Our First Ohio Update!

Sadly, it’s taken over a month to sit down and write an official update since we moved on June 21^st. At the time, there wasn’t much to say other than – we moved! We slowly got our house set up (ahem…a few boxes linger) and found our way around the countryside and towns nearby. There is not a Target or Costco to be found but I think we will find our way in this strange new land!

::Support & MMS Update::
As of this morning (7/27/15) we are down to needing just $365/month. 

This is H U G E. 

Just two weeks ago it was $750 so God is truly supplying our needs! There are seven new families joining us as ministry partners and we praise God for how he raises up his people to make the work of missions happen! What a gift to be surrounded in spirit by folks who are trusting us to do God’s work. 

We have been sending emails that highlight different projects in the hangar at MMS so that you can see some more specific ways that MMS partners with mission aviation organizations. Those email features will be posted here on the blog soon, so you can check them out!

We will be part of the MMS crew coming to the Smoketown Mission Aviation Festival in Smoketown, PA on August 15-16. Come see us there! It is a really fun family day and a great, hands-on way to learn more about missionary aviation.

::Communications Update::
We are online infrequently because we don’t have internet at our house, other than a wireless hotspot. We will continue to communicate primarily through email so make sure you are getting our emails! They come through MailChimp from teamgudeman@gmail.com so if you don’t see them in your main inbox, check your promotions folder and drag us to your inbox! We will also be blogging more regularly. Facebook is super unreliable because it doesn’t show you all of our posts. An exciting post that I put up yesterday was only shown to 59 people :-( Boo facebook. 

Email us :: teamgudeman@gmail.com
Snail mail us :: 11699 Blue Ridge Rd, Newcomerstown, OH 43832
Call us :: (A)814.404.1203 / (T)814.404.9764

::Family Update::
Overall, we are adjusting well. The house we rent is truly a gift and we feel quite at home here. We have visited Fresno Bible Church for the past 3 weeks and have been blessed by sound biblical teaching and a rambunctious group of kiddos! Micah’s Sunday school class is full of 4yo boys! Last week, Jess Grote (a fellow MMS mom) hosted God’s Girl Glamour Day for the little girls. They got pampered with hairdos and painted nails! At each room they went to, they met a woman from the Bible who had a characteristic besides outward beauty that made her beautiful. The girls learned that God looks at the beauty on the inside. What a treat and such good lessons for the girls!

During our second week in OH, the kids attended Everest VBS. We have been hanging out with other MMS families over the past few weeks. On the 4^th of July we camped out at the MMS hangar for a BBQ and fireworks. This week the kids are participating in a cooking camp at a local farmers market. Each day they prepare and eat some delicious food!  

Here are a few scenes from the past few weeks. Enjoy!

The pond near our yard...great for finding little creatures!

Digging our garden and finding critters!

Micah getting a tractor ride with Mr. Miller, our next-door-farmer

Grace's turn in the tractor

The newest renters at our house -- chirp chirp chirp!

JUMPING!

Fun day at the Columbus Zoo

Corners

I've never liked corners. I hate the corners of pillow cases when I am trying to fold them. I have the round, elusive corners of fitted sheets. I am not a fan of being scared -- think walking around a corner and being scared. Or extremely loud cracks of thunder. I might be the only person on the planet that doesn't want a corner piece of cake.

Nope.

And I definitely do not like the dusty, crusty corners in our house that need to be cleaned as we pack to move in a couple weeks. I am aware that we live in mild filth. For me, cleanliness of NOT next to godliness. Matching socks, twice weekly baths, and buffalo wings are next to godliness. Seriously, though, not the wings. If godliness is prayer and studying the Scriptures and trying to be like Christ, then being with my family and sleeping are as close to godliness as it get for me right now.

I was challenged on Wednesday evening in a lesson on prayer that even those of us with young kids (read: people for whom personal time is a rare, nebulous, highly prized thing) need to carve out time for prayer. In this particular class we read many passages where Jesus prayed with or for or on behalf of people. If Christ can make a prayer his final, dying words, perhaps I can find some time while I am LIVING to be more consistent in prayer.

Just for the record, I do pray. Often. For my sanity. And lots of other things, too! It's just that I don't have a specific time set aside where I enter prepared to focus and listen and speak. I pray on the fly for things that are urgent or for the random thoughts that pop into my head. We pray while we are doing support raising work. We pray with the kids when they are upset or anxious. I pray at small group or with someone having a hard time. I pray for those grieving.

So, I believe I was writing about cleaning and corners which somehow led to godliness and prayer. Makes perfect sense.

The thing about corners is that they can be dark, sharp, hidden and easy to avoid. Like the parts of our spiritual life we'd rather ignore.

My prayer life is a dusty corner I'd rather not deal with right now. I have a kid who wakes us between 6:00-6:30 in the morning. Right when I am entering REM sleep. EVERY. DAY.

Early morning doesn't seem like an option. But maybe it is.

Then the day begins. And both of my kids like to interact with us all day long. Weird. Wonderful. But I haven't figured out how to create/maintain/enforce solitude.

Our move is a transition ripe with possibility, though. New habits. New routines. New, new, new. I have some ideas for creating a space for solitude in my day. The challenge is doing that now, before we move. For the next two weeks I will venture into this dusty corner and see what the Lord will do. I make no promises. I'll keep doing my crazy-mom-life praying but I am seeking each day to pray on purpose. 

Preparations continue!

This update is long overdue! Things are moving so fast and we barely have time to sit and write about it! We continue to feel peace in the midst of chaos and an increased focus on our life in missions. Our emotions are like pinball machines! One minute we are thinking about how to arrange the furniture in our new house and the next we are mourning our favorite people, places, and things here in Harrisburg. Our hope is secure in Christ, though, despite all the changes in this life! 

The kids finished school at the end of May! They both loved school this year! Here are some last day of school photos...

 

 

::God provided a place to live in Ohio::
We are renting a renovated farmhouse that is just perfect for us and more than we could have imagined from a rental house. We’ll be living out in the country with lots of green space and places to roam. 

::Move date::
June 20 is our pack-and-move day! It is fast approaching and packing is in full swing. We welcome volunteers to help load the moving truck. We are pretty organized with packing and staging our stuff so loading usually goes quickly. We’ve done this a few times in the past 12 years so we are getting pretty good!
Help load the moving truck :: Saturday, June 20 @ 8:15am

OC Baptist Church (MD)

:Support raising blitz::
We are amazed at how God is providing the support we need to begin serving at MMS. In recent weeks we've been to Ocean City Baptist Church (MD), Heidelberg UCC (near Philly), Pleasant Gap UMC, and we are headed to Kutztown BFC this Sunday. 

Ocean City Baptist Church and Pleasant Gap UMC are the churces we grew up attending. It was great to return to those places and share where the Lord is leading in our lives. Sort of like coming full circle. There were many familiar faces but also lots of new folks which reminds us that those are vibrant faith communities where people are hearing and responding to the gospel.

Unofficially, we need about $900 in monthly support to meet our goal. I say “unofficially” because just this weekend we visited friends and a church where several folks have committed to monthly support. We are also waiting for a few other folks to formalize their support by contacting MMS. 

GBFC yard sale!

We are making a lot of progress with our OUT-GOING expenses, too! So far, over $10,000 has been contributed or raised! We’ve received many donations from individuals towards these expenses, our church is contributing May and June’s benevolence offering, and we just had a yard sale at our church that raised over $700! Praise the Lord!

::Commissioning Service::
On Sunday May 31 our church, Grace Bible Fellowship Church, and our denomination, the Bible Fellowship Church, commissioned us as full-service missionaries. We were overwhelmed with emotion and gratitude to have such support and encouragement from our home church. We were also surprised by several out of towns friends! Many thanks to Rev. Josh Miller and Duane Moyer, president of the BFC Board of Missions, for leading the service. Many from our congregation contributed to the service and provided a wonderful reception afterwards. Thanks to all!!!

Hey! Harrisburg friends – We will happily take newspaper or boxes (in good condition) off your hands. Let us know and we’ll arrange to get them from you!

Already{but not yet}

We’re ready. But we’re not.

We’re gone. But we’re not.

We’re there. But we’re not.

We are all living in the already{but not yet}. A life of faith in Christ is defined by the already{but not yet}. Our hope is secure. The battle with sin and evil is won. We know how the story ends. But we are still dwelling here in our earthly life living out the calling God has for our lives. That is our meta-narrative. Our big story. That’s what things look like when we sweep in broad strokes.

Our micro-universe is mirroring this big story. Andy & I are living with the already{but not yet}. We know the call that God has for us. We don’t always understand the details but we are confident in His call. We know we are serving at MMS Aviation. We know that God has and will continue to provide what we need to serve. Just yesterday we found a house – we have a place to live!

That is the already.

We still need $1000 in monthly support.

That is the {but not yet}.

The beauty of our meta-narrative – the big picture that tells our faith story – is that it is true for our individual stories, too. When we are in the center of God’s will, we know how the story ends. The Lord humbles us along the way, reminding us who is the author of this story. But that never changes the ending. 

Notice how there is no space between the already and the {but not yet}? If you are a grammar nerd like me, this probably drives you nuts. It is annoying and sort of uncomfortable to have no space where space belongs. That's how life can be in the already{but not yet}. 

Uncomfortable. Not the way it should be. We want our life to be comfortable and follow the rules, but you've read the Bible. You know. You know Christ doesn't always leave space where space belongs. He invades our lives and makes us live in an uncomfortable, rule-breaking, space-less place. Welcome to the already{but not yet}. Get uncomfortable.

In Philippians 1:6, despite the uncomfortable space-less life of following Christ, Paul declares, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

The work that God has begun in us – and you! – will be completed. Our support will come in and we’ll being serving at MMS! We will labor and work and call and visit but it is God who completes the work.

The already{but not yet}  house we are going to rent in Ohio!

………………………………………………....…………………...……………..………….

We just made a trip to OH earlier this week and these thoughts bounced around in my head the whole time we were there. We are making plans for a part of our life that is already{but not yet}. To follow the biblical narrative is to live by steps of faith. No prophet, disciple, or apostle lived with the knowledge about each specific step in their journey but they did live with holy anticipation of how the story ends.

On Prayer

Two people in the past two days helped bring home a lesson we didn’t even know we needed to learn.

Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

We didn’t know we were dull – isn’t that usually the case! We pray. We aren’t struggling with praying. There are plenty of struggles over here but, maybe it’s just our current situation, but praying seems to be fairly easy right now.

Prayer works.
It encourages.
It sustains.
Prayer draws us closer to God’s heart.

But we were just thinking about OUR prayers. We ask people to support us in prayer and we ask them to pray for our specific needs. Somewhere along the way, though, we unconsciously began to assume it would be OUR prayers that God was answering. We forgot the power of other people’s prayers. It wasn’t an issue of doubting that anyone else’s prayers were being heard; it was a spiritual blind spot. You don’t doubt that a car could be in the lane beside you but it if you can’t see them in your mirror – it’s a blind spot.

We have the self-centered notion that it will be OUR prayers that bring new supporters. We will pray and God will work. And that’s true. We have a prayer list, we pray daily, we are specific, we are general, we give thanks, we ask for things to happen, we praise what God is doing. Notice all the WEs? Without even realizing it, our perception of prayer became inward focused. It wasn’t even something we realized was happening. Blind spot.

Now, in the grand scheme of mistakes to be made, this is probably not among the worst! Often times our faith doesn’t make an abrupt U-turn. It is a gradual shifting to the side…we are still headed in the right direction but we’ve drifted to the next lane. It’s why we do faith together. It’s why we talk to other believers. It’s why we sit under the teaching of Scripture. So we can bring back into focus the areas that have gotten blurry. For us, this wasn’t so much dealing with a significant sin issue; it was sharpening our perception of prayer. There are ALWAYS areas of our faith that need to be sharpened.

Our inadvertently egotistical ideas about prayer crumbled when two people said it was their initial commitment to PRAY FOR US that led them to becoming monthly supporters. God used THEIR prayer life to grow their love for missions and the lost. Their love for us and our family grew as they prayed for us and our journey to MMS. Through their commitment to supporting us through prayer, the Lord led them to give.

IRON SHARPENING IRON. God used their testimony of prayer to sharpen our own view of prayer. We won’t stop praying but we are so humbled and encouraged by how God used someone else’s faith to strengthen us and the work of His kingdom.