 | I AM is the name God ascribed himself when he met Moses in the burning bush. It is a name that carries with it the connotation of eternality - the notion that our God is not finite, but has existed and ruled from before the creation of the universe. But the scripture that is clear about this God who temporally precedes us is also clear that this same God goes ahead of us - paving the way for his plans to be fulfilled and his name to be praised. It is this God, who when residing in eternity past (if we can use such language), planned for the salvation of his children who had yet to be created. And it is this God who preserved Israel and set up history in such a perfect way as to lead to the work of the cross - that which would accomplish his eternal purposes. Our God that is before us goes before us. Sometimes this truth seems to be a distant truth, as we question where our omnipotent God is in our pain. Without seeing the whole picture, in our misery, we are left to rely only on what we have been told about God and hope we are right about him. When we cannot feel his love, we can only hope that his love does indeed endure, like we believe it does. For when we feel forsaken, it is usually easiest to believe that God isn't who he really says he is or that he doesn't see us and love us in our struggles. It is often easiest to come to the conclusion that God is an imposter or that we are not truly his children rather than conclude that that this omnipotent God could love us while allowing harm to befall us. |
But God has provided us more than his word and our sentiments. God reveals himself to us in his actions. Hebrews 11 tells us that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who attest to God's faithfulness. Their stories of God's miraculous hand and their stories of God’s triumph through their trials, tribulations, and failings are to be an encouragement to us. But sometimes this seems like a trite comfort - for who can take comfort in a God who worked millennia ago in the lives of people we have never met? How do we even know their stories are true?
Catalina and I completely understand these reservations. However, we believe that God has not left us with only his actions in the past. We believe we serve a living God who is active in the world today. With this in mind, we want to share with you the story of how God has worked in our lives as he has been faithful in his call to us and his provision for that to which he has called us. We pray that our story of God's work will be real to you and encourage you as you seek to follow him.
Catalina and I completely understand these reservations. However, we believe that God has not left us with only his actions in the past. We believe we serve a living God who is active in the world today. With this in mind, we want to share with you the story of how God has worked in our lives as he has been faithful in his call to us and his provision for that to which he has called us. We pray that our story of God's work will be real to you and encourage you as you seek to follow him.
The story of the Kreiders going to Romania really begins long, long ago - before there were even "the Kreiders." Catalina and I are often asked how we met. "High school?" No. "College?" No. "Work?" No. Actually, we met in Mexico. "......Spring Break?" Nope.
It really is an unconventional meeting, and it only occurred because of a few "flukes." See, my mom worked at a local, private college, and I could have gone tuition free to that college. But instead, due to either my stupidity or a sense of God's calling, I chose to incur $100,000 of college debt to go to a private Christian school in Ohio - Cedarville University. That was a pretty unwise financial decision, especially considering I was going to be a teacher. 30 years of college debt isn't the best idea when you could get a free education, and especially if you’re not going into a high paying field. But because I went to Cedarville, I was required to attend an education job fair my senior year. I already knew that I was going to move back to Pennsylvania and live with my parents to pay off some of my debt, so I despised that I was required to go to this job fair. Who were they to tell me what to do? Out of spite, I picked the three most ridiculous locales I could and interviewed with them: Costa Rica, Israel, and Mexico. I received an unexpected call a few days later. It was Mexico City Christian Academy calling to see if I would accept a job with them. For some reason, I said "sure," and my parents were supportive. I ended up going to Mexico to teach at a small Christian school for two years. It was the worst plan for paying off debt, but I ended up in Mexico City - brought there through poor financial decisions and my own spiteful attitude.
Catalina ended up in Mexico City in a similarly haphazard way. She had tested out of so many classes at UGA that she ended up with a semester off of college due to her education courses only being offered at certain times of the year. With a semester off, she decided to go on a medium-term mission trip. She had originally planned on going to Spain, but that all fell through. The opportunity to go to Mexico presented itself, and though she wasn't wild about it, she pursued it. She had a very short time to raise support but everything ended up working out. She landed in Mexico and was there for three months - where we met on the tail end of her trip - because she just so happened to be staying with some of the students that I taught.
God brought our paths together through my poor financial decisions, my spiteful attitude, Catalina's meticulous plans for college courses falling apart, and a slew of other circumstances that could have caused our meeting to have worked out differently - or not at all. It just so happened....
Having met each other doing missions, it's no surprise that we both had a pull towards full-time missions. We wanted to do it right out of the gate, but unfortunately, my college debt stood in the way. My massive loans and our measly salaries meant that it would be 30 years before any mission's agency would look at us as viable candidates - as a missionary's salary is much less than even a teacher's salary. Nevertheless, five years later, after Elin was just born, we simultaneously felt that God was telling us that it was time to pursue full-time missions. Considering we had now taken on $120,000 in a mortgage and $25,000 in master's loans - with a savings of $0 (plus or minus 1,000 at any given time), this seemed like the most ridiculous thing ever. Adding onto that the fact that we just had a kid, we were starting to get settled into our house and our community, and we had the best jobs we could hope for as teachers, the call didn't make any sense. Nevertheless, we pursued it despite our $250,000 in total debt. We told God that if he wanted it to happen, he'd have to make it so.
As we began our initial contact with MTW, they nailed us on our debt. It was clear to them - as it was to us - that we had far too much debt to go. But God had called us to step forward. With a few recommendations, we began talking to a real estate agent in our church about what we may get out of our house if we sold it. We bought our house about two years prior, at the very bottom of the market, for half price. The housing crash was a terrible thing, but it allowed us to get into a house. Now, it seemed like it might be one route for decreasing our debt. It looked like it would cover a portion of our outstanding debt, but we'd likely have to supplement this. We budgeted and planned and went back to MTW with a proposal that we could get our debt down to about $30,000. They gave us the green light to move forward. It just so happened...
We began to move through some of the trainings and really settled into the thought that we were going to do full-time missions. It began to be a reality for us but we still had to figure out where we were being called. Through a number of circumstances, we landed on Romania. But before joining a team, we were required to do a site visit. As teachers who needed to keep teaching the following year to pay off debt - finding out about this site visit only a couple months before it needed to happen left us with a very short window to coordinate schedules, buy plane tickets, and raise support. We didn't even have time to do any sort of support campaign so we just shot out an email to our closest friends and told them about our situation. Given the short notice and the small group we asked, we were hoping to raise enough to cover just our plane tickets – though we knew even that would be a stretch. We had no idea how much total money was coming in and headed off to Romania. When we returned and put all of our receipts in to MTW, we not only had enough to cover all of our plane tickets, but we had $6 over - our four loaves and two fishes. Nobody knew how much we needed, but God had brought in almost exactly what we had needed, even when we only had faith (with crossed fingers) for the plane tickets. It just so happened...
Our time in Romania was fabulous and God confirmed our call there in a variety of ways through the people we met and through the closeness we felt to the Ebbers there. It was a very formative time for us as we moved forward with ministry, but it was also very timely in regard to our family decisions. The Ebbers - experienced parents of five - were able to guide us through the discipline process with Elin. At just the right time, when we needed mentors to guide us through the tumultuous waters of parenting, God provided the Ebbers for us, and brought us together a half a world away. We came back from Romania confident, invigorated, and more equipped. It just so happened...
Once we committed to Romania we then had a number of trainings we were required to attend. One of those trainings would be the October following our return from our vision trip. However, this training would require that we miss a number of days of school - more personal days than we had available. That meant pay would be coming out of our pockets - pay we couldn't afford to lose as we were trying to pay off our college debt. It just so happened that several months back, another teacher had been praying about where to give money should she happen to receive the annual teacher bonus. Over the summer, she wrote in her journal that she would give half of any bonus she got to us. She ended up getting the bonus and she donated the money to our endeavor. It just so happened that the amount she gave us was about the amount that would cover the cost for the extra days we would miss for our training. It just so happened...
In the winter of 2016, we were getting closer to thinking about the selling of our house. It looked like comps in our area could get us a little bit more than we had expected, reducing our debt to $20,000 or so. However, our 15 year old roof loomed over us as one huge dent that would negate some of the money we could otherwise put towards our debt. We began to pray for a new roof, but we didn’t want God to send a storm that would harm our neighbors. So when we prayed, we asked that God would somehow get us a new roof, but not that he would harm others. Within a couple months, God answered our prayer. One day, as we were getting ready to leave for work, we heard what sounded like a train landing on top of our house and observed the wind blowing completely sideways outside. When we got home from work that day we found a roofing flyer on our door and gave them a call, even though we didn’t see anything visibly wrong with our roof. They set up an inspection and we got a new roof through insurance. We were the only house in our side of the subdivision to receive a roof through insurance. We were told that this strong wind - this microburst - basically sat on top of our house, and only our house. It just so happened...
Needless to say, God had cultivated faith in us with the long string of "coincidences" that we knew were so clearly his hand. With our answer to prayer on the roof, it emboldened us to pray even bigger - because what God had called us to do, he had always provided for. We began to pray that God would do a miracle and not only help us pay off some of our college debt, but to pay off all of our college debt with the sale of our house. And even beyond this, we asked God to provide us with excess. We asked that he would give us $10,000 more than we needed and pledged that we would give as an offering of thanksgiving and praise every cent beyond what we needed to cover our college debt.
That spring, support raising began to ramp up and we began working on planning a support raising road trip for the summer. I emailed every church in the PCA east of the Mississippi, and we used the responses to map out a trip that took us West to Mississippi, North to Minnesota, and back down through to Georgia through Ohio. We had five churches lined up on our cross-country road trip along with a number of individuals. But within a week before leaving, all of the churches cancelled on us. On top of that, the Ebbers, who were home for a college trip, got sick, which postponed our trip by a few days. In those few short days we questioned whether or not the trip would be worthwhile any longer. We were discouraged. But somehow, we ended up booking 7 new churches to meet within those few days. If you know anything about church availability and response time – this is amazing. On top of this, it just so happened that we figured out the former team leader in Romania was located on our route, and we were able to arrange to meet him on our trip. While he is almost always out of the country or busy, it just so happened that his schedule was open on the exact day we would be passing through - an oasis of availability sandwiched between two out-of-the-country trips. It just so happened...
While we were on our trip we had the opportunity of staying with a family from a PCA church in Iowa. During our initial conversation, the hostess said that she had grown up in Thailand as a missionary kid. Thinking that she may have crossed paths with a member of our home church who also grew up in Thailand, we asked if she knew our friend. It just so happened the two women were sisters. We drove across the country and ended up staying - by “chance” - with the sister of a woman with whom Catalina was close friends from her Bible Study. It just so happened...
While staying with this family, we were able to glean so much wisdom about how to raise our family. We were trying to figure out how to raise our kids and discipline them to stay in church, both because we began to see the value of modeling church to our kids and because the church in Romania doesn’t have child care. This family from Iowa basically gave us the foundation for what we do with our family today. They taught us how to expect from our kids first before they can do, and that our kids would then learn to meet those expectations. Go figure that there would be a bit of overlap between teaching wisdom and parenting wisdom. Because of them, we began to have dinner time expectations and bedtime expectations that reflected the expectations we would have in church, and it wasn't long before Elin, who had just turned two, was sitting through her first church service. This family's wisdom came at just the right time for us in our parenting. It just so happened...
It was also on our road trip that our institution of the Sabbath began. Through some required marriage counseling for MTW we had come to realize that our lives were out of balance. We were not spending enough time with our family due to all our obligations. But as full-time workers, parents, congregants, and missionaries - how could we ever rest? We absolutely had to go full speed ahead. We had spent the past few months instituting traditions such as "pizza and playground night," where we would black out every other Wednesday on our calendar to just focus on our family. We also became more cautious in scheduling our support meetings. We had done 4-5 meetings in a week when we first began and it was devastating to our kids. Their lack of sleep and lack of attention wore them down and tore us apart. We began to make changes to that scheduling - though life was still certainly hectic. And on top of it all, we talked about the fourth commandment - keeping the Sabbath holy. What we used to view as an archaic prohibition in the vein of the ceremonial law we began to reconsider it as a blessed commandment given for all time - not as an empty rule - but as a blessing for God's beloved children. Like all commandments, it reflected what was God’s best for us.
As we began our road trip, we were reading the former Romania leader's book which dealt a lot with the family and Sabbath. By the time we got to Iowa, we had been close to concluding that we were definitely going to institute the Sabbath in our lives. But the tipping point for me was actually a sermon that we just so happened to hear at the church on the one Sunday we were in Iowa. It was a sermon about Revelation 14. As the pastor was reading the passage, one part jumped out at me. As it talked about hell and punishment for the wicked, it described part of the torment as being unable to rest day or night. One major component of the torment in hell is that there is no Sabbath. And for the blessed saints, part of their reward was that they would be able to rest from their labors. Busyness that drowns out Kingdom work and family - even if it is in the name of such good things - is, in a sense, experiencing hell. Why would we rather relish in the busyness we create than in the blessing of the Sabbath rest? From that point onward we have been very careful about how we plan our weeks and activities in regard to the Sabbath. It is not an imposition on us, it is a blessing. And we realized this blessing - a blessing our family greatly needed to prevent meltdown - only because simultaneously, MTW required us to go to a counselor, the former Romania team leader wrote a book dealing with the Sabbath, and we were in a small Iowa town to hear a sermon on Revelation 14 and gleaned wisdom from a chance encounter with a wise family connected to our Georgia church family. It all just so happened...
When we returned from our summer road trip, my parents moved in with us. I know that sounds like a big deal, but it's an even bigger deal than you think. See, my dad had lived in his Pennsylvania house since he was 7. All of my family on his side is from Pennsylvania. It was a big deal for my parents to pick up and move away from all of their family and friends. On top of this, my dad's contract with Hershey was almost up and that would likely mean buy-out options for the older employees. For him to retire and move to spend time with us during our last year in the States was a great sacrifice. But they did it anyway, and it was fantastic - more fantastic than we could have ever imagined. It just so happened...
Within a few months from moving down, my dad found out that there was going to be a buy-out from Hershey, and though he had already retired, he could participate in the buy-out. During the next few months, my parents (and Catalina's parents who are already down here in GA) helped to stabilize our kids and our family during our hectic schedules. They provided stability for us all - watching the kids so we didn't have to pay childcare, allowing us to have date nights, and cooking meals for us. But when Catalina fell into a depression after her miscarriage, we realized how big the blessing of our parents really was. During the worst two months, our parents helped to take the helm more than ever. Had we not had our parents supporting us during this last year, we would have fallen apart. Pride and our perception of what was necessary had dictated to us that we keep our full-time jobs while support raising - and doing so had been such a blessing in a number of ways. But we had made that decision regardless of my parents being able to move down to live with us. But God knew that we would have fallen apart without them and placed Catalina's parents a stone's throw away from us and coordinated the timing of our need with my dad's ability to retire and his buy-out. It just so happened...
From July to December of 2016 our monthly support did not budge one bit. It remained stable at 54%. With school starting, a new pregnancy, a miscarriage, and then Catalina's depression - we just couldn't make any headway. But with the New Year around the corner we resolved that we would make a triumphant push and come out swinging hard. Surely the hectic pace that tore our family apart last year wouldn't do so again. But God knew better. He saw our pride bubbling to the surface again and he demolished it. Catalina's depression bottomed out and she had a panic attack at the last place where she was able to hold herself together - at work. It was devastating. We questioned our support, we questioned Romania, and everything spun. But for as scary as that was, it soon became clear that God had his hand on us in this depression.
It just so happened that a week prior to Catalina's panic attack, our counseling session had been changed due to a conflict. It was changed to the day after the panic attack manifested. It just so happened that this counselor, the one we had built up a relationship with for a year, and the one we only started going to because MTW required it - spoke the exact words Catalina needed to hear. He quoted Isaiah 41:9-10, which became our family's memory verse and our rock. God upholds us with his righteous right hand. It just so happened that I - a goal minded individual - was ok with stepping back from our big support raising push to just rest, because the Sabbath and God's rest had been a big theme God had been teaching me over the past year. It just so happened that this is exactly what Catalina needed – to know that I was for her and her well-being over our goal. It just so happened that the two weeks Catalina needed to regroup were the only two week blocks we didn't have scheduled at churches for the foreseeable future. It just so happened that these were the perfect two weeks in the school year for Catalina to be off without having to take on the stress of her 7 lesson preps due to them already being prepared. It just so happened that MTW had accidentally paid us a salary check in the month of December - without us requesting it - which was just enough to cover the money we missed from Catalina having to take a three week leave of absence. That’s the only time we’ve drawn salary in our year and a half of support raising. It just so happened that in Catalina's three week leave of absence and our doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to bring in more support, we jumped up in our monthly support for the first time in six months, from 54% to 68%. And it just so happened that Catalina's experience allowed her to feel God's presence in a way she had not done so before, and to share with others a genuine experience that touched lives more than anything else she could have shared. It provided her with an opportunity to change her presentation to the women at the Redeemer Valdosta's missions conference several weeks later, and to connect with women who needed someone who understood their experiences. And it all just so happened...
Spring quickly approached and we began to think about the selling of our house. Fortunately, since my parents had moved down to Georgia and had bought a house themselves, we were able to move in with them and get our house ready to sell at the perfect time. And honestly, for as much as we wanted to sell our house and get it done with, we were most excited to see God do a miracle and get us enough to cover our college loans, with $10,000 to spare. It seemed impossible. Comps showed that our house should list around 189,000 on the higher end. With normal fees and closing costs, that was right at the threshold for breaking even on our college loans. Don't get me wrong, after all that God had done, to end with paying off our huge debt was phenomenal. But we had been praying for the $10,000 extra and we really thought God was going to do it. Nevertheless, we put our house on the market for what was recommended. We had several offers within 24 hours and had to go to a "highest and best offer" scenario. By the end of the weekend we had 12 offers on our house. We ended up going with one that was about $10,000 over asking price - with no closing costs. God had done his miracle and answered our prayer. He had covered our college debt with $10,000 to spare – just as we had prayed.
A week after we were supposed to close on our house, skepticism began to creep back in. The offer seemed too good to be true, and now we worried that the buyers wouldn’t be able to get financing. Two weeks went by and there was still nothing. Finally, about a week before we had to leave for Romania, we got the good news that everything had gone through. We signed the documents and received the money. When we compared the amount we received for the house and our bills (the college debt plus the remaining carpet cost for the house), we were able to pay off everything with a surplus of $10,011.37. Had closing occurred two weeks earlier (and thus a mortgage payment earlier), we would have had $11,000 or more in surplus. Had we gone a week or two over the exact closing date, we would have ended up with $9,000 or less in surplus. Not only was the need met to pay our college debt, the specific offering we had desired was also provided almost exactly. It just so happened...
As a little icing on the cake, God brought us hope and encouragement out of a tragedy that occurred on the same day we sold our house - my grandmother's death. I was out in Minnesota on the day our house sold, as my grandmother had been under hospice care and I wanted to see her one last time before we left for Romania. When I arrived, my aunt handed me a letter my grandma wrote for me while she was still conscious. She had written one for each of the grandchildren a few weeks back. She had not conferred with my parents or us about what she wrote. At the end of her letter (pictured at the top of this post), she quoted a special verse for me - Isaiah 41:10. "...surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." Out of the whole Bible, my grandma picked the exact verse that had been our rock through depression and seeming failure, and that our family had memorized and fed on for our sustenance. Out of 31,000 verses in the BIble, my grandmother unwittingly chose the perfect verse with which to encourage us.
There are a few concepts I want to pull out of our story. The first, and perhaps most important, is that God accomplishes his will. His purposes will not be thwarted. God will overcome every obstacle if it stands in the way of his will. In fact, it seems that he often desires obstacles. It seems to me he takes joy in overcoming such things - doing the impossible and working strength through the weak. My insurmountable debt became his mounting praise, as he seeded faith in our lives through it and moved mountains while he razed obstacles. Know this - that nothing is too big for God - whether it is the obstacles he allows into your life, the obstacles he brings into your life, or the obstacles you have created in your own life. Not even evil can stymie God. In fact, God can do the impossible and he takes joy in doing it. He will work out all things for the good, defined as the conformity to Jesus Christ - for those whom he has called – those that love him.
Second, our story can help to give you the confidence that our God is a living God working in the world today. He truly answers prayer. Now there are a few caveats to this. First, God answers prayers that are aligned with his will. Check out the Westminster Catechism on that one ( http://www.shortercatechism.com/resources/wsc/wsc_098.html). God accomplishes his will and his desire is that we will align ourselves with him through that will. When we first seek the Kingdom of God, it is no wonder that our prayers are answered when we pray - because our desires are God's desires and he will accomplish his will. We can pray with confidence, but that doesn't mean we don't pray without seeking and self-reflection first. Our confidence in prayer should come from our assurance that God accomplishes his will, and because we are seeking God’s will in prayer, our prayers will be answered.
But a bigger question then arises. How do we ever truly know if God answers prayer? I mean, sure, God answers some of my prayers in the affirmative, but many of my prayers are not answered. I asked this very question to one of Catalina's BIOLA professors and I really enjoyed his response. I questioned how we can know prayers are answered when we Christians have such a bias towards answered prayer. Our confirmation bias causes us to praise God when a prayer is answered but we dismiss the fact that many or most of our prayers are unanswered prayers. We give God the credit for the good but then excuse his “no” or non-answer as it not being aligned with his will. How can we ever encourage others to pray with such skewed data and motivation? That professor acknowledged my statement and said that much of what Christians do is indeed confirmation bias. No skeptic should be expected to believe that most “answered prayers” are from God. But that doesn't negate that some prayers are very clearly weighted in favor of God’s hand having been involved. The professor said that the more specific and difficult our prayer requests are, the more certain we can be that it is answered prayer. By being specific and asking for hard things, we squeeze out any elements of chance and make God the more compelling option. I believe our story encompasses a number of answered prayers that you can hang your hat on – if not individually, then surely as a collective. God so clearly moved mountains to preserve us and strengthen us unto Romania, time and time again. It is a cumulative case. An unimaginable coincidence is a coincidence, but a long string of unimaginable, thematic coincidences strikes me as nothing but the hand of God.
Third, it is important to understand that God will indeed give you more than you can bear. What I believe God will not do is give you more than He will bear. Whatever God calls you to, for that He will provide. His goal is not our self-esteem or self-success, but rather our recognition of God as our sustainer and our understanding that we succeed in community, far beyond ourselves. The worst thing one can ever do is bear the trials and tribulations that come their way. “Cast all your cares upon him, for he cares for you.” “Throw off every weight and the sin that so easily entangles, looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame.” We are called to bear one another’s burdens and we are called to take up our cross (as Jesus clarifies, this means laying down our lives – a far cry from bearing and conquering). The Christian life is all about self-sacrifice, self-control, and a reliance on others. It is not an individual victory march.
I believe Christians do their faith a disservice when they say that God would not give one more than they can bear. If we could always bear what was given us, what would that do to community? What would that do the cross Christ bore for us? No, rather it is that whatever God calls us to, for that he will supply. Sometimes he may supply for us directly and sometimes he may do it through another. This truth has been one of the most encouraging aspects of our journey to Romania. It is so easy to question our motives and our interpretation of God's call - especially during times of trials like support stagnation and depression. We can feel ill-equipped or inept in a multitude of ways. But time and time again God was showing us that he was calling us to pursue Romania. God provided for us in every imaginable way - spiritually, familially, financially, and emotionally. While there were many times we doubted ourselves – and rightly so! - God never allowed us to doubt his call for long, as he constantly moved us forward - and often moved us the most when we couldn't move at all. I have always given lip service to my need for Christ and the fact that he bore my sins and rebellion on the cross, but the road to Romania has reminded us that it is God who continues to bear our burdens. The gospel is no less true and no less necessary for me today than it was when God first revealed to me his love.
Finally, our story can be added to the stories of the millions of Christians who came before us. It attests to the fact that not only is God real, but he is purposeful. Yes, God can do amazing feats and display his power. But much of what God did for us he began long before we even knew we needed it. How could Catalina and I have planned to meet our perfect complement - a girl from Georgia and a guy from Pennsylvania - in the largest city in Mexico? How could we have ever planned to pay off our huge college debt with equity from a house in unpredictable markets? We had no control or foresight over the housing market. How could we have planned to go to a counselor that would be the perfect person to lift Catalina out of an unforeseen depression a year down the road - then schedule the perfect time to see this counselor - the day after her panic attack? How could we have had a microburst sit right on top of our house a year before we needed to sell and be the only house to get a new roof from it? How could we plan my dad's retirement and buy-out to coincide with our year before leaving for Romania? How could we have planned to reach almost exactly $10,000 more for our house, just as we had prayed, when the market said our house shouldn’t sell for that much?
Our story amazes even us, as we see not only a God who is before us, but a God who is for us and who goes before us. We don't know what his plan is for our lives and our ministry. He may be rushing us off to get on a flight that crashes into the ocean - killing us all and spreading the story of a family whose lives he touched so beautifully until he called them home. Maybe he's calling us to Romania where our ministry will bear no visible fruit to us in our lifetime. And maybe he's calling us to Romania to start a revival in Europe that changes the religious landscape for centuries to come. It really doesn't matter. God has so clearly shown us that whatever he calls us to, for that he will provide. You may say that our story is a story of "it just so happeneds," but I would beg to differ. Our story is one of extreme specificity and unlikelihood all directed towards a particular end of moving us to Romania. As for the Christian, we hope it will be an encouragement to you as it has been to us. “Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.”
It really is an unconventional meeting, and it only occurred because of a few "flukes." See, my mom worked at a local, private college, and I could have gone tuition free to that college. But instead, due to either my stupidity or a sense of God's calling, I chose to incur $100,000 of college debt to go to a private Christian school in Ohio - Cedarville University. That was a pretty unwise financial decision, especially considering I was going to be a teacher. 30 years of college debt isn't the best idea when you could get a free education, and especially if you’re not going into a high paying field. But because I went to Cedarville, I was required to attend an education job fair my senior year. I already knew that I was going to move back to Pennsylvania and live with my parents to pay off some of my debt, so I despised that I was required to go to this job fair. Who were they to tell me what to do? Out of spite, I picked the three most ridiculous locales I could and interviewed with them: Costa Rica, Israel, and Mexico. I received an unexpected call a few days later. It was Mexico City Christian Academy calling to see if I would accept a job with them. For some reason, I said "sure," and my parents were supportive. I ended up going to Mexico to teach at a small Christian school for two years. It was the worst plan for paying off debt, but I ended up in Mexico City - brought there through poor financial decisions and my own spiteful attitude.
Catalina ended up in Mexico City in a similarly haphazard way. She had tested out of so many classes at UGA that she ended up with a semester off of college due to her education courses only being offered at certain times of the year. With a semester off, she decided to go on a medium-term mission trip. She had originally planned on going to Spain, but that all fell through. The opportunity to go to Mexico presented itself, and though she wasn't wild about it, she pursued it. She had a very short time to raise support but everything ended up working out. She landed in Mexico and was there for three months - where we met on the tail end of her trip - because she just so happened to be staying with some of the students that I taught.
God brought our paths together through my poor financial decisions, my spiteful attitude, Catalina's meticulous plans for college courses falling apart, and a slew of other circumstances that could have caused our meeting to have worked out differently - or not at all. It just so happened....
Having met each other doing missions, it's no surprise that we both had a pull towards full-time missions. We wanted to do it right out of the gate, but unfortunately, my college debt stood in the way. My massive loans and our measly salaries meant that it would be 30 years before any mission's agency would look at us as viable candidates - as a missionary's salary is much less than even a teacher's salary. Nevertheless, five years later, after Elin was just born, we simultaneously felt that God was telling us that it was time to pursue full-time missions. Considering we had now taken on $120,000 in a mortgage and $25,000 in master's loans - with a savings of $0 (plus or minus 1,000 at any given time), this seemed like the most ridiculous thing ever. Adding onto that the fact that we just had a kid, we were starting to get settled into our house and our community, and we had the best jobs we could hope for as teachers, the call didn't make any sense. Nevertheless, we pursued it despite our $250,000 in total debt. We told God that if he wanted it to happen, he'd have to make it so.
As we began our initial contact with MTW, they nailed us on our debt. It was clear to them - as it was to us - that we had far too much debt to go. But God had called us to step forward. With a few recommendations, we began talking to a real estate agent in our church about what we may get out of our house if we sold it. We bought our house about two years prior, at the very bottom of the market, for half price. The housing crash was a terrible thing, but it allowed us to get into a house. Now, it seemed like it might be one route for decreasing our debt. It looked like it would cover a portion of our outstanding debt, but we'd likely have to supplement this. We budgeted and planned and went back to MTW with a proposal that we could get our debt down to about $30,000. They gave us the green light to move forward. It just so happened...
We began to move through some of the trainings and really settled into the thought that we were going to do full-time missions. It began to be a reality for us but we still had to figure out where we were being called. Through a number of circumstances, we landed on Romania. But before joining a team, we were required to do a site visit. As teachers who needed to keep teaching the following year to pay off debt - finding out about this site visit only a couple months before it needed to happen left us with a very short window to coordinate schedules, buy plane tickets, and raise support. We didn't even have time to do any sort of support campaign so we just shot out an email to our closest friends and told them about our situation. Given the short notice and the small group we asked, we were hoping to raise enough to cover just our plane tickets – though we knew even that would be a stretch. We had no idea how much total money was coming in and headed off to Romania. When we returned and put all of our receipts in to MTW, we not only had enough to cover all of our plane tickets, but we had $6 over - our four loaves and two fishes. Nobody knew how much we needed, but God had brought in almost exactly what we had needed, even when we only had faith (with crossed fingers) for the plane tickets. It just so happened...
Our time in Romania was fabulous and God confirmed our call there in a variety of ways through the people we met and through the closeness we felt to the Ebbers there. It was a very formative time for us as we moved forward with ministry, but it was also very timely in regard to our family decisions. The Ebbers - experienced parents of five - were able to guide us through the discipline process with Elin. At just the right time, when we needed mentors to guide us through the tumultuous waters of parenting, God provided the Ebbers for us, and brought us together a half a world away. We came back from Romania confident, invigorated, and more equipped. It just so happened...
Once we committed to Romania we then had a number of trainings we were required to attend. One of those trainings would be the October following our return from our vision trip. However, this training would require that we miss a number of days of school - more personal days than we had available. That meant pay would be coming out of our pockets - pay we couldn't afford to lose as we were trying to pay off our college debt. It just so happened that several months back, another teacher had been praying about where to give money should she happen to receive the annual teacher bonus. Over the summer, she wrote in her journal that she would give half of any bonus she got to us. She ended up getting the bonus and she donated the money to our endeavor. It just so happened that the amount she gave us was about the amount that would cover the cost for the extra days we would miss for our training. It just so happened...
In the winter of 2016, we were getting closer to thinking about the selling of our house. It looked like comps in our area could get us a little bit more than we had expected, reducing our debt to $20,000 or so. However, our 15 year old roof loomed over us as one huge dent that would negate some of the money we could otherwise put towards our debt. We began to pray for a new roof, but we didn’t want God to send a storm that would harm our neighbors. So when we prayed, we asked that God would somehow get us a new roof, but not that he would harm others. Within a couple months, God answered our prayer. One day, as we were getting ready to leave for work, we heard what sounded like a train landing on top of our house and observed the wind blowing completely sideways outside. When we got home from work that day we found a roofing flyer on our door and gave them a call, even though we didn’t see anything visibly wrong with our roof. They set up an inspection and we got a new roof through insurance. We were the only house in our side of the subdivision to receive a roof through insurance. We were told that this strong wind - this microburst - basically sat on top of our house, and only our house. It just so happened...
Needless to say, God had cultivated faith in us with the long string of "coincidences" that we knew were so clearly his hand. With our answer to prayer on the roof, it emboldened us to pray even bigger - because what God had called us to do, he had always provided for. We began to pray that God would do a miracle and not only help us pay off some of our college debt, but to pay off all of our college debt with the sale of our house. And even beyond this, we asked God to provide us with excess. We asked that he would give us $10,000 more than we needed and pledged that we would give as an offering of thanksgiving and praise every cent beyond what we needed to cover our college debt.
That spring, support raising began to ramp up and we began working on planning a support raising road trip for the summer. I emailed every church in the PCA east of the Mississippi, and we used the responses to map out a trip that took us West to Mississippi, North to Minnesota, and back down through to Georgia through Ohio. We had five churches lined up on our cross-country road trip along with a number of individuals. But within a week before leaving, all of the churches cancelled on us. On top of that, the Ebbers, who were home for a college trip, got sick, which postponed our trip by a few days. In those few short days we questioned whether or not the trip would be worthwhile any longer. We were discouraged. But somehow, we ended up booking 7 new churches to meet within those few days. If you know anything about church availability and response time – this is amazing. On top of this, it just so happened that we figured out the former team leader in Romania was located on our route, and we were able to arrange to meet him on our trip. While he is almost always out of the country or busy, it just so happened that his schedule was open on the exact day we would be passing through - an oasis of availability sandwiched between two out-of-the-country trips. It just so happened...
While we were on our trip we had the opportunity of staying with a family from a PCA church in Iowa. During our initial conversation, the hostess said that she had grown up in Thailand as a missionary kid. Thinking that she may have crossed paths with a member of our home church who also grew up in Thailand, we asked if she knew our friend. It just so happened the two women were sisters. We drove across the country and ended up staying - by “chance” - with the sister of a woman with whom Catalina was close friends from her Bible Study. It just so happened...
While staying with this family, we were able to glean so much wisdom about how to raise our family. We were trying to figure out how to raise our kids and discipline them to stay in church, both because we began to see the value of modeling church to our kids and because the church in Romania doesn’t have child care. This family from Iowa basically gave us the foundation for what we do with our family today. They taught us how to expect from our kids first before they can do, and that our kids would then learn to meet those expectations. Go figure that there would be a bit of overlap between teaching wisdom and parenting wisdom. Because of them, we began to have dinner time expectations and bedtime expectations that reflected the expectations we would have in church, and it wasn't long before Elin, who had just turned two, was sitting through her first church service. This family's wisdom came at just the right time for us in our parenting. It just so happened...
It was also on our road trip that our institution of the Sabbath began. Through some required marriage counseling for MTW we had come to realize that our lives were out of balance. We were not spending enough time with our family due to all our obligations. But as full-time workers, parents, congregants, and missionaries - how could we ever rest? We absolutely had to go full speed ahead. We had spent the past few months instituting traditions such as "pizza and playground night," where we would black out every other Wednesday on our calendar to just focus on our family. We also became more cautious in scheduling our support meetings. We had done 4-5 meetings in a week when we first began and it was devastating to our kids. Their lack of sleep and lack of attention wore them down and tore us apart. We began to make changes to that scheduling - though life was still certainly hectic. And on top of it all, we talked about the fourth commandment - keeping the Sabbath holy. What we used to view as an archaic prohibition in the vein of the ceremonial law we began to reconsider it as a blessed commandment given for all time - not as an empty rule - but as a blessing for God's beloved children. Like all commandments, it reflected what was God’s best for us.
As we began our road trip, we were reading the former Romania leader's book which dealt a lot with the family and Sabbath. By the time we got to Iowa, we had been close to concluding that we were definitely going to institute the Sabbath in our lives. But the tipping point for me was actually a sermon that we just so happened to hear at the church on the one Sunday we were in Iowa. It was a sermon about Revelation 14. As the pastor was reading the passage, one part jumped out at me. As it talked about hell and punishment for the wicked, it described part of the torment as being unable to rest day or night. One major component of the torment in hell is that there is no Sabbath. And for the blessed saints, part of their reward was that they would be able to rest from their labors. Busyness that drowns out Kingdom work and family - even if it is in the name of such good things - is, in a sense, experiencing hell. Why would we rather relish in the busyness we create than in the blessing of the Sabbath rest? From that point onward we have been very careful about how we plan our weeks and activities in regard to the Sabbath. It is not an imposition on us, it is a blessing. And we realized this blessing - a blessing our family greatly needed to prevent meltdown - only because simultaneously, MTW required us to go to a counselor, the former Romania team leader wrote a book dealing with the Sabbath, and we were in a small Iowa town to hear a sermon on Revelation 14 and gleaned wisdom from a chance encounter with a wise family connected to our Georgia church family. It all just so happened...
When we returned from our summer road trip, my parents moved in with us. I know that sounds like a big deal, but it's an even bigger deal than you think. See, my dad had lived in his Pennsylvania house since he was 7. All of my family on his side is from Pennsylvania. It was a big deal for my parents to pick up and move away from all of their family and friends. On top of this, my dad's contract with Hershey was almost up and that would likely mean buy-out options for the older employees. For him to retire and move to spend time with us during our last year in the States was a great sacrifice. But they did it anyway, and it was fantastic - more fantastic than we could have ever imagined. It just so happened...
Within a few months from moving down, my dad found out that there was going to be a buy-out from Hershey, and though he had already retired, he could participate in the buy-out. During the next few months, my parents (and Catalina's parents who are already down here in GA) helped to stabilize our kids and our family during our hectic schedules. They provided stability for us all - watching the kids so we didn't have to pay childcare, allowing us to have date nights, and cooking meals for us. But when Catalina fell into a depression after her miscarriage, we realized how big the blessing of our parents really was. During the worst two months, our parents helped to take the helm more than ever. Had we not had our parents supporting us during this last year, we would have fallen apart. Pride and our perception of what was necessary had dictated to us that we keep our full-time jobs while support raising - and doing so had been such a blessing in a number of ways. But we had made that decision regardless of my parents being able to move down to live with us. But God knew that we would have fallen apart without them and placed Catalina's parents a stone's throw away from us and coordinated the timing of our need with my dad's ability to retire and his buy-out. It just so happened...
From July to December of 2016 our monthly support did not budge one bit. It remained stable at 54%. With school starting, a new pregnancy, a miscarriage, and then Catalina's depression - we just couldn't make any headway. But with the New Year around the corner we resolved that we would make a triumphant push and come out swinging hard. Surely the hectic pace that tore our family apart last year wouldn't do so again. But God knew better. He saw our pride bubbling to the surface again and he demolished it. Catalina's depression bottomed out and she had a panic attack at the last place where she was able to hold herself together - at work. It was devastating. We questioned our support, we questioned Romania, and everything spun. But for as scary as that was, it soon became clear that God had his hand on us in this depression.
It just so happened that a week prior to Catalina's panic attack, our counseling session had been changed due to a conflict. It was changed to the day after the panic attack manifested. It just so happened that this counselor, the one we had built up a relationship with for a year, and the one we only started going to because MTW required it - spoke the exact words Catalina needed to hear. He quoted Isaiah 41:9-10, which became our family's memory verse and our rock. God upholds us with his righteous right hand. It just so happened that I - a goal minded individual - was ok with stepping back from our big support raising push to just rest, because the Sabbath and God's rest had been a big theme God had been teaching me over the past year. It just so happened that this is exactly what Catalina needed – to know that I was for her and her well-being over our goal. It just so happened that the two weeks Catalina needed to regroup were the only two week blocks we didn't have scheduled at churches for the foreseeable future. It just so happened that these were the perfect two weeks in the school year for Catalina to be off without having to take on the stress of her 7 lesson preps due to them already being prepared. It just so happened that MTW had accidentally paid us a salary check in the month of December - without us requesting it - which was just enough to cover the money we missed from Catalina having to take a three week leave of absence. That’s the only time we’ve drawn salary in our year and a half of support raising. It just so happened that in Catalina's three week leave of absence and our doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to bring in more support, we jumped up in our monthly support for the first time in six months, from 54% to 68%. And it just so happened that Catalina's experience allowed her to feel God's presence in a way she had not done so before, and to share with others a genuine experience that touched lives more than anything else she could have shared. It provided her with an opportunity to change her presentation to the women at the Redeemer Valdosta's missions conference several weeks later, and to connect with women who needed someone who understood their experiences. And it all just so happened...
Spring quickly approached and we began to think about the selling of our house. Fortunately, since my parents had moved down to Georgia and had bought a house themselves, we were able to move in with them and get our house ready to sell at the perfect time. And honestly, for as much as we wanted to sell our house and get it done with, we were most excited to see God do a miracle and get us enough to cover our college loans, with $10,000 to spare. It seemed impossible. Comps showed that our house should list around 189,000 on the higher end. With normal fees and closing costs, that was right at the threshold for breaking even on our college loans. Don't get me wrong, after all that God had done, to end with paying off our huge debt was phenomenal. But we had been praying for the $10,000 extra and we really thought God was going to do it. Nevertheless, we put our house on the market for what was recommended. We had several offers within 24 hours and had to go to a "highest and best offer" scenario. By the end of the weekend we had 12 offers on our house. We ended up going with one that was about $10,000 over asking price - with no closing costs. God had done his miracle and answered our prayer. He had covered our college debt with $10,000 to spare – just as we had prayed.
A week after we were supposed to close on our house, skepticism began to creep back in. The offer seemed too good to be true, and now we worried that the buyers wouldn’t be able to get financing. Two weeks went by and there was still nothing. Finally, about a week before we had to leave for Romania, we got the good news that everything had gone through. We signed the documents and received the money. When we compared the amount we received for the house and our bills (the college debt plus the remaining carpet cost for the house), we were able to pay off everything with a surplus of $10,011.37. Had closing occurred two weeks earlier (and thus a mortgage payment earlier), we would have had $11,000 or more in surplus. Had we gone a week or two over the exact closing date, we would have ended up with $9,000 or less in surplus. Not only was the need met to pay our college debt, the specific offering we had desired was also provided almost exactly. It just so happened...
As a little icing on the cake, God brought us hope and encouragement out of a tragedy that occurred on the same day we sold our house - my grandmother's death. I was out in Minnesota on the day our house sold, as my grandmother had been under hospice care and I wanted to see her one last time before we left for Romania. When I arrived, my aunt handed me a letter my grandma wrote for me while she was still conscious. She had written one for each of the grandchildren a few weeks back. She had not conferred with my parents or us about what she wrote. At the end of her letter (pictured at the top of this post), she quoted a special verse for me - Isaiah 41:10. "...surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." Out of the whole Bible, my grandma picked the exact verse that had been our rock through depression and seeming failure, and that our family had memorized and fed on for our sustenance. Out of 31,000 verses in the BIble, my grandmother unwittingly chose the perfect verse with which to encourage us.
There are a few concepts I want to pull out of our story. The first, and perhaps most important, is that God accomplishes his will. His purposes will not be thwarted. God will overcome every obstacle if it stands in the way of his will. In fact, it seems that he often desires obstacles. It seems to me he takes joy in overcoming such things - doing the impossible and working strength through the weak. My insurmountable debt became his mounting praise, as he seeded faith in our lives through it and moved mountains while he razed obstacles. Know this - that nothing is too big for God - whether it is the obstacles he allows into your life, the obstacles he brings into your life, or the obstacles you have created in your own life. Not even evil can stymie God. In fact, God can do the impossible and he takes joy in doing it. He will work out all things for the good, defined as the conformity to Jesus Christ - for those whom he has called – those that love him.
Second, our story can help to give you the confidence that our God is a living God working in the world today. He truly answers prayer. Now there are a few caveats to this. First, God answers prayers that are aligned with his will. Check out the Westminster Catechism on that one ( http://www.shortercatechism.com/resources/wsc/wsc_098.html). God accomplishes his will and his desire is that we will align ourselves with him through that will. When we first seek the Kingdom of God, it is no wonder that our prayers are answered when we pray - because our desires are God's desires and he will accomplish his will. We can pray with confidence, but that doesn't mean we don't pray without seeking and self-reflection first. Our confidence in prayer should come from our assurance that God accomplishes his will, and because we are seeking God’s will in prayer, our prayers will be answered.
But a bigger question then arises. How do we ever truly know if God answers prayer? I mean, sure, God answers some of my prayers in the affirmative, but many of my prayers are not answered. I asked this very question to one of Catalina's BIOLA professors and I really enjoyed his response. I questioned how we can know prayers are answered when we Christians have such a bias towards answered prayer. Our confirmation bias causes us to praise God when a prayer is answered but we dismiss the fact that many or most of our prayers are unanswered prayers. We give God the credit for the good but then excuse his “no” or non-answer as it not being aligned with his will. How can we ever encourage others to pray with such skewed data and motivation? That professor acknowledged my statement and said that much of what Christians do is indeed confirmation bias. No skeptic should be expected to believe that most “answered prayers” are from God. But that doesn't negate that some prayers are very clearly weighted in favor of God’s hand having been involved. The professor said that the more specific and difficult our prayer requests are, the more certain we can be that it is answered prayer. By being specific and asking for hard things, we squeeze out any elements of chance and make God the more compelling option. I believe our story encompasses a number of answered prayers that you can hang your hat on – if not individually, then surely as a collective. God so clearly moved mountains to preserve us and strengthen us unto Romania, time and time again. It is a cumulative case. An unimaginable coincidence is a coincidence, but a long string of unimaginable, thematic coincidences strikes me as nothing but the hand of God.
Third, it is important to understand that God will indeed give you more than you can bear. What I believe God will not do is give you more than He will bear. Whatever God calls you to, for that He will provide. His goal is not our self-esteem or self-success, but rather our recognition of God as our sustainer and our understanding that we succeed in community, far beyond ourselves. The worst thing one can ever do is bear the trials and tribulations that come their way. “Cast all your cares upon him, for he cares for you.” “Throw off every weight and the sin that so easily entangles, looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame.” We are called to bear one another’s burdens and we are called to take up our cross (as Jesus clarifies, this means laying down our lives – a far cry from bearing and conquering). The Christian life is all about self-sacrifice, self-control, and a reliance on others. It is not an individual victory march.
I believe Christians do their faith a disservice when they say that God would not give one more than they can bear. If we could always bear what was given us, what would that do to community? What would that do the cross Christ bore for us? No, rather it is that whatever God calls us to, for that he will supply. Sometimes he may supply for us directly and sometimes he may do it through another. This truth has been one of the most encouraging aspects of our journey to Romania. It is so easy to question our motives and our interpretation of God's call - especially during times of trials like support stagnation and depression. We can feel ill-equipped or inept in a multitude of ways. But time and time again God was showing us that he was calling us to pursue Romania. God provided for us in every imaginable way - spiritually, familially, financially, and emotionally. While there were many times we doubted ourselves – and rightly so! - God never allowed us to doubt his call for long, as he constantly moved us forward - and often moved us the most when we couldn't move at all. I have always given lip service to my need for Christ and the fact that he bore my sins and rebellion on the cross, but the road to Romania has reminded us that it is God who continues to bear our burdens. The gospel is no less true and no less necessary for me today than it was when God first revealed to me his love.
Finally, our story can be added to the stories of the millions of Christians who came before us. It attests to the fact that not only is God real, but he is purposeful. Yes, God can do amazing feats and display his power. But much of what God did for us he began long before we even knew we needed it. How could Catalina and I have planned to meet our perfect complement - a girl from Georgia and a guy from Pennsylvania - in the largest city in Mexico? How could we have ever planned to pay off our huge college debt with equity from a house in unpredictable markets? We had no control or foresight over the housing market. How could we have planned to go to a counselor that would be the perfect person to lift Catalina out of an unforeseen depression a year down the road - then schedule the perfect time to see this counselor - the day after her panic attack? How could we have had a microburst sit right on top of our house a year before we needed to sell and be the only house to get a new roof from it? How could we plan my dad's retirement and buy-out to coincide with our year before leaving for Romania? How could we have planned to reach almost exactly $10,000 more for our house, just as we had prayed, when the market said our house shouldn’t sell for that much?
Our story amazes even us, as we see not only a God who is before us, but a God who is for us and who goes before us. We don't know what his plan is for our lives and our ministry. He may be rushing us off to get on a flight that crashes into the ocean - killing us all and spreading the story of a family whose lives he touched so beautifully until he called them home. Maybe he's calling us to Romania where our ministry will bear no visible fruit to us in our lifetime. And maybe he's calling us to Romania to start a revival in Europe that changes the religious landscape for centuries to come. It really doesn't matter. God has so clearly shown us that whatever he calls us to, for that he will provide. You may say that our story is a story of "it just so happeneds," but I would beg to differ. Our story is one of extreme specificity and unlikelihood all directed towards a particular end of moving us to Romania. As for the Christian, we hope it will be an encouragement to you as it has been to us. “Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.”
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