Coming to a Close

Life as we have known it for many years is coming to a close.

Only one other time in our life have we known life apart from being church staff - the eleven months, August 1985-July 1986 - we spent in New Orleans as David completed his MRE at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. And yet, as of Sunday, we will no longer be church staff but in reality RLMs - Real Live Missionaries. Sunday, December 16th, our church will commission us as missionaries leaving from Abilene Baptist Church where we have served the past eight years.

We have often laughed and said that David is actually the Minister of Next - wherever was Next he did. And this journey of service is next. There has been a lifetime of preparation and heart filled with whatever He wanted and wherever He sent.

I first knew of God's call on my life as a preschooler when He called me to Himself in salvation. I didn't understand the dynamics of salvation but I knew that He loved me to provide the death of His only Son as payment for my sins. I knew that even as a preschooler I had sinned and that sin separated me forever from God and if I confessed my sin, acknowledged His death for me, and believed that God has raised Him from the dead I would be saved. Now that knowledge has grown and deepened over the years, but I was as saved then as I am now many years later.

My home church was an incubator for my spiritual life. My pastor and the countless missionaries and other godly men and women who passed through our church in Bible and missions conferences were the role models and proclaimers of God's Word that guided my understanding of God, His Word, and the lostness of mankind. So my parents were not at all surprised when at age 8 or 9 I told them that God would send me to the mission field.

And He has - the mission field of school, the mission field of preparation, the mission field of teaching, the mission field of raising a family as the wife of a godly man and as the mother of four children, the mission field of church service...the mission field of whatever He set before us and wherever He called us. All along the way, I questioned if now was the time and He seemed to be saying, "Be faithful in the place I have set you." And so we continued on. We grew content with carrying as many as we could to foreign places to expose them to the heart of God and missions.

Then He began to show, first David and then me, that the direction of the mission field had changed. I must admit that I asked God if He had looked at us lately. We are now in our fifties, grayhaired, and aging and I think He must have laughed.

God continued to speak Joshua 1:9 to David and he showed me God's message - "Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed; for the Lord thy God is with thee whitersoever thou goest." So God has called us, not to ease down in these later years of ministry, but to finish STRONG and head to the hard country being strong, with good courage, without dismay, knowing the He, our Lord, our God, is with us wherever we go.

Years ago, God gave me the example of Abraham's servant when he was sent to find a wife for Issac,. His response to Abraham after finding Rebecca was - "I being in the way, the Lord led me." That has been the way we have lived - being in the way; He has continued to lead each step of the way. Now as the Minister of Next, we close this chapter of ministry as we head into final preparations for foreign service.

Thank you for praying for us. He has provided a home for Floppy, a dear man who needed the companionship she will provide for himself and his ten year old basset who is going blind. And if God is concerned and provided a home for her, shall He not also provide a buyer for our home? God has reminded me lately to pray for the family who will purchase our home. Things must occur in their lives to bring them to this place - may they rest in His leading, just as much as we.

May you and your family celebrate this Christmas season as never before - secure in the gift of salvation that Christ, the new-born King provided for all mankind.

"I will bring the blind by a way they did not know; I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them."
Isaiah 42:16 (NKJV)