This is a blog series that we have talked about doing many times but haven’t committed to it yet. The point of this blog, we hope, is to help people see what life has been like to be married on The World Race and for people who are just interested in knowing how it has been for Katie and me on this crazy journey. We are going to try posting once every week or so for the rest of the race and maybe even after as we adjust back into our lives. This will be a series of blogs as said above and we ask if there is a question you have for us to fill it out in the comments of the blog and we will try to answer it in the upcoming blogs or in the comments. Thank you and without further ado lets begin part one.
When Katie and I heard about the race we knew it was something that would be challenging, rewarding, and also adventurous. After deciding to go and being accepted we were ready to travel the world with the serving hearts God gave us, but before we could we needed to get all our ducks in a row. For those who do not know Katie and I did two years of marriage counseling before the race and I would strongly recommend this to newlyweds. Not only did we work out the bugs in our marriage, it gave us some great tips and tools that we have used many times on the race and in daily life. Couples often fear counseling because they don’t want to admit something is wrong in their marriages. Please don’t be afraid of counseling because if you love the person you are married to, which you should, then marriage counseling is something to rejoice, especially with a Christian counselor. It’s not something to fear or look at as fixing problems. Instead think of it as tuning your marriage, just like you need your car serviced every 2 to 3 thousand miles, your marriage needs servicing as well.
Now, though our hearts were ready to tackle the world, we still needed to get all the gear and raise the money to go. The problem was we needed a lot of money, exactly how much money? Around $34,000 would do it, not a problem for God, but we were a little worried. So we had our realtor Dori stop by and give us a quote on what it would look like to sell our house. This was in November 2014, and we were thinking of selling in February 2015. She told us if we wanted she could sell our house as it is, fully priced, and asked if she could bring some people to look at it. We said sure, not really thinking much would come out of it. Something this journey has shown us is God will do amazing things if you only open the door and say, “Yes”, just like Bob Goff says in his book Love Does. We’ll bring him back up later down the road. God didn’t just open the door for us He kicked it in, taking it off it’s hinges. Our home was sold 3 weeks later for full asking price, as is, and with no closing costs. Wow! But God wasn’t done yet. While we were excited about the profit we gained, we needed to also sell most of our furniture because we had no place to keep all of it. That is when the buyers came to us asking if we were willing to sell 75% of our furniture simply because they liked the way it was staged. What? That is unheard of! God sold our house for full asking price, almost all of our furniture, and we didn’t have to pay for an inspection or closing cost because the buyer said he would do all of it. This stuff doesn’t happen unless God has his hand in it, which he did! We say all of this because you never know what God will do if you simply allow him to work.
Now we had all the money we needed to pay off our debt, buy our gear, and head to training camp. But God still had many more blessings for us ahead. In a weekend God sold Katie’s car for a great price and that allowed us to apply a large amount of our own money to what we needed fund raised. The Greeley Tribune asked to write a piece on us, which helped a lot with fund raising. We also had no place to sleep now that we were homeless, but one of our great friends Kati gave us a room to rent in a Christian community house she lived in until we left for training camp in May.
God does amazing things if we only stop and let Him. We tend to get in God’s way a lot by not trusting Him and thinking it impossible, but isn’t He a God of impossibilities? He created everything. We doubted time and time again thinking the odds of us raising $8,000 to leave the country seemed dismaying and to raise the total of $32,554 seemed impossible at times. We laid awake praying and stressing how it was going to be possible. It wasn’t until we stopped getting in God’s way that we were able to see how much He was moving.
I read a saying today that sums this up very well. “God is not intimidated by the odds, he is like ‘Dude, I made the galaxies!’” If we serve the God of all creation and just say yes when He asks us to, the odds have no say in what God can do and you can take that to the bank.
