Hi friends! On today’s episode of Draw Near to Me, we will begin part 3 of Michael’s faith journey. For those who prefer to read, today’s content is also posted below. As a recap, part 2 ended with Michael and Sarah finishing their YWAM training and beginning their time as missionaries. The first location they were called to was Jacksonville, FL. Since this is a man’s testimony, my husband, Jeff, will narrate Michael’s story. If you enjoy this post, please share it with others using the share button below and consider doing a free or paid subscription. With that, let’s dive into part 3 of Michael’s story. Enjoy!
Sarah and I had been at the Jacksonville YWAM location for almost two years. As we closed in on the end of that commitment period, we began to pray about where God was leading us. Once again, we knew He was calling us elsewhere, but we needed to figure out what the next location was going to be.
In ministry and missions, our hearts may want to go where there is a need, but the problem is that there are a million needs in the world. We are often inundated with them. For us, discerning where God wanted us to move next was often a process. We had to determine where there were great things to work on, understand what we could be effective at, and know what we were actually gifted in and called to do. It is one of those myths that if there is an open door it must be of God. The reality is that God is not the only one that opens doors, so we still must take the time to discern which one is right.
To be honest, we were surrounded by people being sent out to other places, often overseas, so the idea of being movable was nothing out of the ordinary. It may not be much different than the day to day experience that people have when God asks them to do some step of obedience. Perhaps for some, that prompt is something as simple as going to go talk to someone at a grocery store. For us, being immersed in the mission setting, it became a normal practice to just pick up and go.
When it came time to discern where God wanted us, we considered what the specific needs were for a position. We then evaluated whether it was something God had equipped us to handle. If we had certain qualifications, it narrowed down the different locations we considered. From there it was often a question of whether someone was willing to pick up and go with their whole family. We were always open to doing that part of the equation.
Again, we prayed and had others pray with us to confirm what the next step looked like. Sarah and I never wanted to be on an island figuring it out ourselves. So, in some ways, discerning where God was calling us for the next step was not anything super groundbreaking or dramatic. It was determining if we could help with a need and then, through the prayer process, knowing if that was where we felt like we should head.
For Sarah and me, our next step after Jacksonville led us to the West Coast, in Portland, OR. There we worked with an anti-human trafficking ministry. Part of that work was conducted in Latvia. We spent 7 months in Eastern Europe doing mission work.
My wife worked in a café ministry. They opened their doors from around 9:00 PM to 1 AM in the morning. Women on the streets were invited into the café where they were offered food and coffee. Over time, they built relationships with the women and got them connected to the rehabilitation center, which was attached to the coffee shop. There they could receive job training and free counseling.
Meanwhile, I was running a men’s targeted ministry. Every weekend in the downtown Latvia area there were pockets of guys that came in. They were there for bachelor parties, strip clubs, and prostitution. I led a team of guys from an international church to those areas. We approached those groups of men that came downtown for the clubs and prostitution and talked to them directly about their life choices. Why were they there and did they understand how those decisions impacted real people?
We targeted the men with the idea that these human trafficking industries existed because there was a demand for them. While the café ministry worked on getting people out in rehabilitation, the men’s ministry was to use prevention as a long-term solution. If we could get the people who are paying for the services to rethink their participation, then we could diminish the industry before it started.
When we returned to the States and our time commitment in Portland, OR came to a close, we prayed again about whether to remain at that site or if we were called elsewhere. Once more, we felt God direct us to a new location. This time we headed to Madison, WI.
Madison was the only place that we stayed much longer. We were there for about five years. There I was a part of an in-depth Bible training. We taught, preached, and went to parts of the world where there was no access to training. For instance, we went to places in Africa and Asia, especially in rural villages. We sometimes discovered that the only qualifications to pastor a church were simply being the oldest person that owned a Bible. They did not necessarily have any idea what they were doing.
We went to many locations for 2 or 3 weeks at a time. While we were in the field, we trained the local pastors and gave them Biblical resources. In one location, we even ran an underground Bible school alongside of the indigenous leaders for six months. That mission work was done in an Asian country that was a closed nation to the gospel. It was in that setting where our daughter learned to walk.
When you lumped all of our experiences together, and saw the pieces fall into place at the end, it looked good. However, it was a different story if you’re in the process of waiting for that picture to develop. From an outsider’s perspective, when you mapped out everywhere we had been, from Jacksonville to Portland to Latvia to China to Madison etc., we looked like we could not focus.
The fact was that at each transition state over the years we only moved on because that was what we heard from God. To be honest, half the time we felt guilty. Often when we reached that two-year mark where we had to reevaluate and ask God where He wanted us, we were established, and that place felt like home. It was challenging to go to leaders and to tell them that as crazy as it sounded, we felt we were supposed to leave. It was even harder to explain it to people that were not within those circles. For them the norm was to stay in a job. It didn’t make sense that we were always moving.
Despite being called by God to each place, we still had people ask us what we were doing and what our specific long-term call was. People, from pastors to those supporting us through donations, told us that it appeared like we had no clue as to what we were actually trying to do. They just thought we were going everywhere. Those were real conversations we had on a regular basis.
Although I understood those were valid questions, I was sitting there trying to figure out how to answer them. I was simply taking things one step at a time and following where God called us. Yes, we were passionate about several things, but we did not know exactly what it culminated into. What I knew was that I was doing what God asked me to do and walking in obedience to Him in the way He asked.
Once we hit 2019, Sarah and I had been going for ten consecutive years in missions without any real break. At that point we felt the Lord leading us to take a different season. We needed to regroup a little bit as a family. By that time, in different ways, I had probably been to 22 countries or so. Between shorter term trips, to longer missions, and some travel done after a mission trip, we had been to many places. Even our boys had been to around 10 countries by that point. This did not even include all the travel and movement we did from city to city over the years. We were a family of five, and living as missionaries was starting to take its toll on us as well as our kids.
Sarah and I knew we could no longer remain in Wisconsin. I was too involved in leadership to be able to take a true sabbatical. It would not be an actual break. Through a lot of different times of prayer, we felt God consistently brought up the idea of moving back to Jacksonville. We had been there before and loved the city and the church we used to be a part of. We decided to explore the possibility of moving there, and within a day my wife discovered an opportunity while searching online.
The church we used to attend, Beach church, was holding an internship. Even though it was an unpaid position, I became interested in it as Sarah described it. For us, as support raised missionaries, we felt it could work as long as our donations stayed consistent. So, I began the application process. By then I had 10 years of leadership and ministry experience in missions, so getting the job of an unpaid internship was fairly probable.
In the end I was offered one of the open positions. We did not know what our time of sabbatical from mission work would reveal, but we knew it was time to rest in some ways. In 2019, we moved our family from Wisconsin straight to Jacksonville, FL. In the fall I started as an intern at Beach Church working specifically with the lead pastors at the time.
To be continued.
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