The Difficulty of Releasing

Over the past couple of years the life lesson on the mission field is the need to train up new leaders and trust them.  We have learned that for this to be truly effective it must start early on in the process.  Now this may not be the norm everywhere but in our context allowing ourselves to shrink back into the background and see God pour Himself into the new leaders is the best way to go.  We don’t practice a sink or swim type leadership but we will always give the new leaders a place to begin to exercise their leadership.  Now all of us who have trained up new people into new positions know that mistakes will be made and especially in ministry.  We are aware that how we do things and how they will do certain things will look different.  We must be okay with it as long as it is morally pure and is glorifying to God.  Of course we all have learned best practices so in many situations it is a good idea to teach, train and live by those.  Just as long as we don’t make best practices the only practices we accept.  We cannot become rigid and unchanging as things progress.

This past month has been a very busy month in this very thought.  We are constantly reminded of our inabilities and the obstacles to get the job done well just seem to add up.  A few examples, our vehicle is sick and not allowing us to get to the workplace, Adam’s computer broke so important files are not accessible at this time and that impacts everything, budget constraints make it harder to acquire and make all the tools and resources we need for future success, our physical health is on a constant roller coaster (part of this is just getting old, haha).  Thus, as we see God beginning to work in things that only He can accomplish we sit back and with a little self imposed stress we seek to trust and obey Him.  Now things haven’t been done perfectly to our expectations and we see many issues that break our hearts in new leaders but knowing that God is answering prayers by raising up new leaders from the harvest fields excites us for what is to come.

Therefore, as we move forward in the future we aren’t necessarily anxious but we do want to work with excellence under the guidance of Christ.  Our prayer is that God makes us more and more obsolete so that He becomes the central focus of all that He desires to do in Madagascar.  We don’t boast in amazing stories of what we are doing  but just tell you all that God is good!



Prayer Requests:

Pray for the school supply distribution to truly be a blessing and that people would rejoice in the Lord

Pray for Baylee as she finishes out her first term of boarding school.  She is doing great thus far.

Pray for Phoebe and Emma to stay strong in the Lord and to be diligent in their studies at university

Pray for November to be a fruitful month of ministry as we don’t have as many trips away from station



Praises:

Adam had safe travels

We were able to see the Malagasy Baptist make the initial steps in forming a mission board

Despite many set backs we prevailed and got things done

Our apprentice units have started off well and seen little successes.

 Backpack distribution in the village of Ambanijangne

 The Graduce family and Rado headed out for their bush training experience.

 River getting some good puppy loves.  

(They are preparing to go to their new homes now.)

Just a quick selfie as the three of us head to church.