{"id":3077,"date":"2022-11-29T03:28:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-29T03:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3077"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:47","slug":"prepared-in-advance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3077","title":{"rendered":"PREPARED IN ADVANCE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Francis Azaglo is a teacher in a small town in Ghana, but it doesn&#8217;t pay much. To stay afloat, Francis started to look for some way to increase his family&#8217;s income.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">About a year ago &#8211; with the help of a $1,000 loan from Mission Resource &#8211; he and his wife stocked a small shop on the main street where they could sell food (like fresh eggs) and household items (like superglue).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEioZV1deztrdeGIo3spd4b6gHxwgwCO-udN-WmQLDUQUJJFJe8hoBx7m_Fv-QnsNWaDL2EK2h_n-CUa8tj-OMOLD8Jc8wcjb1CFRxTv8EAaG0Sr6g2htn4BOSYNoNMY-K1NhB2mLhzh3SrXx5GZw50cvarY5ZhnAQER5_pw_xEqKHCLvT3TPN03eraW\/w640-h480\/Francis%20Azaglo%2025.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1280\" height=\"960\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Business has been good!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As he finishes paying back his first loan, Francis has started thinking about the next step in the growth of his business: He would like to buy a freezer so that he could add various types of frozen meats to his inventory.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So his next loan request will be 2.5 or 3 times as much as his first!<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With so many of our clients requesting annual loans year after year &#8211; and each one bigger than the last &#8211; you can see why we are constantly in need of growing the revolving fund.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many of our clients use their loans as part of an annual business plan. They count on Mission Resource to have the funds available to build on the previous year&#8217;s successes.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so they are counting on me to get the word out and find the people who can financially support their climb out of poverty.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I feel the pressure, but I also read Ephesians 2:10 literally:<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;For we are God&#8217;s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I believe my position with Mission Resource is right where the Lord planned to have me at this point in my life.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And since I have assurance of God&#8217;s advance planning &#8211; He does all the heavy lifting &#8211; I don&#8217;t need to fear failure.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Francis Azaglo is a teacher in a small town in Ghana, but it doesn&#8217;t pay much. To stay afloat, Francis started to look for some way to increase his family&#8217;s income.\u00a0 About a year ago &#8211; with the help of a $1,000 loan from Mission Resource &#8211; he and his wife stocked a small shop [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3077","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\/3077","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=3077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3079,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077\/revisions\/3079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}