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Strange Winds

The plan for the entire last three years has been to sail south. The first missionary contact we ever made was with a family in Honduras. An old Navy friend introduced us to them through social media. Our other missionary contacts have come through various sources – missionary member care groups, meeting one family which lead to an entire agency with missionaries all over Mexico, local churches, and new friends. It’s been a wonderful adventure, as we trusted God to lead the way. 

Wherever the wind blows…that’s the name of our website, but there’s a lot more to that, a little play on words. We live and travel on a sailboat, so yes, the wind fills our sails. Sometimes we can adjust the sails and harness the wind to take us where we want to go. Other times, the wind is against us and it’s what we sailors refer to as a bash. Loosely translated, it means absolutely no fun at all (okay, that may be my personal definition). Going against the wind is not where we want to go. The Greek word for wind is pneuma, but it has a secondary meaning. In the New Testament of the Bible (originally written in Greek) the word pneuma is also used for Holy Spirit.  We try to listen to and go where the Holy Spirit is leading us – wherever the pneuma blows – wherever God is sending us. Much of the last three years has not looked like we expected, and that trend is continuing with strange winds surrounding us, but we will continue trusting God.

Our plan was to go to Bahía del Sol in El Salvador (the white arrow). The map depicts all category 1+ hurricanes over the last 30 years in the Eastern Pacific, which clearly shows why we must have a plan for hurricane season (May 15 – November 30). Once we’re in the estuary in El Salvador we would be “stuck” there until the fall. We planned to use El Salvador as a jumping off point for land travels to visit a missionary family in Guatemala and the family in Honduras.

Well, the actual wind is not blowing us south. The swell in the Eastern Pacific has been much larger than normal for this time of year. The sand bar that must be crossed to get into Bahía del Sol has been closed for almost 3 weeks. It isn’t looking good for the near future either.

It appears that the Holy Spirit isn’t sending us south either. The missionary family in Guatemala has returned to the US. The family in Honduras is actually on the Atlantic (yes, big mistake on our part, we thought they said Pacific and we never googled their small town until recently).

We are currently in Marina Chiapas, Mexico (the red arrow on the map). It’s a nice marina with a great manager and it’s a safe place to leave the boat (plus a discounted summer rate). Yep, I said leave the boat. As much as we don’t want to leave the boat for a few months, the 90-100 degree temperatures INSIDE the boat (heat index is 100-110), no AC, swarms of mosquitoes, and daily rain/thunderstorms that require we close up the boat, just makes it unbearable. The marina is 30 minutes from town and the only thing out here are tennis courts (yeah, I don’t think so!). We’ve decided it’s best to head back to the US, take care of our yearly medical appointments, and spend some time with my parents in Colorado. We also plan to send Dennis off somewhere so he can finally finish his dissertation for his doctorate. The constantly growing list of things to fix or maintain on the boat doesn’t allow him any time to sit and research/write.  

We need a week or so to secure everything on our boat. Our insurance considers southern Mexico still in the hurricane zone. Even though it should be perfectly safe, we must follow the recommendations from our insurance company to protect our boat. We’ll be flying into Tijuana on June 6^thand walking across the border into San Diego. Dennis and I each have a medical appointment and then we’ll be heading to Colorado on June 11^th. We will probably fly back to Mexico (not quite sure when yet) through San Diego/Tijuana so hopefully we’ll get a chance to spend some more time and visit with more friends. 

We appreciate your prayers as we continue to strive to follow God’s leading, wherever the wind blows, in our ministry to missionaries.

Confidence

We made it to Puerto Escondido just before 8 on the morning of January 1st. Actually, we were a mile and a half away at 6am but we slowly rode the current while we waited for sunrise. This is not the kind of place you want to approach in the dark. We’re tied up on a mooring ball where we’ll be for 3 weeks.

The 21 hour passage was incredibly calm at first, and then much rougher than we like (starting just before sunset and into the moonless night). Right around 4pm, the wind kicked up, waves got big (the boat is covered in salt – maybe we should start a secondary business selling sea salt), we had to reef the sail (pull it down some so there’s less sail area), fight the waves that were pushing us to shore, and in the middle of all of this we caught a fish! But not just any fish, a Pacific sharp nosed shark! It was about 3’ long. We let it go because we really couldn’t handle a shark at that moment and no one was super excited about eating shark. We celebrated New Year’s Eve with the kids on the first, but Dennis and I didn’t make it til midnight. The long rough night just wore us out 😴

The wind began to pick up by the afternoon after we arrived and has been blowing strong over the last few days. It’s made the half mile ride in from the boat to the dock a bit wet. Tomorrow should be calm but then it’s going to rain for a couple of days. Our solar and wind power are doing great! We can spend time at the mooring ball (a quarter of the price) instead of the expensive dock.

We’re happy to be back somewhere familiar and plan to spend time with the missionaries we met here 2 years ago. We also have study and prep work to do to get ready for the conference which starts the 13th. Our cell service is limited because of these giant beautiful mountains. We’ll probably go ashore each day and get some marginal 3G network. Not completely off the grid, but close.

Please pray for us as we prepare for the January 13-18th conference. We will be leading the youth of the TEAM missionary families. The theme is Confidence in God, which has been hitting home during my personal study.

As an update to our finances, we have received donations of almost $6000 above our regular monthly support. This has helped so much!! Unfortunately, we had unexpected problems with our engines to the tune of $3000, but we were able to pay the boat yard bill and the credit card bill (which had all of those necessary boat parts on it). We are waiting to hear back again from the state of CA in regards to a settlement on our tax bill (approximately $15,000). We provided them with information on our current income and what we could pay per month. They don’t seem to be in a hurry to give us a decision.

We are still only about a third of the way to what we need to be fully funded ($3000/month) to continue to serve missionaries. We have exhausted so much of our own resources over the last couple of years, we are to the point that we don’t have much more to provide and now are becoming dependent on support. We know God specializes in coming through when we’ve reached the end of ourselves. He wants us to fully rely on Him, to have confidence in His faithfulness. Please prayerfully consider if God is calling you to partner with us in this ministry to missionaries.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Kellys!!

We finally splashed the boat on the 17th and left Puerto Penasco on the 20th. We’ve been alternating between calm 1-2 day sails and hiding from 20-40 knot northerly winds for 3-4 days. We’re taking advantage of the next calm weather window and heading to Puerto Escondido (Loreto) today. We’ll be postponing New Year’s and pretending tomorrow is December 31st so we can celebrate after we arrive. 

This year has been full of so many wonderful surprises and unplanned events – a few not so great, but it’s been wonderful to see how God turned them around. 

We are thankful for our families and friends who are like family – all those who opened their homes and their hearts for a weekend or a month, made us delicious meals, loaned us nerf guns for necessary battles, let us borrow cars, were our personal post office (our amazon account has literally almost 2 dozen addresses where we have shipped things this year), provided amazing conversations, prayers, and financial support of this ministry God has given us. 

We are thankful for missionaries around the world – we were able to meet so many this year in unexpected places. We’re thankful for what they do and the love of Jesus that they show to others. 

May your 2019 be blessed beyond anything you can ask or imagine. 

Reflections on Our Summer, Part 1

     The end of November may seem an odd time for our “What we did during our summer ‘vacation’” essay, but we’re finally back home (although not in the water quite yet). Looking back at our summer, it’s amazing to see God’s plans and how they overrode our plans. We thought we were going to spend the summer getting caught up on homeschool, admin, financial reports, and blog posts 😉 Dennis was going to work on research for his doctoral project. I was going to finish my certifications in counseling. We would never have bounced over the Atlantic without the promise of a few months to be still (and access to the internet). God knew that and I feel now (it’s taken some time to get here) that He used that plan to get us to Europe. After the disastrous month in France (if you missed that blog post, you can read about it here), we were searching for what God had in mind. He seemed to insist that we keep doing what He called us to do – spend our time helping and encouraging missionaries. In fact, even while we were in France, we had a missionary family spend a few days there before they headed to language school. It was a great opportunity to share our stories and encourage each other (we sure needed it at that point!).

     We left France in search of peace for ourselves and the least expensive way back to the US. We knew our chances of getting a military space available flight during the summer were pretty slim, so we were looking for places to stay cheaply in Europe. Driving to and flying out of Paris was the cheapest option out of France. We searched for places to stay with many different ministries in Europe. We talked to quite a number of missionaries and ministry leaders in Europe during our search for places to stay. We didn’t get to meet most of them, but we’ve certainly made new friends through email. A 3 hour detour to Switzerland became the new plan when a family offered us room and board for almost a week (although I have to admit, I was hoping to get to go to Switzerland).

     On our way to Switzerland, we made our first stop at Pont Julien, a 2000 year old bridge that was only about 5 miles from where we had been working (we just never had an opportunity to leave). We spent our “first night of freedom” near the Pont du Gard. (On a side night, if you ever think staying in a safari tent sounds like fun, maybe think again. The sheer number and size of the spiders was slightly terrifying. Caleb made the mistake of teasing Hope after she screamed when a large spider came inches from her face, and he ended up having to trade beds with her. You could tell he was freaking out a bit too, but he held it together and survived the night without any screams or bites.) The Pont du Gard is the highest and one of the best preserved ancient Roman aqueduct bridges that provided water to the city of Nîmes. It was part of the 31 mile aqueduct system that was built in the first century. First century! We’re talking about when Jesus walked the earth! It stands 160 feet high and only descends 1 inch across the almost 1/3 of a mile length. The system carried 8,800,000 gallons of water a day! Mind blowing and beautiful.