Summer School blog #2
I can still remember the moment when God shot down my last excuse in flames. I was sitting on an increasingly uncomfortable plastic seat in the front row at CMS Summer School 2009 when the keynote speaker, Dr 'Willie' Philips, very pointedly challenged us all with this question: "If God did not withhold his only Son, what will you not give up for him?"
For many years I had told people I would never do overseas mission because 'I was not cut out for it'. In my heart of hearts though, that really meant 'It will be too hard, too uncomfortable, and I would have to give up too much'.
So during our car drive back down the mountain at the end of Summer School 2009 I choked out an unwilling confession to my husband. In trepidation and with my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, I told him that I thought God had been challenging me that we should be looking at overseas mission work.
Within two weeks we were sitting in John Bales' office 'testing the waters'. We explained to John that we felt convicted that we should be looking at the possibility of mission work in Sweden. Two weeks later, we were sitting in the same office discussing mission work in Tanzania - go figure! (John Bales thought we wouldn't notice any difference!)
My husband Paul was serving as Senior Minister at Sylvania Anglican and I was Head of Music at a Christian school at the time. Over the next three months as we prayed and talked with a few close and godly friends, God worked an incredible process of transformation in our hearts. He grew an increasing excitement at the prospect of proclaiming his truth in a much less well resourced country. And he began to show us how much we were going to learn from and be blessed by our Christian brothers and sisters overseas.
By July we had resigned from our positions, packed up our whole house, and sold most of our furniture in the biggest garage sale we have ever run - a lot ended up at the Salvos! I don't think a day passed over those months when I didn't feel slightly sick to my stomach at some point. But over those months I began to recite Bible verses of God's promises to go before us, to care for our needs, and to renew his compassions every morning. I came to trust him more and more as the process continued.
It wasn't until October, when we were completing missionary training at St Andrew's Hall in Melbourne, that we found out that our destination was to be Nairobi - and by this time I had begun to know a real sense of God's peace. As I write this blog today (whilst seated on another very hard and uncomfortable chair at Summer School 2010!) I am overwhelmed, in a way that I couldn't have anticipated even 12 months ago, by a knowledge of the great privilege and honour that it is to go and serve my Lord in whatever place he chooses to take us.
