It's interesting how your perspective changes as the years pass and the inventory of your experiences grows. Sometimes it's scary to think that we've now spent 20 years overseas starting churches, proclaiming the good news, doing outreaches, and doing a million other things that basically amount to resourcing believers who have vision and need help. At other times it doesn't really seem all that long and it has certainly been a wonderful blessing to be a part of what God is doing in so many countries and with so many different people.
One of the challenges that is involved in doing what we do is that we are responsible for raising all of our finances. This includes not only money to live on, but also health insurance, any pension contributions, and an overhead that goes towards services that are provided by our mission agency, MBMSI. It is a daunting and difficult task, and to be perfectly honest, it's not one that we really enjoy doing. We would much rather get back to work proclaiming the gospel, teaching and helping people develop in their relationship with God.
In the past when we've come back we've generally taken a maximum of about a month and visited only one or two churches, which hasn't been too disruptive for us or the projects and people with which we're involved. However, it's become obvious that we need to broaden the scope of our sharing to include more churches and individuals as our support base has been eroding to a critical point.
We have friends, churches and relatives all across Canada, and there are a number of churches and people who have supported us for years and with whom we have had difficulty visiting because of time constraints, so we really thought that this year was the occasion to spend some more time deepening these vital relationships.
As we considered where we thought we should be going and who we should be visiting, we realized we had some fairly serious logistical "issues". To be able to develop or renew relationships we really felt we needed to stay for more than just a sunday or a weekend, and take more like a week or even more in each location. Staying with friends or even family for more than just a day or two quickly becomes tiring and can be stressful for both the hosts and the hosted (that'd be us). Staying at hotels is expensive and isn't a serious option for most missionaries (including us), especially over a six month time period. Then there is the travel question; we have people to visit all across Western Canada and even into Quebec and Ontario. Flying doesn't work all that well because of the expense and because of the limited baggage you can take (for six months you generally need more than the one suitcase per person. And we don't own a car in Canada and leasing and rental costs can be astronomical as well.
The only solution I could come up with sounded a little off-the-wall the first time I advanced it; using an RV for our entire time at home.
As we thought about it the idea grew on us. Living in an RV would solve the travel and lodging questions, allow us to be "at home" no matter where we are, and we would always have our belongings and ministry tools with us.
The one rather large problem remaining was how to get our hands on one of these things. We did some research and decided the best type for us would be a relatively small unit; no need for some 40 foot long behemoth that wouldn't even fit in many residential area.
My initial idea was to try and save and probably borrow enough money to purchase something in the US in the off season, import it to Canada to use for six months and then sell it afterwards. I wasn't sure how much was needed, nor how exactly importing RVs worked, or how I would sell it but it was a working plan.
As we tried out our idea with a few friends, God provided a wonderful solution and in the end we were able to rent an RV from FraserWay RV for a very reasonable price to do a one-way cross-canada trip, picking up the RV in Abbotsford, and dropping it off in Halifax.
So it seems we've become RVers, at least for a limited time. We've been learning how to live and work in a very limited space, and have enjoyed always sleeping in our own bed, and being able to cook our own food. We can park right in the church parking lot (no commute!), and as long as we have some electricity and wifi we can keep working. The one big negative is of course the cost to move from one place to another; at 25 liters per 100 kms and a mileage charge it ends up costing us about 60 cents for every kilometer we travel which adds up really really fast when you're traveling across a country a big as Canada.
There has been a fair amount of interest from other missionaries and from MBMSI and this may turn out to be a bit of a pilot project for other missionaries who will do the same.
We just need to figure out how to create a soundproof barrier so that I can play my guitar while Marjorie studies or edits. That, and some sort of alternative fuel source like solar power or a big sail so we can forgo the ridiculous gas bills and we'd be all set.
Thanks for praying for us during this time in Canada. We have already felt your prayers as we had a near miss with an elk who crossed right in front of us on the highway.
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