Questions

There were some questions posed to me recently about some things that were missing in our initial newsletter. I'm sorry for this mix-up. Please see the following for those questions, and the responses.


In your email, you said:... I myself have never really given any money to any organization except for my church. I figure that this keeps me feeling like I know where my money is going; to people that serve God with my money, whom I can hold personally responsible by examining the budget and their lives. This can't be done with televangelists, etc. So I basically would like to know just a couple of things..."
1) "I believe that missionaries should be commissioned and sent out by a local church. What church is sponsoring you and why did you not mention it?"

I'm sorry that we didn't mention our homechurch. It is Calvary Chapel. Josh and I come from backgrounds of pentecostal and charismatic churches, and so I'm very familiar with the deception of "Word of Faith" and "Name It / Claim It" movements. Josh was seeking spiritual answers after leaving his home methodist church, and instead found deceptive zeal in a charismatic church. He was caught in that for two years, and the things they taught were pretty confusing and contrary to the scriptures. He found Calvary Chapel through a friend and made it his home church, and has been there for 5 years.
Meanwhile, I was becoming restless in my own church. I felt the Lord teaching me and guiding me, and I knew that I wasn't supposed to stay there, even though I had been raised in that church. So I finally started church searching and that's when I met Josh, we were working in a coffeshop downtown together and started dating. I began attending Calvary Chapel with him, and the pastor agreed to meet us every week. I had loads of questions - why was I finding things in the scriptures that were contrary to what I had been taught by various people? What was the real truth? Why was there confusion in worship, and what had I experienced all my life - was I experiencing real worship, or zeal without wisdom? The pastor never answered me with a sermon, or his own words, he just gave me scriptures, told me to go home and study them, and to come back the next day. The deeper I studied the word, the more I realized how much Josh and I needed to learn.
One day the pastor approached us both. He knew we were called to the ministry and asked us to come live at the church and work in the neighborhood full-time as local missionaries. We agreed. He also asked us to stay at least 3-5 years and study under him to prepare for future mission service. We agreed. We served at the church, studied and met with the pastor regularly, and experienced the mission field right at home, which is very hard.
This year, the pastor approached Josh and me and told us that if we went somewhere as missionaries they would support us. We were contacted shortly after by our friends from Mexico, who told us they needed one more family in their mexican village. We prayed about the opportunity, spoke to the pastor, and consulted our families. Our families were queasy about the distance, but were supportive in the fact that we were making a decision based on God's call on our lives. Teh church confirmed the calling they saw in our lives and gave us their blessings to move forward with the mission. And so, here we are, moving forward :-)

2)Secondly, you asked for donors to make their checks payable not to you, but to an organization called T.R.E.K. Nowhere in the newsletter did you mention what this organization was (unless I missed it) and what relationship you and Josh had with it. What exactly is this organization?
T.R.E.K. is a ministry started by our friend and brother in Christ, Darren West. Josh met Darren a few years ago during several youth programs that linked our church with our sister church, New Beginnings Christian Fellowship. The Owens, our friends who invited us to go to Mexico, told Darren that we were coming with them, and he contacted us about his ministry.
T.R.E.K. has a two-fold purpose. Their main purpose is to secure short-term mission/service opportunities for local churches. Their second purpose, the one that pertains to us, is that they are set up to receive funds for missionaries as a non-profit organization. This is very important, for us and the donators.
For us, if money is sent in our name, then it is "taxable income." For the donators, money sent in our name means that part of their donation will be going back to the government for taxes. We did NOT want this, because we are not accepting financial contributions for a profit. Since we are not a 501c3 organization, we needed someone who did have 501c3 status to legally collect our money. This is where T.R.E.K. comes in. After the Owens contacted Darren, he called us and explained all of this information to us. He gave us several options for 501c3 organizations that were nation-wide and large organizations, but we wanted to stay as local as possible. We arranged an agreement with Darren that his ministry would collect our money (there is no fee, it is a ministry that they provide) and then distribute it to us in an account designated for the mission. Legally, anything that is written to Joshua (Josh) or Lacynda (Lacy) Webb or any reference to our names is taxable income. That is why all monetary documents must be made out to T.R.E.K., so that they are tax-deductible contributions.
We know Darren and trust him in the highest regard for this task. We had no reservations whatsoever in joining with him to make our donations legal, tax-free, and simpler for us. If you have any further concerns, I would be glad to send you Darren's phone number so that you may learn more about T.R.E.K.