A Saturday Story - Update

part four

PART FOUR:

For thirteen years we have seen God provide support for training conferences and mission trips to multiple countries – India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, South Africa, The Philippines, and Madagascar – most multiple times – have been places where we have been able to minister. I look back with some degree of amazement.

The construction work has grown more physically difficult. The desire to continue doing it left me some time back. At the beginning of this summer, I started a job where I was finishing out an attic space and converting it into a craft room. Naturally, it ended up happening in the middle of a heat wave.

I didn’t have any help, which meant I had to carry the 26 sheets of drywall around to the back of the house and up the stairs by myself.  It meant I had to hang them on the ceiling and walls alone. I made some cabinets in my garage that were to be installed in the walls. With every piece of plywood, I added to each cabinet I groaned because I knew I would have to carry every one of them up to that room and install them without help.

I was losing anywhere from four to seven pounds a day in sweat. Every evening, I would rehydrate and recover and get up to do it all over again. I tell you all of this, not for sympathy, but to put into context what happened next.

About the time I finished the attic project, I went by Half Moon Plumbing’s office to pick up a check they had been holding for me. A few weeks earlier, I had done a drywall repair for them, and I had never had the chance to go by and get paid. Normally, I wouldn’t bother the owner, but as I was driving over, I had the thought that I should stick my head in his office and tell him, “Hello….”

Dustin’s office door was open, but he wasn’t there. I glanced across the hallway and saw that Dustin’s wife, Tiffany, was in the operations manager’s office. I walked over and greeted them, not realizing that Dustin was behind the door. He said, “Why won’t you come to work for us?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’ve kind of joked about it before, but we could really use you.”

“Tell me about it.”

Dustin described the role they were looking to fill, what it would require, and what it would pay. The timing couldn’t have been better. I had thought about doing something different and never had any peace about any ideas I came up with. In fact, I had resigned myself to the thought of doing what I was doing for a few more years. It had become a matter of just sucking it up and enduring until I could retire someday in the future. It didn’t sound enjoyable but seemed necessary.

I told Dustin I was interested. We had a more formal interview a few days later. He called me the next evening and said the job was mine if I wanted it. I accepted.

I will still be a part of Equipping Pastors. I’m glad I can continue to be a part of that work and ministry. Monica and I have a trip planned to Madagascar in the fall. I have a new invitation to a country for next year that I was working in for a few years but that ministry was short-circuited by a military coup.

My intention over the past few weeks was to give you an update and a brief history of how we got to where we are today. More than that, I wanted to give thanks to God, Who has always shown us His mercy and grace, Who has led us all the way, and Who has always provided for what we needed, sometimes through freewill gifts of others and sometimes through the sweat and toil of our own hands.

Thanks be to our Lord Jesus Christ.