Sunday, July 01, 2007

Two Milestones on the Road to Rwanda

We are praising the Lord for two major milestones on our road to serving God again in Africa.

These two events took place last Thursday. First we loaded a 40 ft. container with three other families planning to serve in Rwanda. Most of the shipment was books and other supplies for the new mission in Rwanda, but it also included personal effects for the families going. It was a hot and rainy day, but we got the container loaded in about 6 hours.

The second milestone was more important to us personally. For some weeks we have been agonizing over whether to sell our house or make it available to missionaries on furlough on a month to month rental basis. We thought we could leave our house furnished and our furniture in place. Through prayer and advice from others we decided that was not a workable idea, so we put the house on the market. Quite honestly this was a big struggle for me: to liquidate everything again for the fourth time in forty years and to again be homeless. Knowing also that we are in a real estate slump we anticipated that we would likely take a huge loss on the sale or worse yet, get on the plane for Rwanda with an empty, unrented, unsold house on our hands.

A week ago Wednesday night we asked the prayer group we are a part of to pray for a miracle as the house went on the market; to pray for a buyer who wanted the house as much as we needed to sell it. God blessed these prayers and the step of faith! Again this Wednesday night our friends were praying with us for our house to sell. The next day, the fifth day the house was on the market we got two offers for the house, one for the full asking price and the other for $1000 less.

We accepted the latter offer because it is a cash offer and the buyer agreed to delay the closing day until August 13, two weeks after I return from a mission to South Sudan. That will give us time to pack and move out. How gracious and kind our Father is!! Please praise God with us!!