BELIEVABLE

We were traveling back to Bolivia from Viña de Mar in Chile (a journey of over 1,100 miles), and just as we headed into the desert we realized we didn’t have any water. With a car full of kids and a long endless drive ahead, how could we be so careless? After a few miles of wondering if we should turn back, we saw this colorful hut on the side of the road. It was brightly painted and strangely situated. Nick pulled over and said, “I’m going to ask here.” He walked up to the house and disappeared for a few minutes, then came back to the car. “Babe come… you have to see this.”

We walked to the back of the home where a man was watering plants ‒ an oasis in the dessert. How did he have water? How were these plants growing in this desolate place? As we chatted, the man told us about bringing life to the dessert. He asked us about our journey, and we began to see that we were speaking to another believer. Every time I used the word “unbelievable”, he would correct me and say, “BELIEVABLE”. I would continue talking and again would exclaim, “It was unbelievable,” and the man would correct me: “Believable”. As we filled our water bottles and jugs, he said, “You need to change your vocabulary… with God, nothing is unbelievable. Everything is Believable.”

As we got back into our car, our youngest son Tucker said, “Mommy, do you think they were angels because their eyes sparkled?” And I said, “Believable.”

We arrived in La Paz and began fasting, praying and dreaming. We spent nights awake, talking as we dreamed. Through the years we had gathered a following of university students that called themselves Go Missionaries. They gathered to pray every Friday evening and stayed until everyone fell asleep. In the morning, all got up and went off to the University or to work. We told them what we thought the Lord was speaking to us and asked them to pray.

God was moving us. Did we have the faith to obey? The word obedience was in our minds like block letters on a whiteboard. As we had pulled out of Viña de Mar in Chile, the pastor had held up a whiteboard that had that single word on it: Obedience.

Faith and Obedience are interchangeable. Not the same words, but actually the same thing. When you go out on a limb in obedience, that’s when you start to have faith. When you have faith ‒ when you trust God ‒ you obey, and by doing so you walk into the supernatural, where God makes the “not yet”, “Believable”, as if it were.

We moved to northern Peru in 2010. The dream was to buy a property and build a place that we and the local churches could use for discipleship. Our personal dream was to settle in and put down some roots, to plow, plant and work the fields, and to trust God for the harvest.

We started out our time in Peru sharing a house with some friends, a Peruvian girl who was married to a Bolivian guy. Our three worlds in one house. We didn’t know where to start. We didn’t have money to just go and buy a place.

We moved into a rented apartment right across the street. We decided that we would use what was in our hands. We rented the bottom floor of the apartment building and used it as a classroom. It had a bathroom and a back storage room that we used for a dorm room. We enlisted the help of a local pastor to lend us bunk beds and we were off. My friends used their rented house as a dining room and boys’ bedroom. Nick and I gave up our bedroom to house the teachers, and we moved in with our kids. We knew this simple living.

Our first 10-week Discipleship in Missions School was inaugurated in 2011. We were on our way! Teachers came from Bolivia, Go missionaries came to help and lead. The Holy Spirit swept in and filled in all the details. The Lord was leading us by the hand, and it was Believable!

In 2014, we began in faith to look for properties after finishing the Discipleship School. We couldn’t keep going in the present buildings ‒ we needed to expand. The Vision was bigger. Again, we were on our knees in faith.

The week we bought the property was hairy. The real estate agent said, “You’ve got until Thursday.” Our board of directors said we needed the money up front, that we would not go into to debt. It seemed impossible. We had been raising money, but it wasn’t enough. By Tuesday we were still lacking $11,000. The real estate agent came for a visit, and we said it didn’t look like we were going to make it. He, an unbeliever, believed. He said, “When we started this you didn’t have any money and now you only lack a third ‒ are you sure your God won’t do it? We awoke on Wednesday morning and prayed. We couldn’t see any other way; God would have to do it. We sent out a few letters and made a Facebook page with a link. And waited.

All night we watched as the money came in through big chunks and little ones. When we awoke on Thursday morning, we lacked $5,000. The real estate agent came and we bowed our heads. He asked us to go back to our board to beg them to take out a small loan. We assured him that it wasn’t going to happen like that…that if it was to be, God would have to do it. He left, but by noon on that day, July 4th, 2014, we received a call from our secretary, saying, “Shannon, you won’t believe it! We’ve got it!!”

In 2015, we moved onto the property while we finished getting it ready for use. We were homesteading, again living simply.

Early one morning, armed men came into our doorless entryway. Nicolas had heard them and before I knew what was happening, shots were fired and Nick was subdued. The only doors were on our room and the kids’ room. The kids behind their closed door began to sing. I could hear them, Moi leading in the song, Oceans, and then, I Have Decided to Follow Jesus. As their door came down, I could hear TJ speaking the name of Jesus. He shouted, “Jesus loves you, Jesus loves you,” and then his voice changed and he shouted, “You’re bringing a curse on yourselves. This belongs to the Lord.” Maddy, busy hiding things, got smacked in the face. TJ was hit on the head with the blunt edge of a gun.

When it was all over, we were alive but our faith had been shaken. More than things, they stole our joy. Like Job, we heard from the gamete of councilors: “You should go home. What did you do to deserve this?” We were faced with the cost of the Call. We were depleted, tired, dumbfounded, and physically wounded. Nick had been severely beaten, and fire from the sawed-off shotgun had left burns on his ears and face. We were sad.

A pivotal moment came when a family of Peruvians came to attend to us. They prayed in every corner of our property and then emptied a bottle of olive oil onto our heads. The reverberations of this tragedy continue to play out in our lives, yet the oil of healing poured out that day continues to flow into the cracks and crevices where faith was lost.

Plenty of other activities take place throughout the year, providing options to invite those who might not be comfortable going to church, but who are willing to try Jesus through this third-party connection. We also serve the Church through active exercises of praise, through massage and spiritual counseling.

The vision is far from complete, but it’s established. This January we came together from the U.S., Switzerland, Bolivia and Peru in Celebration. This is what God does: He puts a dream in your heart and then in faith He calls you to the Believable.