One of our tasks while we are home is to raise monthly financial support to go back to New Zealand in June to staff as missionaries with YWAM Marine Reach.
For the past 21 months, we've been living off of our savings, a small amount of monthly support from our church and a few family and friends, and (while we were in Thailand) our teaching stipend.
As a result, our savings has done its job of getting us through our vision trip and safely home. Praise the Lord! We're both working full-time jobs right now, and God has blessed us with multiple ways to save money, so we'll be stockpiling a good chunk of our income, which will go toward paying monthly expenses over the 18 months we've committed to YWAM, but we're still needing to raise support for the remaining funds.
So far, we have about 10% of the funding we've set as our target income pledged from our church and a handful of family and friends.
Would you consider asking the Lord if he would like you to partner with us in this way?
We trust that if God is opening this door for us to serve and minister with YWAM, he will provide what we need, but we also know that He often uses His church body to minister to different members. We believe he will let you know if you're supposed to be part of investing in our ministry - we have no desire to coerce or manipulate or guilt anyone into giving! So please, pray about it and seek HIS leading!
We do, however, believe that God has directed us to be open about our desire and need for financial support, so that people who are willing might be able to give. He's directed us to Exodus 35 as a reminder that he is the one that prompts hearts to give - Moses just shared the vision and the need.
Our great desire is to have financial support flow through relationship - for that reason, we are asking God to put on the heart of 30 people we know and that HE would desire for us to be in relationship with to pledge to support us at the rate of $50.00 per month.
That would equal out to $50.00 per day toward our financial support, which would definitely get us a good chunk of the way toward our target support.
We believe that the transfer of money will be a tangible way of strengthening a relationship - it will remind the givers to pray for us, read communication from us, and generally be not only financially but also emotionally invested in us and our work. Likewise, as we receive that gift each month, it reminds us to pray for our supporters, reach out to them and communicate directly with them, and seek to be in intentional relationship with them also. Our hope is that such a partnership would be far beyond simply financial but would truly be just one aspect of a friendship and spiritual partnership in what God is ultimately doing through ALL of us, as well!
We would love to hear from you if you have questions about financially supporting us. Please feel free to email, call, or talk with us in person. Again, we genuinely desire for relationships to be the foundation of all we do, so we look forward to any conversations that will build a relationship with you!
Love,
Gabe and Dani
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