We're going

We are going to Rwanda August 15th.  We are staying for 9 months.

Last night, I decided that this is how I will start talking about this from now on. 

Do we have the money for plane tickets?  No.  Do we have the money for renting a home there?  No.  Do we have the money to pay for the kids school?  No.  But I am sick & tired of saying, "Well, we want to be in Rwanda, but we don't have the finances yet...  We are hoping to be there August 15th, but it will take a miracle."  Saying this again yesterday, I was suddenly overcome by a deep discouragement that this was just never going to happen.  There is no sign that it's going to happen.  I had thoughts like, "I should just give up & accept that it's not happening."  It was not a fun place to be.

By the end of the night I decided that what I have to do is change the way I think & talk about it.  We're going.  I think the reason I've hedged around it with my words in the past is because I don't want to be shown as "wrong" later- if it doesn't happen I don't want to look like a fool.  However, I do believe this is what God wants us to do, and for my own mental & spiritual health I need to start talking about it as a fact.

If it doesn't happen, well, then I'll let you know.

The other night we watched the movie, "Faith Like Potatoes".  If you can get through the first 30 minutes where the main character is a real jerk (after that God totally changes his life) it is a really inspirational movie (based on a true story, by the way).  The main character is a farmer, and later a preacher too.  Everyone is talking about a drought & how there is not going to be any rain.  His faith leads him to choose to plant potatoes- a very water thirsty plant.  And he lets everyone know this at a country wide prayer meeting in a stadium.

He puts all his family's crop money into seed potatoes, which he plants in the dry dusty ground.  His faith means that he continues to tend to the potato plants even when it looks (from the surface) that they have died (potatoes grow under ground you know).  I don't want to totally spoil the movie for you, but you should know that God rewards his faith.

This farmer/preacher is talking to the children in the orphanage and tells them to pick up a potato, to touch it and smell it.  He tells them that their faith should be like that- something you can touch.  I was reminded of the verse,

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."   (Hebrews 11:1, KJV)

in the NIV it says it like this, "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."

But I was thinking about "substance".  That's what he was talking about with the potatoes I think- your faith should have substance, it should look like something.  For us, I guess right now our faith looks like the fact that we have enrolled our kids in the private school in Rwanda.  I'm asking God, what else should our faith look like?  Should it look like plane tickets for August 15th?  If that's what He wants we'll do it.  I know for sure it looks like me talking about our trip as something sure & certain.

What about for you?  What does your faith "look like"?  What has God spoken to you, but you have not yet seen the fulfillment of?  What can you do to give your faith substance today?

In Christ,
Lisa