Life in a fishbowl: May 2012

I am now going to admit something that is embarrassing and I am not proud of......although we are missionaries and mature adults, Jon and I allowed ourselves to get into debt. Perhaps not much debt compared to a large portion of the population in the United States, but for us it was large. Large and looming. Now I realize that many of you would never let yourselves get into this situation in the first place. You are wise!! We were not.
Not long after reading a book that I posted about here, God really convicted both of us.  It was not right that we were in debt. We were not using the resources that God has given us well, and we were not teaching our children so many things that come with being faithful in finances. Things like patience and the ability to distinguish between wants and needs.

So we talked and prayed about it and decided to be drastic. No more. THE END. We started praying together as a family about our debt. We prayed that God would help us to be wise with our spending and help us to get rid of our debt and never get in debt again.  Our motto became "Cash on the barrel" just like Pa in Little House on the Prairie.

I am happy to say that as of this month we have paid 75% of the debt off!!! We hope by the end of this year to be completely free from debt.

One of the best things has been seeing our kids understand and take to heart the importance of financial responsibility.  I was talking with Ben the other day. He wisely told me that after we pay off the rest of the debt we shouldn't just go back to spending everything. We should start a savings so that if something comes up we will be prepared.   He is going to be so much smarter than I was when he starts being responsible for himself!

It's also been really great to see how God is taking care of us. Since we are living  extremely frugally so that every extra can go to pay the debt, there are times when things that we really want to do are put on hold or cancelled completely.  But God also provided very specifically for some things that we as a family have prayed about, and the kids were able to see those prayers answered through God's generosity. We are writing them down, so that we can look back and see how God gave us more than we needed!

We are definitely going to celebrate when the day of freedom comes! Anybody have any free celebration ideas??

I noticed that they were all three sitting on the swing. Chatting about something. Oh, I should take a picture. After all they represent three generations of our family.

So I quickly got the camera out. Smile, I'm taking a picture.