Road Trip
Three weeks. Fourteen different places to sleep. Five-thousand miles. We just returned from an amazing road trip, visiting family, friends, partners in ministry, churches, and attending a worship conference. For all of you who hosted us, fed us, and visited with us, thank you! And those of you we missed on this trip – we’ll put you down for a future U.S. road trip!
We started out from Minneapolis, drove to Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, surprised our kids in South Carolina, then North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and then back to Minnesota.
It’s really hard to pick out highlights from this trip because there were so many! If we had to summarize the trip with three words, they would be connecting, confirming, encouraging.
Connecting
It was such a joy to connect with so many new people and to reconnect with friends we haven’t seen, in some cases, in many, many years! We were also amazed to discover a web of connections between people that we met, extending all the way to Africa!
For example, we found out that one of the pastors at a church we visited along our route had worked at RVA with his wife in the early 90’s. Another pastor in TN had worked in North Africa with people we’ve known for years. One of the speakers at the worship conference had also worked at Moffat Bible College many years ago, and come to find out, his daughter is married to the Moffat principal’s son!
Confirming
This trip also ended up being very confirming to our call to church plant in Nairobi. Not only from the support we received from individuals and churches along the way, but also how we felt the sovereign hand of God guiding us. Lilli did a great job of planning the entire trip, and prayed for wisdom as she did so, but the Lord kept surprising us with those unplanned connections and divine appointments!
After being introduced at a Sovereign Grace church in Pennsylvania, we had a woman come up to us after the service saying she needed to speak with us. Turns out the family is planning to move to Nairobi in November, and the husband (a Kenyan) has been praying for years for a church like ours to be planted in Nairobi! Stuff like that kept happening!
Encouraging
Traveling around, staying in home after home, hearing your stories of how God has been faithful and good, even through the midst of great difficulty, was such an encouragement to us. We saw tears of grief, and tears of joy, the fierce love of parents for their children, unselfish hospitality, sacrificial service for an entire community, and just the simple love of hanging out with friends. Thanks for inviting us into your lives as well as into your homes (okay so maybe we invited ourselves!).
And finally, we were so encouraged to sing the praises of our God and King, together with 1,400 fellow worshippers, including 8 from Cornerstone, at the Worship God Conference! The teaching we heard on our union with Christ became fuel to our spiritual worship in song! We left with full hearts and minds, with a few more friends from around the world, but also ready to get back to our local church!
Pray
- Lilli is accompanying her dad on a month long trip to Norway and Madagascar. Pray for safe travel, good health, and fruitful connections.
- Jonathan preaches at Cross of Grace Church in Chaska on Sept. 11, Emmaus Road Church in Bozeman, MT on the 18th, and Emmaus Road Church in Sioux Falls, SD on the 25th.
- We depart for Nairobi on September 10. Pray that the rest of our financial support will come in, that we can be packed and ready to go, that we would find housing within the first few weeks.
- We will be commissioned at our church, Cornerstone Community Church in Burnsville, MN on September 8 at 10:00 am. Jonathan will also be ordained (Lord willing! – there’s actually one more step that needs to be done first), and it’s the 40th anniversary of our church. We would love to have you join us!
Amazing trip and reconnections. Very life affirming and confirming. Looking forward to your work in Kenya. Will plan to visit for sure. Let us know any short term needs.
Khosi and Ron
Can’t wait to welcome you!
Well, I’m exhausted from your trip!! LOL!! I am so impressed and thankful for all the people you were able to connect with on your road trip!! You clearly have met so many people over the years as you have served the Lord in many places!! And have kept in contact with them….that is a real gift! Praying for you in the ways you have asked!!
All by God’s grace! Thanks for the prayers.
This is so beautiful! And I’m so thankful that God crossed our paths because now I get to learn bits and pieces from afar what it’s like to be a missionary in a different country! (Unrelated but I reached out and am beginning to make connections to the Sovereign Grace Church in Korea!!)
Though I am not officially connected to an organization/church (yet haha), this post has given me a beautiful picture of receiving the needed support that the Lord provides from a “home-base”. I had been under the misconception that to be abroad long term, I need to learn to be equipped/sustained from my new country alone. However, God’s divine connections are to be utilized in partnership rather than ignored or forgotten~~
In some ways, my week visit in the States was also the same —connecting, confirming, and encouraging! And I honestly strive to model this picture of “family reunions” in the years to come :)) praying for you all!! <3
Thanks for sharing this, Michelle! We loved hearing God’s story in your own life, and meeting your dad. It was definitely one of the highlights of our trip! Actually, I could have added one more word to this update, partnership. It’s one of the 7 shared values we have as a family of churches – that we can’t do it alone! We need each other! Keep in touch!
So thankful for the connections, for the confirmations, and the encouragement that the Lord provided for you all on this trip. I’m sure the people you visited were so blessed to have you, just as you were blessed by them. Excited to see you in Nairobi in the future!
Karibu!