Thursday, March 26, 2009

A quick update:


Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen
- Eph. 3:20-21


March has been a good month for us as we continue to be amazed at how God is getting us ready to move to Europe. One of our biggest hurdles was selling our house. We were a little worried considering the current economy and housing market but we knew in the end that God would take care of this too. I'm glad to say that He has taken care of it in an amazing way. We sold the house without even putting it on the market!

We have some close friends of ours that have been living outside of Chillicothe for a while and decided it was time to move closer to town and they wanted to help us out... they decided to buy our house. Since it was never put on the market we are able to complete it all without commissions which helps both of us save money. With the paperwork finishing up next week, the move will take place very soon.

But, we are not ready to move overseas yet and don't expect to be able to for quite some time. In the interim, we will be living in an apartment above my brother's family's garage. It's very nice and will make a good transition place for us to live for the rest of this year or however long it takes for us to raise the rest of our support.

This will still be a tougher than normal move since we will need to go through everything that we have and make decisions about whether to sell, move it, store it until it can be moved to Germany, or store it long term in anticipation of our return to the states someday. It will be a very busy few weeks for us so please send your prayers our way!

As I mentioned, our other big hurdle is to finish raising support. We have really just begun that process but we are glad to say that we have raised about 10% of what we need. It's still a long way to go but it feels good to make some progress.

Thank you to all of you that have been involved in the process and have supported us in so many ways and a ton of thanks to God for taking such good care of us and helping us to overcome what has seemed like insurmountable tasks!

A Leap of Faith

This is a repost from my personal blog but I felt it was fitting to publish it here as well. This was originally published on Dec. 10, 2008:

___________________

Something to celebrate

After last weeks blog, I was planning one for this week talking a little bit about my recent frustrations but God was good this week and finally removed another road-block for us.

Let me start at the beginning for those that don't know us well or only know pieces of my life. I am a Christian. With all of the baggage that often times goes along with the word Christian, I am still one and proud to be so. I gave my life to Christ on my thirteen birthday and things have never been the same since (that's an understatement).

I've spent a lot of time in my life doing ministry of one sort or another but usually it involves youth, missions, or both. Missions, in particular, has been an interesting journey for me and Kim. We met while she was a senior in college and I was a new graduate working full time in youth ministry. She had been considering going overseas for a year to do missions work after she graduated. When I asked her to marry me, she asked me to promise her that I would someday go overseas with her to do missions work. On the outside I said yes but in my head I was thinking "No way!". You see, I had been overseas before and even went with AFS as an exchange student to Australia right after high school. I had signed up for a year program somewhere in Europe but after evaluating my language skills (I took latin in High school) they decided to send me to Australia for a summer instead. I didn't last 3 weeks. I was so "homesick" that they eventually sent me home. So, you see, I knew that there was no way God would ever want me to go overseas and besides, I had a ministry right here in the safe and comfortable US of A.

I've learned some important lessons since then. First of all, when you really place your life in God's hands, hold on for the ride because safe and comfortable are not really on God's priority list. At least not the way we use those words. Second, don't EVER try to say no to God about something He really wants you to do.

God made me live up to that promise about five years later and Kim and I headed to Budapest Hungary with ESI. It was a tough 2 years in Budapest for lots of reasons but during that time we learned to depend on God, to love each other deeper than we ever imagined and to fall in love with overseas missions work. More specifically, He really put a burden on our hearts for Europe.

After we returned to the states we settled in, had 3 beautiful daughters and got comfortable. Safe and comfortable. It's been a wonderful 10 years back home but about 5 years ago we began to hear God's call once again. It's been a long process to come back to the conclusion that He wanted us to move overseas again and even longer to figure out where but in the summer of '07 we had a conversation with a missionary named Vince Purpero who had a vision for youth ministry in Western Europe. Considering my background, skills and passions in life it sounded like a real possibility. Kim and I discussed it at length and since we had been planning a 15th anniversary trip to Europe anyway we decided to stop and visit with them as well. Soon we realized that this was the door that God wanted us to step through.

Last January we began the process of joining the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ. We were accepted and went to a brief training this past September. We were then supposed to start raising support and developing our ministry partners so we could head overseas. But there was still one problem. We had been accepted on staff but we hadn't yet received our placement from the team in Europe. What to us seemed like a simple decision was in fact something that had to be carefully thought because it was all new. It was a new position with a new team trying to fit into a brand new ministry structure in Europe. So we have been on hold for the past 3 months as we awaited our official placement.

Last Friday, December 5, 2008, we finally received our placement and we have a green light to once again start moving forward on our support raising and ministry partner development. Praise God! This part of the process began over a year ago but we finally feel at peace with where we are going to be and what we are going to be doing. Now the hard part begins. Time to really lean on God again. Which is the way He intended it to be all along.

Welcome

Welcome to our Blog!

We are the McKells and we are a family of 5 that is heading to Germany to work with Campus Crusade for Christ. We will try to use this page as a place for quick updates to what is happening with us. We will also be keeping a website which will have more of our newsletters and photos and we will also have a Facebook page that will have very similar information as well. If you don't hear from us for a while just bug us :)

Ed & Kim