NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

     Since we are in missions training, the month of December brings with it the understanding that tuition for the spring semester will be due soon.

     As we headed home to Corning, NY for our Christmas break, our prayer was that God would provide for our tuition start-up costs. We were confident that the Lord could and would completely provide that for us. Our very first Sunday back in our home/sending church, North Baptist Church of Corning, the Lord provided for our tuition costs! We were so excited about what God had done through His people.

Wow! God so clearly showed Himself faithful and strong!

      Being encouraged by God provision, we started trying to decide exactly what day we would head back to Missouri to continue our training. Then it happened… we were at my parent’s house and my brother was checking our van looking for a leak. While he was checking things out, I hear him say "Oh, man. I wouldn’t put a dime into this. In fact, don’t even put air in the tires." Well, that came a bit of a shock to my ears. We had been hearing some noise coming from the front end of the van but didn’t know how bad it might be.

       Thankfully, we thought, we still have another van in storage that was very similar so we would just use both vans to make one good one. But as we got into that process we found that the other van had too many of it’s own problems to be able to do that.

       So… now what? Or in my brother’s words "So what’s plan B?"

       "Plan B" in our mind was totally up to God. He provided for our tuition so we were also trusting Him to provide for our new need, a van.

        We know that we serve the Great God, the Only One Who can truly provide, the Giver of good gifts, our Father. We took encouragement in the fact that He had already provided for our every need and that we could look into His Word and see evidence of His provision to His people, both Israel (Joshua 24.1-13) and throughout the book of Acts and Romans (3.21-8.39). But this is the God who gave His only Son to be our Redeemer, our Savior to die for our sins, to be raised on the third day and be seated at the right hand of God.

        We began to pray and trust God to provide. We also let our friends, family and church know about our need. The response to God was over whelming when His people learned of this need they were amazing. Becki and I spent most of Friday (Jan.2nd) online and driving around the area looking for a possible vehicle that God might provide. Late Friday evening we went to a small dealer in Corning who had a green van in his lot. He wanted $7000.00 for it, but we looked at it anyway. Well we decided to test drive it the next day (Saturday) and we drove it around for about two hours.

        When we arrived back at the dealers he had dropped the price to $4700.00, including our van as a trade-in. WOW! We thought God might be providing this van for us. $4700 is nothing for our God! He parted seas, destroy walls, conquered death and sin!

        We sent out more emails with the updated information and rested in Christ for His leading.

        On Sunday, as we walked into Church we were presented with $4000 to be divided between our tuition start-up and for the van. We were amazed at our loving church family’s act of sacrificial giving.

        Then it happened. Within the next hour God provided another $4000.00 which totally covered the cost of the van.

         Laughter, tears, smiles, trust, love, excitement all filled our hearts. How do you react to something like this? What do you say or do?

         All we could say was "Thank you, God and thank you to all who have so amazingly given to the need He had presented to them."

        So on Monday (5th) we went to the dealer and purchased the van with cash! What an amazing feeling!

        We want to thank all who responded to God in this, you are an incredible encouragement to us!!!

        You have given to those who were in need, you have given to Jesus!

We thank God for you and are praying for you, in all our prayers, to continue "to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Pet.3.18)

Thank you,

from the whole Bennett family.

ps. the kids all loved riding in the van on our trip back to Missouri.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.