Doors.

On Tuesday night we attended the YWAM family evening. A family meeting is when all the people from the different YWAM ministries get together to sing, pray, and listen to a message by the speaker for the DTS school that week. This week's speaker was Stefan Hugo, he is the head of YWAM Southern Africa. He shared a basic but significant, and importnat, message about judgement and grace.
I want to focus on something that he said before the message though.
When we walked in, we were 5 minutes late, Stefan was sitting in the back taking notes. I noticed him looking at us several times. When the singing portion on the evening was done Stefan said that he had some "words" he wanted to share with some people in the room. He felt that God had a specific thing to say. He came over to us and shared a short a simple word with two people in the room and then he came over to us. What he had to say was spot on. Keep in mind that this is the first night that we met him, and he knows nothing about us.
He said that he felt God was saying that He is closing some doors to us, but opening others. That there are some doors we thought would be open, and they were open, but now they were closing and God was opening a new door for us. He is closing the wrong doors and opening the right ones. He said that He felt God lay Revelation 3:8 on his heart for us. It says:

"I know your deeds. Behold, I have put before you an open door which no one can shut, because you have little power, and have kept My word, and have not denied My name."

Then he told us that God will provide for the next step, and that we should not worry about it at all. 

You could pick my jaw up off the floor after that. If you have been following our story you know that our time with the school is coming to an end in the nest few months and we will be starting our own brand new ministry in Katutura. In the last two years things have not been exactly what we thought they would be. We thought we would be moving to the North to do rural ministry asap, but that door has been closed for now. We also came with the Wrights as a team, but they decided to leave the team to pursue ministry other than church planting so that door closed too. In all honesty we have been worrying and stressing. Starting a new ministry is a big deal, and there are so many things that need to be considered. Many things that need to fall into place for the ministry to be successful. We have been worried about those things. But after Tuesday night we are encouraged and excited. I would be lying if I said all the worry is gone, but we feel bolder in taking the next step and we are more determined than ever to carry out the plan God has for us in Namibia, AND we are excited because God does have a plan for the people of Katutura. 

If you are reading this take a moment to pray for us as we close our time at CHS and lay the foundation work for the new ministry in Katutura. 

With His love.

The Echols.

P.S Reese is doing really well, he is getting nice and chubby and has started to smile at us:)