Why We Skipped Church

The ironic thing is I had finally decided to drive to church that Sunday, for the first time since we moved to the Bronx.

See, we’ve been attending a church that is across the 207^th St. Bridge in the Norwood section of Manhattan. To get there, we walk about a half mile to a bus stop, wait for the bus, ride the bus for 5 stops, then walk a couple more blocks to get to the church building. We leave at least 40 minutes for the trip. We do it this way because the church has no parking lot, only on-street parking wherever you can find it. And finding it is difficult. On Saturday night I had seen that rain was forecasted for the majority of the next day and I thought, “Well, this would be a good day not to ride the bus.”

Our beloved Bx12 SBS

Riding the bus has its downside, of course. If the weather is bad (too hot, too cold, too monsoon-like, etc.), then the walk to and from the bus – with 3 little kids – can be very annoying. Too, there is no guarantee of a seat on the bus, depending on how full it is. Unless, I must say, you have a child with you. We have NEVER had to stand if we’re holding Juliet; someone always gives up their seat. Always.

Anyway, it was supposed to rain, so I decided we should try driving and see how bad it would be. At the very least, even if I had to drive around for 20 minutes looking for a parking place, it would be better than walking a mile in the rain.

But then the warnings from my phone’s weather app began: “Wintry mix.” “Icy conditions.” “Take extra precautions on the roadways.” My resolve was waning.

Amber, our Priority 1 colleague who was under the weather that day, texted me and told me to be careful, that there had been two car accidents near her building already that morning.

Hmm.

I even started seeing warnings about sidewalks and stairways. Ice. Slippery. Use caution.

Ultimately, we decided simply to stay in. The thought of the mile-long walk in the rain on icy sidewalks was just as bad as driving, considering that (as I saw on Twitter) the police were “urging” people to stay off the roads.

Yep, we skipped church. Turns out we made the right call though, because around noon they suspended all bus service in the Bronx because the roads were so bad. So even if we had made it to church, there would have been no bus to take home.

No buses = No go out

So we had family church. I put my church shirt back in the closet and reached for my guitar. We’d sing a song or two, then pray together as a family. We sang “Oceans” because I knew that Ginny could sing along with that one, and then sang “Who Is the King of the Jungle?” complete with motions. Then we went around and prayed for each person individually, especially for anything she was afraid of or worried about. My favorite moment came when Ginny (a week shy of 8) prayed for her baby sister. Cora is still pretty shy about things like that, and just shook her head when we asked if she would pray, but no matter; she still got a glimpse of Jesus. Juliet, of course, is only just learning to say her own name (She currently refers to herself as “Et”). We didn’t belabor it, didn't force it. Altogether, it was maybe 20 minutes. But it was a great family church service.

We don’t want Jesus to be someone we go visit once a week at church. Our kids (and we ourselves, for that matter) need to know that He is always with them, and that all they have to do is knock, and the door will be opened for them. They also need to see their parents following hard after Him, even if we’re just in our living room.

We’re not perfect. Not even close. We have plenty of areas where we can – no, must – grow. But we hope and pray that as we learn to listen and obey our Father better, that our girls will watch us growing and then turn and do the same.

And we'll see about driving to church next week. They're forecasting no precipitation, but I'll keep checking my Twitter feed, just in case.

Crunch Time!

Our family of five

Crunch time! OK, here’s how things stand with us: We have raised almost half of our monthly support, which leaves –naturally – the other half of our support to raise. A nice round number to use is $2000 per month in regular, pledged support – that’s what we still need. We have gotten a number of one-time gifts and multiple donations from monthly givers, but the most important number we’re tracking is monthly pledges.

We have had the opportunity to speak to a couple of our home-church Sunday School classes in the past couple of weeks and have another engagement lined up for this Sunday. We’d love to say that we gained several more monthly supporters from each, but if we did, we don’t know about them. We have another one lined up, then less than a month and a half to raise the rest of our support. If that doesn’t happen…

Before we talk about Plan B, let’s talk about August 10^th. On that day, the first tuition payment to Ginny’s school is due, so we’re using August 10^th as a decision deadline for ourselves. The question isn’t if we will have enough money to make the payment (we do), the question is if we will have enough support raised to make the physical move to the Bronx in time for school to start. If we don’t, then we won’t make the payment because we won’t be moving this Fall.

Plan B is pretty simple: Don’t move to the Bronx yet. Hold off for at least a semester, perhaps a year, until we can raise our full support. We would remain at our church and job and keep Ginny in her current elementary school for 1^st grade. We don’t know how delaying a year would affect Ginny’s spot in the school in New York – that’s something we still need to find out, though we imagine she’d simply have to apply again in the same way she did this year. Let us say this, though: Even if we do resort to Plan B and don’t move this Fall, we will still move to the Bronx, just at a later date. We believe strongly that God has called us there, so we’re going. We just don’t know when.

We’re torn about which is more daunting to us at this point: staying or going. It’s kind of a toss-up right now. Raising another $2000 a month and then moving in a whirlwind to the Bronx would be absolutely insane. But then, the thought of staying for another semester or year after all the buildup of the last several months seems just as formidable.

PLEASE PRAY. We need more supporters! We need more faith and trust and belief and boldness and…. The list goes on and on.

PLEASE GIVE. We need YOU! We ask you to pray about coming on our support team. We need all the prayer support and financial support we can get! Simply email us and we can get you all the information you need.

Thank you for the support, love, and encouragement you have already given! It means the world to us.

We Sent the Check

We had a dilemma. Kind of. Well, at first it seemed like a dilemma, but the more we talked about it and prayed about it, the less it seemed like one. We had to choose whether or not to do something, but dilemmas typically involve two relatively equal options, either equally positive or equally negative, and our current situation ultimately didn’t meet the criteria.

We could either send in the registration check to Manhattan Christian Academy, the school we fell in love with and would like our daughter to attend in the fall, OR we could wait to send the check until we raised more financial support and we were more confident that we will, indeed, be relocating to the Bronx later this year. There were several things to consider:

1: We can’t wait too long, because it’s not a big school and someone else may just jump in and take Ginny’s spot. OK, so send the check!

2: The fee is nonrefundable. If somehow we’re unable to make the move by August, we’d be out $325. OK, so wait for a bit!

3: If we lose the spot, we’d be starting from scratch with where to send Ginny for school. So, send the check!

4:  It’s big and scary and daunting to make this commitment before we have, well, any support at all to stand on. Um, yeah, that is a little scary. Good luck with that one.

We sent the check.

Whenever we described the “dilemma” to someone, it went something like this: “We have to decide whether we should commit to reserving a spot for Ginny, and step out on faith that we’ll get the support we need, or if we should wait until we have more of that support in before we make any definite plans.”

The more we stated the problem, the more it sounded to our own ears like this: “We need to decide if we should trust in God or trust in the money we’re trying to raise.”

Yeah, doesn’t sound so much like a dilemma anymore. We'd much rather put our faith in God than in money. Those two options are definitely not equal.

Does it make sense to reserve a spot for Ginny before we're 100% sure that we'll be able to move to New York this summer? We think so, because we want to live by faith and not by sight. It’s definitely still scary, but playing it safe is totally overrated.

Escape from Nemo

It was the quickest trip we ever made to New York City.

Ginny, our 6 year-old, had a placement test scheduled at a Christian school we’re looking into. When we took a tour of the place we really liked it and could easily envision Ginny scampering around with the kids we encountered, and so we decided to go ahead and put in an application. All new students must take a placement test to determine their academic levels and knowledge, and it needed to be done soon. Hey, let’s make a family fun time out of it! we thought. That may take some of the sting out of it for Ginny. (We hoped to make it as fun as possible for our daughters, especially Ginny, who thoroughly enjoys New York City itself, but who wells up with tears when she thinks about the possibility of leaving her current elementary school.)

Ever heard the expression, “We plan, and God laughs”? Well, plans changed.

A major snowstorm was forecast for the entire northeast, and New York City was going to get about a foot of snow (or more – every time we checked the weather updates, the totals went up two more inches). We almost canceled the trip, because though it might be possible to make the appointment, we would have to turn right around and come home to avoid getting snowed in.

Ultimately, after praying about it and asking several others to pray, we decided to keep our appointment. We left our house just before 4:30pm on Thursday and arrived a bit after 10pm at Priority 1’s apartment in the Bronx (the drive is that long only because of dinner, gasoline, and potty stops – one could make it in less than four hours if one were less, um, encumbered). We got the girls to bed as quickly as we could, though now they were wired and hyper.

At 7am Friday morning Ginny awoke, much earlier than her parents desired, but hey, it’s better than having to drag her out of bed. Upon looking out the window, we found, to our dismay and alarm, that snow was already falling, and had covered the sidewalks and cars. The streets looked OK, though – one nice thing about winter weather in big cities is the fact that constant traffic flow keeps the roads passable for longer. We called the school and politely asked if there was any way we could come early – the appointment was at 11am – because we were somewhat anxious about getting out of town. They said that we could come in whenever we could get there, and that they would work around our schedule.

Needless to say, we quickened our steps.

We got to the school about 10:30, half an hour before her actual appointment, and they took Ginny back after just a couple of minutes. I (Greg) had just enough time to repark the van – apparently I was in danger of being towed away where I’d parked – and come back inside the school to dry my snow-soaked head, when Ginny hops out of the room where she’d had her test, about 20 minutes after she went in. She looked happy, and the woman who gave her the test said she’d done just fine.

Well then. After a couple of questions for the admin director, we skedaddled. It was just after 11am, when Ginny’s test was originally supposed to begin. Whew!

Roads were fine, just wet really, though there was a slippery spot or two in New Jersey. To make up for not doing anything fun in the city, we let the girls get a donut on the way home, and we even stopped at Cabela’s to look at the dead animals. Ginny liked the moose the best. We got home at about 5pm, just over 24 hours after we left.

On Monday, Bethany got a call from the school. They would love to have Ginny attend there and when we pay the registration fee, her spot will be reserved for her.

We hadn’t expected such a quick response. We suddenly find ourselves having to commit to an actual date on the calendar, which doesn’t seem that difficult, except we hardly have any financial support raised yet. Do we step out in faith that God will provide what we need in time, or is it more prudent to wait until we’re on more secure financial footing? If we wait, the spot at the school may disappear; we have to decide soon.

Pray for us! We need more wisdom and discernment and faith and trust and love every day.