It’s been five months of support raising. When I write this down and read it, five months doesn’t seem so long, but having to fluctuate between 58-60% of support raised for the past month and a half felt so, so long. Hitting a plateau in support raising for nearly two months, with only 7 months to do it, is long. I’m actually “supposed” to be in North Carolina right now for training, but I like to believe that according to God I’m not supposed to be there yet, and I’m at peace with that.
I find my experience with support raising rather rewarding, although painful. The 58-60% of supporters that I have are mostly Hmong but they all are 2nd generation Hmong Americans, meaning that they are millennials. If you haven’t known yet, the Hmong church today is only two generations old; that’s nearly 50 years old. The process of raising monthly supporters was all very new not just to me, but to my church and most people I asked; monthly support was foreign and resisted. I just think that minority churches still have a lot to grow from regarding financially supporting missionaries. Despite this resistance, God’s grace has provided me with all the support that I have now. The best part, however, is that this is now being introduced to the Hmong church much more directly. My hope and prayer is that the Hmong church will grow in the love and understanding of God’s mission to redeem all nations, so that they would not hesitate to partner with His goers both prayerfully and financially.
So many things happened during this season of support raising, that made it that much more difficult to endure and persevere. I solemnly thought that maybe if I lived at home (California) with all my family, then maybe life eating and paying bills wouldn’t be so hard, but of course I knew that although living would’ve been easier with family, moving back would’ve made support raising much more difficult because most of my community and networks are here in Minnesota. I could have chosen the comfortable life living with people that I long to be with, but I couldn’t muster up the courage to disobey my LORD. I’ve also thought that since I’ve been living away from family for so many years that maybe leaving to serve overseas wouldn’t be so hard, but I thought wrong. In addition, maybe if my family were followers of Christ, then I probably wouldn’t be so torn to leave. Leaving overseas knowing that my family could potentially never come to have relationship with Jesus, is daunting to me. However, the peace of Jesus continues to lead me to rest assure that placing my hopes and trust in the Lord is far more comforting than worrying my life away.
All this to say that support raising for me has been emotionally and mentally challenging. However, if it wasn’t for all these challenges, then I wouldn’t be where I am now and come to know how serious the LORD is about sending me to unreached people groups to share His Good News.