How does this work?

Fund-raising is NEVER fun and it's getting harder as wall street tanks. We're trying to be creative about finding a way to get back to Botswana in time for the school term that begins in January. We wrote to AGWM (Assemblies of God World Missions, our sending organization) about taking steps to reduce our budget, so that we could return to Africa with less support than they've told us we need. We even suggested that we might take money out of our personal income and pledge it towards our own Mission account. Chuck got an e-mail back from AGWM and they said we can't do that, the IRS doesn't allow it.

So I thought a little while about it and then I suggested to Chuck, "Well, we could take money out of our personal income, though, and pledge it to some OTHER missionary family." You may be wondering, "But how does that help the WILSONS raise the support they need?" It doesn't. But I know that all our missionary friends and colleagues are struggling, too, and none of us is finding it easy to raise our support.

The next day I got a call first thing in the morning from a cousin of mine; she wants to know how she and her husband can support us on a regular basis. You see, they've retired now, sold their house, bought an RV, and they're traveling around the country. Since they're not going to church at the same place every week, they're not putting their tithe toward the support of a local church. I was amazed when I got off the phone.

I told Chuck the good news and he looked up from his e-mails and said, "I have a message from AGWM that we got four new pledges yesterday." We were ecstatic! We haven't received a new pledge in nearly four weeks, and in one day we had reports of four new pledges and a promise of one that'll be coming in soon.

Chuck commented, "I think it's significant that the day after we made pledges to two of our missionary colleagues is the day we got five new pledges." I asked him, "Do you think they're really connected?" Does God really work like that? If somebody wrote a novel and put in a sequence like that, you would probably ditch the novel and say, "It's just not realistic." But this IS realistic, you know, because it's REAL. God really did this for us: He knows we needed the encouragement, no matter what the timing of it, and it takes my breath away that God's abundant blessings came right on the heals of our own gift to others.

But, even if it DOESN'T work that way, it did this time. God is good.

Pay-Pal Church?

I just got an idea yesterday. This idea is a potential solution to a problem facing today's churches: younger worshippers don't carry cash, nor do they carry checkbooks. A lot of churches are trying creative ways to give these young people the opportunity to give, but it continues to be a problem. Here's my solution:

Why not make the sanctuary a free wi-fi zone and set up a pay-pal account for the church? Then, instead of insisting that everyone turn OFF their cell phones in church, you could encourage them to leave on their phones, blackberries, i-phones, or even their laptop computers. At offering time, tech-savvy worshippers could log on and put their offering into the church's pay-pal account, and some of us more techno-challenged could drop a check or currency into the plat as it goes by.

A side benefit might also be sending out announcements and even the sermon power-point via internet right during the service. Hey, it might not solve ALL our problems, but it could be worth a try!

Replacement computer

Earlier this week, Chuck suggested that we go look at computers, to see if we could replace that one that was stolen at the Sea-Tac airport a couple of weeks ago. I said, "No, let's just be a bit patient and see if God will replace it for us" Later, as I prayed about it, I thought it would be good to wait at least till Sunday (tomorrow) to see what the Lord would do.

Yesterday we got a call from the pastor where we were scheduled to speak last night--at a Missions Banquet. He thought there might be something we needed that he could get for us; at first he thought perhaps we could use a video projector, but when he heard that a computer was a bigger need for us (and not quite as much money either), he said, "Go for it."

I'm glad we were patient. God is not in a hurry.