It's what I do all day, everyday

and then along came God's Word for the Nations

The impact of My Father’s World on our lives   Part 2

make sure you read Part 1 first, thanks

When we made that donation for the reprinting of Proverbs in that specific language, we thought we were done with part of what God had in mind for us.   We found out it was just a beginning.

Hang with me… the story takes an odd jump and twist here and there.  It stops being about the curriculum, but never stops being about the Lord and what He is doing.

After the God’s Word for the Nations information meeting, my husband wanted to spread the word through our church to try to raise money in general for this cause.   Cool.  Even *my* husband was doing something because of MFW.   Cool.

We took our brochures to church with us that Sunday.   We wanted to pass it along to the missions committee.   I kid you not….  We have been at this church since the year 2000.  It was the first time we sang “This is My Father’s World.”

We gave the brochures to someone.   Then I made a follow up phone call.   Can David Hazell give his power point presentation to our church after the homeschool convention?  The answer was no.   They don’t know David, so it just wasn’t meant to be. David understood and thanked me for trying.   He has wanted to speak in churches after home school conventions.  I prayed that God would open that for him.    Besides, my town was a little out of the way from the interstate. 

I am a very frequent contributor on the MFW message boards.  About one month after I returned from our weekend learning about God’s Word for the Nations, there was a post on the mfw message board in which a mom had an early reading 6 year old.  She wondered about placement in the program.  I gave some long winded answer about breadth over depth and whatever I said.  Something about doing service projects as a family.  I don’t know exactly.

Later that night, I was trying to get to sleep and my answer on that post bothered me.   I was suddenly worried that I had made it sound like that was easy to do family ministry when you have 4 young children.    I tossed and turned and prayed.  Then out of nowhere I got up, turned on the computer and posted “you know….maybe you could turn your child’s gift of reading into a service project.   Hold a read a thon and give the donations to your favorite charity or to a missionary or help fund Bible translation.     I’m tired. Goodnight.”

I went to bed.  Woke up next morning and thought --- now that could be fun to do with our oldest child.  She loves to read.   I didn’t act on it right away.

3 days later, I received an email update from God’s Word for the Nations saying that now that the Proverbs reprinting was done, there is a new project for the New Testament to be printed for the first time in that language.

I turned around and asked my oldest “will you do a read a thon and raise for this?”   She replied “YES!!!!!!!   That’s the group that looks like Grandma Judy, right?”

I wanted so much to post about it on the message board, but had to wait.  I prayed and ask God to either open it or close it for posting.

I thought… let’s get started on fund raising.  I called the Children’s minister at our church to ask if she wanted to donate.   Not only did she say “sure. put me down for X dollars.”   She then asked me, with no prompting from me “Do you have a power point presentation that you could share with the other children and teens?”

“No, I said.  But the guy who does this has one, maybe he would lend it to me”

She replied “couldn’t he just come and give it to the children?   As long as he is with the kids, that’s alright to do on a Sunday.   The elders have given me permission to allow guest speakers.”

At this point, do I faint?, say yes? or just calmly say “I’ll ask him.  How about such and such date?”

Sure.

I couldn’t call fast enough to MFW offices.    I breathlessly said into the phone “my church changed their minds.   Will you speak to our children?”    David was on his way out the door to the airport for a missions conference in another country.   He said “yes I will.   Call me back in 10 days to set it up. Pray for my trip. Good bye.”   I never call at good times.

I go to sleep that night wondering…. What is going on? And how can I ever post about this on the board?

The next morning I go to the library to pick up book basket books.   I get back and there is a new thread on the board that says ‘Thank you Crystal for Read a Thon idea”

I took the time to talk about how my daughter was going to do it too and invited anyone who wanted to do one, to email me off list.

Another family in Kansas sold spring flowers to raise money.  Four moms from the message board are participating in a summer read a thon for Bible translation.

The home school convention came 4 weeks later.  David spoke to the children and teens at my church.  My daughter raised her money.   Some of those teens and children had no idea that Bibles come in different languages or anything about translation work.   David never wanted “a lot of money” from them.  He didn’t really come to raise money.  He came to present some new ideas to help the next generation see what God is doing outside of their lives.

You see, none of this was me.   I just tried to do what God put on my heart. It may not be Bible translation that God puts on your heart, but our God wants more than just academic machines in our home schools.   Make sure you find a way to make it all about Him.

--crystal

MFW since 2003 and remaining there unless God leads otherwise.

MFW Journeys

If I had known in 2003 the things that God would do just from what curriculum I was going to buy..... would I have done it anyway?

The impact of My Father’s World on our lives   Part 1

If someone had told me in 2003 what God had in mind for our family because of a
choice in home school curriculum, I wouldn't have believed it.   And maybe you
wouldn't either.   The story is long.  It starts with how God put the business manager of MFW in my path at the convention and I made the quickest purchasing decision of my home schooling life. 

It's one of those odd, it really happened stories that just lets me know that God put MFW in my path for reasons that had some to do with academics and a lot to do with His kingdom. (your mileage will vary of course)

MFW found me in 2003. I had never heard of MFW.  I had just walked away from another company’s vendor booth.  I had spent a year researching and thought I would try that program.  I took one look and said “nice program.  But that’s not what God wants me to do.”   Some moments in your life have freeze frames in your mind.   I felt God’s hand on my arm just a like a friend at a carnival saying “nah…. Let’s go over here and ride this one.”    I walked downed the aisle and just prayed “Lord just show me.”  I wasn’t looking up.  I stopped and kept looking down. I looked lost.   I heard a man’s voice asking with concern “Can I help you with something ma’am?”  Just like the kid in A Christmas Story who wanted the official Red Ryder B B Gun describing his wish, I blurted out in a long run on sentence “I want a curriculum that starts with world geography before chronological history--  It has to be hands on learning geared for elementary age students-- A nice blend of unit studies and Charlotte Mason would be cool--- And it must be Biblical based and for some reason I want missionary biographies.    Is there anything in the convention like that???”

This guy (business manager for MFW) looked at me, then looked at the other guy in the booth (Timon Hazell, oldest son of the MFW author) and said nothing.  He just let me push him out of the way as the Lord opened my eyes to see Exploring Countries and Cultures (ECC).    They had the same things I wanted to use for spelling and writing.   I just handed over my credit card and said “I want that.   Will you help me take it to my car?”   Well, that was 10 minutes into the convention.  And I was done shopping.

There were 2 things that stood out from ECC that would impact our lives several years later while using Exploration to 1850 (EX1850).  1.  We read one of those ECC character stories in Hero Tales where some guy kept getting more money, but lived at the same wage as before and gave more to God.    That idea was interesting.  We were never big spenders to begin with, but never really thought about what to do with the money we weren’t spending.  I just figured we’d save it for expenses related to speech/language and occupational therapies for our special needs kids.   But – God always provided for the payments for that.   Thank you Father!

2. We read the Nate Saint book in ECC in 2003.   Then after that, the movies started to come out.  Beyond the Gates of Splendor, and End of the Spear.  So we re-read it.  (nothing wrong with reading a book again, right?)   This phrase just remained with me ---- there's your people sis.   It was when Nate and Rachel first spotted the village.   I didn't understand why that phrase stuck in my mind.

So how does that all connect?

Last year (2006) my husband took a new job, with more pay.   When this new job and new salary came around, we started to pray and ask where did God want us to use some of this extra money for His purposes.   Therapy expenses were being covered for the kids. Then we remembered that MFW has a Bible translation fund.  We wanted to know more. We like the curriculum and well…. I picked up the phone and asked for more information.   They told me about different ways to contribute including one way --- to a specific people group.  I didn't know how to select a group of people somewhere in Russia, so I decided "unrestricted giving sounds good."  It is useful and important.  And it would mean a missionary who needed a desk to do his job could have those funds.  Didn't want anyone to have to sit on the floor.  As a former budget manager in a university, I understood about restricted budget lines and needing lab supplies at the end of the year.   Ugh.   So, unrestricted funds was ok for me.  That’s good.

But, something stirred in me to want to have a specific people group. When I had spoke with MFW on the phone, I remember David Hazell’s words:  "would you like me to call Moscow and see if I can find you a group to sponsor?"   My answer "uh no. that's ok.  unrestricted giving is ok."  (I'm such a geek in real life.)

I kept praying. That phrase from the Nate Saint book ---there's your people sis, kept coming back to me.    I know it sounds a bit weird to say this in cyber space, but I prayed that God would somehow show my dh and me "our people".  I never called David back to ask him to find us a group.  

Knowing that my dh's grandfather was 1st generation American, I wondered --- is that ethnic group related to any of the groups that are being served by God's Word for the Nations, the Bible translation fund that MFW supports?  Was there a connection?  I don’t know.  I never asked MFW at that point.  I never researched any of it.   I just wondered and planned to give to unrestricted accounts.   And I put it out of my mind.  I didn’t even tell my husband.   It was just a passing thought and  a daydream.  (yeah right.  No it wasn’t) 

Fast forward several months.   My dh and I were watching a power point about some of the people groups that are being reached through God's Word for the Nations.   A picture flashed across the screen and the lady in that picture looks like my MIL.      I hear a whisper in my heart ---there's your people.    We asked the MFW speaker for a copy of the picture.  He went to his laptop and found it for me and said "There's your picture, Crystal."   At first I was really sure he had said "there's your people."  Then my ears clicked on and I hear "picture".  But let’s just say I was extremely quiet for the rest of day and evening as I pondered on all of it.

And of course, we then researched it and it turns out that the people group is related to my dh’s grandfather’s ancestry.  And we’ve been able to help contribute a little bit.  We returned from that trip in which we learned more about God’s Word for the Nations and made a donation that covered the expenses for the re-print of Proverbs in that language.  The amount, interestingly enough, was 10% of the increase in salary that my husband got from this new job. How he got that new job is a whole different story separate from all of this. But God was right there.

We don't give God’s Word for the Nations all of our money.   I want to make sure I say that.   It is just one thing that we are doing. Not the only thing

Anyway... that's just the tiny way that using ECC changed our lives.  We're not that great or anything like that. We're just not.   We just read stories about ordinary people who did extraordinary things for God and it inspired us to try to do something and to "Serve as Senders".   It took us from ECC until EX1850 to even act on any of the things that touched us.   I guess I could try to sound all spiritual and says something like the seeds were planted in ECC --- but I don’t know.  It was more of we heard the ideas and when the time came the ideas turned into action.

That's why my sig line on MFW’s message board reads what it does.   That's what MFW means to me.  It helped us to discover that Works of Service are for an Eternal Purpose.

Don't skip doing ECC just so that you somehow get through a full chronologically history cycle.  It will be your breath of fresh air and it might be something that will grow your family in ways that you wouldn't have an idea.  And if someone told you ahead of time of what those ways were --- you wouldn't believe it anyway.

 Go to part 2 of the story

--crystal