When God speaks we step!

Just when we thought we had the next few years of our lives planned out, God stopped us in our tracks, and turned us in another direction. We know He has the perfect plan, and we are trusting Him!

As you know, after graduating from NTBI in May 2011 we were planning on heading to MTC as soon as we could get there. We now see that God has something different in store for us. Not that we will never go to MTC, because we both deeply desire to go, but as for now we are being led to something else. Alton was laid off from his job in January, and two days later had been hired for a company working in Anderson, South Carolina. The fact that he was plopped down in Anderson, SC was pretty astounding to us. We were not making any effort to try and move there, but unbeknownst to us, God had laid it on my (Grace) brother's heart to bring us to that exact city. He is on staff at Newspring Church, and he was praying that the Lord would bring us there to work, and get involved. This Friday we are making the move to SC. For the last 4 months Riah and I have been living with my folks, and Alton gets to come home on the weekends. We are SO thankful that we will finally get to be together again. We will be getting involved in ministry at Newspring, and we would really love it if Alton could get on staff there eventually. We still are completely missions focused, and are excited that Newspring has a big heart for missions as well. 

I can't adequately express how much we desire to do WHATEVER it is that the Lord wants us to. We had hoped it was MTC, but He is guiding us in another direction...one that has lots of unknowns, and honestly is one that we didn't even see coming, but God has it figured out. We are clay in the Potter's hands, we are vessels for His use, we are holding our lives with open hands just asking Him to make known what He has for us. 

Please pray for us, that the Lord would show us where He wants us to be, and what He wants us to be doing. 

Thanks for your support as we have been on this journey of life! :) 

Where there is no guidance, a people falls...

Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety. (Proverbs 11:14)

It is not always easy to listen to wise counsel, especially when we don't see it the same way at first. Thankfully, after we take it to the Lord we see the wisdom in what was said and decided. A few weeks ago we met with the elders of our church, as well as a few of the men on the missions committee. To our disappointment we all came to the conclusion that heading to MTC in January still seems like a closed door. We have the support of our home church, and they are eager to see us get there, and then get to the mission field. We do not feel it is necessary to know where all of our financial support will come from while we are in training, but there is also an aspect of being responsible. At this time we do not have the financial support behind us that would be necessary to support our family as we finish our training with the mission. So, we are going to spend our time from now until August sharing our vision with people and churches in our area in hopes to find people passionate about the lost enough to do something about it. We want to dedicate our lives to the people in the world (there are still approx. 2500 people groups) who do not have the Bible in their language, and have never even heard of Jesus Christ...the one and only Savior of the world! We are willing to go, and even though we don't know how God is going to get us there, He does, and that's all that matters.

Please be in prayer for us. It's hard not to get discouraged when our plans don't come to fruition, but we always go back to the fact that God's plans are far greater than what we can imagine.

Because He said "Go!".

The Cale family

Waiting on the Lord

This summer has flown by! It seems like life has been busier than ever, and I am sure that has to do with why time seems to fly these days. As I mentioned in our last post, our goal has been to get involved in our church, until our time comes to go to the Missionary Training Center in MO. We have thoroughly been enjoying being a functioning part in the body of Christ. Since my last post we have moved thirty minutes away to be closer to Alton's work. He now has a 2 minute commute to work every morning, and this has been such a blessing! It has made juggling one car much more feasible, and it's given Alton the luxury of getting to come home for lunch everyday, which really helps break up our day.

Over the last couple of months we have been enjoying being part of a small group. Small groups really are such a wonderful way to get to know people in the church in a much more intimate way. We are currently reading through the book Radical together, and Alton and I love it! Alton will be leading our next small group discussion, so pray that the Lord would give him clarity of words. We are also co-leading our churches college and career group, which consists of mostly young college students. We are going through the video series The Truth Project. We hosted it three weeks ago, and we had 21 people packed into our tiny apartment, and it was great! :)  I (Grace) am helping with the care ministry, which involves writing and sending letters to those sick or grieving a loss in the church. Alton meets once a week with a godly man in our church for accountability, and they are studying Ephesians together. I am meeting once a week with two other married ladies, and we are going through the book, The Excellent Wife. About a month ago we taught children's church, and we will be doing this every couple of months. So as you can see, we have our schedules pretty full most days, but we wouldn't trade it for anything. We are really loving investing in the peoples lives around us, and having others invest in us.

January is approaching quickly, and we are really hoping and praying that the funds would come in for us to head off to MO to finish our training with New Tribes Mission. We have to let our apartment managers know in November if we are leaving in January, so that we don't get charged a fee, and so we ask that you pray with us about knowing what to do. We want nothing more than to be able to go, but unless the Lord shows us how to pay for the training, we are not sure how to make it work.

Riah is growing so fast, and is adding such joy to our lives! We love watching her grow, develop, and learn new skills. She is attempting to repeat some words like duck, and dog, and she is cruising all over the place. She still does not have any teeth, but it looks like several are making their way in. She will be 10 months old on the 21st of this month, which is crazy to think about. 

Thank you for praying for us!!!

A change in our plans, but not in God's

We are thankful to finally know some of what the Lord's plan is for us currently. After talking with our home church leaders we have come to the decision to wait until January, or at the latest, next August to head to the Missionary Training Center. With the pressures of moving, Alton working out of town for 6 months, having a child, and all the changes that have come our way, we have not been as involved in our home church (Grace Bible Church) as we would have liked. They are completely behind us, and are wanting us to head to MTC as soon as we can, but they also would like to have us around a little bit longer. Since we have been home we were getting involved in another church in our area, but it came to our attention that the people in our home church did not have much access to us, and were not getting to see the growth we had made while at Bible school.

Thank you all for your support in what we are doing. We appreciate the prayers and comments that we get on a regular basis concerning what the Lord is leading us to. We will spend our time here in NC with Alton continuing to work, Grace spending her time taking care of Riah, and we will be trying to spend our evenings involved in small group, helping lead the college and career group, and fellowshipping with our church body.

Please continue to pray for us as we get involved in ministry right here in our hometown. Also continue to seek the Lord about how you can partner with us so that we can get our missionary training done, and eventually make it overseas for missions work. We are aiming to head to Missoiri in January now, but of course we know the Lord can still change our plans. Thankfully our application is good for 2 years, so we will not have to do the application process again! That's good news :)

August 2012

Our Goal:

We have started the application process to begin our training at the Missionary Training Center in Missouri. Our goal is to start this August, and we are so excited at this possibility. "What would stop you?" you may ask, and the only thing at this moment that we can think of would be finances. However, no matter our financial situation, if the Lord is not wanting us to go this August then that of course would stop us. :) 

What we need?

To start this August we need a LOT of prayer! Please pray with us that the Lord would make it possible for us. Some specifics that you could pray for would be: the application process to go smoothly, the money that we need to pay for the two years of training, the ability to focus on what God is wanting us to do, and the strength to once again leave our families and move far from home.

The Missionary Training Center
We understand that most of you don't know exactly what the missionary training is, and what we will do while we are there. We would like to ask you to click here to go to the NTM website to read about the academics that we will be participating in while we are there. You can also navigate around the website to find out any other details you might be wondering about. Thank you for taking your time to do that. 

Riah Skye Cale

Riah Skye Cale

arrived November 21st, 2011

7 lbs 9 oz.

We are so glad to finally have our daughter with us and healthy!

Riah is named after the book of Zechariah, which means YHWH has remembered. Skye is after Grace's best friend in South Africa, and also goes along with the meaning of her first name (YHWH has remembered in the Heavens).

The Birth:
Wow! I am sure glad that part is over. :) For those of you who are interested in how the labor process went...here you go.
Towards the end of my pregnancy we found out that my placenta had moved out of the way of the cervix, so all your prayers concerning that were answered! I was so happy to be able to have a natural birth (natural as in no c-section NOT as in no medication! lol). Due to the fact that I had gestational diabetes my doctors thought it would be best to induce me one week before my due date, because the health risks at the end of a gestational diabetes pregnancy are a lot greater. Sunday November 20th Alton and I arrived to "check into" the hospital at 5 p.m. to begin the process. They planned to insert cervidil that night around 7 in order to ripen my cervix, and then start me on pitocin at 6 A.M. the next morning. It was very surreal checking into the hospital knowing that when we leave we would be parents to a little girl.

After the long checking in process, and getting all hooked up and poked and prodded for a couple of hours it was time to begin. The doctor came in at 7 p.m. and inserted the cervidil, which had to stay in for 12 hours (at this point I was already dilated 1 c.m.). Often times this alone can kick start labor...and that's exactly what happened. After taking some sleeping pills around 9 p.m., I was nice and groggy and ready for a good night of sleep, so that I would be ready for the big task ahead the next morning. Like that was gonna happen!!! lol. ;) At 9:30 p.m. the contractions started. Yikes! The pain was so sharp and mostly in my back. Back labor = NO FUN.
Here is how the rest of the night went:
@ 11 P.M. contractions were 2-3 minutes apart
@ 12 A.M. I was checked and was dilated 3 c.m.
@ 12:30 A.M. I was given Demerol to help with the pain
@ 2 A.M. I was given a second dose of Demerol
@ 5:30 A.M. I was checked and was still only dilated 3 c.m. :( Bummer! Cervidil was removed and contractions slowed to 3-7 minutes apart.
@ 5:30 I was able to get up and shower before they started the pitocin (the medicine that would bring on contractions and labor).
@ 6:30 pitocin drip was started, and I was dilated to 4 c.m.
@7:30 I got the epidural! Hallelujah!!!! What a relief.

The rest of the day was much much better! After a whole night of no sleep and terrible back and stomach contractions I was able to rest. I started to dilate relatively fast for someone having their first baby. By 3 o clock I was dilated to 9 c.m.! One more to go. At this point Alton and I made bets as to when she would be born. I optimistically said she would be born at 4 p.m.. Oh boy was I wrong! I was, however, able to start pushing at 4. After an hour of pushing the nurse said that the baby had not come down at all. :( What a disappointment. I was EXHAUSTED!!! The doctor decided to let me "labor down" for a while...which means rest and just let the contractions bring the baby down the birth canal some more. At this point I was given a top off on my epidural because it's effects were wearing off. At 7:00 they finally decided it was time for me to start pushing again! I was so ready for it all to be over. I remember praying "Lord, please let this be quick!". Alton and I made bets again, and I bet that she would be born at 8:00, Alton said 8:16. Much to my utter delight and relief Riah Skye was born at 8:01 p.m.

The plan was for the doctor to place her right onto my stomach, and Alton would cut the cord. The policy at this hospital is that they would leave the baby on your chest for the first hour of it's life, and then they would take it to be weighed and cleaned off (and by take it I mean take it to the station that was set up right in the room with me. This hospital never takes the baby out of the room with the mother. Unless the mother requests it...they don't even take it to the nursery. EVERYTHING is done in the room with the mother). Sadly, during the final pushes, Riah's shoulders got stuck, and then when she came out she was in shock. They had Alton cut the cord quickly and then took her immediately to the station in the room to be checked. After what seemed like forever I finally heard her cry. She was ok! I told them to go ahead and weigh her, and clean her off. While that was all going on, the doctor was working hard to try and stop my bleeding. I was hemorrhaging bad! The nurse and the doctor were getting worried that they wouldn't be able to stop the bleeding. Just when I thought the painful part was over (and by this time my epidural was not working very well), the most painful part of the whole process was yet to come. In order to stop the bleeding there were two nurses and the doctor that were pushing as hard as they could on my abdomen. They were pushing on the clots in my stomach to try and stop the bleeding. This was the first time (since I got the epidural) that I cried from pain. It took approximately an hour for them to finally get the bleeding to stop. Yes, it was an hour before I finally got to hold my little girl. But the wait was WELL worth it! She was a beauty.
Total hours in labor = 23 1/2

Thanks to everyone who prayed for her and I during this time! 

God's Timing Is PERFECT!

God and His Timing

Oh how much we need to learn about God's timing in our lives! This is something that He is teaching us in ways we would rather not experience, but yet we know that there is no better thing than the perfect plan of God. In life there are so many things that we have to wait on: our favorite T.V. series to start, our dinner to be done, our spouse getting dressed, our test results to come back, and so on. Although most of those are very minor in comparison to other things we wait for. It is mind blowing to think of the fact that our God is Sovereign, and when we wait on Him there will be a wonderful result.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 ^" He has made everything beautiful in its time."
Isaiah 40:31 "they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings ^like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

What God has us Waiting on Currently:

• God has Alton and I waiting on Him in many areas of our life. The biggest one that comes to mind while writing this is Alton's job situation. It is no news to many of you that Alton has been working out of town for the last several months. He is usually gone Monday-Thursday, and sometimes it's Monday-Saturday. This job HAS been a tremendous blessing however, because it is well paying, and has allowed for us to buy the things we need to settle into life here in NC. However, with a baby coming next month we are VERY anxious for him to find a job closer to home. We have been looking for a while now, and nothing has yet to open up. Please pray with us concerning this! We may think that now is the perfect time for another job to open up, but God may have something else in mind. 
• With the crazy schedule/location of Alton's job we have also not been able to get involved in churches in our area like we had hoped. Our goal is still to go to the New Tribes Missionary Training Center in Missouri this coming August. As we mentioned before, we are looking to be better supported financially for this to happen. We are really hoping that God's timing for us to go would be this August, but we don't know what He has in store. Please be praying with us concerning our support, and timing in going to MTC (missionary training center). 
• Last but not least, we are waiting on this little baby girl to arrive!! :) 9 months feels like an eternity on some days, and on others it feels like a blink of an eye. We have already been blessed with a wonderful baby shower recently, and one more will be taking place this weekend. God is certainly teaching me (Grace) patience through this pregnancy as there are many things I am waiting for. There are so many things that you need when having a baby, and I have been learning patience in waiting for the right time to get those things. November 21st is right around the corner, and I just KNOW that God will provide me with everything I need to be a mother! 

What About You?

I am sure we are not the only ones that God is teaching patience, and timing to! I hope that you are learning things about waiting on the Lord, because we certainly are. There is so much joy in waiting when you know that you have a God who wants nothing more than to bless your life! Keep that in mind friends, and we will do the same! 

Thank you for praying! 

Please feel free to let us know what we can be praying with you about! 

Because He said, "Go!"

         Alton, Grace, & soon-to-be Riah Cale!