How are we going to support ourselves?

LaRae's last student loan payment

Many of our friends and family have asked an important questions of us; "How are you going to support yourselves?" To be honest this is a question we have been asking ourselves for sometime. For the last 7 years we worked for the Adventist church in Senegal and Lebanon. We were very well taken care of and by God's grace were able to pay off our student loans in just 6 years.

Boaz's last student loan payment

In the spring of 2016 we felt that God was calling us to leave working for the church and to start a project with some friends in Senegal. This meant leaving our comfortable life in Beirut, Lebanon to head to Dakar, Senegal. It hasn't been easy to give up a well paying job with full benefits, yet we see that God is leading us to another place in our ministry.

Though our savings is not large we are moving forward in faith to work in Senegal. We have been reading several books on various missionaries who moved forward in faith and feel that this is more the direction we want to follow. Though we are grateful for the generosity of friends and family we are not asking for donations at this time. George Mueller inspires us in how he prayed to God to help him and each time he was in need God provided.

We had planned to leave for Senegal in early January, but we decided to push back the time of our departure a few weeks so that we can take a class in how to teach English as Second Language. We believe teaching English will help us to make friends, bring in much needed funds and will likely teach us a lot about ourselves.

The plan is to teach English part time and then spend the rest of our time focusing on paper work for Lika, (the girl we are trying to adopt) and planning with our friends in Senegal  how we can effectively work together to develop our project. In time we hope to develop small businesses that will help to support us and our project. At this point there are a lot of ideas floating around, so we'll need to pray that God will help us to focus on what He sees is the best direction.

To be honest this whole thing is a bit scary. Yet, we are excited to see how God will work. We have already seen Him working in our behalf. We sent out a Christmas letter to family and friends a few weeks ago. We included with the letter a picture magnet that a friend graciously offered to pay the printing. When Boaz went to print off the letter, he found that it cost way more than he had thought. We prayed over the mailing of the letters. God is good and inspired someone to send a donation that covered the cost of the printing and initial mailing!

Though we aren't asking for donations we did include information for donations as several have asked us how they can give. We also included information about the students from Senegal that we have helped to find sponsorship money for to continue their education. Two have already completed their studies and two will finish next year. If you would like more information on these students and how to help in their education, please email us: boaz.papendick@gmail.com