An update on provision, schooling, and our departure timeline
Hello Friends,
We are eager to share a brief update on where things stand as we prepare for Taiwan.
The past couple months have been a flurry of activity and change for our family. Over the last few months, we’ve been meeting with several individuals, families, small groups and churches about prayer and financial partnership. Six days after celebrating Christmas, we moved out of the ministry house and in with Mandie’s folks. During the past two weeks, several new monthly partners have joined our team. Praise God!
Last week, we closed the gap! A wonderfully missional Christian businessman, stepped in to cover the last portion of our remaining monthly need. Because of this, we now have sufficient monthly support in place to confidently purchase plane tickets and move forward with our relocation.
We’re deeply grateful for God’s provision and for the obedience and generosity of His people.
We are very eager to land in Taiwan and begin our ministry! While we have the necessary budget to buy tickets and begin our work, we are still praying and believing for additional monthly support that would aid in covering future school costs for our kids. We are prayerfully seeking the Lord and asking him to provide an additional $2,000 per month. This monthly increase would enable us to either enroll the kids in school, recruit a teacher or employ a local to help us with schooling, rather than homeschooling ourselves. Employing a teacher or sending our kids to school full-time gives us the time freedom to invest full-time in the ministry and in the café platform in Taipei.
Currently, we are planning to share homeschooling responsibilities and adjust our ministry time accordingly. The work will still move forward in excellence — this simply affects the pace and capacity with which we can engage. We trust the Lord and His perfect timing, seeking His wisdom and provision. If you’d like to partner with us monthly to meet this need, we’d love to connect with you!
Additionally, we are very close to completing our upfront cash budget! We believe the Lord will provide this in the coming week. Our amazing church has generously come in with a matching gift — leaving only $4,050 to be raised to fully complete our upfront funding and allow us to depart.
To make this simple, we’ve created a HopeGives crowdfunding page to finish this final portion of our cash budget:
Thank you for walking with us and partnering with us in this season! We continue to be humbled by the way God is providing through His people.
With gratitude,
Ryan & Mandie Buesgens
P.S. For our local Minnesota friends, family and partners - mark your calendar for our farewell get-together next Sunday, January 25th at River Valley Church - Shakopee Campus. We’d love to see you before we depart!
Props on closing the fundng gap, that's huge. The schooling vs homeschooling calculation is interesting because it's not just about the kids education but also ministry capacity. Last year I watched a similar tradeoff play out with friends doing education work in Cambodia and the extra bandwidth from outsourcing teaching made a real difference in what they coud accomplish. The 2k/month target seems reasonable for giving partners the chance to unlock that capacity.
Really excited for your launch! Thanks for the update!!