In the Mail

Yeehaw!  I put the visa application in the mail today!  From here it will take 6-10 business days to reach Tonga.  Once it gets there we will wire $805 to Kamu.  Then Kamu will  fill out a paper and bring it all to the immigration office.   From there we WAIT.
And we're used to that.
It took 3-4 years to even get to this point.  But we've learned a lot in the mean time.  About ourselves, about each other. About Yahweh.  Feels like we've come up with a lot of questions and not many answers.
But a few truths are becoming more solid.  (they're very basic, but difficult to master)
faith

•  faith that God is good, and His goodness might look a little different than what i consider good.
•  do I even have it?  Because most of my life i've just talked.  That's part of the reason we're going to               Tonga.  We're so weak.  Faith needs to be tested in the fire.  I don't want to live my whole life thinking i have faith and find out i never did .  I'm also scared to find out.
• faith that we'll even have $805 to send for the visa application fee!

love

• If we don't have it we are nothing.  And i mean Jesus's love.  Some days i can barely muster up the motivation to show love to my family.  How do i plan on loving and serving people i don't even know?  It has to be supernatural.  I'm not naturally sweet.
• Because Jesus commanded it.  Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself.  Because Jesus showed the greatest love.  Any amount of love we show is just a drop compared to the ocean of Yahweh's love.

giving

• When we give we're so much like Jesus.  Giving is so essential.  And it definitely reveals a lot in our hearts.  I feel the battle a lot.  Putting the needs of others before myself does not come -once again-naturally.  Chris sometimes drives me crazy with how much he gives! 
• I want to be a giving person, i like stuff to.  And the way I see it is my love of stuff sure can get in the way of giving.  Jesus gave up His rights, His stuff, His glory.  His followers in the book of Acts didn't see their property as their own.  They sold it to give to others who needed it.  It's hard get that through my head.  

endurance

• "You want to go to Tonga because God told you?  That's so irresponsible. You have kids."  "You're not going through a mission board and going from church to church to raise support? Why would you  do that?"  "Sounds like you're having childhood fantasies."  Everybody gets criticized, i know that.  But it's still painful.  To keep saying every year, "hopefully we'll be going this spring!" It stinks to look like a fool.  To feel like everyone thinks you're a joke.  That no one takes you seriously.  We've heard it straight from people and behind our backs.  We've questioned ourselves, "are we doing the right thing?  Did God really tell us to do this?  Are we following through just so we can throw it in all the doubter's faces?"  But, this IS what God wants from us, serving others is right, and even if this process takes years longer we have to keep pursuing it.  And if at anytime God says "no", we'll stop and be frustrated, but happy we learned so much.

grace

• I'm so thankful for God's grace covering my non-missionary qualities.  I'm not a good person. Don't have a bubbly personality. Selfish to the core.  Filled with anger, resentment, bitterness, and criticism.   Oh, and i yell at my kids to.  I fear even writing this people will see my hypocrisy.  It's their, trust me. I'm extremely faulty and i'm so sorry i'm not more like Jesus.   But God is full of so much grace and he's changing me slowly. Slowly finding out grace is enough.