So now it does look like we run a campground! I'll have to take pictures and figure out how to post them as it is quite something and more and more show up on a daily basis it seems! We currently have 3 RVs, 1 tent trailer, 4 vehicles, plus all our vehicles, trailers and farm equipment. I'm really curious what our neighbours are thinking, but so far so good....no complaints! There is no extra noise, so no one can really complain. One of the missionaries is from New Brunswick and is quite close to her sister who lives out there, too. After not seeing her for 3 weeks, the sister left behind in NB suggested they pop up and surprise her missionary sister here in Ontario! So, that's what she did! She stuffed 4 little kids (all under 6) and a husband into a small vehicle and completely surprised her while they were out the Niagara Falls way. Now they are with us, too! We've had some lovely times of fellowship, even some singing together and nightly devotions, as well as tons of fun for the kids as there are kids their age to play with.
They come back after going from city to city street preaching exhausted, but often have many opportunities to have good conversations with people. What it often reveals to them is how many mentally disturbed people are out there as so many of them who heckle are often completely whacked out on drugs - there is so much darkness out there, we don't even realize.
Some think it is a huge imposition on us to host them, and trust me, in our humanness, we almost backed out just a few days before they came. RM, in particular, started to wonder what he'd gotten himself into. How would we do this? How would he get his work done? What about the impact on the land? The neighbours? He had a lot of questions. We quickly talked with the leader of the group on the phone and he put RM's mind at ease. It really was no surprise, I said to him after he had a peace about hosting them, that we had had gone through that battle right before they arrived. I'm sure Satan wanted us to not have them. He wanted us to miss out on blessing. He wanted to put a huge block in the missionaries way as well and ruin their trip so that they couldn't preach the Word. Interestingly enough, they've had enough troubles of their own - almost all of them have either had major vehicle issues or issues with their trailers in this past week alone, that to have us back out on them would have just been about the worst thing we could have done. So Satan was definitely at work, hoping we would struggle enough to not do it.
It is an imposition to host them for sure if you have a worldly perspective, but that has changed for us for sure. We are actually very grateful for the experience now - it may have saved us from having our barn burned down! A few nights into the week we realized the power to their trailers kept going out. As RM tried to do the trouble shooting, it took him up to the source of powerlines going across our property from the house to the barn to the shop to their trailers. RM knew there were electrical issues, but had done enough makeshift work to get by through the brutal winter. He wasn't about to go on the roof of either building in the winter storms let alone the winter cold. This time as he went up, he finally saw the true problem. On the barn, there was evidence of sparks where the awful, old wiring had done some serious potential damage - in some ways it is a wonder that we haven't had a barn fire and it now makes us realize how grateful we should be! So he fixed what he could without rewiring the whole barn, but it has definitely revealed that more wiring and electrical work needs to be done on the old buildings....
It was only a few days into having them that we got together for a wonderful time of prayer, singing and a short devotional. During that time one of the missionaries prayed for us, that our family would be blessed for being available to them. He went on and on. I was touched by the prayer in and of itself. It was that night that we found out a major mistake had been made in our tax bill a few months back. I'm not sure how much I wrote about this, but we had a huge financial blow a few months ago - a big oversight on a tax bill had occurred that we couldn't comprehend how we would pay, let alone how it had happened in the first place. It seems it wasn't our fault!!! It seems it was the government's mistake and they have in fact prepaid our taxes with the money they owed us and applied it to this year's taxes, which is a mystery in itself. More details are coming out of the woodwork, but all I'm thinking is why now? Why did we find out now? Could it just be part of the blessing of having these people here? Who knows, but I'll take it! When we look back, we wonder if it was God's way of keeping our spending to a minimum, keeping us trusting him even when nothing makes sense and always being fully, 100% dependent on Him for everything. God was at work the whole time.
There are two single guys here as well. I always ask them if they are hungry as I just know single guys generally are and if they don't have a wife doing most of the cooking, then they starve! One of them kept turning me down, so I finally had to joke with him if he was trying to cut back on eating or what was the deal?! Turns out he is in the middle of a 40 day fast! I should have known. It makes so much sense now as he never made a big deal of it. It was the other missionaries who told me. He said his preaching is given so much more clarity from the Lord when he's fasted - he is no longer glorified, God is. The two single guys have a trailer, but normally they sleep in their cars. But, it turns out, they've never had to sleep in their trailers and they have rarely had to make a meal for themselves. Wherever they go to preach they are always taken in and sleep on either an extra bed or couch so they haven't had to spend one night in their vehicles yet - that's been 5 years of God's faithfulness!
So we are learning a lot from just listening and observing these folks. Their sacrifices, their faith in God's provision, their love for the lost.....very moving. Hosting them is no imposition, it's more of a privilege and an honour.
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