God, The Ultimate Wedding Planner
When people are discerning joining missions, some have reservations about selling all they have, wondering how they will be provided for. But when we put ourselves in our Heavenly Father’s care and protection and rely on God for our needs He is so faithful!
Mission: Hospitality
You can’t take the mission out of the missionary! Although we are currently missionaries-on-furlough (not actively serving at one of FMC’s mission posts around the world), we have had no shortage of mission activity. Jesus is constantly offering us opportunities for ministry and evangelization in our daily lives.
Sewing in the Desert
They call it Kilómetro 64, just known by the nearest kilometer marker on the highway where this dusty village sits, next to a long line of windmills, directly under major, humming power lines, in middle of the Mexican desert.
A Radical Spirit of Faith
In 35 years of celebrating marriages, I have never experienced such a vibrant Catholic community participating in the wedding ceremony. Every hymn was sung with gusto, every prayer response was spoken with clarity, every person was highly attentive to the Word and the Sacraments.
Frank’s Note
The Mission at the Crossroads
Sometimes I ask myself why we are still here. Yesterday I was praying my rosary and asking God what He was doing. Our time here in Ecuador has been far from easy. I have rarely encountered so many obstacles in such a small span of time. Every step forward is hard and slow. People (including our pastor) do not fully understand why we are here.
Solidarity
It is a beautiful mystery that our Lord so sought solidarity with man that He left his heavenly realm to be a man. This time in Costa Rica and these three families have helped us begin to understand this beautiful mystery of God’s love for us, a love so great that He lived and continues to live in solidarity with man.
Madam Eliana
This is Madam Eliana. She has been a dear friend of the FMC missionaries in L’Asile, Haiti for years now, and is just as eager to spend time with us new missionaries as she is to share stories about those from three years ago. On our visits to her humble Haitian home, we sit on the front porch, the place she often chooses to sleep because she prefers the cool air and solid ground to the bed inside the dark front room.
Warfare and Worship
Olivia and the other missionaries serving with her visited this pueblo and faced such great resistance and indifference from the people. She would often describe it as a “heavy” place. We later discovered that a very famous witchdoctor lived and worked there. People came from all over to be cured by her or to receive a spell. No wonder the place feels like such a heavy stronghold of the Enemy.
Gettin’ Awkward for Jesus
During our missionary training, when referring to the way missionaries are called to bring God into ordinary life, someone jokingly coined the phrase “gettin’ awkward for Jesus.” This describes the missionary attitude: sharing the love of Jesus whenever, wherever, and with whomever – even at the expense of one’s social standing.
A Year In Missions
I know by accepting His call to become a missionary, I gave the Lord permission to push and pull and stretch me beyond my deepest imaginings, and there’s no way I could escape from that unscathed. I had to allow myself to recognize my faults, to see where I lacked knowledge and wisdom in things I had never dealt with.
Victor & Karina
On a Saturday afternoon, we received a phone call from our friend Andy, a fellow FMC missionary here in Peru. He’d just been informed of Karina’s biopsy results, which indicated her recently diagnosed and untreated cancer was so advanced that she had only two weeks to live, at best.
The Ultimate Matchmaker
When I joined FMC in 2013, my biggest struggle was the first-year “no dating” commitment. I had just ended a five-year relationship with the man I planned to marry. When the Lord called me to become a missionary, He asked me to abandon what I had planned for myself, to follow His plans. I said yes and let go.
A Filipino American Missionary
I did not know any English, but I knew how to say “work.” They let me help clean the yard, pull weeds, and build them a garden.
Keep On Keeping On!
The missionary life entails renunciation and sufferings. It is a glorious life but not a glamorous one. It can be adventurous and interesting and fun, but it’s not easy. In training new missionaries, Genie tells them, “All it costs is everything!”
My African Heart Transplant
The Ezekiel Chapel
This past July, Jason Healy and I found some extremely cheap tickets to Ecuador, so we decided to go in hopes of meeting the bishop of Tena and seeing if he had any need for missionaries.
Wendy
“In Christ Jesus you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” – Ephesians 2:22 I’m a huge fan of the show Fixer Upper: the sweetness of the Gaines couple, the beauty of the re-creations they make, and the immediate gratification when all their work is easily summed up in 45 simple minutes! So,…
