Donations and Blessings

Not only have we been blessed with work and tool donations, but we have also received many other blessings. We arrived in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and have been living in the nursery room of Calvary Chapel. During the last two weeks, we have met many people, and through reading our printed newsletter and through one-on-one conversations, we found many hearts who were desiring to contribute to the ministry monitarily and physically. We had many offers of household items, clothing and shoes, monitary contributions, and food. We asked all the donors to pray about these contributions before they committed to them.

We are now in our second week of work and fellowship in Las Cruces, and the Lord has ministered to us immensely. We have received 8 bags of clothes and shoes, plates, a full-sized refrigerator, a microwave, daily food brought to the church for us to eat, many opportunities to go out and fellowship over dinner in restaurants, and several monitary contributions. We have even received offers of donations which we cannot accept because we just do not have room for them! God is very good.

Yesterday, I (Lacy) was confronted by an elderly woman, in her 90's, who reprimanded me in ignorance. I showed her respect as she told me that I was hindering our ministry by refusing to ask for an offering, or asking for a suggested donation for speaking in the church. She told me that the people needed to know that this ministry could not continue without the help of the Christians who are not able to go to the mission field. She roughly informed me that without monthly contributors who were dedicated to our "cause," we would fail.

I waited until she had spoken her peace, sensing in wisdom that her deep, conservative convictions were based on a long life of seeing missionaries carry out this method of raising support. I smiled and simply informed her that God supplies all of our needs, that he has all we ever need, and knows our needs before we pray for them. She asked me, "But you need these people, don't you?" "No," I replied, "I don't need the pocketbook of one person. The Holy Spirit has always guided people to give exactly what we need, or to provide us work for exactly the time and pay that we need. If one person refuses to listen to the Holy Spirit, he is not indispensible. God will simply give someone else the blessing of ministering to the Body of Christ."

At this, the woman became very agitated. and said, "You mean, you like working for your money better than just preaching for it?" I had to hold in my chuckles as I stared into her innocent eyes. She truly believed that a missionary had no reason to work. As we have said before, we base our ministry on the example of Paul, and will stand by it until the Lord directs us to do otherwise:

2 Thessalonians 3:6-10

"And now, dear brothers and sisters, we give you this command in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: Stay away from all believers who live idle lives and don’t follow the tradition they received from us. For you know that you ought to imitate us. We were not idle when we were with you. We never accepted food from anyone without paying for it. We worked hard day and night so we would not be a burden to any of you. We certainly had the right to ask you to feed us, but we wanted to give you an example to follow. Even while we were with you, we gave you this command: 'Those unwilling to work will not get to eat.' "