Are You Still Looking for Funding?

So, things are slowly coming together. Actually, in some ways they are starting to come together quite quickly. You see, I was finally able to reach a consulate in Ukraine who said that they could help me when it was time to get a new visa. All this was well and good and I was pretty excited until I realized that I had no budget to travel to Ukraine 3ish times, stay there for two weeks and get a new visa. I was starting to stress about it and finally I had a long chat about it with God and tried not to worry.

Maybe a day or two later, I got an e-mail from Joel. Basically he informed me that we were switching things up with my visa because he was going to get me a year-long multi-entry business visa. Say what? That's right. Not only is my visa going to be good for an entire year, but I will be able to exit and re-enter the country. Can I get a Whoop-Whoop? There was a flurry of activity to get the paperwork in for the letter of invitation which, I was informed would take about a month to process. It will then be FedExed to me and it will be probably about 10 days on my end to actually get the visa, pushing my departure date back to sometime just after Sept 20th.

Which was actually just fine for me. Why? Well, because I'd been looking at my funding and even without having to go to Ukraine three times, I was still kind of worried.

Which brings me to my new favorite question:

Are you still fundraising?

I've had several people recently who are interested in funding my trip ask me this. The answer, dear friends, is always yes. I don't care what the "deadline" was on the paper. The answer is still yes.

You see, we are missionaries. What does that mean? It means that local churches and individuals support us so that we can focus our energy on teaching, preaching, encouraging, sharing and generally spreading God's word. As a result, sometimes there are sudden expenses on the field, trips, emergencies, etc. Or sometimes a congregation that has been supporting a long-term mission suddenly decides it can't any more and pulls funding.

My point in telling you this is that you shouldn't let the fact that a mission might already be funded stop you from giving. Chances are they aren't. And if by some miracle they have all the money they budgeted for, your support could go toward helping another project that otherwise might not be possible.

Now, would anyone be interested in giving $90 a month to support a lovely young lady in Russia...? :P