Are You A Gazillionaire?

I was chatting with a couple of friends the other day and we were talking about Team Strong’s upcoming trip to Mexico in a couple of weeks. One of them said, “Didn’t you take your kids to Africa last year? Are you guys Gazillionaires?”

My first thought was “If only!” but I laughed and said to her that we were far from being Gazillionaires!
As a family, we have chosen to live a life of faith, and that means we live a lot of our life outside of our comfort zone, not only with finances but in so many areas of our life!

I would love to tell you that we have unlimited amounts of money and can travel the world where ever and whenever we want, but for us, that is just not the case!

There have been many sacrifices made along the way. Hard choices to be made and many opportunities turned down to focus on what we know God has called us to do! Some of our friends and family don’t understand our choices, but we know this is the way God has called us to live. It’s exciting and exhilarating, but not always fun!

4 months ago our dishwasher completely died! It just stopped. Well ok, it didn’t just stop! It made a whole lot of weird noises, flooded the kitchen, and then stopped!
The kids were like “Are we going to buy a new one tomorrow?” I would have loved to have said yes, and gone to the shop and put one on credit….that would be the easy option, right? But Phil and I talked with the kids and explained that yes, we could go and get one tomorrow, but that wasn’t the right thing for us to do. We (as a family) don’t borrow money for things like dishwashers, and we weren’t going to use any of our money put aside for Mexico. We knew there were going to be some sacrifices along the way, and it looked like having our dishes washed for us was going to be one of them!

We told them we wouldn’t even be thinking about getting a new dishwasher until we get back from Mexico. They were pretty gutted at first (ok, I was too, having a clean and a tidy bench is one thing I absolutely LOVE!) but we have all muddled through. Yes, our plates now have a few more chips in them, there have been a couple of smashed glasses and every now and then you will get a plate out of the cupboard that is a little less than clean, but we are surviving! Surely, this is a small sacrifice to pay for what God has called us to do?

In Matthew 25:40 it says ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
For me, I would rather make a difference in one life than have a dishwasher. I know we are going to change the lives of the families we are building houses for, our kids’ lives will be changed and I know my life will be too.

And so as a family, we continue to make decisions that don’t always make sense. We continue to step out in faith, and we continue to live the life we know God has called us to live, whether that makes sense to most people or not! And yes, this week we continue to wash dishes!