Hello Blog. It’s been a while. How have you been? Are you feeling neglected? I’m sorry. Here’s a hug.
Obviously, February was not the best of months for blogging on our part. Good thing it’s so short. We’ve been very busy raising support this month, and I suppose that’s why we haven’t posted much. Because nothing very exciting has happened, and it’s hard to summarize and explain this whole support process. It’s a big mash of fear, excitement, joy, disappointment, expectation and despair. And that’s just one day. But, I’m feeling capable of putting my thoughts into words today, so here I go.
We started raising support in September, hoping we’d be able to be in Germany in October. It would have taken a miracle, for sure, but we knew that Black Forest Academy wanted us as soon as possible, so we wanted to try. In September, we raised 20% of our support. Yay! From October to January, we raised about 5% more….
Enter Boot Camp.
Boot Camp is a support raising workshop put on by The Body Builders, a group based out of Fayetteville. We’d considered attending Boot Camp in August, but were still in the application process for BFA and didn’t want to spend the money on something we might not need. In January however, we knew we needed it. So, we went down to Ft. Worth for a couple days of support Boot Camping.
And it was amazing. We were already familiar with most of the things discussed at Boot Camp, but hearing them from someone who’s lived on support for 20 years, and being surrounded by sixty other missionaries who were going through the same thing, made a big difference. Boot Camp was encouraging, motivating, convicting and inspiring. We’d basically known what we needed to do to raise support, but after Boot Camp we actually felt capable of doing it.
One of the most helpful things that came out of Boot Camp was The Plan. Boot Camp made us set a date for when we wanted to have our full support. Then, we had to figure out what we needed to do to make that happen. So, our goal was to have our full support by April 1st and be in Germany by April 7th for a retreat.
By the way, if this actually happens, we’re going to have one CRAZY week. Here’s what it would probably look like. We’d finish up our support April 1st, pack everything up, and drive to Muskogee. Israel’s sister, Hannah, gets married on April 3rd. We’d most likely catch a plane to Germany the next day. When we arrived on the 5th (I’m guessing that’s when we’d arrive), we’d move into our apartment and perhaps go buy furniture, get our visas, open bank accounts, etc. Then, we’d drive to the retreat on the 6th or 7th, where we would meet many of our fellow BFA staff members, get adjusted to the time difference, and then head back for the return of students after Spring Break. Whew, I’m tired just thinking about it.
Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, we set a goal to work towards. In order to accomplish that goal, we estimated how much new support we’d need each week, how many people we’d need to meet with, and how many calls we’d need to make every day in order to set up all of those meetings. So that’s what we’ve been doing since January 25th—calling people, inviting them to join our support team, and praying that God will bring new supporters to our team.
It’s been a wonderful and exhausting 32 days.
In order to keep this post from being ridiculously long, I’m breaking it up. Stay tuned for Part Two. Coming soon.
