Here is an article that Emily wrote last year for The Throat. Although it’s a few months old now, it’s relevant since we are still waiting.

Psalm 25:4-5 “Make me know Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me. For You are the God of my salvation; for You I wait all the day.”

One of the things that I have always known about my spiritual walk with the Lord is that I am willing to do whatever He leads me to do. He led me to go to college in Missouri for a degree in education, He led me to marry a man named Chris Vickio and He instilled in me a desire to do mission work in East Africa. All of these things I have gladly accepted because they are all used to further the kingdom. But never in my life have I contemplated the Lord leading me to wait.

In all of the previous decisions I have made in my life, I prayed about them, sought Godly counsel, prayed some more, and then acted upon my decision. When faced with the decision of my occupation, I decided that I wanted to serve God with my ability to teach. After seeking the answer as to what avenue to take to receive the needed education, I chose a school and then went. When faced with the decision of my life-long mate, God brought to me a man who loved the Lord and lived his life showing that. After prayer, wise counsel, and time with him and God, I married Chris. In both of the above scenarios, I was active in seeking the outcome and I thought it was going to be the same with my decision to become an overseas missionary.

After making the decision to devote my life to missionary work, things progressed quickly but then suddenly came to a halt when a roadblock entered the picture. The house my husband and I own has been on the market for a year but has not sold yet. My family, my church family, my husband and I have all been praying very hard but it is very clear the answer is to wait. At first, I was very confused. I have never had to wait on the Lord before. In all of my experiences, my prayers were answered and I was able to get to work. But, now I can not do anything but wait for God to make His move. But how am I supposed to do that? What does waiting on the Lord look like?

I have come to the conclusion that waiting on the Lord is a form of spiritual art. It is something that everyone must eventually face. Through my time of waiting, I have learned several things to help me stay focused and not get discouraged.

The first thing I realized is that I have to believe that God can handle anything. The Bible tells me so in Mark 10:27. It says, “With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.” I have to know without a doubt that God is in control.

Second, I have to trust that God will take care of me. Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love Him.” I have to have faith that He will work everything out for my good.

The third lesson I learned was that I can not waste my time while I wait. God may be calling me to overseas mission work in the near future, but what about today? What about right now? God may have me here for a purpose and what if I am so wrapped up in my own self that I miss it?

I have decided that I am no longer going to see waiting in a negative light. When I look at this through God’s eyes, the time spent waiting no longer appears bleak and unadventurous. There is still work to do, disciples to make, and the church to encourage. I can still glorify God while I wait and the Bible promises that if I do so, I will become strong. Isaiah 40:31 says, “Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.”

National Missionary Convention 2008

Here is our video report from the 2008 NMC in Tulsa, OK. We explain our adventures in actually getting to Tulsa, give an overview of what goes on at the convention, explore the exhibit hall, and then find some strange and interesting things around town. Check it out.

Convention Arena

We left home on November 20th, a chilly Thursday morning. Getting to the Baltimore Washington International Airport was a bit of an adventure in and of itself. After getting stuck at a railroad crossing waiting for a train, and then getting lost for a while after taking a detour, we very nearly missed our flight. We were running full speed through terminal B of BWI and made it to the gate just before they closed the door.

The National Missionary Convention has three main features: The main sessions, the workshops, and the exhibits. The theme this year was “Getting Your Hands Dirty”. The primary text was from Luke 4, especially verses 17 – 30, where Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah in a synagog in Nazareth. We really enjoyed hearing Mark Moore speak on this text during the main sessions Friday and Saturday. Other main session speakers included missionaries from all over the world with inspiring testimonies and stories.

We attended a number of workshops which included ideas on how to reach muslims, animists, and hindus for Christ, how one man’s water purification system is helping to bring the gospel to impoverished people groups, and how Bible translation and literacy work hand in hand to deliver God’s word to many people who are desperately in need of it.

There was a strong focus this year on reaching those who are suffering in physical poverty. One speaker pointed out that there are over 2,000 references to poverty in the Bible, and Jesus often spoke and dealt with those who were in these types of situations. Too often, we try to spiritualize these concepts, losing sight of their true meaning: We cannot truly show the compassion of Christ to people if we are not doing what we can to meet their physical needs.

The exhibit hall at the NMC is always a great place to meet up with old friends and learn about ministries that are happening all over the world. Walking through the exhibits we found many people we knew, which was both exciting and exhausting after a few hours.

Emily and the girls

A large group of students from Central Christian College of the Bible came to the convention, including my sister Sarah, Emily’s brother Daniel, and a friend of ours from Delaware, Bethany. It was great spending time with them, not having seen them for several months. We visited several great restaurants in Tulsa, and found a peculiar footbridge that the locals call the Center of the Universe. Who knew, the center of the universe was in Tulsa, Oklahoma?

Probably the most encouraging part of our trip was spending time with our PBT family. We hadn’t seen them since PMI in June, and although we are still getting to know everyone, we already feel a strong connection with them. It was great to know that so many people are praying for us and are looking forward to us selling our house and moving to Dallas for our training.

Overall, the convention was enlightening, encouraging, and exhausting. We are very glad that we were able to attend this year, and are more convinced than ever about the great need for people to go and bring the good news of the gospel of Christ to those who are in spiritual darkness, and about our decision to pursue full time ministry in his service and his kingdom!

Update: Check out our NMC 2008 video!

We are attending the National Missionary Convention again this year and are looking forward to the opportunity to meet up with missionaries from around the world and with many fellow PBTers who we haven’t seen since we were in Dallas earlier this summer. This year the convention is being held in Tulsa, OK, November 20th – 23rd. The theme is “Get Your Hands Dirty!”. The worship, sermons, and workshops are always a huge encouragement at the NMC, but probably the greatest part of all is the chance we have to fellowship with hundreds of Christians who have dedicated their lives to Christ’s service.

We’ll be posting the details of our trip, along with photos and hopefully some video, after we return.

It has been a while since we’ve had much to report about our ministry activities, so I wanted to take a moment to update everyone on where things stand right now.

Partnership Development

Emily and I are currently in the Recruit status with PBT, which means we are doing partnership development and preparing to move to Dallas, TX for further training and preparation before moving to the East Africa Branch. This summer we completed our initial round of presentations at some of the local churches in Delaware that we had previous relationships with. We are very grateful to these churches for hosting us and for the prayer and financial support we have received from them so far.

While we have not yet presented anything at our home church, LCC, we have had several opportunities to talk with the leadership team and missions team. There is lot of interest in what we are doing and we are hoping to receive a significant portion of our financial support from them. When we are more certain about the timing of our training in Dallas we will be able to get a clearer picture of what this will include and will then determine how much (if any) additional support we need to raise.

About Our House

Our house, in the middle of our street

The main concern we have at this point (as anyone who has spoken with us knows) is the sale of our house in Milford, DE. We purchased the house in 2005. At the time, we didn’t know that we would soon have the opportunity to join PBT in full-time overseas ministry, or that the US housing market and economy was about to take a sharp turn in an unexpected direction. Fortunately buying our home was a decision that was made with much prayer and consideration, so we are confident that everything will work out in the end.

We need to spend one semester in Dallas for training. Once our house sells, we will be looking to move to Dallas for the next semester, assuming we have enough financial support in place at the time. For example, if our house were to sell this month (and we hope that it does), we would be looking to move to Dallas in January for the Spring semester.

Our house has been on the market since December 2007. As expected, we saw very little interest throughout the winter. This summer we’ve had a number of people come and look at the house (two people just this last weekend), but we have not had any offers yet.

Waiting…

Overall we are remaining optimistic, seeing this waiting period as an opportunity to exercise patience, build relationships, and to prepare spiritually for the journey ahead. Admittedly, It is easy to become discouraged. Every time we turn on the radio or see another foreclosure notice stapled to someone’s front door (such as our neighbor’s!) we are reminded of the reality of the situation.

Fortunately, we can live above the “reality of the situation”. We believe that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love him, as Paul puts it in Romans 8 and as we heard preached this Sunday. We know that “all things” includes the economy, and our mortgage, and our house, and any number of factors that we are unaware of.

So we remain confident that God’s timing is perfect, that our house will sell when it’s supposed to sell, and that the support we need will come in. Even if it doesn’t, we are thankful to God for all that we do have, which, in the scope of everything really is a lot.

Also, if you know anyone who would like to buy a 3,000 square foot 4 bedroom house in Milford, you let me know.

While we were in North Carolina earlier this month visiting Emily’s grandparents, we did some geocaching and made a video of our adventure with Emily’s brother and my sisters:

Lake House Geocaching

We’ve been very busy lately with camp weeks, which is great since we love camp, but it’s also very draining! Two weeks ago we were the mission for MMAD week at DCSC. For those that aren’t familiar with that week, MMAD stands for Music Multimedia Art and Drama. The youth (8th-12th grade) and staff have one week to put together a full blown stage production.

This year was an original play called RSVP that takes place the day before a young couple’s wedding and uses the setting to compare the marriage relationship to our relationship with Jesus. Emily was helping with music and I was in charge of all things tech (mostly lights and sound). It was a great week and we are very grateful to everyone who donated to PBT in support of our ministry!

Looking for an opportunity to recover from MMAD week, we headed down to North Carolina last weekend with my sisters Sarah and Loree, and Emily’s brother Daniel. Emily’s grandparents have a house on Lake Gaston and we had a wonderful and relaxing weekend with them. Between tubing, fishing, playing music, and geocaching, we still found time to get plenty of much needed rest. Check out the photos from the trip in our photo gallery.

From there we drove up to Indian Lake Christian Service Camp where we have to opportunity to be the mission for a Sr. High week that our good friend Charles is leading. Emily is staying all week and helping out as a dorm mom and team leader. Unfortunately I am out of vacation days, so Monday night I had to head back home to work for the rest of this week. I’ll be going back on Friday to stay for the final night and to pick up Emily.

So that’s what we’ve been up to lately. Still no bids on our house, but we did have two people look at it last week. Our friend Billy says that the housing market is picking up and that we could have a sale soon. We’re praying that he’s right.