How We Got There: Part II

If I had to come up with a title for the months between Kansas and England, it would be Consideration, Confirmation and Commitment.

Gerrie returned home from Kansas and for the next several weeks we talked about her experiences, the things she did, the things she felt, and the difference it made in her life. It was obvious that she came back a different person from the one that left for the mission trip. What she experienced, and what I experienced vicariously through her, was something more than what we were currently living through our church life. True, we were very much involved in our church and I feel that we were making a contribution   there. But the Kansas trip and our introduction to Youth With A Mission taught us that there was more that we could be doing and that we were not so old that we couldn’t consider it.

So we began praying and praying a lot. We knew that if going out as missionaries was something we were to do, then two major concerns would have to be dealt with. These were employment and finances. 

The first concern was the easier of the two.  I had already resigned my corporate job and was happily working in the stock room of a local Christian bookstore. Gerrie, on the other hand, was settled in a career with a major non-profit and thought of leaving was a new idea for her. My having already taken the step a few years earlier paved the way, but it was still a hard decision to make. It is scary to go from making a reasonable living to making no living at all, with no sizable savings account to draw from. It took coming to a place in life where feeling called to go out far outweighed the need to stay home. In a short time we had reached a point where it was time to begin downsizing and planning for the next step. This led us to the financial considerations.

I don’t like to talk about money. In fact, I tend to steer clear of any discussions on money, politics and religion. I have my views and leave others to theirs. But, for  this moment I will discuss money.  To serve with Youth With A Mission is to serve as a self-employed, or self-supporting, missionary. You do not get paid. This meant that we had to raise our own support. We would need to share our calling to leave our home, jobs and families with family and friends, and then add, “Say, would you consider supporting financially while we’re away.” This was a foreign concept to some but not to others. To some it seemed absurd while to others it is simply an extension of their faith. We talked  and prayed about it and trusted that if we were hearing God correctly He would make a way for us to go. We came up with an amount we felt we needed to take this new journey in Christ. Without sharing the figure, we simply spoke and wrote to people asking them to think and pray about supporting us.

It didn’t happen overnight, but before we left to begin our training in Europe, we had far exceeded the goal we had set. To us, this was another way God was giving us confirmation! We felt that we were doing what He had called us to for this season in our lives.

We also considered our commitment; we didn’t see this as one to two week or three to six month commitment. It was a lifestyle choice. We intended to leave our home and be gone for quite some time. Early on we hoped and prayed that our desire to serve would lead us to England. But our road would take us first through Switzerland. In Switzerland we enrolled in the Crossroads Discipleship Training School; a discipleship course designed for people 35 years and older.

The school is located in the old Golf Hotel in Chalet a Gobet, north of Lausanne, in the French speaking area of the country. It was the first training location for YWAM founded in 1969. For three months Gerrie and I lived in a very small room on the top floor and attended classes and took meals in the basement. Between the two were between 90 and 100 stair steps. I forget the exact number. In a sense we were getting in shape both spiritually and physically.

The Crossroads school was an exciting and enlightening time for us. Coming from a fairly conservative denominational background, we were exposed to new thoughts, new ways of looking at scripture, and new expressions of worship. These were not contrary to our beliefs but simply areas that were not often explored or indulged. The school lasted 12 weeks and each week focused on a topic promoting spiritual growth while encouraging and challenging us to go deeper in our relationship with God. I like what one YWAM school calls it, “a honeymoon with God.”

From the classroom session we then participated in an outreach. The outreach can be  a whole class or smaller groups and journey to places all over the world. For our outreach, the whole class participated in the Reconciliation Walk. I want to write in more detail about later so I will not say much on this now. I will say that it meant being part of a group that walked over 1,000 miles through Europe, between Dijon, France and Bari, Italy. An incredible experience! 

So back to Consideration, Confirmation and Commitment. It could be summed with the word, time. We needed time. We needed all the time that it took between Gerrie stepping off the bus from Kansas in the summer of ’95 to us arriving in Bari on a windy 24 November 1996. We needed time to consider what life could be, apart from what we had known life to be. We needed time to completely press into God, to discover and have Him confirm what He wanted us to do for Him with our lives. We needed the time to go from hearing, to stepping out in faith to see what God can do. We needed the time to hear Him speak to us, to expand our view of the world, to encourage us, and to walk with us in our commitment to serve.  

We needed the time to begin an incredible journey! Next week the journey leads us to a  week in Le Gault la Foret, France and a day in Paris. Then we cross the English Channel to begin life our life in England.

Greg

An aside:  I can not begin to tell you how much grief we took for making Switzerland our first stop. Honestly, it was a compromise location. We both had different first and second choices on where we wanted to take our school. Switzerland was the third choice for  each of us. We simply learned to make fun of the situation about how we were roughing it and so forth. People understood, I think.