There is, admittedly, a lot to update you on.
It’s been 6 weeks now since I’ve been back from the Race. At the time it felt way more like we were leaving home and going to this strange distant land called the US. Now I’m not sure what it feels like.
I still measure time in places and the months in numbers.
“When was that again?” “Nepal.” What month was that?” “6.”
I still find myself conditioned to get ready to leave a place as soon as I get there.
I remember this dream Sheri told me, it had to be 6 months ago or more now. We were on the flight home, and I was watching out the window as the wheels touched down stateside and everyone started cheering. I had paused for a moment, looked at her in a huff, then said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
It’s been 6 weeks since we touched down now, and coincidentally 6 weeks that I’ve been engaged to her. I’ll tell you the full story some other time, it deserves more attention. We never dated. We hadn’t spent the whole year hooking up in secret and hiding our relationship. We’d simply waited on the Lord, turned our focus to Him, and did what He said to do when He said to do it. And that meant being on one knee 20 feet out the door at JFK, trusting the Lord to take us from there. And honestly, sometimes it’s still almost overwhelming, the thought of me getting married. Leading a woman?? I don’t know how to do that. 2 become 1, what does that even mean?? And now we’re making joint decisions, and all those weeks spent talking about ‘our plans for when we got home’ are washed away in naïve irrelevance.
Hearing the voice of the Lord and doing what He says. That’s it, that’s what we’re going to base our relationship on. It’s gotten us this far and it’s what’s going to take us forward.
We feel crazy sometimes, at least I know I do. Everyone else is talking about this reentry transition home, and I’m being blown about the states making plans I never expected to make, thinking “Transition?? What transition?” In a heartbeat, everything changed. I just had my first date with the woman I'm going to marry, three weeks after we got engaged. Our future is a blank slate dedicated to Him and wherever He takes us. In a sense, the Lord is really the only one who can fully get it.
It’s hard not to keep it from boiling over, until it finally settles into this weird temporary eternal peace thing the day we get married, when we can finally breathe for two seconds and look back and say, I don’t know how we got here, but He said He’d take us here and He did. And then we’ll look forward and say “Alright Lord, what’s next.” Those first few weeks where we can finally just unwind and enjoy each other fully, reflect on the last 14 months in peace, then finally step forward without feeling like we’re being pushed.
It’s been a whirlwind ever since we got home. My best friend got married within days. A week later my family was getting home from the Canadian Rockies, and a week after that I was hugging my soon-to-be in-laws, two kids running around by the end of it calling me Uncle Danny. I’ve never had that before. And now I’m here in Georgia with Race friends as I write this, unwilling and unable to leave the friends and community I’ve come to know and need.
So let me fill you in on what’s happening:
Sheri and I are on the Lord’s schedule. It was His idea to get engaged this quick, His idea to push the wedding forward to November 2nd, His idea to get us all the provision, support, community, and mentorship we need, and His idea to get us permanently out the door. It just so happens that we love His idea.
It’s very clear that He has things for us to do and people for us to meet come November. We moved the wedding up based on a word of prophecy that we received from a girl we didn’t know. She told us that God’s giving us the green light, that we’re ready, and that He has things for us to do. He needs us to take off sprinting and trust that He’ll put the track in front of us. And our prayer that night, as He took us out of the waiting room, became “Lord, if you’re telling us to get married and leave this quickly, then you’re going to need to put the pieces together and make it work.”
And He has, immediately, in unbelievable ways. Everywhere we turn Sheri and I have been experiencing His immediate provision and favor, and it’s been unreal. And we’re leaving, at His prompting, on a one way ticket for Indonesia two days after we’re getting married, knowing that wherever He tells us to go from there in Asia, we’ll go, and wherever He tells us to stay, we’ll stay. The Lord has made it very clear that He has things for us to do, and that there’s no time to waste. Hear His voice and do what He says. And He’s been issuing us both into this season of abundance and provision that we’re just frankly not used to.
In the mean time, I’ll be leaving for Chad in two days on a two week job / volunteer engineering design trip. Bear with me, with all that’s been going on, this trip has almost gotten lost in the shuffle, but it’s still important. God put this opportunity in my lap really randomly a couple months ago. It’s with a ministry called Engineering Ministries International, and they send small, specialized teams of engineers to meet ministry design needs all over the world. Our team of 7 will be working in the capital of Chad, this remote Saharan country in Africa, to design the expansion for a Missions base. My job will primarily be evaluating the water supply needs, and designing the layout of wells, pumps, and water tanks to meet those needs, as well as a comparable sewage treatment system. It’s an incredible opportunity to use the skills I gained at school to serve, and to meet people with similar skillsets and faith. But it's actually really exciting because I'm not super sure of why exactly God put this here at a time like this. The real reason I’m going, as it comes at an odd (and stressfully overwhelming) time, is that Sheri shared with me a word I had given her nearly 7 months ago, a word I don’t even remember getting. I had asked her, “Does God ever put random places on your heart and you can’t stop thinking about them?” “No, not really. Why, you?” “Yeah, Chad”. Honestly, I don’t even fully remember this, but it’s so cool that God used Sheri, the only person who could tell me this, to confirm this trip for me.
All of the fees in Chad are covered by the ministry, but I do need to come up with money for the flight and for the visa, which admittedly aren’t cheap. I’ll need $3400 to make this work. If you feel the Lord prompting you to support me, please get in touch with me, message me, email me ([email protected]), call me (847-602-4324) and I’ll tell you more about the trip and we can work out how you can support me. It’s with a different ministry than the World Race, so if you’re a repeat supporter, I’ll need to collect support differently. I’m expecting the Lord to come through in a big way; with recently getting home and with the wedding, it’s been really hard to get a support base going. Like I said, I leave for this trip in two days.
And finally, if you can keep Sheri and I in your prayers, that would mean so much to us. My biggest prayer request is that we can prepare as best as possible a solid foundation for our marriage. Pray for humility, grace, faith, and for clarity in hearing the Lord’s voice, and strength to follow. Pray for us as we prepare to leave, for safety and direction and provision. And get in touch with us. We’re looking to build a consistent prayer network, and plan on keeping another blog at a different web address for our continuing adventures. We’ll link that blog from here when we get it up and running, and we’ll use it to facilitate prayer requests, updates, support, and community as we follow the Lord. We need your support. Just asking us questions goes a long way.
Thank you so much for everything, you all mean so much to me!
Love,
-Danny
