countdown: one month!

It's hard to believe we leave for Gulu one month from today!

Please save the date for July 15th (2 days before we leave) to come worship & pray with us. We want all of our friends, family, & supporters to be there!

"Unbelievable" - by Eric Vinson

Here is another story of God's Provision on this journey, told by trip-member Eric Vinson. There is still time to donate! You can do so online here. (Type the name of the team member in the 1st box, or just "midtown gulu general" if you want it to go towards the most needed member.) All contributions are tax-deductible.

We live in an unbelievable world. Seriously. We witness things, probably even on a daily basis, that leave us shaking our head in disbelief. Maybe it is a last second shot… a video on YouTube… a twist in the plot of your favorite TV series… the first listen to your favorite band’s new single…the latest natural disaster…What is mildly ironic, is that we use ‘unbelievable’ to describe either side of the coin. For example, a fan of the winning team will scream his disbelief in the purest of joys while the fan of the losing team will say the same thing, only while sinking his chin into his chest with a frown. This world and the people in it, whether for the good or the bad, are simply unbelievable.

When my wife Laura and I first heard about this trip to Uganda, we truly felt drawn to it. Our initial reaction was eager, not because we merely were excited about the experience but more that we truly sensed some sort of belonging to it. The doubt began to creep in immediately as our conversations about the trip turned toward the monetary. We financially were in the worst shape of our lives. There simply wasn’t enough money coming in to match what needed to be paid out. We had scaled back everything that we could and still found ourselves living on a couple of part-time jobs and a whole lot of love. If we came up even $200 short in our fundraising, we would not have the resources to make up the difference. But in the end, we completely trusted that He who calls is faithful.

Fast forward 2 months. We had forked out the initial $400 for our deposit only because we sold a couch that we loved but didn’t really need. Other than that, we had raised very minimal support. It wasn’t even to the point where the trip was seeming realistic. We constantly brainstormed and thought of ways we could raise money. Being worship leaders, we considered finding opportunities to lead somewhere that we had been before, only this time sharing about our trip and coming solely on the premise that the congregation would take a love offering. We had a lot of interest, but in the end, all but two events fell through due to scheduling and finances. These two events were spaced about a month apart. The first event was a great experience where we raised $900 towards our trip. Looking back, it was after this event that the support started coming in… small amounts here, bigger amounts there. Our goal was becoming more tangible but our time to raise money was thinning.

The week leading into our final worship event was hellacious. We had a car break down, recent flooding in our home, endless hours of work… Life got so overwhelming that we came to Kentucky exhausted, beat up, and doubting. We hadn’t had the time to prepare as much as we’d like for the upcoming service and weren’t sure we could even pull it off. Our time with the congregation was met with the Lord’s presence and coupled with a spirit of peace for our own hearts. It wasn’t until mid-sermon that the pastor even noted how fitting it was for them to have us in on that particular Sunday, which was Pentecost. We were striving to be a living example of the passage in Acts…Go to the ‘ends of the Earth,’ proclaim the Good News, and share life with those who believe and those filled with unbelief. As we waited after service for our love offering, we really felt it would be in the $400 range. Such an amount would be extremely helpful, but would also send us back to the drawing board.

Sometimes I believe we don’t give God the chance to ‘wow’ us. We take blessing for granted, we expect He who created the world to always do great things, and we live our lives as if God owes us something. We believe that we can always do it better within our own power, calculate the right scenarios by our own thoughts, and maybe even play God better than God Himself…I realized during that moment of waiting for the total of the love offering that I hadn’t really given God a chance to be God in this situation. I wasn’t allowing the God who has and will always do things unbelievably well to work in an unbelievable way within my own life. I had tried so hard to figure everything out that I had limited my perception of God’s provision and blessing. It was at this point we were told that $1500 had been raised in support of our trip to Uganda. Unbelievable. I couldn’t say a word. I was literally immobilized by not only the generosity of the people of God but also the realization that we, all of us, are so dearly and unconditionally loved by our Father in Heaven.

There is some work left to be done. We need to raise around $1200 more to fully fund our trip. But with a new perspective that has solely come from the Lord, our expectation has turned hopeful. Even more than before, we believe that our journey to Uganda can't begin fast enough!