Amazed

There are times it is important to tell what the Lord has done.
Even if people laugh, even if they mock, even if they do not believe.
Amazing is looking back through the years on how the Lord has orchestrated so many things to end up with a blessing and a calling in today.
It began with a calling.
My husband had gone to an outreach for the community put on by several churches.
Out of that came a conversation with one pastor who encouraged my husband in his desire to go on a missions trip.
“I know I am supposed to go. I just don’t know where and I don’t know how,” my husband said.
That led to a three week trip.
One leg of the trip was a week in Manchester UK.
While he was gone the Lord was doing a work in my own heart.
As a young teen I sat in church and listened to the story of a missionary in Mongolia relate how another family, also missionaries, had lost their baby son while on the mission field.
Right there I had said in my heart, “If missions costs your children, I am never going.”
I didn’t understand that SIDS is not something that happens in one area.
During those three weeks the Lord was speaking through His word about His heart for others and that I needed to be willing to love enough to give up my desires.
When my husband reached home the Lord had spoken clearly to both of us.
WE were moving to Manchester.
Unsure of the how, we knew that we were called.
More than a year previous God used my great uncle to place the desire of missions in our oldest.
I had homeschooled Charity for Kindergarten but during that year became pregnant with our son.
Jered was certain that teaching her 1st grade with two toddlers and an infant was not an ideal situation.
After much prayer we placed her into a private Christian school.
It was beyond our ability to afford but we were walking in faith and the Lord provided, through my uncle, He paid for every year of private school she and the other girls had.
It was at that same private school that Charity first heard, at the age of 6, about people around the world who did not own Bibles.
She was so upset by this news.
“Mommy, they can’t understand God, or know what He wants, or anything without a Bible!”
I agreed with her, lost as to how to comfort her.
“Mommy when I grow up, I am going to do something. I am going to help people to have Bibles. They need to know God!”
When my husband told her he was going on a mission trip, she began to earn money to send with him.
Why?
So he could buy Bibles and give them to those in other countries.
The summer before we moved to the UK we took a group of college students to do a VBS and women’s retreat.
During that visit we met a man named Charlie.
Little was I to understand at that first meeting that he and his wife would become one of our family’s dearest friends.
Jered spent five weeks in the UK the year we moved and then rushed home for his brother’s wedding, and my sister’s baby.
It had taken more than two years for everything to fall into place, including God paying off our house (same uncle) and us selling it without even listing it.
With that sale we had the money to live on while we were in the UK.
By the time we set foot in Manchester our son, an infant the first time Jered was there, was three, Bethany was five, Noel seven and Charity ten.
Out of all the kids she was the one who didn’t want to go.
It had meant the loss of too many things she desperately wanted.
Charlie’s wife met us at the airport.
The house we were supposed to be living in would not be ready for at least a week and so she was taking us to their tiny two bed flat.
They were moving in with the pastor and his family so we could have a place to ourselves.
We lived in Manchester for exactly a year.
It took time, but Charity was able to put aside her desires and serve God in our new home, often sharing with others how she wanted to be a missionary, possibly working with Wycliffe Bible Translators.
It was clear we were to go back to America but we were unsure why.
Our friends in Manchester kept in touch and Charlie and Kate came to visit twice.
Their last trip Charlie offered to have Charity come spend a summer with them.
This summer I flew to the UK with Charity and the other kids as a vacation for me and the beginning of Charity’s stay.
We could only have her there for six weeks but it was clear from the beginning that God had called her back to the UK to open up what He was calling her to do.
She has been searching for His exact calling.
Her desire is still to have people know God and has studied Spanish for two years in an effort to gain the ability to speak to others in their native tongue, all the while hoping it would be a door that would lead to God’s direction.
But since God does things we rarely expect, something else had come along the way.
Charity had learned guitar from her Dad years previous and had grown to love playing, singing, and just recently began to write songs to the Lord.
“How in the world does music fit with Bible Translation? And Mom, I don’t think I am smart enough to translate the Bible but I have a heart for missions and I love what Wycliffe is doing…”
All I could respond with was encouragement to wait for the Lord and lots of prayer.
Charlie had felt one of the things he could teach Charity during her six weeks was how to be self disciplined so on her second week in the UK she began to study four hours a day, three on Spanish and one in guitar. This would be her priority while there and when not studying she was to help around the house. Weekends and evenings would be when she could go shopping or visit with others.
During the six weeks, Charlie arranged to send Charity to Spain where she would practice her Spanish.
This last weekend he flew with her for the day to Belfast, Ireland.
He had friends who are with Wycliffe and they had lunch.
During that meeting God showed us what all the tiny pieces were making—a beautiful painting.
John, after hearing about Charity’s love for language and music asked her if she had ever heard of ethnomusicology.
Or the study of native people’s music and dance.
He explained that missionaries who are ethnomusicologists study the native music and language with the point of taking that and giving them songs of praise to the Lord in their own culture.
He also explained there are only about 100 people in the world that are doing this and his wife (sitting there at the table) had at one time been one of them. He also told Charlie and Charity that he knew personally the expert in ethnomusicology, who lives in the UK.
I received an email from Charlie that was attached to one from John to this expert explaining the situation and requesting an opportunity for Charity to meet him before she leaves.
Whether or not she does
I know and she knows that God has shown her what His calling is.
She is so excited and blessed she wants me to redo her room.
“Mom, I want you to paint some scripture on one wall and music notes on the other and the phrase, ‘You catch the monkey, slowly, slowly, slowly,’ on the other wall.”
I didn’t ask—
Just smiled and said to the Lord,
“I am amazed…”