With the Christmas season come and gone, we have been overwhelmed with blessings since arriving in Africa! Matt had a rewarding and successful two weeks of ministry in Botswana with the men as they assisted building a new roof for a rural church. Kristen has been assisting a church in White River, South Africa with gardening, preparing for their Christmas play, helping lead a bible study for the 33 women in the squad, and throwing Christmas parties for children in neighboring villages.
After coming together last week, we enjoyed time away as a couple at a lovely bed and breakfast, as well as having the opportunity to go on an incredible safari with the entire squad!
However, the greatest blessing of all was finding out a few weeks ago that we are fully funded!!!!
We are incredibly thankful for our amazing supporters for all they have done for us! Your generosity and faith in us as well as the Lord’s ministry has blessed us and taught us so much about God’s provision. $32,500+ is an incredible sum of money, and we knew we could never raise that much support on our own without the Lord’s help. Throughout the entire process of fundraising, the Lord simply told us to trust Him and to work hard in all He lead us to do. Our main desire through fundraising was to board the plane for Serbia in September with no regrets in regards to doing everything we could for fundraising. I can confidently say that as far as we are concerned, we met all these goals and through the process, God showed us an illustration for how he will provide for us when we trust in His promises.
Imagine a son who had a new toy he wanted which cost $250. The child talks with his parents about all the ways this new thing could improve life and the world as a whole. Finally the parents tell the child that if he opens a lemonade stand and works hard at it, then he will have all the money he needs for his new toy by the end of the summer. With this in mind, the child works as hard as he possibly can at setting up flyers, making lemonade, and telling everyone he knows to come by. There were consistent customers who came by often to buy lemonade, and there were some days when no one came by at all. Eventually the summer ends and the child had saved up about $50. Disappointed and confused, the child goes to his parents sullen, feeling like the effort that he put forth was not enough, even though he did his best. The parents smile and load the child into the car to head to the toy store. They pick out the toy for the son and take it to the cash register to check out. Confused, the child says to his parents, “But I didn’t earn enough money!” “You have done everything I asked you to do,” replies the Father. The son puts his $50 on the counter and the parents add in another $200 and give the son the toy.
Throughout our entire time fundraising for The World Race, we had some events which were great success, and others which either failed to launch or totally fizzled. At many points in this journey, we have felt like the child in the illustration; working hard, but seeing little results for the effort. Yet, we did our best to remain faithful and hopeful in the promises God had told us. Despite our best efforts sometimes failing, God constantly amazed us by seemingly pulling money out of thin air. He would do this through supporters we never saw coming, and amazing opportunities opening up to us which we never thought possible.
We feel that it was not through our efforts that the money was raised, but by God’s amazing grace and the generosity of others. It is God who is the supplier of everything we need, and we simply must be obedient to His will.
Thank you again to all of our amazing supporters for your obedience to the Lord and your faith in us and what the Lord is doing on our journey. If you were supporting us monthly, please be sure to suspend your monthly donations to Adventures in Missions. Should you still want to give towards personal expenses while we are on the race, you can find out more information on that at gofundme.com/theturvins We are so grateful and will do everything we can to be faithful stewards of what the Lord has given us! We look forward to beginning ministry in Zimbabwe next month and cannot wait to see what the Lord has in store!
