Backpacks and Butane

     A few weeks ago I found myself sitting with in a meeting with friends John Arnott, and Dan Slade. (For those of you who don't know them, they are leaders from the Catch the Fire network of churches, which my home church is affiliated with, and where my son Blake went to Bible school.)  Part of that meeting was to talk with Dan about the country of Myanmar (formerly Burma) and the fact that Murray, myself and Blake will be travelling there in October to help Dan with mission work.

Myanmar! Why Myanmar? Where is Myanmar anyway? 

Yes... I had the same questions, but it seems that God Himself has the answers to "Why Myanmar?" and He has been faithfully mapping it out for us over the last year, so let me give you some background.

In May of last year (2012) Murray and I were in Alberta and as mentioned in my last blog we have some friends there, who while praying for us began to share with some things that they believed God was saying about our lives.

As our Alberta friends prayed for us, they began to talk about a call to missions for Murray and I and and went on to speak of a "divine connection" coming to us very soon. They ended the time of prayer with an unlikely statement ... That they felt that the work that we would be doing would have something to do with "water." Which at the time seemed a bit unusual to us to say the least. (If you are unfamiliar with the concept  of prophecy in the New Testament church, I will simplify it by saying that prophetic direction comes when mature individuals are praying for you, and they share with you a sense that they have of what God is saying about your life. This can act as confirmation to things that you are praying about and seeking God for yourself.)

Well a couple of months after this prayer time, Dan Slade was visiting our home church and ended his talk by sharing a bit about the mission work that he is doing in Bangladesh,  Myanmar and Turkey. We met him personally for the first time after his talk, and he invited us to join him in his mission work sometime if we were able. 
Now you must understand that I have been invited many times over the years to participate in mission work, so this was nothing new and did not stand out particularly to me because there are a lot of people in churches doing mission work, and so I didn't think Dan's invitation as anything more than "general conversation." However that was all to change over the next 48 hours, as God brought divine visitation into my life, to join together with the divine connection that we had just made. It happened like this....

I woke up in the middle of the night, the day after we had met Dan. The presence of God was very strong around me, and I got up and went into our sun room. What happened next is hard to explain, except to say that it was like God was talking to me in sentences. I did not hear an audible voice, but the topic that came into my mind and heart was so unexpected and specific and unknown to me that I could not have thought it up on my own if I had tried. All of a sudden in my heart I knew we were to join Dan in his mission work ... and then God spoke these startling words to me. 

He said "Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar) have some of the worst waterborne illnesses in the world. I want you to become trained in sanitation and water management."

 Over the next hours I wept before The Lord as the weight of this idea penetrated me. The next morning I got on my computer and began to research. Sure enough it was true... these countries had major problems with poisoned water and illnesses related to the water problems. For days after this, any time I tried to talk to anyone about this experience I would break down crying from some deep place within me as God was working this through in my heart. Murray and others could see that I had experienced something unusual that I couldn't just brush off. Around this time I also remembered back to the prayer session in Alberta and the statement that our mission work would have something to do with water... and I could only say ... wow!

I had a lot of questions that we stirred up in my heart at this time...such as "Why would God call me? A middle aged lady from the suburbs to go to Asia and deal with water problems? Could I even handle going? After all I sleep on a memory foam bed, and like to soak in my extra large whirlpool tub in our big North American house with all its trimmings. Would we be able to walk away from the big house and purposely downsize to enable us to come and go more easily? 

Well I think as people, we have this way of trying to control the small details of life when the big questions don't have easy answers. So in typical Lady Wendolyn style, I immediately set out to find and buy a butane curling iron and a fashionable pink backpack! 
Shortly after this I met a young salesman working at the local camping store who said to me "You don't have to be primitive just to try and be cool being primitive, and there is a lot of really neat equipment you can get now for travelling." And so my butane curling iron and backpack were soon joined by ultralight sleeping cots, and blow up mattress toppers. And I was slowly coming to the conclusion that I could "go as myself" on missions with a bit of adjustment, personal growth and some really cool gadgets. That being said, I am very thankful for the years of camping we have done as a family and the time spent out at our family cottage with no running water, outhouses and a cook stove. At least I have some frame of reference to soften the culture shock a little. 

Another big question that came up at this time was "how does this fit with the rest our life and the things that we do in the church already? After all, Murray and I have spent the last 15 years working on developing an amazing program for women that teaches them about self esteem and worth in Gods eyes. But this too came together with Dan asking me to teach my program to the women in Myanmar, and so right now the teaching materials from my women's program are being translated into the local language and the plan is that I will be teaching it to the young women in the bible school in Myanmar when we go October. With Murray doing some filming, and Blake leading worship, each of us, will simply be going and doing the things that God has equipped us to do as we step out to follow Him.

Earlier this spring I heard a fantastic message by a man named Grantly Watkins where he challenged us to understand that each of us as a Christian is called to live of a life of risk and adventure as we partner together with God. For some of us, it may involve selling up and heading out... For others it means taking an emotional risk, or laying down your pride as you step out in your own community and minister to those around you. 

And so over this last year I have come to understand that If we can live from the place where we daily say in our hearts... "The answer is yes God."..."What's the question?" Not only will God prepare us for what is ahead, but he will use us wherever we are so that will be able to say, whatever season we are in and whatever we are doing.....

Radical? Yes that's me! 

Radical...Who me?

I decided to start this little blog in response to the many questions I have been receiving about the major changes that my husband Murray and I are making in our lives. People have been watching in amazement as we have been packing up and selling our home, and living in temporary quarters.

  A year ago we were a very normal family with a bunch of kids living in a large house in the suburbs and words like  "structured" "stable" and "secure" could definitely be used to describe our life. Work Monday to Friday, church on Sundays and a nice family vacation planned each summer... it had been this way for a long time... 

Now one year later, after a bizarre series of circumstances (some rather tragic), we found ourselves in possession of a very large, very empty nest.. and a desire to make major changes. Going from 6 kids living with us to zero kids living with us, and contemplating how to respond to this wind of change that had blown though our lives... and finally deciding to do something ...well... radical ...

It's not that it was totally unexpected... the first hint of this change coming to our lives was announced during a prayer time, two years ago while we visited some Christians in Alberta who we are deeply connected to. As they prayed for us, they all began to say the same thing in different ways..."God is calling you to step into a big adventure and in preparation for this adventure a major shaking and change will sweep through your life, and it is going to be so big that it will seem like everything that has happened to you before this.. is nothing compared to what you are going through.. but it will launch you into the next faze of your life, and into the amazing plans that God has for you."

I remember thinking after they prayed for us.. "well thats cool".. hmmm.. in hindsight I would have to say.. "If God tells you a major shaking change is coming... don't expect a ride at disneyland.. because you are about to encounter a storm."

And yes.. a storm began to sweep through our lives, and everything was tossed about... relationships, finances, possessions, plans.. all of it. The funny thing however about a storm is that when a storm hits, you have to choose what to hold onto, and it reveals very quickly what is important to you.

The end result of this sweeping storm is that we began to question our "North American" values and mindset, and realized that we were living for many things that were no longer important to us. Possessions and a home being one of those things, and a nine to five safe but structured life being another. And so the end result of all this is that we have decided to give up that old way of living, liquidate a lot of our possessions, and follow after the "adventure" that God has for us... wherever it may lead.

The fact that we have arrived at this place in our thinking and in our beliefs is a minor miracle in it's self. Murray (my husband) and I both grew up in families where our parents worked very hard to move up socially and provide security for them selves and their children. Thus they highly valued home ownership and a secure job with a pension. These values were passed down to us kids, and we really never questioned pursuing the same things... until a few years ago when we began to ask ourselves as many people do in middle age "Is this all there is? Is there something more that we are missing? Are we really living the Christian life as Jesus demonstrated in the Bible, or are we living a North American version of what we think of as the Christian life, where we attend church, and write cheques, but avoid the worst parts of town and leave the uncomfortable and challenging part of the gospel to ... "those who are called to it"...whoever they are... but not us of course.

We had already taken our first tentative steps away from these values four years ago when Murray quit his government job and cashed in his pension in order to open his own business... not so secure anymore.... but we still owned a big house in the suburbs with a lot of equity in it... so we were "safe" in our own eyes, and still doing the North American thing for the most part. 

I mean sure ... a lot of people dream of cashing it all in, and travelling the world.. they may even talk about it... but very few actually do it... it is much more comfortable to hover around the edges of such things, and then go back to your "normal" life... So in some ways, the storm that blew through our life over the last year was a gift... it caused us to really examine  what was important to us.. and that assessment ended up in us making the decision to liquidate, downsize... and embrace some voluntary simplicity... All so that we can be unencumbered enough to pursue the call and dreams from God that await us over the next hill... 

So where are we headed? I'll tell you some of that in my next post...  In this one I simply wanted to answer the question.

Radical... who me?

 and the answer is.. surprisingly ...  YES!