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Reflections of Hope News
Our Testimonies Part 1
July 29th, 2010
As Pam and I share our hearts and vision this summer in America, the Lord is connecting us with many new people who share a heart for the lost and dying…welcome to the Reflections of Hope team! So during the next couple of newsletters, we want to share our testimonies and specific vision in some detail with our new partners, and we also want to review that vision for those of you who have been a part of our team for some time. And when we speak of team members, we are talking about all of you who stand with us in prayer and/or give of your hard-earned finances…both of which make our ministry possible. Thank you for being an extremely vital part of our ministry team!
One of the first questions we are always asked is, “Why Siberia?” Let me tell you that it is not a place that we would have picked on our own but it is the place the Lord has sent us to. Over the last two years, Chita, Siberia, Russia has truly become our home and we are anxiously awaiting the date that we return to our home and our children there. Let me go back to the beginning and share a portion of our testimonies with you, and hopefully this will answer some of the questions on how we ended up literally half way around the world.
I, Gary, was raised in a good Christian home and was exposed to missionaries at an early age. We lived right up the street from our church and my father was a deacon, so when we had missionaries in town visiting our church, they sometimes stayed in our home. We were able to learn to know the missionaries personally and were able to learn unique perspectives about their lives and their struggles. This was the ground that my personal missionary calling began to grow. I embraced this calling until junior high when I started to become afraid about where God was going to take me…I was always afraid that the Lord would send me to Africa to live in a tiny shack with bugs and snakes, and that was not something I wanted. I also began to develop a fear that I could never accomplish what the Lord had for me…that the calling was too large and too difficult. It was at this age, that I began to walk away from the Lord and His calling on my life. I totally turned my back on God and the church for about ten years and it was during this time that I met another back-slidden Christian named Pam.
Pam was not raised in a Christian home and suffered abuse beginning at a young age. As she began to get older and understand the pain she was feeling inside, she began to develop a desire to help children who shared a similar background of abuse. As an adult, she struggled with her self-worth and was in and out of church for many years, never able to fully commit to the Lord for any length of time. She always believed that she had nothing to offer and nothing to give to anyone.
When Pam and I married, she knew nothing of my call to missions and to be honest, I did not consider it to be important and had forgotten about it. Within a year, the Lord began to pull us back to Him. But before I would return to church, I had to answer the nagging question that returned…“What will I do if He renews that call to missions on my life?” At that point, I was tired of running from the Lord and I told Him that I did NOT want to “Go” and become a missionary, but I agreed to never run away from the calling again. Within about a year, the Lord renewed that calling into missions. Pam knew nothing about this previously, and when I spoke with her about missions, she point blankly said, “God is not calling me, which means He is not calling you, so we are not going.” This was the beginning of a seven year process of preparation in both of us. Both of us went through much inner healing and little by little, the Lord was getting us ready for His work as we opened our hearts to Him. Pam went from “I’m not going”, to “I will go to support you”, to truly embracing the specific plan that He had for her. As the Lord showed her that she had value, He opened up Jeremiah 29:11 to her and revealed that He had a very specific plan tailored just for her. And then He opened up 2 Corinthians 8:12, “For if first there is a willing mind, it is accepted according to what one has, and not according to what he does not have.” In other words, if you are truly willing, God will use what you have and does not expect you to bring anything that you do not have. God’s love, His heart, His plan, His word…truly amazing.
In 2005, we knew it was time to go on our first short-term missions trip and to try and figure out what the Lord’s specific plan for us was going to be. I had always wanted to go to Russia and Pam was willing to go to any country…except Russia (yes, God has a sense of humor!). But the irony of the situation is that God came through Pam to confirm that we would be traveling to Russia, and not just Russia, but Siberia. We had no idea what we were stepping into at that time, and little did we know, but the Lord was going to totally change our hearts and desires on that three week trip. That trip to Siberia, including to the city of Chita, was the birthing ground for Reflections of Hope and the vision we have to reach the children of that city with the love of Jesus Christ. Stay tuned…we will continue next month with what God began to do in us on that trip!!!
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