Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Looking Through the Foreboding Door







In the Labor and Delivery room, they put this small slimy body on top of mine, and I remember looking down at it, thinking, "What is this?!"
I did the magic hour and all that jazz but it wasn't until they took him to wipe him down and weigh him that they called out, "9lbs 9ozs" and I broke down sobbing.
At 41 weeks they had done an ultrasound and told me my son would within a pound of 9lbs 15oz. Within a pound! So he could be 10lbs 15oz!
Everyday I was overdue, I was thinking about delivery, for nearly the 24 hours since I had checked into the hospital, I had been focusing, working, laboring to deliver approximately 9lbs 15ozs.
And when they called out his weight, that was my victory. That's what I had worked for.
9 lbs, 9 ozs.
The whole baby thing had taken a backburner to the immediate obstacle of delivery, but that probably shouldn't have been the case.

In the same way, we've been very much focused on fund-raising recently. Of course, there's no harm in that, actually there tends to be success in focusing on a task. But we can't forget why we're doing this.
For a year we've been on the road raising funds to go to Papua New Guinea.
I started fund raising in 2009. Jacob in 2011.
It's been a major focus for a very long time. But now that we're about to leave for the field one way or another, we need to look past that foreboding gateway to the Land of the Unexpected behind it.

There are three stories that I tell again and again at churches. In fact, you've probably already heard them.
I tell the story of the Somau Garia people who showed great generosity in order to convince the missionaries doing survey work to stay, who when they later realized how it wasn't nearly so simple, decided they were unworthy of the Word of God.
I tell the story of the Waran people who did a checking session with an old man who the missionary thought was about to nod so far off he would jerk awake comically. But when the man heard Jesus crying out from the cross, "Father, forgive them" for the first time in his heart language, the shame and guilt of his sins had truly reached his heart. He wasn't nodding off but hanging his head in the traditional Waran gesture of shame.
I tell the story of the highland man who was murdered as part of a series of retribution murders between two tribes. But this man was a Christian. So instead of going along with the cultural norm and killing his murderer, his family begged their tribe to show mercy and forgiveness.

I love these three stories because they really hit on the major three elements of our mission:
To see transformed lives through God's Word in every language.
Every language - no matter how small.
God's Word - working in peoples hearts
Transformed lives - a proof of the Spirit within them.

We're still 17% shy of 100% of our budget. (Every now and again we hit these weird ruts where we're getting new supporters but only just enough to manage other supporters needing to withdraw their support or a pledged supporter ending up committing a bit less than they originally said or having trouble reaching a pledged supporter. Last time our rut was 71%... We just could not get past it! But then we leapt up and here we are waiting for another boost!)
That's still looming over us as we get closer and closer to Departure Day.
$783/month total.
17 people giving $46/month.

But we try to remember to see past this door to remember why we're even approaching it.
To see transformed lives through God's Word in every language.
Please let us know if you'd like to join us in this endeavor.
I think it's worth investing my life in and the life of my son. (My husband is also investing his life in this.)
And we'd like to ask you to consider sacrificing one of your dinners out a month, one of your Starbucks drinks a week, or whatever your guilty indulgence is, to give an entire language and all the generations thereafter a taste of water that will leave them never thirsty again.

I didn't intend for this blog to be about fund raising, but the fact of the matter is that we can't do our jobs without an income to keep us alive in the meantime and work funds to accomplish our goals. I wish it were otherwise but God has a vision of sharing the ownership of this work with those He hasn't sent to the field. And He has proven again and again that His way is best.

Transformed lives through God's Word in every language.
I know, I know, what it's like to have financial stress. Taking $46/month out of your spendable budget may very well make life a little tight. We ourselves are missing $783/month out of our already tight budget!
But the financial stress is worth it.
The worry about whether the malaria meds I'm giving to my infant son will have persistent neuropsychological effects is worth it.
The living in a bush house with a bucket as "indoor plumbing" for at least two years is worth it.
Because this world is fleeting, but the next is eternal and I want to share that eternity with all people, tongues, tribes, and nations.
But there are still some tongues and tribes and people groups who can't hear about God's Word in a way that will really ruin their hardened hearts and transform them.
Only our heart language can speak to our hearts.
I believe God and His Spirit speak that language and so should His Word.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Why Toys and the Jungle Don't Mix

During our exploratory trip to PNG in 2012, we stayed with a missionary who has been working with PBT for over 30 years. Let me paint a picture of her house.

She lived in an Americanized house made of bush materials. The inner walls were woven bamboo, but the floors were covered in linoleum and the roof was tin. The outer walls were load bearing 2x4s filled in with screen wire to allow the breeze to pass through but to limit the number of bugs that came in. The gutter system feed into the water tank, which daily had to be pumped up the the head tank on the roof to provide gravity fed plumbing to the house.

And the house was filled with stuff. There were bags and bags of empty pill bottles waiting to be reused for people who needed a large quantity of medicine. There were stacks and stacks of empty bags. Every sugar bag was cut neatly at the top to salvage the bag and stacked to the side waiting to be reused. Durable flour bags had the top stitches carefully removed and were gifted to women in the village. Used paper was kept in a stack to make little medicine packets or for any purpose they might serve. A filing cabinet was bursting with old maps of places she had traveled on furlough. Books and books lined the shelves.
If this were found in America, one might cry "hoarder". But in Papua New Guinea, where things are hard to come by, where every ream of paper consumes some of the 400 kilo cargo allowance allowed on the helicopter, where you couldn't run to Walmart every time you needed something and any trash you had had to be burned, you keep everything just in case.

Now our collection of odds and ends will be more petite for a couple of reasons.
  1. We haven't yet had the years to accumulate the things she has had. 
  2. We love digital things and digitizing physical things, reducing space consumption. 
This being said, we are thrilled that we have so many people interested in sending us care packages, but we want to ask something to save both our generous senders money and us space.

Please, please, please, do not send us toys. When we arrive in country and have some time to figure out what we need and what we miss, we will provide a list of items that will be great to send in a care package. But I know that when there is such an adorable little baby in the jungle, you just want to spoil him rotten with toys!

But:
  1. Shipping to PNG is not cheap. We want to respect the time and money you put into your gift to us. 
  2. We're not sure what things James will like! In America, kids see things their friends have, things on TV, can go into a toys store and look around and decide what they like. James just won't have been exposed enough to know his preferences. 
  3. Even if James loves the toy, eventually he will outgrow it. Then what? There can be big problems with regifting it to someone in the village, choosing one family over another. There aren't an abundance of thrift stores in the village. We have to burn our trash in the village so we can't just toss it. Leaving us with baby toys around the house where hoarding is already a tendency for the next 30 years or so. 
(Now, of course, with a single toy, this won't be that big of a deal, but if everyone throws in a single toy, we'll be up to our eyeballs!)

Additionally:
  1. There's the cultural aspect to consider. In a village setting, there's a communal idea. If James becomes attached to toys and doesn't let other kids have them, he'll be viewed as selfish and not willing to share with The Village. 
  2. If he does allow children to take toys, there's the concern of perpetuating the Cargo Cult mindset, that white people have things because they worship God and if you worship God, you can get things, too. This is not the gospel, nor a perception we wish to feed. 
  3. Other children don't have toys. James will have a number of things that will differentiate him from his friends. He doesn't need more. We recently watched an episode of the Gilmore Girls, where Emily furnished Rory's dorm. Her reasoning was that Rory now owns the space. It gives her the upper hand among her suite mates. We don't want James to have friendships based on manipulation. "It's my toy and I say how we play with it," whether that's an attitude he assumes or a perception that's shoved on him by his peers. We want him to engage in relationships with humility, in a fraternal relationship not a patriarchal one. 
  4. He doesn't need toys! He lives in a rain forest! I know my fondest memories weren't playing with my many toys as a child but playing outside! Climbing crepe myrtles, catching fireflies and caterpillars, hiking through the woods at my grandparents house. With so many cons to toys in our context, why distract him from the true joys in life?

So, I will send out a wish list, and I'm sure that there will be times a toy or game will be added here or there, but they will be very intentionally chosen based on interests, longevity, and transfer-ability. 

If the number of toys we post don't meet your spoiling needs, we have a solution!
We opened a savings account for James. Please feel free to spoil him financially!
We hope to give him access to this account at some point when we feel he will truly know the value of a dollar. Whether as a wedding present or a nest egg or a house warming gift. We doubt we'll give it to him as college money as we'd like him to never perceive education as a free ride and only value it as such, but we have nothing written in stone.

Checks can be made out to "James Smith" and sent to:
712 Pritchett Rd. 
Lula, GA 30554
This will one day be a gift that he will really appreciate when he can truly value a gift and the value of a dollar.

Care Packages can be sent to:
Pioneer Bible Translators
Attn: Jacob and Elizabeth Smith
Box 997
Madang 511
Papua New Guinea

Good things to include in care packages are always consumables.
Spices, spice packets, pretzels, goldfish, french vanilla creamer, Starbucks Via, individually packaged jelly (for PB&Js in the bush), Chick-fil-a Honey BBQ Sauce, and always silica gel packets to keep our dry goods (like those yummy spices) dry.
When we get in country and have a chance to look around, we'll let you know what else we miss dearly.

Thank you so much,
Elizabeth 

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Today's The Day

We told you about our deadline on July 21st.
And that day is today.
Today is our travel agent's last day of work before he goes on a 19 day vacation.
We had said that in order to buy plane tickets we needed 90% of our budget pledged.
I wrote in a recent post:

Now we have a new goal date, July 21st, and I think we'll make it somehow. And if we don't have 90% of it by then, I know God will work it out some other way. 
Guys, I know it. I feel it. In my heart of hearts, I have felt such peace about it. 
We're leaving in September. 
God is going to make it happen and He is going to look amazing doing it!

Well, we don't have 90% of our support but, nonetheless, God made it work. 
We were green-lighted to buy plane tickets!
We have them in hand!

September 3rd is our departure date! 
In 6 weeks, we will be in Papua New Guinea!




Of course, this does not negate our need to be fully funded. 
If anything, it increases the urgency that we get our funds. We definitely do not want to find ourselves in debt or having to leave the field for lack of funds. 
So please pray for the rest of our team to come together. 
And please pray about whether you might be a part of that team. 

Friday, July 10, 2015

God Loves to Stack the Deck

And God told Gideon, "Son, you have just enough men to think that you're a big deal. But you're not. I am. So what I'm going to need you to do is stack the deck against yourself. Let's get rid of most of the men in your army. I'll leave you with a handful of platoons. There's no way you can win against an army with a few hundred men."
And He was right, as He always is. But to the glory of God, the battle was won anyway. Not because Gideon could possibly win given those odds. But because God can.
Speaking on this very story in Papua New Guinea. The two containers are full of rice. The first has 300 grains and the second approximately 135,000.
Elijah knew this tendency of God to prove himself. So when he was finished mocking the prophets of Baal who begged their god to send fire for hours and hours, Elijah poured gallons and gallons of water on his alter, before calling for God to burn it up. The Lord decimated it. I mean, I think we all cognitively know that stones can burn up, but have you seen it? All you would have seen after this inferno was a charred hole in the ground. 

Jesus heard that his beloved friend Lazarus was dying. So he didn't go. Healing the sick is so beginner's stuff. Any prophet can heal people! But nobody can raise the dead. Nobody. (Except Elijah, but that kid never even died so... He deserves to be an exception.) Even Mary. who knew and believed in Jesus' ability to heal, thought this was beyond him. Jesus waited until Lazarus had been dead for four days, hit the stinky gross level of dead, to come over and say, "Ok, Lazarus. The sun is shining, let's stop napping." And the dead man got up and hobbled out of his tomb, saying "MMmm MMM mm! MM mMM mm!" Which roughly translates to "Why am I tied up [in burial linen]? I can't walk!"

Sometimes God stacks the deck against Himself, so that when His will prevails, despite all odds, His power will be seen and He will be glorified. Sometimes the deck is already stacked against Him: David vs Goliath, Moses vs Pharaoh, Peter vs The Sanhedrin. And He prevails nonetheless. And sometimes He just provides in a crazy way. 

The widow who didn't run out of oil until all her jars were full. 
A few loaves of bread and a couple fish feeding 5,000 men (not including women and children)
A fish having enough money is his mouth for the temple tax x 2. 

God loves to be glorified! And He loves to make sure that there is no doubt that everyone knows that it was Him at work by making it impossible by human means. 

So the multiple times this trip has been pushed back for reasons beyond us (POC requiring infants to be 6 months and POC canceled in May being the last two issues), while I was frustrated that we were further delayed in getting to PNG, I was even more frustrated that reaching 100% of our budget would take that much longer. Because I know that God loves to stack the deck against Himself. 

The last time we went to PNG, we were expecting a $2500 that at the last minute fell through. The day before our trip, Jacob got on the phone and raised it all. We had been raising funds for this trip very slowly for a very long time and pulled in 25% of our expenses the night before. Let me assure you. It was not because we were fantastic fund-raisers. 

God provides, but He's not concerned about my stress levels in the meantime. 

We have 10 days to raise 6% of our funds. 
We have worked full-time for 365 days (yes, a year ago today, we arrived in Virginia, launching our full-time PD-trip) and raised 58% more of our budget. That's just more that 1% a week.
365 days - 58%
10 days - 6%

My, my... This is not looking good. 

Our last deadline at the beginning of July was not met because we raised the money we thought we needed at the hour we thought we needed it, but it was met nonetheless.
God made it work for us and He made the possibility of us bringing our support in in time even slimmer!

Now we have a new goal date, July 21st, and I think we'll make it somehow. And if we don't have 90% of it by then, I know God will work it out some other way. 
Guys, I know it. I feel it. In my heart of hearts, I have felt such peace about it. 
We're leaving in September. 
God is going to make it happen and He is going to look amazing doing it!

So let's glorify Him now for all the things He's already done, for me, for you, throughout history. 
And let's pray, because God loves it when we turn to Him for our own needs and for the needs of others. 
And when He's finished the finale of bringing in our support, let's glorify Him again. 

(If you're thinking of joining our support team, please don't read this as reason to wait until the 21st to share your intentions... That's not what we're going for here.) 

6 people giving $46/month
12 people giving $23/month
1 person giving $275/month
275 people giving $1/month
100 people giving $2.75/month

Whether God finds one person who's able to give a lot or a legion of people who have little they can give, we are so excited to meet the rest of our team. 



Thursday, July 9, 2015

Mark your calendar: July 21st is THE DAY

As you may have heard in my video announcement, there was some miscommunication on what exactly we needed to have of our budget to pass the Beginning of July Deadline. Instead of 90%, what we had of 82% was plenty. But 82% isn't enough to buy plane tickets.

We are two months out from our anticipated departure date and we need to have some goal date for purchasing plane tickets. I didn't want to pick an arbitrary date and hold it up declaring it the deadline, especially if we're not really figuratively dead after it passes.

As I was pondering that, I began to talk with a travel agent about how to get over there. He found us great tickets, involving no overnight stays (blegh for having to get your luggage, find a cab, play for accommodations and food, find another cab and check back into the airport) and only 26.5 hours from the first departure to the last arrival! (I know that sounds like a lot but add a couple nights in Brisbane and a night in Port Moresby and the trip is taking closer to a week!)

BUT, our travel agent is taking a 19 day vacation on July 23rd and the 21st is his last day in the office. So we have our deadline target day, goal day, The Day!
If we don't have 90% of our support pledged on this day, we don't think our ship will be sunk. It may very well be possible to find other tickets from another travel agent.
But we've heard good things about this guy, we like these tickets, and we would like to buy them before he leaves town.

We need 6 people giving $46/month. Or 12 giving $23. Or 3 giving $92.

(Our campaign emphasizing giving 1% of our budget is to help put a graspable picture in your mind of how much we need and say it in attainable terms. 

Telling a stranger about our need, she said "$46? Anybody can give $46! I can give $46!" And she did. We certainly hope she's right and $46 isn't a daunting figure for anyone but we don't want to communicate that a smaller gift is unwelcome. After all, the story of the widow with two coins is about how valuable a sacrificial gift is to the Lord, it's denomination is irrelevant.)

Check out the How to Give Page to see how you can join our team!

We are so so so excited to be leaving soon. We've been working toward this goal for 10 years now. To finally be able to go over and start ministry, to live incarnationally with the villagers, to aid on their translation work and their literacy competency, teaching people how to study the Scriptures, and letting people learn about the God who loves them and who speaks their language.

And we're excited for all the members of our support team who get to have a hand in this. I'm excited to send them pictures of the country and stories of the people we meet there. These pictures and these stories will be theirs too. That's how a partnership works.

If you can't give (or give more (don't want to ostracize our current supporters from the then of this if-then)), can you pray that we find our 6 other supporters before the 21st?
(And if you can give (or give more), after you shoot me an email or check out our giving page, can you also pray? While you are an answer to prayer, your prayers are important too!)