I'm writing this on Thursday, February 21, 2008. It'll be interesting to look back on this and see what God did.
It occured to me that some people may not know the ins and outs of "Support Discovery" (as it's euphamistically reffered to). So here's how it works. I need to find people to promise to support me on a monthly basis. In order to leave for Japan, I need to have $4,091 of monthly support. That means that each month, churchs and individuals have to be sending SEND $4,091. This is not my salary. My salary would come out of it, but it also covers ministry related expenses, housing allowance, travel, and administrative costs. In addition to that I also need an estimated $71,026 up front to cover the cost of language school, moving to Japan, equipment, support raising expenses, getting me set up with a place to live, etc. etc. I anticipate this will drop somewhat, still, it needs to be raised.
My focus is currently raising monthly support. This is the more the challenging of the two, because it is easier to comit to giving once than to comit to giving once a month. Also, people who agree to support me monthly are asked to begin doing so while I am still here raising support, as their monthly support will go into my outgoing fund. So we kill two birds with one stone. Anyways, with all that useful information, I now present my support raising goals. These are goals which I will be praying for, as well as trying to meet. So God, me, and anyone else He brings to partner with me will all be working together on this.
Basically I'm breaking it down like this: I want to have 100% of my support raised by the end of June, 2009. If you take January 1, 2008 as the start, that's 5.5% per month. 1% of my monthly support is $40.91, so I'm looking to get an additional $225 of promised monthly support each month. So, here's my support raising goals: