Questions I am Asked:  Deputation?

I am asked a lot about deputation.  Is it hard?  Do your kids like it?  Are people disrespectful to you?  Are you tired of it?  These are just a few of the different questions we are regularly asked about deputation.  Here are my thoughts.

What is deputation?  In one word, work.  Deputation is the process in which missionaries raise support by traveling from church to church to share their burden for mission field God has called them to.

How do you get meetings at all of these churches?  I call churches.  I spend the day calling churches requesting an opportunity to come by and present what God is doing in our hearts and what we believe He (God) is going to do in Argentina.  Our goal is to present our burden in as many churches as will allow us an opportunity.

What is your goal for deputation?  Truthfully, the ultimate goal is to raise the needed funds to go to the mission field so that we may be equipped to plant churches, proclaim Jesus, and train men.  We also desire to be an encouragement to the pastors and people of the church as well.  Another goal is to challenge believers to surrender and head to the mission field.  Through this year, we have seen a few who have done so.  I can say that it is more exciting to see men surrender to God’s plan of reaching the world than being taken on for support.

Do you like deputation?  Deputation is the process that gets us to the mission field.  I believe, as in every other area of life, how we feel about deputation is a choice.  We choose to love it.  We choose to make it fun.  We choose to enjoy the time we have traveling.  We choose to do what we can make this time in our lives fun for each other and for our children.  It is still work, it is still hours in the car, it is still a process, but we choose to make it fun.  We do not choose to think of deputation as a necessary evil, or a “broke system”.  It works and we make it fun.

How do your children like deputation?  Our children are of the age where our attitude on things has a huge impact on our children’s attitudes.  That being said, we do the best we can to make everything fun.  There are times where they get tired, where they miss home, but overall they like it.  They have friends all over the place that they would have never met otherwise.  They enjoy meeting people and making new friends.

We are one year in to deputation.  Our goal is to leave between March and June of 2016 (this is totally dependent on how God continues to raise our support.  We hope that this next year of deputation will be incredibly productive.