COAT recap!

WOWEE!! It's been well over a month since our last post! That just goes to show just how busy we really were! COAT (Community, Orientation, Assessment and Training) was a lot like being back in school again. Only much more intense. It was 40 hours a week of class plus lots of reading homework! We studied many subjects such as missiology (the study of missions), living in transparency, and being good stewards of God's resources.

We had a total of eight people who went through the whole eight week process. This time was both amazing and trying. It was trying because we had many curve balls thrown our way. There were three major ones that we mark our COAT experience with. One was that our budget got bumped up to much higher than we had originally estimated. The second is some personal awareness type questions that were brought up. Finally, the third was finding out that the last class I needed to officially graduate is not offered at Northwest this fall. While these have all been large bumps in the road, they by no means have completely thrown us off our course. God has been, and is continuing to, work through them. I will comment more on one aspect of this in another post.

Some awesome times we have had almost always included our other COAT teammates. We had several weekend evenings of just hanging out and being silly. One of these evenings resulted in a sort of 'Stomp' like routine that is shown in the video below. All from a simple Cranium game night! Another instance was going to a local coffee shop and watching as some of our new friends performed at a couple of open mic nights. Our last weekend together in Ft. Myers found our COAT team on Sannibel Island enjoying the beautiful beach and spending two whole hours out in the water about 75-100 yards out from the beach! This was amazing to me since this was my first time actually swimming in any kind of salt water or any body of water bigger than a small lake! On our last official day, the COAT directors took all of us out to lunch at the Elephant Bar Restaurant which was a cultural experience in itself.

COAT was a very memorable experience! There is absolutely no way we could describe to you here the entire impact it had on us. We learned a lot more about NMSI as a whole and got to know several of the staff members that work in the office. Our COAT teammates got to be very close and we plan on staying in contact with each other to see how support raising goes. We are all very excited to see what God will work in the lives of everyone involved.

Our COAT team with directors Jordan and Matt at the Elephant Bar Restaurant

Praise the Lord!

As of the beginning of April, Brittney and I have enough funds in our account with New Mission Systems International to attend COAT, which lasts from May 20 - July 17, 2009.

The Lord has been amazing as we go through this process of raising support, and we still have a long way to go. COAT is a little over $5,500, and our suggested Monthly Budget is $3,000 per month. We are praying that we can begin work in August, which means we will need to raise $20,000 to finish out this year and $36,000 per year thereafter. It is a very intimidating project, but the Lord will provide.

At this point, we have raised:
...67% of what we need to finish out this year, and
...22% of the monthly budget.

Like I said, praise the Lord! He has blessed us with wonderful progress, and we still have a long way to go.

Letter

Dear Family and Friends,

Brittney and I would love to share with you where God is leading us after we graduate from Northwest Missouri State University in May; Joe with a Bachelors degree in Accounting and Corporate Finance and Brittney with a Bachelors degree in Elementary and Early Childhood Education. God has called us into missionary work.

At this point, we will take our college education and apply it to New Mission Systems International. NMSI is a missionary sending agency that finds, trains, places, and supports missionaries through many different missionary projects. Most of the training is done from the Center of Global Outreach in Ft. Myers, FL which is its home office, and it is where we will work. We have met representatives from NMSI several times, and they are continuously asking for workers in our areas: finance and education. We assure you that the work we will do is a huge need among all missionaries, not just NMSI.

To be a little more specific, Joe will work with accounts receivable. This means he will be busy processing hundreds of checks each day. He will make sure that each gift is deposited in the bank, and it is applied to the correct missionary account. Brittney will work with their COATkids program, which is designed to train missionaries’ children to be mission minded so that the whole family can work together on the mission field. COATkids runs alongside the COAT program, which is the training program that all new missionaries begin with.

We will begin with COAT, also. COAT is designed to encourage a Christ-centered Community, while offering an Orientation of NMSI, Assessing what God has placed on the hearts of missionaries-in-training, and provides basic Training on how to be a missionary. There are three sessions of COAT each year, and we are scheduled to attend from May 20 – July 17, 2009. Lord willing, we will get to work by August, right after COAT finishes up.

In order to do this kind of work, we need to find prayer partners and financial supporters. Even before that, we are in the works of building a mailing list, and we are looking for people who would like to receive our newsletters. Among our prayer concerns, we will be moving far away from home and family and we will be sacrificing regular paychecks to volunteer full-time. Financially, the two-month COAT program will cost $5,540, and we have been given a suggested budget of $3,000 per month to raise in order to work.

Would you partner with us? We would love to partner with you and share with you how God is working through our lives and through NMSI. We really need prayer partners and monthly gifts. We trust that you honoring God as good stewards whether or not we fit in the picture at this time. If you have any questions, we are more than willing to address them. Thank you!