#22 - When are you going to America? Part 2
'Because when He thinks it's time, the money will be there in a blink of an eye!' - Blog #19
At the beginning of December, we wrote a blog about the progress of our planning to go to America and all the things that came with that. In this blog I wrote the sentence above, not knowing that this time would come very soon. With this blog, we want to give you the latest updates and tell everything as elaborate as possible. So continue reading quickly!
It can happen so fast
I think about a week after I wrote this blog, a job opening came at Timon. It was the same job as Ramon has (nightguard) and with that the only job that we were able to combine with Ramons' job. Besides this, we would never have a babysitter problem and during the quiet hours of the night, I could do the work for Stress Less Family Coaching and any translation work I have. I applied for the job and was hired, so per 1/1/2020 I too started working as a nightguard.
Because Ramon's job was enough to pay all the regular costs like rent and utilities, we could use my paycheck almost completely to save for the Bakkers Beyond Borders projects. Because of this, the start of our travels came really close to happening.
Doing the math, talking, waiting.
After running some numbers, we soon found out how close. If our calculations were right, we could leave to Pennsylvania around July/August! But given the fact that plane tickets are about triple the price in those months, we set our sights on September 2020. We emailed our contact at VPE-missions to arrange a meeting and February 24th we had a conversation in which we presented our saving- and travel plans. Our contact had to put them in front of the board for final approval, so we started waiting. It didn't even take all too long, but it might as well have been months. But, this week we got the news:
We can go!
The plan
So here's our plan: In the beginning of September, 2020 we will leave the Netherlands to go to Pennsylvania for 3 months (so until the beginning of December 2020). Then, depending on how fundraising will go, we want to continue traveling to the next places. With the received monthly pledges and our own savings we now have enough to go to the USA, but to be able to continue following our calling, we really need to find more partners. Fortunately, we have a God that touches people's hearts and we're praying that He will get more and more people excited about what we're doing while we're trying to follow where He leads.
What do we want to do after the USA?
““Missionaries for missionaries””
Over the past couple of months, we've had plenty of time to pray and search for the thing that God wants us to do in the different places we come. The assignment of building, supporting and, if possible, strengthen communities, churches and organizations still is a pretty broad one.
But in the last couple of months, we found out that God mostly wants us to go and support other missionaries (and their organizations). This can look different every time, for example helping people start or lead a church or helping people called to build an orphanage. We don't want to go to take over the work completely but want to focus on how the missionaries can proceed their work stronger, more vital and better organized. When the missionaries are in need of a period of real rest, we can even discuss taking over their work (when possible) for a little while.
It's so beautiful to see how many projects are being set up to tell people about Jesus and help people. But when missionaries require support and help, who's there for them then? We believe God is calling us to fill in that gap. We will help where possible. This sometimes may be (temporarily) leading a team or build one, sometimes restructuring an organization, sometimes it's building houses and sometimes it's cooking and cleaning. Besides those things, we'll always make a cool promo-video for the project, so that their partners can see the beautiful things that are happening in the field. In short: we're becoming missionaries for missionaries.
Where do you want to do this?
Right now we've received a very clear calling for Pennsylvania and Kenya. Other than these places, the path's wide open before us. After careful prayer and a lot of conversations with other people, we believe this is the case because God has given us a very specific assignment that we can basically do anywhere in the world. We've also discussed this with VPE-missions and they'd love it if we go and support our fellow VPE-missionaries. But we also really love to expand this to all kinds of different organizations and projects. As long as we don't have a specific calling for a specific place, we'll go to places that we know our help is needed and work to follow the assignment we did get really specific.
We both think it's really important to travel responsibly and not fly randomly across the world. That's why we're now orienting on places and projects in Central- and South-America. We already know of a couple of possible places, through friends that know people who work there as missionaries. A more specific update will follow when we know what will happen.
How can you help?
Right now we're both working very hard to be able to save money for the work we want to do. We're planning to work during our travels as much as possible too, so that we can help provide our income too. Making tents if you will ;) But as we mentioned before, monthly partners are vitally important. You can help us by:
Thinking and praying if you want to become our (monthly) partners. Through this link you can do this online very easily. VPE-Zending is an ANBI-foundation, making all your donations tax-deductible if you've got a Dutch bank account. It would be amazing if all our partners, in turn, would help us find new partners in their own network. The beauty of this project is that your monthly support is not supporting one project, but a lot of different missionaries, doing a lot of different things in a lot of different places.
Pray for funds, safety, and projects that we can go and work with.
Sharing our posts, blogs and videos on Social Media and telling other people about our work, so that more and more people will hear about our project.
Thinking about places that we can go and tell us about them. The best would be if it's a place that can provide us with room and board, or not to high rental prices so that we can keep the costs as low as possible. The ideas you have, you can email us, by pushing the contact button at the bottom of this page.
It was a blog that was a little longer as usual, but we hope that everything got a little bit more clear for you. We want to sincerely thank you for your patience and interest in our family's work.