Please God, not Africa!

I mentioned that I made a "support thermometer" for ourselves -- just a visual way for all of us to see our support raised. So...here it is ~ "BEFORE" Forty-two stripes...one for each hundred dollars we need monthly. And now.... Yep, that's right!! We've coloured in 18 of the 42 stripes! 18 miracles right there! For you mathy types, it means we have 42.857% of our support.

Hip, hip, hooray for iMovie....

This week our pastor emailed to have us share in our church service this morning. We had made a little plan with the pastor -- he told us what questions he would ask us and Nate and I briefly (read: on the way to church this morning) went over what we thought we would say. The plan WAS for us to answer a few quick questions, show a video presentation I had made on imovie and then the church would vote as to whether or not they would financially support us. That WAS the plan. Easy peasy lemon squeezey. This is how it all went down: We got up to the front and looked out at all the wonderful, beautiful, godly, family-like people in the congregation. All of sudden it seemed very real ~ we are leaving all these loved ones. Nate was asked the first question, which I believe was this: Nate, we know you went to Togo with a team over Christmas, what has God been doing in your lives since then? Sounds easy, right? I think Nate said about four words and then just stopped. Emotion came over h...

I'm losing track. There have been so many really cool things that have happened in the last week, I'm losing count of all the miracles we are seeing. Between Tuesday and Friday of last week we had a few more families let us know that they were excited to support us. We received all the kid's new passports. And I got speak with the Project Manager of the hospital work site on skype -- a totally flukey, right-place-at-the-right-time, God-ordained thing. It's incredible. I decided to make one of those "fundraiser thermometer" things and hang it in our dining room. It's not exactly a thermometer ~ it's a snake. And every stripe of the snake is $100 of support. So 42 strips to go. As the kids colour in the stripes, I'll post some pics so you can see it. On Sunday morning two men showed up to our church. One is a surgeon and the other is an anaesthesiologist. (for sure I spelled that wrong) They both have worked in Togo at the hospital in the s...

So it's Monday morning. Monday mornings are not my fave time of the week. But this Monday morning is different! Yesterday we met with a couple from ABWE (the missions agency we're with) to talk about the financial side of this whole endeavour. This is the part that I struggle with the most. How much do we have to raise in order to get ourselves over there and stay for 2-3 years?? A. Lot. And this money comes from where? From people like us who work hard every day to make ends meet. And we're asking these people to support us?? A family of seven?? We met with this couple and they calculated a monthly total using some fancy-schmancy algorithm that spits out a number based on cost of living, insurance, travel, etc. Our total? $4200.00 per month. That's what we need. In my tiny, faithless head, I think: IMPOSSIBLE. That was my first thought -- as well as feeling deflated and disappointed that we probably won't raise that and we won't get to go. Meeting i...