This is kind of a continuation from my last blog....where I spoke about the fact that we were prepared to be wherever God showed us He wanted us to be.
So let me go back a few months to the events that lead up to where we are going.
In October, I was chatting to my dear friend, Jenni, on Facebook. She and her husband left South Africa for Thailand a little before our journey here. They have loved it there, and she mentioned that we should come over and teach there too.
I told her it would be fabulous, but we were planning on going back to the US, if God opened those doors, and hopefully back to Shelaine and my old school. So we didn't think any more of it...much, anyway. It was always at the back of my mind, but not as something that I thought would pan out.
So, in January I sent out my resume to a couple of schools (including the public schools) in our area in North Carolina, and emailed my old school asking if there was the possibility of an opening. Marlowe and I then prayed, and asked God to open or close the doors, so that we would know where we needed to be.
He firmly closed the doors and, though we were a little disappointed, we felt at peace. This is what we asked for.
In the meantime, I was chatting with Jenni again and she told me that I should send my resume to her school. That even though there were no positions available, positions sometimes came up when people finished their contracts. So I sent off both our resumes, and we prayed that God would open or close this door too.
February 11th : Acts 5:38 Let them alone : for if this plan or this work is of man, it will come to nothing; but if it is of God, You cannot overthrow it.
I did not totally understand this dream at first, but as we started hearing more from God, it began to make sense.
It had been about a month, and we had not heard anything from Thailand. Jenni told me that often the schools don't email if they don't have positions. So we rested, believing that this was probably a sign and that we would be in Paraguay for another 2 years. We were at peace with that.
On March 5th, I received an email from Chiang Rai International School, saying that they would love to have a Skype interview with us. I must admit, we were shocked because we thought that door was closed, and so we prayed again, asking God to open that door to an opportunity, or to close it shut, like the others, if this was not from him. I asked Him for confirmation. As I was seeking him, He gave me a bible verse and a devotion :
- The door God opens will never contradict His word
- The door God opens will come/be accompanied with confirmation
- The door God opens will require you to depend on Him
Some of you may understand when I say He "hid" the bible verse from me, even though I wrote it down. There was a reason for this
The interview went well - it was almost like a meet and greet. We enjoyed meeting Johanna and Jim, and they told us that if they wanted to more forward, they would contact us for a 2nd interview.
During the next week, we continued to seek God, wanting desperately to be where He was, follow where He led and do what He set out for us to do. We were told that they had other people to interview, and this also set us at ease. Please God, find someone more suitable for this job if it's not from you.
Then we laid out some things that we needed to fall into place, asking God for confirmation :
- We needed to have a way for the tickets to be paid. After all our travels, and earning less than half of a salary in Paraguay, we have no savings left. We have never been in need, but we don't have a buffer to help us.
- A position for Marlowe. They only had one position available.
- Zane's passport
- Brendon's passport so that he could continue to apply for schools in the US and leave whenever God opened those doors
On March 13th, I received an email for a 2nd interview. We immediately went to prayer. God revealed a bible verse to me, and it was so clear, that I was shocked. I asked 2 close friends to please pray over it, but I didn't want to reveal it to them. I wanted confirmation of that particular verse.
On Friday, March 17th, I went to our staff worship, with the mindset that I was hoping to hear from God. I was asked to read a passage of scripture out loud after our 2nd song. This is what I read :
Wow! It hit me hard that God was opening this door, and that He was with us. We did not need to fear or worry.
Later that day, we received an email with a job offer from Thailand. I read the email and then went to my prayer journal with my requests - I was able to put a check next to 3 of them :
- Brendon's passport
- Job for Marlowe - possibly a sub / helping out with ESL
- Tickets - mine is paid for, and the school will pay for Marlowe's and Zane's and we can pay them back.
Wow!
We realized that we needed to be in prayer because, even though this seemed like a confirmation, we needed peace at the same time.
On Saturday, March 18th, I was going through my prayer journal, paging back to see where this had all started and where we were now. I paged back to March 6th and was shocked to see the bible verse that I asked my friends to pray over, written down. God opened my eyes to the fact that I had written this verse down just a week before, and this was the confirmation that I had been asking for.
March 23rd : I woke up with this repeating over and over in my head : you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. I knew it was somewhere in Jeremiah so I looked it up. This is what I found :
The first part is a verse that's carried us over the last 15 years. How amazing that God tells us that all we need to do is seek Him and we WILL find Him! Later that day, a friend posted this on my wall :
"Because God rules all the places where you live, he is able to deliver his promises to you in the very circumstances where they are needed." - Paul Tripp
So there you have it. A rather complicated, yet beautiful process that we are honored to be a part of. A journey that has taken us to places we never expected, to meet people we never would have met, and to form relationships that will last a lifetime.
So, we have accepted the position in Thailand. However, this is a huge step of faith because we still don't have Zane's passport (it has mysteriously gotten "lost" in South Africa). We believe that God knows where it is and that it will be here in more than enough time for us to leave. Scary, but exciting! Please believe with us!
Finally, after much prayer, and what we believe is confirmation from God in many ways, I signed my contract and sent it off.
Thailand, here we come!
Prayer requests :
- Zane's passport
- A place for Brendon (who now, being an adult, has to forge his own way and find out what God's will for his life is. This is hard for us, because as a parent, you do not want to leave your child - albeit a grown one - behind. But I do believe that God is going to work through him, and teach him what it is like to lean on Him and trust Him for all that lies ahead).
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