Faith, Future and putting it into Practice

I wanted to share with you some things that have been on my heart and let you know where we are at as a family working in ministry.

2 Corinthians 5:7 “We live by faith, not by sight”

Faith is a word that at its core is the very fabric of belief in God. Looking at the words FaithFaithful it is used over 300 times in New Testament. and People put their Faith in Jesus, their Faith healed them, Faith guides them and the Lord is Faithful to all his promises. With the basis of our religion and all the references to Faith in the New Testament why then is Faith so hard? I believe that if you ask the majority of all people, Christian and non-Christian, that they would say that they have Faith in something. Conversely all Christians have Faith in the fact that Jesus was the son of God, he died for our sins and rose on the third day. The verse above 2 Corinthians 5:7 provides great insight to the fact that we can’t see Christ here with us, but we have Faith that his presence with us is a reality and that is how we are to live.

So why do I say living in Faith is so hard? Most people, and at times even I, think it is very easy. As I look back it was easy to put my complete trust and Faith in Christ when I accepted Him. It wasn’t until later that it became hard because He wants us to relinquish areas of our life that we simply don’t want to put our full Faith into believing that He will take care of us. At the root it is because we are control freaks! It is easy to be in Church and say that I trust the Lord and have Faith that He will provide. It is another thing completely when you have $5 left in your checking account and $400 medical co-pay due. We rack our brains on trying to figure out how WE are going to fix it and often times forget about the most basic thing of including God into the picture. I know that I do this a lot and people think that because you are a missionary that we are sort of super Christian, but in reality we have struggles just like everyone else. Jesus tells us many times in the New Testament that if we ask in His name that He will do it, John 14:14 “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” Pretty cut and dry right! We ask, then after period of time we doubt and don’t have Faith in the very thing that He said that He would do. This is where I find a great challenge, to have complete Faith in his provisions.

A great question is, that if Faith is a cornerstone of our way of life, what areas are you actively living out in it?

Future

As we mentioned in the previous blog it is our hearts desire to move back to the Dominican
Republic on a full-time basis. When we started to split our years by spending part of it in the Dominican and part in Louisville we agreed to a two year commitment. While it has been wonderful to serve in the home office it has also been made clear that our hearts are with those whom we work with and serve in the Dominican. Sunshine and I have been talking a lot about the Future and what we feel that God has in store for us. It has been much more challenging than I expected as we always expect a clear cut answer. Often times I feel that it would be so much easier if the answer was clear, but alas that is part of where Faith comes back into play.

What we do know is that the work that we do in the Dominican is a vital part of who we have become. We both want to continue to invest in the lives of the Dominican’s and Haitians that we have gotten to know over the years. Spend time at the feeding centers playing and teaching the kids, work with the children in the sports ministry, helping build homes, churches, feeding centers, reaching thousands via medical clinics and reaching the lost for Christ. As much as we love the people of Hispaniola we equally love working with the teams of Americans that come down to serve. We have a deep rooted passion to serve and to continue to serve in this capacity.

In Practice

Here is where Faith and our Future come together. We are putting our Faith in God that He will provide the resources for us to realize the Future.

Matthew 7: 7-8 “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

We are fervently in prayer, and ask that you pray as well, that God will help open doors so that we financially can continue to do ministry without going into debt. We were blessed before joining the ministry to start fund raising for about 10 months and built up a reserve. Our first year of ministry we were very close to our minimum budget needed and we were able to offset the small difference from the reserve. After that first year is when the economy in the US took a big step back and unfortunately we had several supporters whom could no longer continue on with us. Simultaneously we have had a large increase in expenses to our budget. All that being said we had a monthly shortfall of $1000 per month in support. We were able to add some supporters over the last couple of months and that allowed us to get that total down to $700 per month. In addition, our reserve was set to run out in July of 2010, but it was amazing to see that as each month that passed God has provided one time gift for us to where we have not run out of funds for the last seven months. We recently received our last ministry statement and we are down to $100 left in our reserve. This is a very difficult position to find ourselves in, but we have Faith that God will continue to provide for us. The most difficult part is checking our own ego, the nervousness of asking for financial support, and know that we can ask you as brothers and sister in Christ to help us meet our need.

Here is what we are asking:

First: Prayer that is always first and foremost. Pray that God will allow doors to be opened and hearts softened so that we will receive what is needed financially. Pray that the 115 letters we sent out last month would be fruitful. Also, since you are praying already, pray for those lives that we will come in contact with this year.

Secondly: For those of you that already support us we want you to know how appreciative we are of that. We would like to ask you if possible to make an increase to your giving. Also, and perhaps more importantly if you know of anyone else who might be interested in supporting missionaries that you share our passion with them. We need advocates on our behalf to take our work and share it with small groups, churches and individuals.

Thirdly: We ask those of you who are not supporters of ours to consider becoming a partner with us TODAY! As mentioned above we need to raise $700 a month in donations or $8,400 per year. I know for some it is easy to budget in a monthly amount, but for others it is easier to send in a one-time gift per year. Either way is awesome!

You can send in your gifts to the address below, Please make all checks out to G.O. Ministries but remember to put Eric & Sunshine Leach in the memo line. You can also click on the “Give” tab on the top of the blog page and follow the steps there. As always you can contact us and we would be happy to send you a copy of our ministry budget, as we always want to have transparency in our ministry.

Peace & Blessings

G.O. Ministries

11501 Plantside Dr. Suite #14

Louisville, KY 40299