We bought airline tickets today.
One way to Accra. July 21st.
It was less than ten months ago we first talked with President Samuel Twumasi-Ankrah about Heritage Christian College. At that time we were poking around the prospect of theological teaching in an international setting. Leaving our country, our people, and our family to go to another land was only a possibility, not a clear calling.
Now we’ve got our one-way tickets. Oh boy.
No surprise, life at the moment can get pretty harried. As you might imagine there are plenty of tasks to be checked off in order to move a family of six across an ocean. Stir in the emotion of preparing to say goodbye to home, mix together with the unanswerable “what-ifs” of the fast-approaching new chapter, sprinkle on a pinch of general anxiety for good measure, and you can understand the stress of our transition. Sometimes we feel like a mercurial middle-schooler. Oh yeah, got one of those, too.
When it begins to feel overwhelming, we remember the road that brought us here. We trust the road because we believe in the God who walks behind us, beside us, and ahead of us. Our faith helps us to reimagine the “we” in “we’ve got our one-way tickets” to include more than just our six, sometimes distressed, selves.
“We” includes a host of folk whose prayers, encouragement, and financial gifts launch us into this venture. Team Bills is sent by three partnering churches--Cedar Lane, Central, Cole Mill Road--and an inspiring crowd of others (individuals, a few more faith communities, and a couple of trusts). The fundraising training we received coached us to expect on average 1 out of every 2 people to say “thanks, but no thanks” to our solicitations for funds. Whoever came up with that calculation didn’t poll our audience. Nearly everyone we approached agreed to contribute monies to our mission. Moreover, we go with a more impressive wealth of supporters praying for the journey.
God behind us.
“We” also encompasses our partners at United World Mission (UWM)and their Theological Education Initiative (TEI). It is a great assurance to lean into the wisdom of their accumulated mission experience, to follow in time-tested, well-worn tracks of cross-cultural mission preparation. This is by no means to overlook the knowledgeable collaboration we will surely garner from our sending churches. It is a gift that our churches and partners have understood how UWM and TEI fruitfully extend and enhance their expectations and guidance.
God beside us.
Finally, “we” includes the Ghanaian people at Heritage Christian College (and its US Foundation) and the leadership of the American International School who affirmed our calling with their warm invitation to us when we visited in October. We were and are humbly excited to be asked to contribute to a work that so obviously has our Lord’s fingerprints all over it. We are set at ease knowing that the Lord “has many people in this city.” We look forward with delight to growing in the fellowship that comes from hustling with Ghanaian saints hot on the heels of the Holy Spirit.
God ahead of us.
So, yes, “we” got our one-way tickets to Accra. But in the mission of God, “we” is bigger for us than our six. As a recent worship song hymns: “We know who goes before us. We know who stands behind. The God of angel armies is always by our side.”
Thank you for being for us a manifestation of God’s presence behind, with, and ahead.
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