'd lose the incredible sense of flexibility that we and our kids have right now.
Why is this concept that we don't need anything such an epiphany? I want to try and explain to you what a gift from God it is not not to need anything. You see, our entire Western society (esp. in USA) is built on needing things that we don't need at all. Take a look around you at the Super Wal-Mart and Bed Bath and Beyond edifices that we have built to this concept. The gift from God for us is that we find our selves in a spot where we don't need any of that stuff. Do you know what a blessing that is?? My point here (and my point that night in the trailer with Marinajo) was that I don't want to just "go home" now that our time in Mississippi is coming to an end. I want to ask God what His next step is for us. What new adventure in trusting Him, serving Him, walking with Him did He have for us? Friends, if you haven't asked God this question lately then I implore you to do so! He will only answer with things that are good for our soul! And so we asked; and the answer was Honduras.
In January, Ruth Bishop came to the Church of the Good Shepherd (the church that we attend down here) and gave a report about Hospital Loma De Luz (Light on a Hill) in Honduras. You can jump ahead if you like and see pictures of the hospital and find out more about it at: http://www.crstone.org/ Marinajo's heart was immediately quickened by her report. God gave her an intense interest in the hospital initially, while I was initially more cool to it. One of the needs that they asked us to be praying for was the need for a full time missionary to take care of their computers down there. While they are remote - essentially right on the edge of the jungle - they are also a new facility with computers to help track patient records and such. There are also (at present) about seventeen missionary families there for whom e-mail is their primary communication method with the outside world. For all of those reasons, it is pretty important to have someone there that can take care of the computer systems. I (Dave) am a computer geek by trade and had never heard of a missionary position/calling for an IT guy before. What's more, we know some Spanish and feel like we could be fluent in Spanish pretty quickly once immersed in the language. We love the Latin culture and had always hoped to travel extensively or live somewhere in Latin America. So for all of these reasons, we went up to Ruth after the service and gave her our contact information and it wasn't long before we heard from a representative asking us to pray specifically about coming down to Honduras to serve full time. We told her (Kathleen) that we already had been praying about it and that the Lord indeed seem to be leading us to look into it further. We wrote a long email to Jeff McKenny (the lead missionary/doctor at Loma De Luz) and explained our situation. He responded that it seemed like it might be a good fit. He indicated that our email had "many of the hallmarks" that they look for to recognize God's leading. After several more pretty long emails listing questions and answers, we were convinced that this was indeed God's next step for us. What remained was for us to travel down to Loma De Luz and see the operation "first hand" to see if we could ascertain God's call for us down there.
And this is the reason that we find ourselves leaving Monday to fly to San Pedro Sula, Honduras and then hop on a bus to La Ceiba, Honduras and the await transportation to Balfate (in the state of Colon) to go to the Hospital for our first trip. One missionary friend of ours keeps calling this our "vision" trip. For some reason, that title bothers me, but all in all, it pretty well sums up what we are doing - we are going down there to confirm the calling (vision) that we believe that God has issued to us to serve there (probably for many years).
We invite you to journey there with us, in your thoughts and prayers. We will post (hopefully) daily to this blog while we are there. Marinajo will be there one week and I will be there two weeks. Grandma (bless her) will fly down from Colorado and stay with the kids while we are gone. When we get back, we will be packing up and moving back to Colorado. But now, we don't believe that we will be moving back to Colorado for good. We don't believe that we will be buying new stuff so that we can move back into our house, but rather that we will be packing it up even more so that we can move on to our new adventure in the Lord. We plan to rent an apartment in Colorado so that we can take care of our affairs there and see family and friends and then get going to Honduras. We're assuming that this trip will result in a positive confirmation of our call to Honduras. We'll all know in the next couple of weeks if that does in fact happen. In the mean time, join us in asking God that His will be done in our lives and in yours, won't you?
1 comment:
Woo Hoo. I'm famous now. My name was published on Dave's BLOG.
Chadd
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