The Road to Missions #4 "Flashback"

I ended in the last post saying that in May of 2009 we decided not to build a house... or buy one of any kind. We decided that God had been leading our hearts to missions, and we needed to pursue what that meant very seriously. We began praying at that point, honestly having no clue where we were going to go or with which organization.

In August, Chris and Evie Jones came to our small group to share with us about their time at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) which is the second phase of training with New Tribes (after NTBI). They had visited our group before, so it was mostly an update kind of get-together. I looked forward to seeing them, but that was all. God had other plans though. When they shared that night, God grabbed my heart. I listened intently, and afterwards I told Ben that I thought we should have them over to ask them more personal questions about New Tribes.

We had them over for lunch a few days later, and we had a great time learning more about New Tribes. After they left, we talked about it. Ben was nervous about the Bible School part. He generally hates school. But we both agreed that New Tribes sounded like an amazing organization that was doing great things for the Lord. We loved the idea of going to people groups who had never, ever heard the gospel of Christ. It felt right, and NTM was definitely answering the Great Commission. We prayed about it for a few days, but I think we knew all along, ever since Chris and Evie talked to us, that this is the path we were going to pursue.

At this point, I decided to drop the education part of my major. It would take another year and a half to finish with the ed. part of my degree because I would have to student teach. If I just finished with English and missions, I could finish in a year, and then we could go to NTBI in the Fall of 2010. It was a hard decision for me to make, but I realized that I was holding onto the education part of my degree for the safety of it as well as the comfort in it. Letting go of the education part of my degree was a step toward trusting God in a way that was difficult for me.

We are so thankful for Chris and Evie Jones and the way God used them in our life to help us start down this path!

The crazy thing is that, after Chris and Evie came to talk to us, I realized how many times New Tribes had been in my past without me noticing it. You know how sometimes in movies (especially crime solving ones), at the end, the main character solves a problem and then flashbacks through a bunch of different moments in the movie that helped prove the solution... as in, he puts all of the pieces together finally. This is what I felt like happened when we decided we would attend New Tribes Bible Institute.

So, my flashback moments were:

-- Chris and Evie had came to our small group before and shared about NTM and MTC, but nothing stuck out to us that time... they were just missionaries sharing what they were doing.

-- I actually met Chris for the first time in the weight room at Grace College during my freshman year of college. He shared some about New Tribes with me at that point which I vaguely remember. I saw his wife, Evie, a few days later in the dining hall and thought she was beautiful

-- I worked in the admissions office with Lee-Ann McKay at Grace College, and I particularly remember her talking about her time as an MK. She was an NTM missionary kid.

-- Ben and I were playing games with friends of mine (Ryan and Julene) from college, and Ryan's parents had Gracia Burnham's book and was talking about her story and New Tribes.

-- On family vacation, Ben saw the Awayo movie about New Tribes with his family.

-- My cousin Jason Walton is an NTM missionary in Paraguay. I remember when he was at Bible School (the same one I'm at now), and he shared with us at Thanksgiving about school.

-- My grandparents love NTM, and one time when Ben and I were at their church, they had an NTM missionary couple there who worked in aviation. Grama told me she thought it would be awesome if we did something like this (this was probably in 2004)

The thing about all of these flashback moments is that none of these moments seemed particularly important at the time. None of them stuck out to me when they happened. Which is a reminder that God has his own timing. I think God used all of these moments in our lives but was waiting to bring any action out of them until his timing when he knew Ben and I were ready.

Here we are playing rock band with our Life Group when Chris and Evie were visiting.

Speaking of our Life Group, we are so thankful for their involvement in our lives! The group has changed quite a bit over the years we were in it, so this is only a part of the awesome group of people that have impacted our lives. We are especially thankful to Josh and Janelle, our Life Group leaders, who faithfully led the group and strongly encouraged us and impacted our lives.
Here is a picture of Evie and Lee-Ann. Both ladies have been so encouraging to Ben and I before and during our time at NTBI.

I have one more blog post to add to this series. Thanks to those who have been following! It's been good to reflect on this journey that God is taking us on.