{"id":10766,"date":"2011-04-15T03:17:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T03:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10766"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:36:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:36:24","slug":"day-150-bunny-teething-rings-throw-and-standing-with-my-hand-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10766","title":{"rendered":"Day 150 – Bunny Teething Rings (Throw) and Standing with My Hand Out"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s been hard getting back in the habit of writing after taking nearly a week off.\u00a0\u00a0The recent illness and busy-ness\u00a0broke my stride! But I think there’s more than loss of momentum at play here.\u00a0 I’ve been a bit down lately.\u00a0 Ever since my car bit the dust, it seems like one thing after another is sneaking up to sucker punch me in the back of the head.\u00a0 I never see\u00a0them coming! Oh, none of these recent hassles is life threatening and most I can’t really discuss here for one reason or another, but they’ve got me down as they have piled up. Always in the background, the car situation\u00a0has served to complicate all the other problems that have come up.\u00a0 I haven’t had time to find a new (to me) vehicle.\u00a0 So…for a while I was borrowing my brother’s truck. It broke down.\u00a0 So I returned it to my brother and slinked away. Most of the time I have been bumming rides to school from a particularly kind\u00a0co-worker.\u00a0 She has been\u00a0more than\u00a0gracious and willing …\u00a0and yet I still feel like a LEECH.\u00a0 There’s nothing that goes so thoroughly against the American grain quite like carlessness and dependence on others!\u00a0 In America, hitchhiking is for losers and\/or moochers. I don’t like asking for handouts.\u00a0 In truth, this issue has been gnawing at me since Melissa and I decided to\u00a0move to Haiti.\u00a0 Part of the deal is that we will have to raise our own support\u00a0– which will mean sending letters and talking to folks – looking for “handouts”.\u00a0 It’s one of the reasons we know we can’t get on the mission field any earlier than August of 2012:\u00a0 we anticipate it being a rather lengthy process to gather support.\u00a0 Especially while continuing to work full-time. And even though we haven’t started fundraising yet, the issue of our own neediness\u00a0is already a part of our present reality. A few weeks back,\u00a0as we made a final push to ready the house for\u00a0the market and\u00a0cousin Phillip repaired our garage roof, providing all the labor and all the materials at no cost, I rejoiced, because we really couldn’t afford to cover that cost and it HAD TO BE DONEl\u00a0 But I have to admit that I rejoiced only half-heartedly.\u00a0 All my instincts screamed, “We’ve got to PAY him!!” And when the father of Ida’s best friend fixed our van two weeks ago for nothing more than the cost of the parts, I rejoiced … half-heartedly!\u00a0 He has expertise far beyond my own and not only did he fix the van, he fixed it QUICKLY.\u00a0 Which was crucial since\u00a0it was our only vehicle.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0He did\u00a0the repairs to help us on our path to missionary service.\u00a0 \u00a0Again, my gut said, “We’ve got to pay him!!” Being dependent on others for rides for a solid two weeks now has brought this struggle out into the open.\u00a0 I was asked the other day if I was prepared to spend the next few years\u00a0begging friends and family for handouts.\u00a0 I didn’t have an immediate answer, but it’s a legitimate question.\u00a0 After giving it some thought, I now have\u00a0a simple answer:\u00a0 “At this moment… honestly … no, I’m not ready.” I’m just now starting to wrestle with this aspect of being a missionary, but at first glance, it looks to me like a pride issue:\u00a0 before I’m ready to “ask for handouts”, God is going to have to break my pride.\u00a0 But if my pride stands in the way of God having an entire family of believers who are willing to join in His work among “the least of these” in Haiti, then it looks like I better give God permission to break my pride, right? As I’ve already hinted, I believe our American culture shapes our values when it comes to cars … but also to so many other aspects of life.\u00a0 American culture puts a lot of value on independence and “earning” a living through our own sweat and hard work.\u00a0 We take PRIDE in those things.\u00a0 But as I’ve started to mull these things over (and I’ve got a long way to go!), I’ve already generated a couple of pertinent questions: 1)\u00a0 Right now, I am a public school teacher.\u00a0 The government, through\u00a0the force of law, takes money from citizens all over this county and state – who may or may not have children in our school system – and uses that money to pay my salary.\u00a0 This arrangement\u00a0is certainly more socially acceptable than me asking friends and families to support me and my family\u00a0while working in a school in Haiti – where none of their own children attend – but is it more virtuous? 2)\u00a0 The members of a church voluntarily give weekly or monthly to the church.\u00a0 That money is pooled and then used to pay the pastor enough to support him or her and, probably, the entire family.\u00a0The church often even provides a house for the pastor to live in. \u00a0Do we view pastors as living on handouts?\u00a0 Why not? Well, like I’ve said, these are issues with which I am just beginning to wrestle.\u00a0 I’m sure I will bring this up again here in the future as I continue to discern God’s\u00a0voice in this matter.\u00a0 (Obviously, for instance, I will need to search Scripture to see what God can teach me there.)\u00a0 \u00a0I would love to hear some feedback from you, though.\u00a0 I need your insight here!\u00a0 I need to be willing to stand with my hand out … soon.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n

I almost forgot:\u00a0 my Throw for Day 150\u00a0was a set of old bunny-shaped teething rings.\u00a0 You can’t really tell they’re bunny-shaped from this webcam photo, but they are.\u00a0\u00a0Sadly, there are no babies around this house anymore… BTW,\u00a0this is the last blurry webcam photo I will be posting – I got a new webcam for my birthday.\u00a0 I’ll tell you about that tomorrow, God willing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been hard getting back in the habit of writing after taking nearly a week off.\u00a0\u00a0The recent illness and busy-ness\u00a0broke my stride! But I think there’s more than loss of momentum at play here.\u00a0 I’ve been a bit down lately.\u00a0 Ever since my car bit the dust, it seems like one thing after another is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10768,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10766\/revisions\/10768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}