And she said yes.

Sweet.

Here’s how it all went down:

A little over a year ago Rocio and I had our third date at this little place in Decatur called Taqueria Del Sol. After we ate we walked down the street toward Java Monkey and I asked to hold her hand for the first time.

Wednesday was a repeat of almost everything…but this time, when I asked for her hand, I asked to have it forever.

I knelt down, told her how I genuinely believed that she was a gift from God to me, and slipped a ring on her beautiful hand.

After she’d said yes, I pulled out a letter I’d written to her years before. Before I had met her.

And here’s what it said:

Dear one,

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing today (August 18, 2007), however impatient you are in waiting for me, thanks. Thanks for waiting…thanks for being patient with my seemingly meandering path to find you. It has not been for lack of looking. I’ve traveled much in my search and yet you still seem to remain hidden from me. There’s nothing to worry about though. If I am meant to find you in this life, then find you I will. Questions like this should not be answered by those who cannot see the future.

Only God can put the kind of love we are both pursuing together.

Fate, luck and human effort can put together imitations, but neither you nor I are willing to settle for that.

And so we wait.

It’s not necessarily a passive waiting either, there’s a lot of asking, “Lord, is she the one?” “Should I spend more time with her?” Wow, have there been a couple that have been close. I thank the Lord for His protection, for giving me eyes to see. For allowing me to wait for the sweeter romance, the more powerful story, the marriage that He might use to mark history. Should I pursue or be patient?

There are a couple right now, even today, that I wonder about. If you are one of them, please forgive me for not sweeping you off of your feet immediately and uniting with you, ending your wait. Be patient with me, I am not an expert at this kind of thing.

I certainly know that I have grown up a lot over the past 6-7 years. I could not have led you then the way I shall lead you now. My God was so small back then, so Republican, so American, so much without grace. My mind tells me that He’s bigger now. Not that he has changed size, but He has very much changed my mind’s perception of Him.

I love Him so much more now, more than I ever did. I cannot tell you what my friendship with Him means to me, how much I love Him, or the ache I tangibly feel for the day when sin’s barrier between He and I will be permanently shattered. Words can’t describe things as mystical as this…

And so dear wife, this is my best gift to you. For all the human fulfillment of togetherness, release from loneliness, and joy that aligning your life with another’s can bring; ultimately my love for you is best played out through my love for Him.

The fact is, we don’t make very good masters of ourselves. Just as in the pursuit of freedom, I find myself in bondage to the things I thought I was so free to do, so free to pursue; giving you whatever you want for yourself will never be my intention. I love you so much that I will deny your wants and desires (even at the cost of temporary harmony) in favor of what God wants and desires for you.

I certainly won’t do it perfectly, but my love for you will always go well beyond the shallow frivolities of this world’s fleeting fleshly desires.

It is my strong belief that there is greatness inside of you. God designed you for a purpose only you can fulfill and my role as your husband, as your leader, is to help you tap into that greatness. Sin’s temptation is to sell off that greatness for smaller wants, smaller dreams, unremarkable trinkets of a life spent on one’s self.

I will fight for your greatness. I will fight for the romantic epic that will be revealed through your life on this earth as you lean into the sweet rhythms of your eternal story.

And when God achieves grand glory for His name through you and the life He’s entrusted to you, you will have no bigger fan than me.

Because we are one, your success will be my success; your dreams, my dreams.

What fun it will be to live this kind of a life with you, my love.

That’s the kind of thing worth waiting for.

Until we meet,

Matt

I cannot describe with words how amazing it is to be joining my life together with this passionate, amazing woman of God. If you haven’t yet met her, I can’t wait to introduce you. I just know you’re gonna fall in love with her too.

----Rocio with the ring a few minutes after----

----Bart, Kim (far right) and three of the KC pastors (Chris, Golden and Eric) they are serving----

I met a tribe leader. Seth Godin would define a tribe leader as someone who is leading a group of people by serving their needs. In and around the geography of Kansas City, Bart Nill, and his assitant Kim, are tribe leaders for pastors in the area of stewardship.

How has Bart won over their trust? He genuinely cares about them, and tries his best to help them achieve the goals and vision God has given them for their local congregations. Bart regularly meets with pastors in groups of 4 and pours his life out for theirs.

And they love him for it.

It’s really incredible to watch. Bart invited me to an event the night before Crown ignite! was held in KC. He was presenting the case for the ministry to several friends and supporters. Several of his pastor friends were there.

More than anything else I was struck by how much they loved this guy. I mean, I really believe that they would take a bullet for him. And when they need something in the area of stewardship, guess whose opinion they’re gonna seek out?

----Young Haitian men, carrying water to those in need----

When moments of disaster strike close by, near in geography or near to our hearts, it’s fashionable to give and talk about how much we should be doing for the people affected by the disaster. It’s hard to find reasons not to give our time, money and effort towards our hurting human family just a short distance away.

We feel good about ourselves when we retweet something, share a post on facebook, publicly question why our governments or big companies aren’t doing more. We tell ourselves that Haiti needs more advocates like us on their side. We might even silently compare ourselves to others who aren’t doing as much as we are to advocate aid for the tragedy. But the main reason we all aren’t giving more, is that we simply don’t have more to give.

According to Barna Research, the average American gives a shade over 1% of their income away. According to this article on MSN, 43% of Americans are spending more than they make each year.

But what if you knew the earthquake was going to strike Haiti. What if you had three years to prepare for your response to the disaster. What if you knew that your personal gift of $1,000 would save 20 lives? What would you do differently?

Would you organize your finances? Would you limit yourself and put a focused effort together to make sure you had a surplus to help those in need?

I’d like to think that we all would.

Here’s the harsh reality, most of us aren’t.

We care enough now to make a lot of noise and make some sacrifices, but we don’t care enough to sacrifice our long term spending habits. There will be another disaster somewhere in the world in the next few years. The statistics are clear (there have been 31 disasters that have killed 20,000 people or more in the last 100 years).

So what?

Should we do what we can to help the people of Haiti and then sit back, do nothing and wait? Or should we actually prepare for the next disaster? For the next time someplace needs us? Put a plan in place to track how much we spend? Purposely spend less so we can give more? Convince others to do the same?

This site is about challenging the status quo when it comes to spending and consumption. The normal pattern is to make more money in order to spend more money. What if we decided to be different and alter our spending patterns and begin to move from consumers to contributors? How much more could we do the next time someone needs our help? How much more could you help next time around?

————————————————————————–

If you would like to give to the Haiti relief efforts, please join me in giving to World Hope. They are a reputable organization that will do a great job serving the people of Haiti. Click here to give.

----Just a small glimpse at the total devastation of Port au Prince, Haiti----

Back in 2005, Haiti gave the US $50,000 dollars in support of Katrina victims. That is almost DOUBLE (as a percentage of total GDP) what the US is giving to Haiti to help with the earthquake. Not to mention the loss of human life in Haiti will be 25-50 times that of Katrina.

But doesn’t the US’s $100 million sound a lot more generous than Haiti’s little $50,000.

Yup.

But not to everyone…

I’m reminded of a story about Jesus. One day he decided to carefully watch who was putting what into the “donation coffers” of his day. He sat quietly while the big, important, high income people made a pompous showing of their gifts, being careful to let everyone know just how much they were giving.

Then came this little widow, perhaps embarrassed to drop in her two small coins. This was too much for Jesus. His exuberance bubbled over into a little speech.

“This poor widow has put in more than everyone else! For they gave out of their abundance, she out of her poverty.”

So why can we not afford to match the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere?

We are too busy spending money to help ourselves out of our self-dug hole. If we could learn to spend less than we earn, we might one day be able to attain Haiti’s level of generosity.

If you would like to join me in giving towards helping Haiti, I would encourage you to go to www.worldhope.org. The founder is a personal friend and I have worked with them around the world.

FYI -it would take the average American giving $0.28 to match the US Government’s generosity as a percentage of income. Let me encourage you to give much more than that!

For reference, also see “The Angry Malaysian”.

----John's $950 Saturn is $10,000 cheaper than his truck and gets double the gas mileage----

I had lunch with John today. We did a little financial check up on how his debt reduction was going and talked about how we could maximize his efforts to continue his journey out of debt.

I told him how his story (see his full story here) has by far been the most popular thing I’ve written about on this blog.

He was thrilled at potentially giving someone else encouragement in their “journey out of a self-dug hole”. I asked him if i could share details.

“Absolutely.” He said.

Perhaps the coolest thing about his journey is that nothing miraculous or spectacular has happened to him along the way. He’s received no inheritance, hasn’t won the lottery, and hasn’t been given a single penny from Ed McMahon and the fine folks at the Publisher’s Clearinghouse. In fact, the value of his house has gone down $10,000 and he has recently started attending school (and might I add paying) for a Master’s Degree.

So how did he do it? Eighteen months ago he simply put a plan together and has been extraordinarily faithful in his grind-it-out execution of that plan. Which begs the question: if this is what John can do in his circumstances, what might you be able to do in yours?

So here are the details, before and after.

Before:

Salary – $40,000

Family and Marital Status: Single and no kids

Assets

House $150,000

Truck    $ 11,000

Cash         $ 0.00 (if i remember correctly, he actually laughed at the question)

TOTAL ASSETS: $161,000

Debt

Mortgage # 1 $119,926.38

Mortgage # 2 $ 23,324.06

Mortgage # 3 $ 24,957.41 (someone thought it a good idea to give a 3rd mortgage..we’d laugh later)

Auto Loan # 1  $ 4,623.72

Student Loans $ 0.00

TOTAL DEBT $ 204,547.82

Some notes about the above:

1. If John were to sell everything he would still owe over $43,500.00 with nothing to show for it.
2. He owed over $168,000 on a $150,000 house (he was “underwater”).
3. He was paying over $19,000 a year in interest alone
4. He was paying $1,500 a year on insurance for his truck
5. He was getting less than 20 miles/gallon of gas

In July of 2008 John began his journey to get out of debt. He sold his truck; his baby. At lunch today, he was sure to point out how hard that was for him. Worth it, yes, but the hardest part of beginning his journey.

Making sure to only spend on things he truly needed with some small frills here and there, he kept on attacking his debt. When he started his Master’s Degree, he purposely took out school loans and used that money to pay off higher interest debt, exchange a low interest loan for higher ones. As an added benefit, student loan debt is tax deductible while credit card interest is not!

So after eighteen long months of work, here’s what John has to show for his efforts.

After:

Salary – still $40,000

Family and Marital Status: Single and no kids

Assets

House $140,000

Saturn        $ 500**

Cash        $ 3,300

TOTAL: $143,800

**When I asked him how much the car was worth, he quipped, “It depends on how much gas it has in it.”

Debt

Mortgage # 1 $117,298.14

Mortgage # 2 $ 8,821.76

Mortgage # 3 $ 23,650.14

Auto Loan # 1  $ 0.00

CreditCards(6) $ 0.00

Student Loans $ 18,355.03

TOTAL DEBT $ 167,262.60

So how do the “afternotes” compare to the previous ones?

1. If John were to sell everything now he would only owe $23,500.00 (versus $43,500) with some quality education to show for it.
2. He now owes $149,770 on a $140,000 house (still “underwater”, but much better than owing $168,000 on a $140,000 house).
3. He is now only paying $9,650 a year in interest (and dropping, compared to over $19,000 and growing!)
4. He is now paying $500 a year on insurance for his car (compared to $1500)
5. He is now getting almost 35 miles/gallon (compared to less than 20)

The result for John has been peace of mind, purpose, and an incredible momentum that is churning and burning away his pile of debt. Without making more money, he still plans on paying off another $20-25,000 this year!

Feel free to “Contact the Author” below if you would like some personal help to begin your own journey to destroy some debt in the months ahead. And, John, thanks for your willingness to share your story with others. He and I both hope it serves as a great encouragement and motivator for your own personal debt destruction journey, as we move from consuming to contributing, together.

]]> http://mattelsberry.com/how-john-paid-off-3728522-in-18-months-the-details/feed/ 0 http://mattelsberry.com/how-john-paid-off-3728522-in-18-months-the-details/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/mattelsberry/~3/bAMXRu7Z8xQ/ http://mattelsberry.com/concerning-johns-1937703/#comments Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:21:20 +0000 Matt http://mattelsberry.com/?p=946 Last June I posted that my friend John had been able to pay off $19,377.03 of debt by using some cool strategies we worked out when I sat down with him.  Check out how he did it here.

He emailed me this weekend with an update. He now has paid off $32,076.89.

Wow.

Way to go John!!! So proud of the discipline and sacrifice you’ve used to make this happen.

]]> http://mattelsberry.com/concerning-johns-1937703/feed/ 0 http://mattelsberry.com/concerning-johns-1937703/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/mattelsberry/~3/zsyM7ZWocdM/ http://mattelsberry.com/the-first-time-i-met-larry-burkett/#comments Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:26:46 +0000 Matt http://mattelsberry.com/?p=749

--Larry Burkett 1939-2003--

It was 6:00am and I was sitting with my back to the door eating Fruit Loops. I didn’t realize he was there until he had pulled out the chair next to me and sat down.

My Fruit Loops quickly lost their luster.

Here was a guy that had founded Crown, sold millions of books, and was speaking to 2.1 million people on the radio every week. And was sitting across the table from me at breakfast. Asking questions about my life.

Didn’t he know that he was the interesting one?

In a few short minutes, he made an impression that would mark my life forever. It was evident that he genuinely cared about people; that he genuinely cared about me.

I am grateful that the Lord gave me 2 years of interaction with this humble servant.

-----The Sea of Galilee-----

Were unbelievable.

Though I really do need a better camera. Friday morning we had a chance to meet Taysaar Saada, author of the book “Once an Arafat Man”. He told stories of a crazy past filled with hate and acts of jihad, where he had worked closely with Yasser Arafat.

After meeting the Lord in Kansas City, he has returned to Israel to help with the impoverished Palestinians. Check out his organization, Seeds of Hope, here.

After some time with him we met a gentleman who was traveling with him, Mark Crosslin. Turns out Mark is from Atlanta. Any guesses on where he goes to church?

12Stone.

Which of course just happens to be my church. Yeah right.

Thanks, Lord.

Mark and I have already had lunch on this side of the world. What a cool connection.

After the time with Taysaar, we took off for Galilee, arriving in just enough time for a quick lunch before heading out on a worship boat. It was a little cheesy, especially when the first song they sang was the US national anthem. Yikes. Now, I love my country just fine, but that was a little ridiculous.

After the boat ride we took off for Haifa where we spent time with Kehilat HaCarmel right on the top of Mt. Carmel. They were just celebrating the graduation of a class of adult students from all over the world. I was able to meet people from Ghana that knew my good friend Sam Oppong, as well as people from Finland that knew Risto Huvila, a gentleman that has helped us promote Crown there.

Small world.

At the Shabbat dinner one of the leaders of the ministry was telling one of our team members how he had really hoped to get Crown to come to Israel. He called me over. The guy, Peter Tsukahira, has written a book called “My Father’s Business” and is passionate about seeing Israeli’s raised up to serve God through business. How cool is that?

My mind filled with thoughts and possibilities, I slept incredibly well after this long day.

The next morning we journeyed back to the top of Mt Carmel and worshiped at the Mt. Carmel Assembly. Their worship slides were in Hebrew, Russian, Arabic and English. The church had an incredible mixture of nationalities and cultures, all bound together in their adoration of Yeshua. There were messianic Jews from Israel, Arabs, Russian Jews and a large crowd of Sudanese refugees that had migrated from Darfur.

David and Karen Davis planted this church almost accidentally several years ago. It has been multicultural from the very start and we all felt incredibly blessed to worship with them. Oh yeah, they had 12 stones placed around the alter, I guess some guy named Elijah piled up 12 stones in the exact same spot a few thousand years ago.

-----Some of the 12 stones around the alter at Mt. Carmel Assembly-----

We walked down from Mt. Carmel into the surrounding Druze village and ate at a local Druze restaurant. The food was amazing…and my Greek friend Yanni will be glad to know I had the lamb.

And that was it.

A 2am taxi ride to the airport, a 3:30am interrogation about my recent trips to Indonesia and Malaysia, and they let me board the plane and go home.

Thanks, God. Thanks for choosing a people to demonstrate your grace. Thanks for placing them in this amazing corner of the world. Thanks for sending your Messiah to this place so we could celebrate His coming. And so, Merry Messiahmas!

-----On top of Mt. Carmel, believe it or not this was a candid photo-----

----Our team with Calev and John Myers after our day at the base----

Each day in Israel started with a devotional and worship. It was one of my highlights from the trip. Dustin, one of the guys from Gateway, brought his guitar and we crammed 9 guys into a room and belted out praise to the One who had sent us to this chosen corner of the earth. I wish I could start everyday like this.

At the end of our time of worship, we were joined by Calev Myers founder of the Jerusalem Institute of Justice and his father John Myers, who leads a congregation in Jerusalem. Calev fights for the rights of the marginalized and the oppressed in Israel. We spent some time talking with him about the different issues facing Israel today, including the difficulty for Jews who believe that their Messiah has already come and that he is Yeshua.

After listening to some unbelievable stories, all 11 of us (including Calev and his John) piled into the cars to head to our next adventure a couple hours away.

We arrived at an Israeli military base in the middle of the Negev desert and were in for a crazy cool expereince.

Through a friend of Calev’s they had set up an in-depth tour/description of what they do on the base.

We started in a briefing room and were shown footage from the recent Lebanon war. They then took us outside where they had many of their weapons lined up for our perusal and handling. It was so cool. There’s some pretty hi-tech weaponry out there.

After that they took us over to their tank battery, where we got to go inside one of the tanks, while they turned it on and showed us a lot of the internal specifics. While it was unbelievable, there were some parts that were highly sensitive.

From there we went into a pitch black room where they handed us night vision goggles. I was shocked at the clarity of my vision in complete darkness. It was as if a neon green sun was shedding light on everything.

Reentering the light brought us to their weapons simulation room. We were handed real weapons that were connected electronically to a full-wall-sized screen. Bad guys with guns blazing began to appear and it was our mission to take them out. The guy that handed me my gun pointed and said get that guy. I took him out with one shot. He seemed impressed and said something to the officer behind him in Hebrew.

That’s right. I’m a sniper.

Before we left, they fed us an incredible meal. One of the guys felt lead to pray, and one of the soldiers was curious.

“We only read our prayers, it’s interesting that you just seem to talk,” she said.

It started a whole dialogue that culminated with her asking, really out of the blue “why did Jesus have to die?” And Geoff shared the story.

The night ended with some incredible shoarma and good conversation with the guys along the streets of Jerusalem.

]]> http://mattelsberry.com/my-time-in-the-israeli-army/feed/ 0 http://mattelsberry.com/my-time-in-the-israeli-army/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/mattelsberry/~3/_hp-cG5JR8g/ http://mattelsberry.com/an-email-i-received-from-israel/#comments Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:35:27 +0000 Matt http://mattelsberry.com/?p=851 Corrected my last post.  My friend Adi sent me the following email:

Matt Hi,

I saw the blog and it was great. The “15 second dilemma” is a scary thought, the ultimate “no win” situation.

The reason I am writing is to point out that we are not “the” Hatzalah Organization; there is no “the” Hatzalah organization. There are many such organizations and projects all over the world. We are one of them. We are the “Hatzalah Project”, which belongs to the “Israel Emergency Aid Fund”.

We provide emergency equipment to all first responders such as doctors, firefighter, paramedics and Magen David Adom first responders (women included), all over Israel. and that is the reason the response time stands on 72 seconds!

Until now, we focused on local Israeli first responders. Recently we have expanded to include American first responder’s .Fireman and medical teams who will work with our first responders in Israel in times of emergency.

If you know of emergency personal that this project can be of an interest to them please forward them to the project site at www.evp.org.il .

Any question you have fell free to ask me.

G-d Bless,

Adi

After sending Adi an email thanking him for the correction, he was able to give me a better picture of the needs of his organization:

There are many ways to support our cause every one can help us. Almost in every community there are Firefighters if people know firefighters and they can connect them to us or me to them this will be super important.

From the financial side we are looking sponsors to :

· Sponsor Firefighters from the US that would arrive for training in Israel and in times of emergency would stand with us in Israel to save lives. The overall cost of the training is $3,300 per a firefighter and we have a list of firefighters that are willing to join the program.

· The $20,000 is the cost of a fully equipped emergency motorbike, you can find all the information for that on the EVP site under – LIFE ANGEL

Purchase medical equipment to our teams in Israel.

Toda, thank you!!!

Adi

Thanks Adi.

If you feel led to support his effort to save lives, please follow the link Adi gives above (www.evp.org.il) and give whatever you can. I just did. I’d love to hear about it if you decide to join me.

If you have firefighter friends that you would like to connect to Adi’s work, just let me know. I’d be happy to connect you.