May Letter 05

Dear Friends,

We hope this letter finds you well. It is almost summer and we have started the countdown! Charles and I plan to leave the States August 30 — bound for San Jose, Costa Rica! It seems that our hopes and dreams of serving as missionaries in South America are on the verge of finally being realized!

We were told just weeks ago that we met our financial support goals and therefore will be able to attend the classes at the Center for Intercultural Training in June-July. We will leave the Washington, D.C. area June 17 headed for North Carolina, where the classes are held. We will take three intense week-long courses on Acts, Old Testament Survey and New Testament Survey. We will be the first S.A.M. missionaries to take any courses from this institution! Charles and I are also excited about the time to focus all of our energy and attention on the courses — it has been a long year of juggling two full-time jobs along with steps of preparation.

The classes will be the beginning to a very busy summer for us. Charles and I will be able to go on vacations with our families this summer, which we have not had the opportunity to do since we graduated from college, due to busy work schedules. We will visit with our immediate and extended families for the latter half of July — some of whom we won’t see again until our return. We plan on being in Memphis for almost the entire month of August in hopes that we can prepare and rest before we embark on four months of intense language training in Costa Rica.

In the last month, we have spent a lot of our time preparing for our journey by communicating with other missionaries in Costa Rica and Bolivia, finding out what we’ll need to pack and what to expect as far as climate, medical treatment, housing situations, etc. It is quite something to be enlightened by some of their responses! We are also communicating with missionaries from our local church who are spread across the globe, asking for advice and any wisdom they can give. Just this week one of our teammates, Alison Hershey, has arrived on the field in Santa Cruz! We are so excited to be able to communicate with her via email about her first impressions and the work set out for her there.

Just this week at church, a group of 11 men returned from a short-term mission trip to Cuba. It was so fascinating to see how these grown men in the church were brought to tears when standing before the congregation telling stories of lives that had been saved and the ways in which the trip had changed them. Charles and I couldn’t help but be so excited about how we too will be changed by the people we will come to know in Costa Rica and Bolivia. One of the men talking about the trip said, “It’s a very hard thing to be away from home and be evangelizing to strangers, but it’s amazing the satisfaction one feels from being obedient to God at the root of his heart.” Charles and I feel the satisfaction I think he is mentioning as we know that we are going to Bolivia in obedience. We also have a good friend who is working on a team with Word Made Flesh in Sri Lanka, restoring tsunami damage. Her emails bring such insight about how God is alive in parts of the world many of us will never see on this side of heaven. What a blessing that she has and that she can share it with so many of us back home. We have similar hopes for the next few years — that we will be able to give insight to others about God’s presence in Bolivia and how we are changed by it. We also hope to host groups from the States for short-term mission trips so that many of you can taste God’s goodness in a foreign place.

It is so exciting to learn how God continues to confirm this calling in our hearts! We hope that you will join us in taking part of this Bolivian ministry to the Ayore people. We are still in need of your support, both prayerfully and financially. We hope you will consider being a part of what God has called us and possibly you to for the purpose of advancing his kingdom. Also, please keep us in your prayers as we start the process of going by saying goodbye to our friends here. We anticipate it being a difficult part of the process.

By God’s grace and mercy,

Charles and Hannah McCall

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8.