The Road to Missions #3

When I mentioned that we put missions "on the back burner" in the last post, that's essentially what we did. After we got married the summer of 08, we slowly and subtly got sucked into the American dream.

1. My change in degree

2. House

3. Dog

I changed my major from English with missions to English Education. At the time, I thought it was a wise decision (and was told so by a number of well-meaning Christians) because it was a more safe career path. What can you do with a degree in English and missions? Not much... When you tell people that your major is English and your minor is missions, they ask, "So what are you going to do with that?" When you tell someone that your major is English Education, they say, "Oh, so you're going to be an English teacher!" To be honest, I liked not getting the questions. And I really did like (some of) my education classes.

We were renting a house at the beginning of our marriage. We learned about a neat program where you could build a house for a fairly decent price. We were sucked in. We contacted the company and went to a number of meetings. In fact, we had the blue prints for our house drawn up and a lot chosen. I had planned our life- where we would live, where I would teach, and when we would have children. We were still considering missions at this point, but we figured when we decided to go into missions, we would find someone to rent our house to. (below is the house we rented)

We got a dog (we don't regret this decision, but buying a dog a few years before you plan to go into missions isn't really thinking on God's terms).

Obviously, none of these things are wrong in and of themselves. The problem was that we knew God wanted to use us in missions, but yet we were chasing things that would prohibit us from entering into missions.

As I mentioned in a previous post, our one-year anniversary trip began the change. I was reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan, and suddenly felt convicted about building a house. Chan shares a story about how he and his wife chose to sell their house for a smaller house and how many, well-meaning Christians encouraged him against doing so for various reasons

(they still sold their house and were able to give more money away as a result). As he shared his story, I realized that I felt like I had a right to own a house. And I didn't. I knew, while reading, that by building a house, Ben and I would be making a decision that would make it difficult to go into missions... because of money but also because of comfort. We would become comfortable. I debated about whether I should say something to Ben or let God show him what he had shown me. There were times in the past where I knew it was better to let God work on Ben's heart without me saying anything... but I knew this wasn't one of those times. So I very nervously told Ben about what God had convicted me in. He took it hard... for the first hour. But by the next morning he told me that he agreed (I love that he adjusts well to change), and we e-mailed the contractor to stop any further process on our house (which is somewhat of a story itself, and God totally had his hand in it).

(for our one year anniversary we went to Orlando, FL)

While we knew that not building was the right thing to do, we struggled at first to understand why God had brought us so far in the house-planning process. We had been talking with the company for about 4 months and literally were one step away from breaking ground. We had both prayed about the decision to build often. So why hadn't God made it clear that we shouldn't build until now? We eventually realized the problem. We wanted God to pound us over the head and yell at us in a clear voice, "NO! DON'T BUILD THE HOUSE!" In essence, if we had been honest with ourselves and with God all along, we would have known that we shouldn't have built.

We knew God wanted us to go into missions.

We have the Word of God in front of us, and know that owning a house is not necessary... but we just really fell in love with the idea and became blinded.

We knew that building a house would hinder us from going into missions, at least for a while.

But we just thought we could change our plans. We could build, teach, have a dog, work construction, and THEN go into missions. But the problem is that that's not what God was calling us to do. He didn't want our later years, after we had enjoyed the things we wanted to. He wanted us to be cheerful givers. While this passage (2 Cor. 9) is talking about money, God also wants us to be cheerful and willing givers of our time and lives, and we were being reluctant.

Still more to come....

[I'll share more about the decision I made about my degree of study in the next post]

The Road to Missions #2

At this point (2006) in our mission journey, missions was exciting and still in the very distant future. Today (2012), going into missions still excites us, but in a more realistic way (we know it's not all fun and easy, we know it involves living very far from loved ones, we know it means a different lifestyle for our children), and it doesn't seem like such a thing of the distant future anymore.

In the year after the summer where God first caught our attention for missions, lots happened. I started my first year of college, Ben worked construction full-time, we got engaged (March 24, 07), and that following summer, I helped lead a mission trip with Teen Missions again, this time to Wales.

I chose Grace College. God blessed me with a full-ride scholarship that allowed me to attend Grace. I had an English major and missions minor. The only missions class I took my first year was Intro to Missions, but Dr. Peugh shared amazing stories from his experience in missions and taught me many basics about missions and about the need in the world. He has a heart for God and for the proclamation of the gospel like few people I know, and I was thankful to sit under his teaching.

Also at Grace, I met my best friend Abbey who became an accountability partner in many areas in my life, including my relationship with Ben, my attitude, my time with God, and my heart for missions. She has never been afraid to ask the hard questions, and I'm thankful for her.

After my first year of college, I packed up and headed away for 2 months again, this time to Wales. I had decided that going as an assistant leader would be a good idea. At this point, Ben and I were thinking that I would finish my time at Grace College, and then we would join staff with Teen Missions in Florida. Teen Missions is a great organization, and Ben and I are forever grateful to them for the way God worked through them to catch our hearts. But our motives for being interested in serving with them weren't right. Teen Missions was fun to us. If we worked in Florida, we got the best of both worlds. We got to live in America, in a sunny state and near the beach, we got to lead fun trips overseas every summer, and we got to do missions all at the same time. (Please hear me out, I know there are many people who are missionaries who work at headquarters in the U.S. and have the right heart and are exactly where God wants them. We were not those people however. I also know that our idea of working in the U.S. was that it would be easy and I realize that that is a false view...). We meant well, but God just had a lot of maturing to do in our hearts still to help us truly understand the gospel and the need in the world and where we fit into that.

So because we were strongly considering joining staff with Teen Missions, we thought it would be a good idea for me to be an assistant leader on a team. My mom's family from way, way long ago came to America from Wales, so Wales has always interested me. Our team worked at an organization in Wales called Save the Family. This organization helps those who are addicts and homeless to get back on their feet again. My job, as a leader, was to take care of the team of 27 teens (!!!!!) along with three other leaders. I cooked, I supervised projects, I had heart-to-hearts, I stayed up late, I woke up early, I created activities, etc. It was a tiring summer, but one in which I learned a lot. I learned about leadership, I learned about making hard choices that involved real lives, I learned to cook (for a lot of people!), I learned to be flexible (this one was hard for me... James 4:13-16 was pointed out to me by one of the team members and has become somewhat of a life verse for me), I learned to love those who are hard to love (do you want to know how many hours I spent picking lice out of a team member's hair?), I learned that missions is tough, I learned that it's impossible to make everyone happy, I learned that "it's not about ME!", I learned how to survive off of little sleep, and I know I learned many other things as well.
(lady leaders)
I came back from this summer, still as sure as ever that God wanted us in missions. However, it was a much different summer than the one I had in Africa. We still did not know where God wanted us in missions. We still planned for me to finish college and then to head to Teen Missions. But at this point, we had a wedding to plan which meant no mission trips were planned for the next summer. Missions was put on hold for now. Truly, we kind of placed it on the back burner at this point.

The Road to Missions #1

I realized some of you may be interested in knowing how we got to where we are today... as in, training for missions and planning on heading to the mission field. Obviously God has led us here, but we believe he has used certain people and events in our lives to guide us here. So I'm going to do a few blog posts (since it won't all fit in one) about how God guided us to where we are today... The Road to Missions :)

First, I think it's important to emphasize that we had people in our lives praying for us. Both of us have believing parents who prayed for us as we grew up. Specifically, my (Alisha's) Grama prayed for me, and then for both together, that God would use us in missions. She may have nagged sometimes too. Specifically, I remember a time when we were at their church when we were in high school and an NTM missionary couple was there, and Grama talked about how cool it would be if one of her grandkids went into missions and how cool this missionary couple was and how cool tribal missions work is... get my point? She may have nagged a little. She has a great heart for missions though, and it didn't go unnoticed by me.

So ultimately, God has been working in our hearts since we were born to interest our hearts in his greater mission- taking the gospel to the world- but he really first grabbed our attention in the summer of 2006. We had both just graduated from high school and had decided to go on a mission trip that would take up most of our summer. We went with the same organization: Teen Missions International. Ben went to Siberia (he was originally supposed to go to Cameroon, but that's another story in itself) and I went to Malawi, Africa. We were together during the two weeks of orientation, but then we parted ways...

In Sibera, Ben was one of the assistant leaders. He helped lead the team in construction projects, such as building an obstacle course for the missions program they were beginning there and working on a church. He learned a lot about being a leader, working in another country (it was hard to submit to some of the cultural differences), and staying warm in a cold climate...

Meanwhile, I was in Malawi. It was the best summer of my life. I saw a different part of the world that I had only heard about before. Now it was right before my eyes. I saw the joy the people had in simple things. I learned to live simply as well. My team was a foot washing team, so we took shoes and socks to the orphans and washed their feet, which were often blistered and sometimes infected (do you know how much I hate even CLEAN feet?). While there, we also did other work projects, helped share the gospel alongside the missionaries who lived there, sang songs in Chewa with the orphans (amazing!), learned to appreciate squatty potties, and I learned that there was a lot of need in the world, both spiritually and physically...

I loved every moment of my summer. Ben loved most moments. But when we came home, God had worked in both of our lives. I felt certain that I was supposed to go into missions after that summer. I even made a commitment at debrief. I was afraid to tell Ben because I didn't know what it would mean for us. I had decided I wasn't going to say anything until I let him share about his summer though. So, one afternoon we sat on the deck of his parents' pool, sharing about our summers, and Ben told me that he thought that he was supposed to go into missions. I don't remember if I cried or squealed, but I know I felt like doing both inside. It was so incredible that God had led us in the same direction that summer, living in opposite parts of the world. Of course, at that point we didn't know what "missions" looked like. We thought perhaps we would go join staff at Teen Missions. We really weren't sure, but it was the beginning of our vulnerability. We both had agreed that God was calling us to something greater.

One of my great professors, Dr. Peugh, at Grace College said something one time that has always stuck with me. "God doesn't show us everything at once. He knows we wouldn't be ready for it. Instead, he takes us in steps and slowly shows us his plan for our lives." I think this is so true. We didn't know everything at this point. God was just beginning to reveal his plan for us. He was taking us on our first step.

Living the Student Life

Ben and I are students here at New Tribes Bible Institute. Since we've been here for a year and a half, we almost forget sometimes that our life isn't exactly the normal life for a married 23 year-old couple. So what does our life look like?

8am- Wake Up/Class for Ben (Usually Ben wakes up at 7:55am to get to his 8am class and Alisha wakes up at 8 when Sophie wakes up for the day)

9am- Chapel (Tues are Married Ladies and Married Men split chapel, Thurs are Marrieds combined chapel, and Mon, Wed, and Fri are chapels with different speakers such as missionaries (our favorite!), our teachers, pastors, or evangelism or worship)

10am- Class

11am- Class

We have about 70 students in our class. There are 7 married couples, and the rest are single students.

This is our classroom:

In the afternoon, we do random things. Alisha stays with Sophie, occasionally hanging out with friends, meeting with a staff lady, or running errands. Ben sometimes has elective classes, sometimes works, sometimes naps, and sometimes hangs out with friends or a staff member among other things. And of course, we both have homework. We live in a big building that has both our apartment and our classes in. We live on the floor with other marrieds and single guys while the floor above us has more marrieds and single ladies. It's been nice living so close to friends, although, it's also hard to hide much with the type of environment we live in, so we know we are constantly being kept accountable :)

Here are some pictures of us hanging out with friends at school...

Our 2nd floor hall dinner (we did 2 of these last semester)...
Our good friends Jason and Laken who live just a few doors down...
Our good friend Jessica who is marrying our good friend Mike this summer...
And Sophie has good friends too...

Sophie especially loves hanging out with Asa, a boy who lives across the hall from us. And now that she can crawl, he seems to be a little more interested in her too. They both enjoy crawling to each other's apartments and playing with each other's toys.

We hope this helps you to have a better idea of what our life as a student looks like.

Where We Thought We'd Be Today

If you had asked us 3 years ago where we thought we'd be today, this is how we would have answered...

We'd be living in a nice house in a nice neighborhood (we actually had signed a contract to build a house very similar to this one before God caught our attention and we headed on the path we're on now) ...

Ben would be working construction...
Alisha would be teaching English...
And we would have the cutest dog in the world (this was our dog Jack who got hit by a car and killed 2 summers ago :( )...

We had always been considering missions but didn't know where we would go or with whom, so we figured we would keep going down the "American Dream" path until we knew. Then God used several things to stop this path.

*******

Francis Chan's Crazy Love. We read it on our 1 year anniversary trip to Florida and were convicted in our pursuit of the American dream and what we thought were our "rights" as an American Christian (i.e. owning a house).

Chris and Evie Jones who were in training with New Tribes Mission (they are now in Papua New Guinea) came and talked to our small group. We were intrigued, so we had them over for dinner and learned more...

And of course, the Bible and prayer...

Through these things, God opened our eyes to the need in the world and our mediocre attitude to it. We realized that we were expecting God to just throw missions in our laps... and truly, we were waiting for that clear, you'd-have-to-be-deaf-blind-and-dumb-to-miss-it kind of calling before making any big steps toward missions We failed to recognize that God already MADE that clear calling in the Bible when he said "Go into all nations." We didn't need to WAIT for one. We also realized that we just needed to take it one step at a time. We didn't need to have our entire life planned out before us. And so we took the first step.

*******

Alisha graduated from Grace College, we sold some things and packed up and moved to New Tribes Bible Institute in Jackson, MI. So now, this is our house (our apartment itself is 730ish sq. feet so a bit smaller than the house we planned to build ;) ... but hey, we have a gym and weight room and cafeteria and library all in our extended house, so we can't complain). We are so thankful for the Bible training we have been receiving here...
Ben works at Red Lobster...
We are preparing to take the gospel to those who have never heard it...
And we have a sweet baby girl who has brightened up our lives...

Our family of 3...

To be honest, we still grieve the loss of the house we were going to build. It's hard to give up materialism. We still desire it, even though we have peace about giving it up in order to follow God's plan for us. We miss other things too. We wish we could have another dog but know that a dog doesn't fit in our life right now since we plan to head overseas. Ben greatly misses working construction, but maybe he'll get to do that within missions. And once we move overseas, we know we will miss our family and friends greatly. Following God's calling isn't always easy, but we know it's rewarding. Please pray with us as we follow Him, and pray that we would be strong when giving up our desires is hard. Thank you!! Your prayers mean so much to us.

What Will 2012 Look Like For the Millers?

2012 has arrived and is already in full swing! Many of you know that we are entering our final semester at New Tribes Bible Institute, and we will finish in May, so you may wonder what our plans are for after graduation. We have come to accept that all plans are tentative as God's plan is ultimate, but our tentative plans are as follows:

Jan-May 2012 --> Final semester at NTBI

March 2012 --> All 3 of us Millers will celebrate birthdays, Sophie's being most exciting, of course

May 2012 --> Move to the Warsaw/Winona Lake area (by the way, we'll be looking for a place to live - let us know if you know of anywhere on the cheaper end!)

May-December 2012 --> Ben will work, we will (excitedly!) be back at our church, CCC, and hope to plug in big time, Alisha will be a mommy, we will spend lots of time with many friends who we've missed these past couple of years, we will spend time with family, and we will prepare for our next step of training

January 2013 --> Lord willing, we will head to the next step of training, the Missionary Training Center (MTC), in Missouri ... this is a 1 year-2.5 year program depending what we study

Thank you for investing in our lives as we prepare for heading to missions!

And since no blog post is complete without pictures, here are some completely unrelated pictures...

We started 2012 off by attending Kyle and Lindsi Jones' wedding! These are friends of ours who attended NTBI last year, and Kyle's brother and wife are our dear friends who first told us all about NTBI and NTM (who are now in Papua New Guinea)

And Sophie is now 9 months!

Christmas Photo Blast

We had a wonderful Christmas, celebrating in both Indiana and in Vermont with family. It was Alisha's first time to Vermont in 7 years and Ben's and Sophie's first time ever to Vermont. Here are some fun Christmas pictures!

Sophie and Brayden with Great Grandpa Miller and Anita




Jenks Family (my mom's side of the family- all of us together except for my dad!)
Cousins :)