My five missions trips, taken to Mexico at age 9, Romania at age 17, Mexico again at age 18, Austria at age 21, and Croatia at age 27 completely changed my life and influenced the direction I went in in ministry. I am very excited for the students who will be going this year. Last year a newly married couple gave up their honeymoon to go to Congo, and now they are leading the trip there this year.

These trips, however, can get very expensive. The one to Japan is nearly equivalent to a year’s tuition at CTS. I was thinking how lovely it would be if people in my missions-minded network of acquaintances were to give to a scholarship fund for some of these trips. Not only would it be of financial assistance, but it would also be a blessing to the students to know that their futures and their ministries are cared for by some Americans they’ve never heard of. American brothers and sisters.

If you have any interest in giving to this, please send me an email. It needs to be quite soon because of the way donations are filtered through AGWM, banks, and two different continents.

If giving isn’t an option, please pray for the students at CTS, that those God wants to go will hear and obey Him, that they will get the finances they need, that they will do amazing work where they go, and that they will be blessed and grow themselves through these trips.

I knew my own fundraising was not going well before I came, that I ought to have several thousand dollars in monthly commitments, and I didn’t even have even a thousand a month committed, and I knew I was not going to enjoy my meeting with my itineration specialist (though he is a kind and friendly person). The meeting turned into a meeting with AGWM’s head of mobilization/itineration and an analysis of everything I am doing and what more or different I needed to do. He actually invited me out for dinner with his wife so they could give me some tips and help. Which was good and lovely of them but oh so humiliating and served to deepen my discouragement about my progress and abilities. Until then I had actually been enjoying itineration while still recognizing my lack of financial support.

Later on in the first week there was also a session in which a number of new missionaries who were doing really well in fundraising were interviewed about how they did it. In my currently discouraged mind, I heard a lot of people who had all kinds of advantages I did not have (a spouse, to give support or fill up their lack, or a big district with lots of churches in a small radius to go to, or skills in marketing), and no wonder I was not doing well in my own progress.

But gradually, over the course of the three weeks, as my emotions went up and down and I had lovely times with God and He sent people to encourage me in certain ways…gradually I was thoroughly encouraged, even though my financial situation did not change, nor did my marketing skills change nor the difficult size of my district. I gained some tips and strategies for things to do, but more importantly I had a turnaround in my thoughts about myself, my calling, God’s plan for and thoughts about me. I still don’t know in any way how I am going to raise my budget, but I know how to face discouragement and try to combine trust in God’s plan with my own hard work.

Forsyth, Montana, Assembly of God church

I learned to see value in discouragement. For one thing, discouragement shows you that you’re paying more attention to circumstances and your own inabilities than God’s plan and abilities. I tend to find it harder to believe that God will do something than that He can. But if I hold on to trust that He has a good plan whatever the circumstances look like and whatever I think He should do, it puts things into perspective.

For another thing, my discouragement, coming from feeling alone and small and unable, made me realize what a lot of the churches I will be speaking to are going through. Montana churches tend to be small and poor and isolated, and it must be so easy to feel discouraged about where they are and what’s going on. If I can use my own experience with feeling that way to encourage the churches I will be speaking at, then it was worth it.

In January, I was discouraged because I’d meant to start full-time itineration in the beginning of January and had to put it off until February because I hadn’t scheduled enough services for Headquarters’ approval, and also because I felt very much alone in the process (even though it was just the beginning). Missionaries who are married have a built-in support system (which is not to say that being married doesn’t have its own struggles), and I felt like I had none and like no one really cared what I was doing. Then a person from church sent me a card in the mail with words of encouragement in it, and then I went to the Montana District’s Ministers Renewal and was reassured that actually Montana does care about its itinerating missionaries. We were all introduced to the whole gathering, who were encouraged to welcome us to their churches, a top district official randomly gave me money, I had lunch with his wife, and a pastor I had known in my Bible Quiz days gave me a solid dose of unsolicited encouragement.

In February I started crying because my windshield wipers didn’t work in a freezing rainstorm. Probably it was really just because I was tired after a long weekend of traveling in blizzards and doing services and staying with strangers, but inanimate objects that don’t behave as they should have the capacity to make me crazier in the head than anything else. A three-hour drive turned into a five-hour drive, and I had to turn around twice and go back to a friendly Napa Autoparts to get my windshield wipers fixed, and I got stuck in the snow. Small problems indeed, but on the way home there was a rainbow in the snow, which rarely happens. (You can barely see it in this picture, but it’s there.)

Rainbow in the snow

In April, the truly hard part about itineration hit me. The raising money part. Last June or July, when I had my first interview for the missions application process, I was told that there were some people reviewing my application who wanted me to go to Europe as a short-term Missionary Associate rather than a fully-appointed missionary because they didn’t believe I could raise a full budget for Europe in Montana. Montana is a massive state with few churches, the majority of which are struggling financially. Blithely I declared that while I was willing to do what they thought was best, I had always intended on being fully appointed and I knew God could make it happen if He wanted it to. I have continued to believe that, but still, in the back of my mind has always been that naysayer…Headquarters doesn’t believe you can raise your budget… (which is not true: it was only one or two people on a vast committee). And now I see what they mean. I’d hoped to have $2000/month in commitments raised by the end of April, and I don’t even have $1000. Churches are so generous in giving me cash, and I’ve raised far more than I expected every month in offerings, but it is harder for them and for individuals to commit to what I really need, giving monthly, when they are poor, when there are so many missionaries, missions projects, and local ministries clamoring for them to give.

Then just at the end of last month, a friend mentioned to me something God was reminding her of in a difficult situation she is in: He is the God of the impossible. Then I went to Montana’s District Council, and the speaker the first night spoke on the council’s theme: “Mission: Possible.” His altar call was on asking God to restore one’s innocence when difficult situations have made one jaded. While I was praying (and crying, ‘cos that’s what I do), the same district official’s wife came and prayed with me and seemed to get a vast deal of encouragement of her own out of it. It was lovely.

Directly after, a board member from Trinity Bible College spoke to me about what I’m up to and how itinerating is going, and he reminded me that if I want people to give me money, I have to ask them. Durr. That’s kind of the hardest part. I’m jolly good at getting up and telling people all about my work and calling and so forth, but the part where I say, “I need you to give me money every month or I can’t go”…that part’s hard. I tend to forget it, or shy away from it. But he told me people expect me to ask and they’re disappointed if I don’t. So next Sunday, when I speak about missions in Europe, I will explain how expensive Europe is, and I will ask them to support me monthly. That will be hard. Because itineration is hard.

But, my goodness, it’s fun.

(P.S. Here’s a lovely link where you can go to support me in missions in Europe, if you want…)

*”Lover of God,” sort of a quote from Acts. 1:1 for no good reason at all.

The questions have been about the little section called Class. The page looks like this:

You can select the amount you want to give or put in your own amount, and you can choose to give once or to set up a monthly withdrawal or charge as a monthly commitment. That’s all fairly self-explanatory. But in the middle there’s that little dropdown called Class, with two unhelpful options, which are 00 and 09. There’s an explanation, if you hover on “What is a class?” but the explanation itself doesn’t help a lot.

The problem is that everyone inside the AGWM world knows what Classes are and what a 00 account is and what a 09 account is and six thousand other kinds of accounts, and it’s really easy to forget the average non-AGWM person has no idea what those are. This is a user-interface problem, where they’ve forgotten the needs of the average user. They really should have short titles there rather than “00″ and “09.” This is a very common mistake among anybody designing anything: they forget that the average user doesn’t have the same amount of knowledge about the thing as they themselves do. (Maybe I should email them and see if they’ll change it.)

So here’s the translation:
00 is my General Account. It’s the account that all my expenses will be drawn out of: travel, housing, taxes, etc. If you want to give to me as a missionary overseas, give to that account.
09 is Personal. This is money that will be given directly to me as a personal gift in exclusion of my expenses. As, for instance, birthdays, Christmas, Guy Fawkes Day, 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who–you know, usual gift-giving days.

Usually you’ll want to choose 00. ‘Cos it’s not the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who every day.