Febloguary Day 8 (This is LOVE)

In January of 2013 God was bringing our family through a lot of changes, one of which was changing where our family met with the Body of Christ on a weekly basis.  I was resistant. God was resilient.  We made the heartbreaking change as an act of obedience.  This was our first time in our marriage to join a group of believers and to not be in leadership which was incredibly strange.  We had to figure out how to get connected on our own without the immediate gift of fellowship with other leaders.  It was hard.  I did not like it.

As He always does though, God came through.  A facebook friend who I had never met in person sent me a message.  Through some mutual friends we discovered that we lived minutes from one another and had a lot in common.  She invited our family to the Home Group they attended, and thus began 2013, the year of the Campbells.  Our families immediately hit it off.  It seemed that God was providing what each of us needed through these new friends.  David is the leader of the Campbell family and a man who loves God's word and searches it intently to know God more deeply.  This fervor for the Truth and commitment to prayer was exactly what Justin was craving.  Keri, the sweet Momma of Team Campbell, made me feel like we had known one another forever.  Her kindness, honesty and heart to follow boldly after Jesus drew me in and made me want to know God more.  The Campbell kiddos are Emma (10), Jacob (8), and Ben (5).  Lizzie and Lainie embraced Emma as their big sister very quickly and delighted in learning from her.  Jacob and Lizzie became very close and enjoyed adventures together.  Finally, Ben and Lainie were instant buddies, often asking Keri and I to send messages to to each other on their behalf.  This crew affectionately named themselves "Team Campsett" and couldn't get enough of one another.  Oh, and Liv was obsessed with Ms. ReeRee!

When some changes came to our Home Group, our two families were the only ones who remained.  Out of this was born Fuzzy's Home Group.  Both of our families met on Saturday nights to worship corporately with the Church, so our Sunday mornings were spent together over breakfast tacos and chips and queso as we discussed all that God was teaching us and challenged one another with the Truth.  Everyone looked forward to these mornings together, and we began to know the employees by name, and they knew our orders. About this time we also began to switch off date nights with each other.  This meant that our kids spent A LOT of time together weekly, and they loved it 99% of the time, when they weren't arguing like sibling tend to do.

We entered into this friendship knowing that we had about a year before things changed drastically.  The Campbells had felt led to move to Berlin to share the gospel, and it looked like they would be leaving sometime in 2014.  Knowing this information, we had some choices.  We could be friendly but hold back so saying goodbye wouldn't be so hard, we could just pretend they weren't going anywhere and treat them like any other good friends, or we could pour out our lives to serve these friends as if they were our own family, making their leaving incredibly painful.  We opted for number three.  Both families poured out our lives for one another.  We loved and served one another with fervor.  We spent as much time as possible together.  We worshiped God together.  We laughed together.  We cried together.  We prayed together.  It was an incredible 12 months.  And then they left for training on January 1.  Can I tell you how much it hurt?  Every one of us has felt it way down in our gut.  Our hearts hurt, we have all cried a lot, it has been incredibly painful, as we had anticipated. Our visits to Fuzzy's are dampened now by the absence of half of our crew.  Our typical Tuesday and Wednesday nights for date night just feel empty.  We don't get to just stop by to bring a Dr. Pepper by for Ms. Keri.  It stinks.  BUT it has also been downright amazing.  We have the privilege of serving our friends in prayer, financially, with care packages, and with words of encouragement, as they are currently at training.  Thanks to the gift of technology, our families get to FaceTime often and bring smiles to one another when things are tough.  Sweet Liv is still not convinced that they are really gone.  Precious girl keeps asking to ride in "ReeRee's car" and to see "Bub" (Jacob).   However, she also will belt out the B-I-B-L-E song as she remembers her time with ReeRee.  Lizzie and Lainie often lament the loss of having our dear friends so close by.  They have come to understand though, that we lost nothing in loving deeply.  Had we never dug in with the Campbell family, that would have been true loss.  We would have missed out on an entire year's worth of amazing experiences.  This is such a great life lesson.  We never want to be the people who hold everything back in fear.  Rather, we want to give it all, especially when it is risky, knowing that the reward is great when you are walking in obedience.  Our Loving Father longs to be gracious toward us, and He has showed us his sweet mercies and kindness through our relationship with David, Keri, Emma, Jacob and Ben.  We love you Team Campbell!

If you want to learn more about what God is calling our friends to do, or you just want to see what their experiences have been like at training, check out their blog!  It is always encouraging and challenging to read what God is teaching them in this season.  If you are interested in how to support their calling, there is information about that on their site!  I challenge you to spend at least 60 seconds in prayer for the Campbells and asking God how you can join in what He is doing through this family.