Side Note

It's so close we can almost taste it. It's like the coffee is brewing: you can smell it, you can hear it dripping into the pot, but it hasn't signaled it's final beep yet, letting you know you can fill up your empty cup and drink! (Yes, coffee is in most of my analogies). 


We're almost done reading Funding Your Ministry, which has really changed our attitudes and perspectives on support raising. It's still a big responsibility, but now it seems like a natural part of what we have to go through instead of a daunting and impossible task designed only to make us lose hope. In April, Whitney and I will be going to a support raising conference to learn more about both the ministry and biblical aspects of it. We know God is faithful and since he's called us into this, he'll provide a way for it all to happen.


Actually, we've already seen God doing some crazy things over the past two weeks. I'll tell you one example. As most of you know, we both work as servers at a restaurant. One night, Whitney was serving a guest who had sat in her section before. As they talked a little bit, discussion led to what Whitney and I are planning to do in Mexico. It turns out he's a pastor in the area too, and offered to pray for our journey for us. They exchanged contact information and the night continued as normal.


Two days later, I was serving during the lunch shift, and he happened to sit in my section. However, I wasn't there the night Whitney talked to him so I didn't even know what he looked like. Towards the end of his meal, he asked me a little bit about my life and plans. In about forty-five seconds, he put it together that he talked to my wife two days earlier. It was definitely a God-aligned meeting, because he originally was seated in another server's section, but had to move. Not only did I happen to be serving that morning, but he managed to sit in my section without even knowing it, not even realizing who I was until the end of the meal.


After that, he made it clear that his church is in its growing stages and doesn't have a missions department developed yet. He asked me to pray about the possibility of their financial support of us in Mexico. I was blown away.


A man I had never met just asked me to pray, as he prayed also, about the potential of a financial partnership in this adventure God has been weaving together for us in Mexico with Back2Back. Instances like this one make it drastically clear that people aren't simply supporting "Nathan and Whitney," but God's bigger kingdom picture of grace and redemption.

He loves us with a furious love that is so passionate that no one or thing can separate us from it.