As most of you know, couple months ago we sold our dream house and down-sized into a rental. We lost a lot of money, I guess you’d say.

We lost about 1,000 square feet. Lost that big soak tub. Lost my walk-in closet. Lost our garage. Lost our double-sinks. I guess we lost the tax deduction for mortgage interest too.  Now that I think about it, I guess we lost a lot.

Maybe that’s why I feel so much lighter. Why I feel so free. … {the rest over at (in)courage … thanks for reading!}

 

A quick 1-minute video as we continue to prepare our hearts for Christ’s birth. GFA has many more resources available at ForgottenChristmas.org if you’d like to share them on your own blog, facebook, or with your family. Thanks for watching; have a blessed weekend!

 

What did you get for Christmas last year? 

Off the top of your head, can you even remember? I can’t.  Probably because it’s gotten holes in it or it’s out of style or broken or run out. It may have been wonderful, but chances are it didn’t last that long.

Don’t we always want to buy gifts that will last. The gifts that keeps on giving, right? (And that’s not the cheese-of-the-month club.)

And not only do we want to give gifts that last but we want to invest in things that will give us a good return. An investment where the benefits are lasting. For a while we were told that a house was the best investment we could make, right? Well we’ve owned 4 of them and let me tell you, they aren’t that great of an investment. 

But can I tell you what is? Investing in things eternal. That is, buying gifts that truly keep on giving. That last not only through next year but into eternity. Pretty good deal, yes? Want to know what it is?

The gift of the God’s Word translated into someone’s own language for the very first time. 

Our dear friends, Brendan & Naomi Yoder, are linguists and Bible translators with Wycliffe. They have traveled through Indonesia doing mission work and Bible translation so that God’s Word can be make available to those who have never heard the gospel. It is unthinkable to us, who have dozens of Bibles that we never read, but millions of people still have never heard the gospel and still do not have God’s Word in their own language. It’s tragic.

Brendan is a trained linguist, and he and his wife Naomi will, Lord willing, be moving to Papua (other side of Papua New Guinea) to work at a school, mentoring Natives as  Bible-translators so that they can go into the hundreds of tribes (700 languages/dialects in Papua alone) and translate the Bible and share the gospel message with those who have never heard. This is phenomenal work and absolutely part of the Greatest Commission the world has ever received. 

Will you join them? They are schedule to leave in January, but must raise $300 in monthly support and $8,000 in a lump sum that will be used for their airline tickets, language school, and a motorbike. This is a steal of a deal, people. Brendan and Naomi are two of the most frugal, modest, humble, God-fearing and God-honoring people I have ever met. Truly.  It would be an incredible investment to partner with them in this exciting project of bringing God’s Word to those who have never heard.

They must receive the rest of their needed funds by Christmas in order to leave on schedule. Would you please consider directing some of your Christmas spending toward this opportunity? Perhaps ask parents or spouses to redirect their giving to you to this instead? No pressure, no obligation, but I’d be honored if you’d simply pray and ask God if this is something He’d have you do. This is something that you and I cannot do (unless you happen to be a trained linguist?? I know I’m not!) but we can partner with them through our resources.

How do you go about it? Simply visit Brendon and Naomi’s partner page. It’s easy-peasy. If you have any questions or concerns, or want more information, please contact me via the contact form, or visit their blog at http://brendonnaomi.wordpress.com/.  Thank you so much!

{Bless you for your generosity, and thank you so much for reading.} 

 

Let’s face it, among the goats and cows and rabbits we purchase this Christmas, we’ll still want to buy some gifts for our friends and family. Thankfully, there are ways to buy modest gifts for those we love that show our love and share our wealth. 

So, still looking for the perfect gift? Check out these fabulous finds. And, no need to stand in a line out the door, circle a dozen times looking for a parking spot, or wake up at 2am after Thanksgiving. Such a deal!

Books:

• Revolution in World Missions by KP Yohannen. (free!)

 

• Gospel for Asia Christmas Gift Catalog. Something for every budget, $11 and up. For the same price as a camel-hair coat you can buy an actual CAMEL. Such a deal!
• World Vision Gift Catalog. 5 fruit trees for only $30! You can also buy $385 worth of clothing for only $35. THAT’s a great deal. 
• Compassion Gifts. A cow is only $100 here — I’ve been bargain-shopping and that’s the best deal on a cow I’ve found so far.
• India Partners. Only $155 (the price of new boots) can dig a well providing water for 500 families in a rural village. 

 

My parents maintain that they’ve only had one fight in their 41 years of marriage.

When Mom changed the family diet without warning.

“We’re now eating fruit every morning for breakfast!” She announced cheerfully. I don’t remember it (thankfully), but apparently Dad about blew his top. You see, the man loves his sausage and eggs, his oatmeal, his hashbrowns. The man don’t want no fruit for breakfast if you hear what I’m saying.

She quickly learned that changing the family’s traditions needs to happen slowly.

Now, the question I hear so often is this:

“How do you make your family follow along with your new giving priorities?”

That is, when you are newly burdened with a desire to give to poor, and you want to change your holiday-habits, how on earth do you do so without disappointing everyone else? What do you tell your kids? What about grandparents? Do you forbid them to buy your kids toys? What about Christmas morning? The question pertains to one particular day, but the principle can be applied to every day:

How do we establish new gospel-centered traditions?  

I’m certainly not the expert, but here are a few thoughts:

1. Go slow. Guaranteed, if you all of a sudden declare that there will be no more gift-giving or holiday shopping ever happening again, you will have World War III in your home. No bueno. Consider making small steps over the next five years. You’ll have much better results. (That same can be said with establishing new eating habits, as my mom learned!)
2. Make it fun. Over the past few years, my family has done more and more giving through Gospel for Asia. We buy pigs, goats, rabbits, Bibles, clean water. But we keep it fun. One year I gave my brother a rubber chicken and a stuffed bunny rabbit from the dollar store (symbolizing the gift we’d given in his name). Another year I gave hard-boiled eggs to everyone (again, chickens). Last year my brother gave Jeff an old Bible (sent Bibles to unreached people) and gave me a bottle of water (he drilled a well in my name).  There’s all sorts of creative ways to celebrate and keep it fun without heaping up more and more junk that we really don’t need. Get creative!
3. Let others be free. Personally, I feel that I am only responsible for the people under my roof. I’m not going to tell my parents, Jeff’s parents, or our aunts and uncles what they can and cannot do with their money. Plus, for heavens sake let grandparents be grandparents. Wild horses couldn’t keep Jeff’s and my parents from spoiling their grandkids. So we let them. We personally do not buy our children gifts. We do for their birthdays but not for Christmas. However, it’s wonderful that their grandparents do!  We’re free and so are they. (And I appreciate their amazing generosity!)
4. Never say, “We can’t afford.” Sometimes it’s easy to pull a cop-out and tell people or our children that we can’t afford certain things. But this communicates that we’re victims, which just isn’t true. Some people in our world are victims of absolute poverty. We are not. By saying, “We choose  not to buy those gifts this year so that we can bless some people in need,” we communicate an important truth. We believe that poverty-stricken people matter. We are choosing them.
5. Keep it real. Showing our children pictures of other children in need is so helpful in teaching them compassion. Daily look at pictures of children in need. When doing the Operation Christmas Child boxes, look at children in the age-group and talk about who might receive the box.  Help them see how real need is, and their hearts will be quicker to follow your new giving-traditions.

 

Isn’t it crazy that overnight the stores shelves went from Halloween costumes to Christmas lights?

The Word says we live “from strength to strength” but the World says we live “from shopping season to shopping season.” Guaranteed the minute the Christmas lights come down the Valentine chocolates and teddy bears will line the shelves. Not that I blame them. Truly, if we didn’t have the joy and wonder of Christ to celebrate of course we’d have to buy stuff to celebrate!

But we have something so much greater to celebrate, don’t we? And don’t we also have to be intentional every single year, to actually honor Christ at His birth instead of being swept along in the sea of consumerism and forgetting Him altogether? I know I do. And doing so doesn’t mean we can’t have a Christmas tree or bake cookies or give meaningful gifts, but it means preparing our hearts to honor Christ’s birth. 

How can we do this?

We’ll look together at just a few of the innumerable ways. And please, I would love to hear from you how your family prepares to celebrate Christ in the midst of Christmas. So feel free to leave a comment with your idea.

To kick it off, I’d love to share this video with you, from one of my favorite missions organizations, Gospel for Asia. GFA is a truly remarkable organization, and if you’ve never read it, I highly encourage you to read Revolution in World Missions (click here for a free copy!). But only if you want to be ruined for regular life.

For today, will you please watch this video (all the way to the end!), and share your thoughts with us. Let’s prepare our hearts together … {Thanks for watching, and reading.}

 

And [Jesus] told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

The world (and most Christians) would look at the guyabove and say, “There’s a wise guy. That‘s the guy I should ask for financial wisdom from. He obviously is making all the wise decisions because God has blessed him so much.”  We would praise such a man, call him a genius financial advisor.  But you know what God calls Him?

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

A fool.

Fool.

Friends, that single word brings tears to my eyes. God called him a fool. Why? Because he “laid up treasures for himself and was not rich toward God.” A fool.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. (Jim Elliott)

Think of it this way.

You and I are going to be called a fool by someone.

We’ve had more than one person look at our recent financial decisions and shake their head at us: “Foolish.”

We can live by God’s economy,  refuse the empty promises of materialism and wealth, and store up treasures in heaven. If we do this: The world will call us fools.

Or, we can save, hoard, aim for bigger and better, pad ourselves with insulated walls of wealth. The world will praise us for our financial savvy, the world will call us wise. But, someday God will call us  fools.

Who, dear friends, will call you a fool?

I know one thing for sure: I do not want God to call me a fool.

Let’s desperately seek His ways and His wisdom. {Thanks for reading.}

Reminded afresh of this lesson from last year…

 

Oh friends, it feels so good to land. 

This last weekend I flew over to Bend for a women’s conference, and while it was wonderful to be there, and fun to fly over the beautiful cascade mountains, there’s just such a wonderful feeling about landing. Especially for a “J” like me, I like when things are settled, stable, at least for a bit.

This past year has been a flight of sorts, a bit of a free-fall with our house on the market and a serious re-positioning and re-considering of our finances, giving, and general life-priorities. I posted here, about our huge “aha!” moment of realizing that we could do so much good with money we were spending on our huge mortgage. So, we made a leap of faith and began giving 41%, living on just 18% of our income for awhile.

We made it a few months. While it’s true that we can’t “outgive God” it’s also true that at this point we just couldn’t make it on that small amount. Well, we could do it, but we wouldn’t be able to eat or drive.  (Small things.) So, it’s been a year-long process of “landing,” that is figuring out what God would have us give and live on in this season of our life, still dreaming of giving more, but being reasonable about our current situation.  I share all this because I’d like to just be honest through the process, perhaps it can be helpful, challenging, encouraging, or inspiring. I also wanted to make sure we weren’t mis-leading anyone by having you think we still gave 41% … so in the name of encouragement, honesty, and integrity:

Here’s where we’ve landed. 

Our dream would be to give half our income away. Not because we’d somehow be more spiritual but because I would just love to be able to DO that much with the money God’s given us. However, it’s just not realistic right now. So, baby steps.

Last year we were teaching Dutch about money: earning, saving, and giving. He earned $4 and we laid each of the four dollar bills out in front of him. As we interacted with him, we together decided that he would give $1, save $1, and use $2. He then used his $2 to buy a toy for Heidi and a toy for himself (since part of the money we use goes to providing for our family, not just ourselves.)  Jeff and I both were struck by the simplicity, and thought that for now we’d adopt the general rule for our family budget as well:

• Give 25%
• Save 25%
• Live on 50%

Using this as a model, we would get used to living on 50% and then (Lord willing) if we are someday able to own a house outright, we could reduce the “save” portion and increase the “give” portion.  Who knows what the future holds, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

• 58% goes to our church home.
• 18% goes to Un-reached people groups.
• 13% goes to missionaries in developing nations.
• 11% goes to child sponsorship.

 

Hello and how I’ve missed you all! I’ve been five days without internet and am overjoyed to be back connected to you, dear friends. I sneaked off to Starbucks yesterday to check my email and sat silently among the hustle and bustle with tears slipping down my cheeks when I discovered what that man of mine had done here … my steady man.

And now, I sit here in the darkness in my ugly-beautiful home, heart-full and hoping to somehow capture what these days have held. I’m at a loss for words. How can I catch my breath long enough to write when He keeps taking my breath away? Truly. I thought our house selling was cake enough, but He’s doled out frosting on top and then whipped cream and cherries and sprinkles and I’m sitting here speechless at the abundance before me and where, oh where do I start?

And how do I even begin to share it with a hopelessly inadequate supply of words. And I fear it will come across, at best, as a glorified boast of how wonderful our life is. At worst as shameless bragging. That is not it. On the one hand we are still the same Pattersons – we get sick (and are), we’re prone to frustration, we find ourselves impatient, our kids misbehave. We now live in a somewhat shoddily-built 1970s house and our carport is FULL of damp boxes and other random eye-sores. The wading pool and patio table are just sitting in the driveway. The front porch bench is engulfed in empty boxes to recycle. I’m sitting here on the couch in my pajamas, un-showered and unkempt, sipping coffee leftover from yesterday that I’ve reheated in a saucepan on the stove.

Just want to be sure the picture is clear.

On the other hand, God has sent us down the roaring rapids of His abundant provision this last week and we are soaked.

Soaked to the soul by His kindness.

The house was supposed to close last Friday. We wanted it to. Had prayed that it would (so that we didn’t have to pay overlapping rent and mortgage costs). But at 4pm on Thursday afternoon, as I stood in the midst of a garage that still needed to be sorted, cleaned, and packed, I fought back tears and sent a short text to my man: “Overwhelmed.” Walking into the kitchen past my laptop, I saw our realtor’s name pop up in my inbox. Message: Docs not ready to sign until Tuesday.

I sigh, not with disappointment, but relief. Grace. Thank God for knowing what I need more than I do. Even though moving day was still Friday, that meant we had through the weekend and beginning of this week to clean and finish up. Blessed margin.

Another email pops up. A KATU Channel 2 reporter. Asks me to call. I do. (Another blessed provision as both children rest long that afternoon providing ample time for uninterrupted talk on the phone.) We talk long, she explains. Two short news stories on Frugal Living choices. One story on our house-sale and down-size, the inspiration of The Hole in our Gospel, the choice to live on less. Can they film our move, interview us, come to our new house and see? I shake my head. Amazed. Yes, of course.

I say it to her but really to God. Yes!

We talk more. A short story on the Food-Stamp Challenge, local healthy eating on a food-stamp budget. Can they film a grocery-shopping trip, post a simple menu for families wanting to make the change. Can she come film us cooking a simple meal, come see our home full of boxes?

I say it to her but really to God. Yes!

Yes, God, yes!

So we go back to the house. They film a tour, our favorite parts of the house, a short-interview around our dining room table. The kids are a riot, they think it’s a game. KATU certainly doesn’t see perfection but at least some laughter and light? A bit of true joy? Perhaps, it seems an audacious request, perhaps a bit of Jesus too? Is it too much to ask that they see Him too? Dear Lord, please?

Because that’s who I’ve seen in the faces of all those who labored with us last weekend. Those strong arms and backs, those hot meals and groceries, those hours spent playing with kids while we worked. All the faces came and smiled, blessed, and said yes to our requests. And yes I’ve certainly seen Jesus’ face in dozens of theirs and His grace has soaked us to the soul.

In Christ it’s always yes, so we can live the yes, and we’ve happily received your yes and we say thanks.

Come visit at the farm? More tomorrow on this place. I had no idea what He had in store … Thanks for reading.