A visit to 2009

I just went back to my blog I started 2 years ago when I was venturing off to Ethiopia on my own. This was so exciting for me. It was a time in my life where I was still struggling and still unaware of so much that I know now after deciding to go to Bible College at the end of 2009.

This was a trip that I thought would tick the box for me and help me to move on with life in New Zealand. Little did I know then what God would do while I was away...

Anyway, here is what I called, "How it all began" on michellegoestoethiopia.blogspot.com:

http://michellegoestoethiopia.blogspot.com

When Jesus takes you somewhere, like a real Gentleman, He opens the doors.

I posted on FB, "When God tells you to go somewhere..." but actually, the statement should have been, "When God takes you somewhere..." because when God tells you to go, He goes with you! It's a Divine date between you and He and He's with you all the way, holding your hand, opening the doors and paying for your bill.

Yes, I have been on "missions" before where I thought that it was Divinely led-and may have ended up feeling "stood up" because I had initiated it myself and He wasn't in it AT ALL. But never before have I known like I know now, that He is the one who initiated this "date" and that He is going to be the Gentleman that He is and is going to do all these things-not just for me, but for my whole family.

So, just our date so far and what it has looked like. I talked about the 5am wake up call. This was the "initiation" - the asking of the date. He asked us all to GO OUT (out of our country, out of our comfort zone and out of our family home) - through my husband - and we respond like an excited teenage girl, being asked out by the best looking guy in school, and excitedly give a big "YES" reply!

The next thing God does (again, so gentleman-like) is let our dad (well Asaua's dad, that is) know that He is going to take us out. He does this through a dream that Asaua's dad has the night before Asaua warns him that he has some news. I love it when I hear of men who ask their girlfriends father's for their daughters hand in marriage. It's so romantic and it gives that sense of security to the father, that his daughter is going to be well looked after. It also makes it easier for the daughter to let her parents know that she will be "leaving" them and "cleaving" to her new husband. In the same way, this dream that Asaua's dad had, made it a whole lot easier for us to tell him that WE are not only going, but that we are taking his grandchildren across the other side of the world.

A true gentleman takes a girl out, giving her no obligation to pay the bill - at all. We too have that promise. He's told us to come with Him and to not worry about paying for us. As soon as we said "yes", we have found out a way that we can be supported in the internship that we are going to do for the first year. We also know that after the first year, the organisation that we are going to work with, are able to support us through funds raised in the States. We never would have known this if we had not said yes - IMMEDIATELY.

Just this past Sunday, Ps David McCracken, talked about Faith at our evening service. He said that beyond "incredible" faith, there is "another level of obedience-living in a realm where we don't have the circumstances to manipulate or rearrange-it's called UNREASONABLE FAITH!
Where we don't have a clue how it's going to happen but we know we have a WORD from GOD."

He said that "God is a CREATOR! He creates everything out of nothing! It's not our faith that creates anything but GOD spoke it, so He created it. (What a sense of relief!) But when we BELIEVE it and OBEY it, it draws it (whatever He has spoken into life) into the realm of our reality." Wow!

So, there we were- on Sunday night, thinking of how we are going to be having this big CLEAN UP and Working Bee at our house this Saturday (today as I write this actually) and how we need to put our house on the Market on Monday. I remember as I lie in bed, how originally. perhaps "heard from God," that we should sell our house for $350k. But last year when we had put our house on the market, I was told - after a failed attempt because I was trying to initiate this date- that we would be lucky to get what we paid for it 5 years ago - $310k. So, I thought, maybe we could settle for $325k, sell it privately and not have to pay anyone commission. (Just writing that word "settle", makes me cringe. Settling for the mediocre, is not the way of the Gentleman who asked us out on this date." My faith needed to be a bit more UNREASONABLE than that.

When you go out on a date with Jesus, He really does give you GRACE. Even without MY unreasonable faith, He still comes through...

Thursday afternoon, we get a phone call from our Real Estate Agent from last year. She wonders if perhaps we were interested in putting our house on the Market again. She has a buyer who are with a Government agency. "They have heaps of money", she says on the answer machine, and are needing to buy four bedroom houses in our area and only have a week to use up their budget. They are wanting to come around on MONDAY and want to settle by the end of JUNE (perfect timing for our departure in August.) Best of all, she says we should put the house on at $349k because they're not looking to undercut people, but want to pay the best price.

So we are just riding now, on this conveyabelt of Love. He says to "learn the unforced rhythms of His Grace" and so that is what He is teaching me- or us. He's overlooked our past mistakes. He's saying, come with me and watch how much I ACTUALLY love you. You look beautiful to me. You are my bride to be, and I am going to show You what I have in store for you - if you just TRUST me.

That's a Real Gentleman.

5am

5am was such a significant time in Ethiopia. It was at this time, almost every morning I was there, that I was awoken by the Muslim call to prayer- magnified by loud speakers across the city, echoed by a roosters crowing. There are 28 million Muslims in Ethiopia, I just found out, so I imagine that in any city in Ethiopia, this would be the standard alarm clock. The fact that Ethiopia is like a country that never sleeps, doesn't really allow for the need of an alarm clock, so I suppose it all makes sense.

This recent 5am wake up call, however, was a little closer to home. It was actually a wake up call preceded by a kiss. The kiss may have been a bufferer for news to come or it could have been a "thank God your still alive" kiss. It came on the morning after I had just had my graduation from Equippers College and all sign posts in MY life were pointing to the next destination. Where sermon after sermon, book after book, and devotion after devotion, screamed out to ME - "GO!"

It was something that had yet to be heard in the ears of Asaua though. So when he woke me up at 5am, on the morning of the 27th of March 2011, with the words "We need to GO to Africa! I had a dream..." I was very, very excited! So excited, that for the next week, I could barely sleep. Yes there could have been a mix of emotions, but after experiencing almost all of them - from fear, to nervousness, from doubt to anxiety, I now only had room for EXCITEMENT.

This GO-ing, means that we will be selling up, taking our children away from their grandparents, friends, schools and family, having them immunised and getting a one year visa (for now) and flying together across two continents to arrive in Ethiopia - a world apart from what they currently know.

Yes there are risks in going. But there are also risks in staying - Risking not doing the will of God, risking missing out on tremendous blessings, risking regretting for the rest of our lives what we have always felt in our hearts to do - and most of all, risking not being possibly the only people that may touch the lives of thousands of people who are still left untouched by the hand of Love.

This is a MASSIVE faith step for us. Faith that God will supply EVERY possible need that there is to fill. But we have a MASSIVE faith in a MASSIVE God who is more than able to fill those needs and to bring about the completion of what He began in our hearts to accomplish.

I'm so looking forward to reuniting with our friends there. I'm so excited about finally doing what I said I would do 27 years ago. We are so looking forward to doing it TOGETHER as a family who have been appointed for such a time as this.

Please pray for us :)

Others

Recently, I heard quoted that a good preacher articulates what the listener was already thinking but didn't know how to put it to words. If this is true, Israel Houghton preaches extremely well in his song Others. Not only in this song but in so many of his songs and in his life, he speaks about the cry of the poor and the cry of God for us to meet the needs of the poor.

To explain, here are the words of the song:

I hear the state of the world and it grieves me
I hear the cries of the broken from the rich and the poor
Smell the fear of disease all around me
I feel responsible now that I have seen
Because we all were born to live for more than this

So I wanna love like you love, Love like you love
Wanna love others the way that you love me
I wanna love like you love, Love like you love
Wanna love others the way that you love me

I've held the children unseen and they move me
I wonder what I can do to improve a thousand lives
I feel the absence of love and it scares me
I feel responsible now that I have seen
Because we all were born to live for more than this

I was that lost soul that you rescued
I was that orphan you adopted and brought into your heart
I was acquainted with the hopelessness of living in the streets
That was me

Now I'm gonna love like you love, Love like you love
Help me love others the way that you love me
I'm gonna forgive like you forgave, Rescue like you have saved
I'm gonna love others the way that you love me.

God has done so much for me. He blessed me into a beautiful country where we don't have to worry about dying from much other than our own lifestyles. He saved me from myself and sprinkled and poured his grace over my life when I was lost and when I got lost again in my own self. He has blessed me with a beautiful home and five healthy, healthy kids. I have an income that surpasses probably 50% of the worlds population.

I am blessed to be a blessing?

We say that and yet we underestimate our ability to be a blessing. If God has blessed us then we have a responsibility to be a blessing. We are surrounded with wealth, where in countries like Ethiopia, they are surrounded with the deadly reality of poverty and disease. Can I not just give beyond what I am already giving to make a change, as Israel says in his song - to improve a thousand lives.

Well, actually, yes I can. Last year, I was sent a proposal from a friend of mine in Ethiopia. An amazing man who wants to see his people's lives improved. His proposal is so thorough. It reminded me of proposals that I have put together for funding - ambitious, yet well thought through. A man who is willing to stand in the gap for his community, realising that somewhere out there, God has an answer to his prayer. He's been so proactive about it. He's already spent a year putting a water system in place in another village, received funding, then developed and educated a whole community on health while showing and speaking to them God's love.

Because of this great work, the government has given his trust board charitable status and his vision has expanded to another area, where no one has yet touched. This is the area, I have an opportunity to help. And maybe so do you.

This year, my project will be to raise money for this project. God sent me an angel to help me along. She is my daughter Lydia. Almost everyday, she reminds me that we need to do something. At the end of last year, her and her cousin put together a Charity idea. It is yet to be released, but it will be released and they will tell their story and you will have the opportunity to support. I hope you do. Watch this space!

A time and place.

Acts 17:26 "From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places they should live."

God places us at specific times, in specific places. While our time and place right now is in New Zealand, we have a vision for where and when God wants us to be next year. And it is in the land of Ethiopia!

After Asaua returned from his short trip to Addis Ababa in April this year, he announced that we need to go back. I couldn't have agreed more! I too felt this was the will of God for our lives. There is peace in this decision that is unlike any other decision we have made. Though not everyone will understand the logic behind wanting to take five children to an unknown land, giving up the comforts of living in such a beautiful country, we know that we know, that God is calling us to GO! and calling us to go to this specific country.

There are so many reasons why we believe this. So many subtle hints God has placed along the way, accompanied by confirmations through people, through His Word, through circumstances that throw Ethiopia in front of our face surrounded by flashing lights. There is something that has drawn our hearts to this country that we couldn't even fathom the preperation God was doing until we placed our feet on it's soil.

Most people know that I (Michelle) told my mother at 6 years old that I wanted to go to Ethiopia one day as a missionary, but now looking back, I know that God had to do that because He knew he had more preperation to do in me- He needed to get in early! Asaua too has had dreams of working in this country but knowing that God brought us together, that He created us both to look Ethiopian in some strange way, and that He has given us gifts that can be used for Him to a population of 80million people- that is Divine Intervention!

So the question we had to ask next was, What exactly Lord, do you want us to do? Well, to cut a long story short, we searched, tried to figure it out ourselves, googled, emailed, and then gave up. Discouraged and confused, I asked God to show us. I decided to just do what needed to be done here, in this season, in this place, and God showed up.

We came across, just randomly, this ministry in Debre Zeit. A city just an hour out of Addis Ababa. The name of this ministry is Blessing the Children. (check out there websites: blessingthechildren.wordpress.com or http://www.blessingthechildren.org/) They are an organisation that does so much and that have facilities to host a family like us. The vision they have is the vision we have- to work with street kids, get them off the street, help meet their social, physical and spiritual needs. They work alongside Ethiopian communities to empower them and enable them to make changes in their lives. They plant churches and train pastors. They have built a school and a Children's Centre that meet the needs of children in Debre Zeit and the surrounding areas. The coolest thing (well not really the coolest, but it's still cool) is that I had a dream about this city long before I even went there. When our team drove through there last year on the way to Nazareth in Ethiopia, I recognized it from a dream I had had.

We are just really , really excited and humbled that God would use us in this AMAZING country. A country that has a long history and so much culture. A land of beautiful, friendly, loving and sharing people. We just can't wait!

So, please pray for us. Our intention is to head over there to start an internship with them next September 11 (which is their New Year). We will do a One year internship under Blessing the Children then work with them after that to keep building what they are doing right now- building the Kingdom and building leaders in their nation. Pray for direction, wisdom and for God's favour on all we set out to do! Pray for protection of our family and for provision. Follow us on here and we will keep you updated :)

Time for change

I really do need to change the title of my blog. Blogging is really all new to me but if it's what gets the message out, then it's all good!

Well, since our last entry, a lot has happened. After a 21 day partial fast and praying about what God wants us to do, we settled back into our normal routine - Asaua started work, the kids started school and I started my new journey at Bible College. This was a big decision for me as I didn't understand how it could work - financially, family wise and time wise. On the first week - the Thursday of our first week to be exact, I get a text from our neighbour during our Prayer and Spiritual Warfare class to say our house had been broken into. They had taken our TV and the police, our real estate agent and our neighbours were all having a good nosey around our house while I was stuck in the city.

Then, that Sunday night, our eldest son was playing outside church with a rock and a broken piece of wood and the piece of wood flew into his eye, rendering him blind and knocking him out. This turned into a distressful evening and an eventful week. I had to leave my son in the hospital by himself that night which was the first time I had done that. I sent out a text for people to pray and just waited for God to bring a miracle. In the morning I got a message on my phone saying my mum was in hospital. I could hear the ambulance in the background asking her to respond and I just got this aching feeling that this might just be all too much. I drove to pick up my son, thinking I would have to spend a whole day with him in the hospital, but arrived to find out that his vision was coming back and that he could come home. This would mean I was going to miss out on some of the foundational classes of my Bible College. Through that time, however, I got to stay home and really spend some time on my knees.

I asked God (like you do) WHY this was all happening, and as usual, I asked Him to speak to me through His word. I opened my Bible and it opened on Jonah. Jonah is a story of a man appointed by God to go to a specific country to preach His message of Hope. Jonah, was a faithful man, his life was in check and he had a gift, obviously, to be able to accomplish such a task. But what Jonah did wrong, was run from where God had appointed him to go. So God, in HIs loving nature, sent a storm to the sea on which Jonah's runaway boat was on, and everyone realised that there was someone on that boat that God was not happy with. Jonah drew the short straw, they threw him off the boat and got swallowed up by a whale. Jonah's disobedience not only affected him, but also affected the people on the boat - the innocent by-standers. God has often showed us this story in relation to our life, but at this time in our life, I felt that this was the answer to our recent dramatic events.

When we planned to go to Ethiopia in December, we were really retracting what God had already said, and were making statements like, "we're going to see IF God wants us to go to Ethiopia long-term." But what we needed to be saying was "Yes, we are going to go to Ethiopia long term, we are going to ask God what, when and how." That week, I realised that I already sort of know the answers to that question. It really is just up to Asaua now. So using the money we had raised last year, and what we had raised this year, we agreed that Asaua would go by himself, booked his ticket and he is off next Thursday!!

Around the same time, I was specifically praying for God to show us what He wanted us to do while we or he was there. A preacher from Australia came that weekend to preach at our church and briefly mentioned that he had gone to Ethiopia last year. He was in a hurry to leave but our Pastor slowed him down by taking him around our building. I walked past him, tapped him on the shoulder and asked what he was doing in Ethiopia and if it was something that we could visit. Turns out that his daughter and her family had just moved over there last year and were teaching English, working with street kids and doing programmes in the University in Addis. He gave me permission to contact his PA to get his daughters email address and I emailed her straight away. After a couple of initial emails and then deciding that Asaua would go by himself, they have asked if Asaua would preach at their Easter Service which is the only Sunday he is there. Asaua happily accepted the invitation.

Our friend Samson who was one of the translators on our trip last year, will be spending time showing Asaua around and hanging out with some street kids, and other projects. Samson is in Bible College, leads worship at his church and many other services and has a real heart for God. I see us working closely with him over there.

God is so good. His ways are sovereign and His plans are beyond our deepest imaginations. I can't wait to see what He will do while Asaua is in that place that God loves so much - Ethiopia. We will keep you posted on what the outcome is. We covet your prayers for direction, protection and wisdom for the future. Thanks for your financial support and your love. We love you all.

PS. My son's eye was miraculously healed. He had to have laser surgery and the doctors couldn't believe how fast he healed after that. They gave him four weeks of what would normally be eight weeks, for his eye to completely heal and it only took two weeks! God is a God of miracles - that's partly why we love him so much!

Delay in our trip.

To all of our dear supporters,

We hope that you all have had a very joyful Christmas day and want to send our sincere thanks to all of you for supporting our trip to Ethiopia. As most of you know, we had an enormous task of raising about NZ$9,200 for the both of us to go to Ethiopia with the Mocha Club. We had really struggled to fundraise this time as the Tsunami fundraisers were happening and the Christmas season approached, and had hoped that the Newspaper article would have gotten us the extra funds that we still needed. Unfortunately, we were still down a big percentage of what we needed and at the last minute (ie. Yesterday) found out that there was not enough money for us to go. This was a real sad moment for us as we have been preparing for this trip for the last few months, but we know that God has our ultimate interests at heart. Even though we did not get onto our scheduled plane today, we are still planning to go to Ethiopia when the finances permit. We thank you all for your prayers and for your financial support and we hope and pray that you will continue to pray for us as we are called to this amazing mission field- Ethiopia. Even in our preparations, we have learnt so much about Ethiopia and about cross-cultural missions through our conference calls with the Mocha Club team and through our own research. This has only made our desire to go, stronger and more significant. Ethiopia is the only African nation that has not been colonised and they are a very patriotic country. They also have around 5 million orphans and around 1 million of those have HIV or AIDS. We know that God has a calling for us to go, so please keep in touch and see what happens as we prepare to do what ever, and when ever, He wants us to do and go. Please feel free to contact me with any questions. For those who have sacraficially given, your money is still in the Mocha Club account that either you, or we, put through. We will be saving that money for our trip. Thank you for giving at such a financially stretched time of the year- Your generosity has not gone unnoticed. God bless
-- Asaua and Michelle Tiatia