William Carey has been called the
“Father of Modern Missions.” In the late 1700's, he uprooted his
family from England and went to India where after 40 years of
service, he saw 212,000 copies of the Bible he had translated reach
300 million people in over 40 different Indian dialects.
There is another man integral to this
great missionary story- Andrew Fuller. He held the ropes.
Before he left for India, Carey told a
group of missions focused believers , “I will go down into the
well, if you hold the ropes.” Fuller was among those believers. He
raised funds, recruited more missionaries, and sent personal letters
to Carey in India. He held the ropes.
When talking about missions John Piper
put it this way, “You can be a goer, a sender, or disobedient. The
Bible does not assume that everyone goes. But it does assume that
ones who do not go care about goers and support goers and pray for
goers and hold the rope of the goers." If you believe in Jesus,
when it comes to “making disciples of all men,” you have three
choices: go, send, or disobey. It is as simple and as difficult as
that.
Josh and I have picked up one end of
the rope. We have said we will go into “the well”. We will go
down into the dark unknown where it is uncomfortable and risky, but
we need you to hold the other end.
Literally we need you.
We need you to pick up the other end of
the rope! We need your financial support. Missionaries need a lot
more than a plane ticket. But still, they really do need that plane
ticket, and health insurance, and other everyday tangible items that
make life in a foreign country possible. As unglamorous as they are,
these items add up. But we also need your money to purchase sheep for
a sick woman so that she can have a source of income to buy her life
sustaining medicines. Your money allows us to do missions and it
fuels our mission.
We need you to keep holding on to that
rope! Once we take the leap into the well, we need you to keep hold
of us or we will fall. We need your prayers. This is not an easy
alternative to giving money. This is not an “oh yeah I will pray
for them someday, maybe, if I remember” kind of prayer. What we
need is faithful, fervent prayers. We need you to pray for our
safety. I mean really pray. Last term, we narrowly escaped a rebel
attack! Daily we face malaria and other tropical diseases. We need
you to pray for the people we come in contact with- for their health,
their fight against poverty, and their spiritual needs. We need you
to pray for our family that when we come back out of the well that we
will be intact and none worse the wear. We have so many prayer needs.
Ask us what they are- please.
We need you to cheer us on while we are
hanging on to the rope. We need your encouragement. Living and
ministering in a foreign land is not for the faint of heart. I have
never been so tired as when we were in Africa. I felt like my body
was always fighting off some bug, my mind hurt from constantly trying
to translate the flow of foreign words around me, almost every moment
was spent wrestling with how to meet the overwhelming needs around
me, safety is always on our minds, and to boot there is the
homesickness. We also want you to cheer with us when we are excited
and experiencing the many joys God blesses us with with on the
mission field. Watching a plump baby leave the hospital that was once
hours away from dying of malnutrition is amazing. Celebrate God's
awesomeness with us! An encouraging email- (or even better-snail
mail) is joyous! Once Charlie went with me to the post office and she
just happened to get a card with stickers in it. Every time we passed
the post office after that, she talked about the time she got those
stickers! Little gestures go a long way and are appreciated way more
than we can express.
There is something taboo about asking
for help, a sign of weakness I guess, and it is hard for me to “lay
it all out in the open” in this blog post, but listen, I am not too
proud to beg. I know from our experience last time in Africa that we
really need you. Will you hold the ropes for us?
