Divine Appointments

As of December 1, 2008, we had a total of three, that's 3, bookings for all of 2009 and all of those were for the fall. Discouraged and not sure what to do, I set out with a fellow missionary friend on an eleven day road trip to visit three different pastors fellowship meetings. At this point, I was desperate for opportunities to present our ministry. The first meeting we went to was....alright. I met several pastors, gave them my info and a few seemed interested. I left thinking, "God, you're going to have to help us out here." The second meeting started off not much better. During the preaching I began praying, "God, I totally understand that I am not in control here. I completely turn my calendar over to You. If You want us booked, You will book us. If You will give me just one appointment at this meeting I will give You all the credit. If not, I will still give You all the praise." I walked out of that meeting with 2 new appointments in the Spring and 2 more potential opportunities. God had begun filling our calendar! At the third meeting God gave us another booking for the upcoming Spring. If He wants us booked...He will book us!

**Looking Back**

We ended up presenting our ministry at 13 different churches in the Spring of 2009 (Feb-April) and 10 of those agreed to begin partnering with our ministry financially. We are truly blessed to be serving such an amazing God and to be partnering with these wonderful churches.

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If you don't know much about how deputation works, let me fill you in a little.  Missionaries call churches and pastors all over the country and try to schedule opportunities to go to that church, sometime during a regular service or a missions conference, and present their ministry in hopes that the church will then agree to support the missionary financially (usually on a monthly basis).  There are basically two types of calls that missionaries make:  contacts and cold calls.  Contacts are churches that the missionary has at least some type of relationship with, either through ministry, friends, family or referral from a pastor or another missionary.  Cold calls are calls made to churches that the missionary has absolutely no relationship with; the missionary doesn't know the pastor and the pastor doesn't know the missionary.  Let me be totally honest:  in my humble opinion, ALL calls stink!  I have yet to meet a missionary that truly enjoys this part of deputation.  It can be brutal for a number of reasons, some of which I will get into in future blog posts.  In this case, let me give you an idea of my experience with making calls.  When we first started deputation I was making 75-100 calls a day.  On more than one occasion...alright, on most occasions, I got 0, that's ZERO bookings from all those calls.  I spoke to a lot of secretaries; I spoke to a lot of answering machines and voicemail systems; every once in a while a pastor would explain that they just couldn't have us in right now but at the end of the day it really didn't matter.  I made a lot of calls and got nowhere.  Just brutal!

**Perhaps deputation calling is really just a lesson in humility!**

Unzipped

Being in so many different churches, you see a lot of unique things:  some inspiring, some tragic, some discouraging...and some just down right hilarious.  This was one of those hilarious moments.  It was Faith Promise Sunday at a church that we were with for their missions conference.  The AM service was moving right along as the pastor explained the concept of Faith Promise.  It was commitment time.  He called the ushers forward to begin handing out the commitment cards.  As the usher for our section turned around I noticed it:  his pants zipper was down!  It wasn't just down, it was wide open.  Even worse, we, the congregation were sitting down so we were all eye-level with this catastrophe.  You know the awkward "someone should say something" feeling?  Well, it lasted his entire walk down the aisle.  As he passed each seated member of the congregation, the awkwardness grew.  I'm not sure if anyone ever told him or not.  I guess you could say they were a very "open" church and this was one hilarious deputation experience! (probably not so hilarious for the poor usher whenever he finally realized his...situation)