the reinforcers.

Alternate title: What Stephen is calling “The Reinforcers.” I’m just not sold on it yet.

At the beginning of every year, we sit together and talk about what has changed and evolved in the community over the past year, what God has done, and what prayers have been answered. And then we make goals for the next year.

At the beginning of 2017, we specifically prayed and strategized for very little growth–we wanted to deepen relationships, to get better at what we do in the community, specifically to grow in quality and not quantity. We have felt in over our heads for so long, and we just really didn’t want to start anything new.

That has become the running joke of 2017: Let’s “not start anything new.”

Instead, we brought on Mwei Mwei and started a new side of our sewing project. This also involves providing part-time education for her, so I now teach her English & math three days a week. And she wanted two friends to join her on Wednesdays, so we have a little English class in the afternoons.

We started The Breakfast Club, which is an epic undertaking involving new community members being hired into the house, a warehouse full of bulk rice, eggs, and noodles (in addition to the flour and baking goods we buy in bulk!), and the added bonus of waking up by 5:30am Monday to Friday.

We got more involved in our church, with Stephen helping on the worship team and I’m helping with Sunday school. As of Saturday, I’m teaching English to the pastors & elders at our church.

Oh, and The Reinforcers. We just started that last Tuesday.

First, the background: We have previously partnered with Kingdom Mission Fund, who is funding Stephen’s current project with OneHouse. While Stephen continues to work on the recording and translation projects, we have found its coming slower and more challenging than we thought. He keeps trekking ahead, but also felt like God opened up a different door.

Stephen felt like there was an opportunity to begin mentoring two teenage boys, training them on live sound and hopefully computers and recording in the future. His hope was to purchase live sound equipment that could be used for our monthly worship nights, and also be rented out to local non-profits and businesses. He hoped that if the equipment was purchased with the grant, the project could then sustain itself, providing part-time jobs for the boys and teaching new skills. It would also provide new opportunities for churches, non-profits, and other ministries in town. Meanwhile, it gives the boys a part-time job on the evenings and weekends, where they can contribute to their families while attending school–and hopefully keep them there. So many teenagers are pulled out around this age because they are needed for their income, and we always want to prevent that. And as icing on the cake, it provided an opportunity for Stephen to invest in two specific guys. One of them has no father figure in the home. The other has a physically present father that is not the best role model, and his mom is currently battling cancer (our Flower lady, Daw Ma Oo) and has been gone since April.

Pretty amazing project idea, right? Stephen always comes up with the best ideas. I just wish we could do them all.

We applied for an additional Kingdom Missions Fund grant this year and hoped to receive it when we were stateside. Unfortunately, we weren’t chosen this year, which left us in a predicament: we still felt like this was a great project and a genius idea. Upon returning in April, we felt both of the boy’s situations needed it more than ever. But our grant was requesting $4,000–something we just don’t have in any of our budgets.

So we’ve been praying and praying and praying. We have been considering options and re-working the idea. Where was God leading us? Why did he give Stephen this great idea, and why were we both so unsettled? It didn’t feel right to simply close the door, but we also weren’t sure how to make it happen.

Until this month. Our church had a new building open earlier this year, and recently acquired some new instruments and has some new musicians–including the two newly-baptized young men in our community. They have the capacity for a full band, but they are still trying to get in a groove.

We began talking with our church, and we have re-worked the idea for our current situation. For the time being, Stephen is partnering with our church’s worship leader and his good friend, Saw Min Tun. They are going to purchase a few things for the sound system at church that makes it more usable. They are setting up the mixer in the back of the room, and Stephen is going to go ahead and train these two guys to run sound weekly for our church. They will still learn the techniques and it opens the door for additional training. And we are investing some: we are making a few initial purchases as gifts to the church, and then we are “hiring” the two boys each weekend. They will run sound for band practice every Saturday and for church on Sunday, and we’ll pay them each $6.

And we’ll wait. We’ll see if God provides a way to purchase a sound system and open up doors that way, or perhaps He has something else in mind. And for now, it still provides a way to support these families in need through education, new opportunities, and skills.

Stephen is training them one afternoon a week, doing what he loves, and loving getting to spend time with these great kids. And they are ecstatic–they are really beyond excited to learn about sound and music. They are both artistic and very smart. And they’ll be coming to church with us regularly while providing additional income for their families.

Because even when his first great idea doesn’t work, Stephen finds a way 🙂

{If you’re like me, you’ve read all that and you’re still asking: so why “The Reinforcers”? I’m told that live sound is officially called sound reinforcement, so these guys are now The Reinforcers. I think they all just like that it makes them sound like superheroes.}