Bubble Wrap and Helmets

I wish someone had reminded me that bad things happen in THREES! Our oldest son's injury was #1 (you can read about it at www.brickeys.net, newsletters, November), but his dad and brother were soon to follow with #2 and #3. We had a great Thanksgiving weekend visiting family, but came home to absolute chaos. On November 29th, a Wednesday night, we were at church and Justin got a concussion while playing football with the high school guys. We went to the ER and he was okay, but his memory was pretty rattled. The next day his memory was coming back, but short term stuff was a little fuzzy. Being forgetful, he left a steak knife out on the table, and our three year-old son got ahold of it and managed to stab his hand. We went to urgent care, but he didn't need any stitches. It was a pretty deep puncture wound, so we had to watch it for infection, but that was it. Praise God! Justin has recovered well, and is now back to normal. Our youngest son's cut is now just a faint line on his hand. And our oldest son (the one who hit his head on a rock while camping) is long recovered.
My New Mantra: I'm going to wrap them all up in bubble wrap and helmets.

Thinking about the year...
Father,
The year began with wonder
If we would arrive where you have called us.
You said, "Wait my children. I am not done."

We stressed, we waited, and still we wait,
But our stress has been lifted
As we see your present work.

Thank you for giving time to heal our children.
What a gift to watch our oldest run and jump,
and our youngest speak.
When a year ago, they couldn't.

Thank you for giving us time to grow.
We were trying to do this on our own strength,
Now we're learning to lean on you.

Thank you for the friendships
That continue to deepen.
They are a foundation for our journey.

Thank you for bridging the gap
between our denomination and our call.
It's a humbling honor to work in the body of Christ.

Thank you for visions of the field,
of the ministry and life we will begin...
What does it mean? What will it hold?

You are not done, and we continue to wait,
But now we see what you have started to do...
You're making us truly YOURS.

Thank You.

So, we have had a busy couple of months. We went to the IPHC school of missions in Chattanooga, TN in August. Gillian's dad got married in Minnesota in September. In between those trips we have been busy presenting at churches about our call to serve in Peru. We praise God for the doors that He is opening to get us to the field in just the right time.

This past week we received some encouraging words from the staff that are serving in Peru. We gave them some updates on where we stand and things they could pray for us about. They responded with good words for us. Right now they have several new missionaries that have recently arrived and some more that are arriving at the end of the year. It is great that they have so many people coming to serve in their efforts to overcome poverty in Peru.

Alex was asking me in the car today, "Daddy, when are we going to get to Peru?" The only thing I could say was, "Soon." Then he began to ask me about the types of things the people in Peru have. Do the kids have toys? Do they have McDonalds? Are their houses made of brick or wood? What kind of apartment will we have? The questions are endless with that kid, but they are all great questions. Every time he asks me about those things I just get excited to know that one day soon he will be able to see these things first hand. Then all of his questions about the unknown country of Peru will be answered. Of course, their will be new questions, but we will answer those as they arrive. The one I can see most is, "How do you say ______ in Spanish?" We are already getting that one, but once both boys have an interest in communicating in their new culture the questions will abound.

Well, that is it for now.

We just retuned from the "School of Missions" put on by our denomination at the Chattanooga Choo Choo in Chattanooga, TN. We had a great time worshipping with and learning along side many veterans of the mission field. On Friday night we had a commissioning/ordination service for those of us entering the mission field. Justin and I were commissioned to be Short-term Overseas Workers through the IPHC, seconded to Food for the Hungry. That in itself was an awesome part of the ceremony, but before they commissioned or ordained any of us "newbies" they honored two retiring couples. The first couple was represented by just the husband, because his wife has already gone home to God. And he spoke mostly of her faithful service, and little of himself. He wore his years of service with grace. The second couple expressed deep thanks and love for the field. The woman commented that her passion has not worn out, just her body, so they continue to serve their church stateside. There was also another couple particpating in the week that has been on the mission field in India for 55 years!
Wow. I started the week feeling pretty awed about our three year commitment, but by the end I felt like I was leaving with my little three year commitment cupped in my hands. I have no idea how many years God has for us on the mission field. To me, three years sounds like a lot, but I have to remember that I'm looking at it from the beginning of the journey. When I look back at the four years that our first son has been in the world I'm shocked at how fast it's gone. I wonder if that's what it's like for the Howards as they celebrate 55 years in India or for those other couples who have retired after similar terms?
This past week we met so many people who have "been there, done that," and they offered great words of encouragement to us. We're at 51% of our monthly need, which is AWESOME. It's a rollercoaster of progress followed by lulls followed by progress as we wait upon the Lord, but He is absolutely growing our faith, endurance, patience, maturity, and even joy through this process. We are so grateful for this past week of new faces and continued encouragement.

Praising God,
Gillian

On the Move

Well, this summer has been an encouraging one as far as our missions preparation goes. We have been endorsed by our denomination, the International Pentecostal Holiness Church (IPHC), to serve with Food for the Hungry Intenational (FHI) in Peru. We spoke with the denomination office in Oklahoma and they said it would be no problem for us to serve with FHI. We filled out an application with them so they could make sure that we were acceptable candidates, spoke with them several times and were approved. We were presented at the 2006 Camp Meeting in Lake City, SC as new missionaries and are now working hard to speak to local churches about the ministry in Peru.

Our hearts are burdened for the people of Peru and we can't wait to get to the field. Since we were presented as new missionaries at Camp Meeting in Lake City, SC on Father's Day the burden and desire to go has grown. Please pray for us and the ministry in Peru that Christ would be glorified through our efforts.

Kids Kamp 2006

Gillian here. It was another great year at Kids Kamp in South Congaree, South Carolina. We registered over 1,000 kids again this year. Kids Kamp is a mega-VBS. It lasts from 6-9pm for five consecutive nights, one week every summer (this was it's seventh year!). The kids (ages 4-16) are divided into three groups according to age, and then they rotate among three sections: Ministry, Dining, and Activities. It takes hundreds and hundreds of volunteers. As far as I know, it is completely run by volunteers, right down to the coordinators and directors. The awesome part was that we had camp even though it was POURING for three of the five nights. How is this possible, you ask? Because it all takes place under a covered outdoor arena. The South Congaree rodeo is held there every year, and now it's home to Kids Kamp, too.

Justin was a Go'fer again this year, and I worked in the craft area. Our son, Alex, is four this year, so he was old enough to be a camper. It was tough for us to let him go, but after a discussion about sticking with his group, we sent him on his way. He LOVED it. Nathan had a blast up in the nursery at our church, too. They had crafts, Bible lessons, and fun games up there for the little ones. On the last night we brought Nathan down the field and Justin acted as the boys' leader for the night. It was so much fun to watch them enjoy Kids Kamp together. This is an awesome ministry, and it will be one of the big things we will miss when we're on the field. We consider it an honor to serve these kids with the love that God has for all of us. Thanks for another great year, community!! If you would like to hear more about Kids Kamp, contact our church, Ebenezer PH Church at 803-755-2883.

In <><,
Gillian

Best Birthday EVER

That's right, folks, I'm now 28. Justin will be joining the ranks of the 28 year-olds in July, so for these six weeks I have bragging rights to being older and ...wiser? Okay, just older. Why was this the best birthday ever? My dad and Linda came down for a surprise visit! On Friday, June 9, I innocently call my dad's cell phone for a regular chat. He asks, "Can you get pulled over for talking on your cell phone while driving?" I respond by saying, "I don't know, Dad, I think that's a state by state law." Obviously I assume he's driving down a Minnesota freeway on his way home from work, but he's actually driving down a South Carolina highway after checking into a hotel, and realizing his flub, he quickly changes the subject. Justin has already announced his plans to take me out for birthday dinner on Friday night. What he didn't share was that, within an hour of my brief chat with Dad on the phone, Dad and Linda would be at the restaurant when we arrived! It was awesome. I was SHOCKED to see them sitting on the bench outside Fatz Cafe. It took a few seconds to put the pieces together...okay, I'm still in South Carolina, at a restaurant I've never been to before, but Dad and Linda are here....OH! They're here for ME!! It was AWESOME.
I was glad I had the house pretty cleaned up that day, but we hadn't cleaned the bathrooms yet. When you have two boys ages 3 and 4, cleaning the bathrooms is (or SHOULD be) an almost daily ritual...one that we hadn't completed that day...eek! So, I have no idea what state our bathrooms were in when Dad and Linda first saw our house, but I made it a point NOT to check. This visit was a wonderful surprise, and it was high time I just let it go and receive this gift without worrying about the state of my bathrooms!! Besides, there was nothing I could do about it :) .
So Dad spent the weekend spoiling us, and we loved it. We went to Bill's Pickin' Parlor for some Blue Grass, a minor league baseball game, Zesto's for dipped ice cream cones, to the movie "Cars," and more! Alex and Nathan (our two boys) are still talking about what they did with Grandpa Bucky and Grandma Linda. Thanks, Dad and Linda, for making that special visit.

Love,
Gillian

Saying goodbye to an old friend

Well, today I made one of the first major property elimination as we prepare to move to Peru. I got rid of my 1979 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Brougham, AKA "The Hoop" - as in hoopdee. A relatively large automobile with rear wheel drive and a V8 engine. My grandmother bought the car new at Hall Chevrolet in Welch, WV. She drove it until about 1990 when my parents bought it from her and gave it to her. She drove it until Fall of 92 when the engine blew while she was at her first semester in college. My dad then drove the car until February of 1995 - then it became mine.

Over the course of the next 11 years the car has been with me through alot of ups and downs.

Increases and Tough Decisions

Gillian, here. We've just updated our totals on our website (www.brickeys.net) to 45.7% received in our monthly budget and 59.7% of the outbound. We are just plain amazed at what God can do through His people. THANK YOU! We shouldn't be amazed, of course, because God has been working miracles literally forever. We even met a man on Sunday that had been healed from paralysis. Our own children were healed of asthma and reflux...these are huge things! And yet we still stand in awe of how God is bringing people into this ministry and making things move. I hope that God's miracles NEVER STOP AMAZING ME!

This Sunday we enjoyed worshipping with Bethesda Bible Church in South Congaree. They're a small church with a big heart, and we were blessed by their worship service. After worship, we fellowshipped with the pastor and his family, and our boys made quick friends with their 2 year-old grandson. Thank you, Bethesda, for making us yours! After lunch, we went home and rested, and then went back to evening church service at our home church (Ebenezer PH Church of West Columbia). We spoke with our pastor and secretary who updated us on the progress of getting endorsed by the denomination and about the new pledge amounts from our congregation. Let me just say it was an awesome day of increases, capped off with a timely sermon on worshipping in the Spirit every day. Thank you, church!

After we got home from our day of church, we put the boys to bed, settled the house for the night, and then I returned a call home. There are big and exciting things happening back at my childhood home in Minnesota. You may not know this, but just over five years ago, my mom took her own life. After that, it was a long time before getting out of the bed in the morning was something enjoyable for me, and you could not have told me then that God would bring me through so quickly and lovingly. It's amazing to see what God has done in that short amount of time. Here I stand, 5.5 years of marriage and two children later, about to become a missionary. And now my sister is getting married, my brother is moving out on his own, and my dad has found new love. I am now faced with a familiar difficulty of living far from home...I'm missing out on a lot. The toughest part is that we can't afford to jump 1200 miles very often. Now that we're moving to Peru, our ability to be home (both South Carolina and Minnesota) for big events will be even more difficult...and sometimes impossible. We are extremely thankful for families that are loving us through this, and who are also making sacrifices in this new life God has put before us.

I stand in a great place today...a place of deepening faith and growth. Justin and I feel the challenges of relying on God to supply the means to get to the field, but held in perspective to the path we have already walked and the healing that He is working in our family, we see that we are richly blessed. Only God knows when we will set foot in Peru at last, but it will be soon...very soon. And I can be patient because I can now see that God has blessed the process.

In <><,
Gillian

Visions of Movement

My husband and I have this God-Given confidence and vision that we will be starting a new life in Peru one of these days. All logic would look at the percentages for support and say, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket just yet." And yet, our life with God has such an amazing track record for His faithfulness, that we have no spiritual reason to limit God to dollar signs.
Our ministry in Peru will be deep and intermingled with life, I can already sense that. I also expect the language to be a tough transition for me (I'm not as gifted as my husband), so I'm thankful for three months of language school when we get there. Having two awesome little guys, we expect childhood illnesses and the worry that comes with them, and then the added layer of learning how to help them in Peru. We also know that we will be surprised when some things are harder to transition into than we expected. And we will also be surprised at how easy some things will be. But the greatest thing is that we can just plain envision our life in minsitry there...and we are now busy waiting for God.
I say "busy waiting" because we're busy building relationships for this coming ministry. We're visiting churches and enjoying diverse worship styles. I think the diversity has been my favorite part so far. God has an incredible body of believers, and we feel so honored to get this opportunity to meet so many. I am also impressed with how adaptable our children are to these worship styles. It's such a blessing! Aside from the occasional Hot Wheels car hitting a hardwood floor, or a child announcing their need to visit the restroom, they've been quiet and well behaved. They've also thoroughly enjoyed different children's ministries...thank God for friendly little guys!!
Justin recently said he had a vision of God whisking us off on a wind to Peru. We've had other friends give similar encouragement...so I think we're on the brink of movement. Please help us pray for the coming changes because all indications are that they are going to be swift. I am just so thankful for our growing team of supporters who have hearts for foreign missions. And "I wouldn't take nothing for my journey now" (Maya Angelou).
In Christ,
Gillian

The Lost Blog

It happened. I thought I lost a whole blog (journal entry; short for “web log”)…one that I’ve been working on for a while…writing, then saving as a draft, then writing again, and saving as a draft. Ugh. Justin and I were working on our newsletter and I thought we could use a line from the blog. I went to look it up…and it wasn’t there. We looked. Justin tried to Google an archive of it, but it was gone. Just gone. Aside from a major drop in my stomach upon its discovery (or lack thereof), I’m fine…but now I’m saving all of my blogs in Word! And now, feeling a little sheepish, I realize that I just listed the wrong date on our website, and therefore went looking for an entry on December 28, and the blog I wanted was right there on November 17. So, sorry to those of you who saw our website (www.brickeys.net) and saw a link to a December 28 entry…it wasn’t there. It prompted me to be concerned about our other blogs, though, and the possibility of losing them. I think I’ll be backing those up in a Word document over the next couple of days.

This blog thing, while a little sketchy when it comes to saving drafts, has been a great tool for keeping everyone informed and also for logging our journey. About a week ago I read through some of our first blogs from this time last year. And it was therapeutic to get back in touch with the path we’re on…to be missionaries in Peru.

We will live in an apartment in a secure community in Lima where most missionaries and ex-pats live. We’ll be within walking distance of familiar chains like Starbucks and McDonald’s, and it’s urban…very urban…with parks and activity. But blending with the edges of the urban setting are communities filled with people who came to the city after being driven out of the jungles by guerillas. These people flooded a city that couldn’t accommodate or afford them in their sheer volume. I think I got that right. I’m still learning, constantly learning. The logistics of their arrival don’t matter so much as the fact that they exist, they’re starving, and Food for the Hungry has a development strategy to help them achieve lasting change in order for them to help themselves.

So reading our past blogs helped put things into perspective. A year ago we were revved up for support raising. We sent letters and presented to a few churches, and things seemed to be moving quickly. So quickly, in fact, that we set a departure date for January 2006 thinking we’d be ready to go long before that. At first we received lots of encouraging emails, cards, and phone calls. We had meetings and planning sessions, and we felt alive. Then we had a summer of mega-travels that halted our support raising efforts, but blessed us with training and time with family. In June we spent three weeks in Minnesota, then we were home for three weeks (during which we had a church yard sale/carwash and visited family in West Virginia), then we were off to Thailand for 4 weeks in August/September. It was like we resurfaced in September and realized three months had slipped by with little change in support levels. We put it in high gear for October and November. Justin had a week of training in October, but we still met with a couple of individuals and visited some supporting churches. We presented at one new church in November, and then moved into December…the frantic month where everything regular gets cancelled only to be replaced by a frenzy of Christmas parties, church events, and family gatherings. We got our monthly newsletter out in mid-December, and then made a conscious decision to just take a break and enjoy the holidays…but that was a little weird for us. You see, we expected to be packing for Peru over Christmas. We email with our future co-workers more and more, and sometimes it feels like we could be there tomorrow. So, while we were physically home for the holidays, we were mentally a world away.

We get an occasional letter of encouragement, but the high of our first efforts has changed, and the depth of the ministry has mingled with our spirits. The idea of living in Peru has lost its newness, and now it’s a deep reality in our hearts…like in marriage when you move from the honeymoon stage to the stage of oneness when being called “wife,” “husband,” “Mom,” or “Dad” is part of your name and not some distant concept. We are support-raising missionaries.

Now we’ve entered the New Year and days slip through our fingers like “sands through the hour glass.” We are putting together plans, talking to people, and getting ready for a new start to support raising, uninterrupted by travel and training. God has been working in us through this year and through the challenges we have faced in support raising. So now we begin anew with a growing reliance upon God and humility that comes from knowing we cannot do this without Him in the lead.

I guess I’m glad I thought I lost that blog. It prompted me to write this one, and think about how I write my entries. I am sometimes too mechanical, too “informative,” and not very Gillian (ie: random and externally pensive). This has been a quick write, and hopefully an easy read. I just want you to know what this process is like for us…or for anyone going out on a limb to do something not-so-mainstream. It’s not easy, but it’s so worth the work to see how big God can become in our lives when we let Him. When our family finally gets to Peru, it will be by the strength only God can provide through the Holy Spirit. Thank you for joining in this ministry through your interest, prayers, and finances. There’s no way to express what you mean to us and this ministry.

Blessings,
Gillian