Week 5 of Fire and Fragrance!

This week we have Lou Engle speaking to our school.  What a great and obedient man after God's heart!  I remember when he spoke in our youth group in around 1996.  I vaguely remembered until I spoke to him about it and then the memory of him weeping came to me as he was sharing with me how God spoke to him at that retreat so strongly.
So, how refreshing to be listening to him again.  What a man of God he is.  He started 'The Call' and has a huge passion for praying for this world.  Praying for revival in America and throughout the nations.  His heart burns with zeal and it's contagious.  The things that are happening through his life are inspiring to walk closer to God...to have the encounters with God like he does is what I hunger for.  He's got some great stories.
We are excited for what is to come.  And that we get to be a part of it.  Sometimes I can't believe that we have been chosen for this time and that we will see great things yet to come.  And it will be all in the name of Jesus!  Thank you Lord for what you are going to do in these nations. In America.  In Canada!

And, Let me just say a great big THANKS to you who have sown in to us financially.  We are so forever grateful! We are still needing to meet our goal and need about $4000 (which is overdue). Continue to pray and see if God would speak to you about this. (monthly or one time gifts)
We are also so very GRATEFUL for all your prayers that come our way! Thank you, thank you!  Those are SO important...more than money.  God will provide but prayers are continually needed for this little family.
We love all of you!! xoxo

On another note, the kids are doing great!  The girls are enjoying the school program here and are pretty well adjusted to the busy schedule we all have.  It really is non stop from 7am till after dinner.  They love it though and fit in lots of play time in at the park right by our apartment.
It was Madison's birthday yesterday and we had a little party for her over the weekend on my birthday. We got a cake and had all our friends come and hang out for a BBQ.  It was really nice.

                                                     one of many geckos around here

                       Maddy and Kaiyah had an 'animal day' at school so we did some face painting

                                         Going for a swim - the pool is right below our room

                                                      Madison and my birthday party

Judah and Sarah (who watches him everyday) are getting along great.  He really enjoys hanging out with her and is excited every morning that she comes. They seem to have a routine going on that starts with swimming every day!    He'll be 2 next month! Time is flying.
Sarah seems to have adapted well to Hawaii too.  She loves it here and has had lots of adventures...I'm waaay behind in that area! Hoping to catch up though. There really is SO much to do on this island.  It features 11 of the 13 climate zones of the world.  So, you can just imagine the amazing things to do and see here.

                                                               Sarah and Judah

(photo credit to someone in our school)

 This was at a lady's house that was touched with our community outreach we've been doing near/at a beach that's a bit run down.  So, she wanted to bless us and invited us all over for dinner to her place! There were about 200 of us there - if not more!  What a blessing to all of us. And what a beautiful place she has!!

      Kaiyah hanging around these cool climbing trees.  The kids can literally hide in them. Very cool!

Financial Update....I know, I know....

I just wanted to clarify myself a bit better as to what our financial needs are as I have had some people message me to clarify as I guess it's a bit confusing.  I'll try to be more straight forward!

First of all, we are REALLY looking for anyone who would join us in support on a monthly basis.  It would be such a great help to know we have a certain amount each month coming in.  And, really, ANY amount is fine.  If we could get 10 people at $10/month - what a help! No amount is too little (or too big! ha)

Secondly, one time gifts of support would be great too and greatly appreciated.

I can't stress to you enough how grateful we are to each one of you who have helped us financially.  I know it's a sacrifice and we SO appreciate every dime! Thank you, Thank you.....

But we are really short on our funds that are due now.
We need $5000.00 as our down payment for our outreach here in Hawaii.  And we need your help.

So, I just ask that you think about it, pray about it - even just take 5 minutes right now. :)
We trust God in all this.  He has taken us this far and we believe he'll continue to take us.  He is a good God that wants the best for his children.

Thanks  :)

It's been a MONTH here in Hawaii!

Alright, I got my hand on a laptop to borrow for a couple hrs. so thought best thing to be productive would be to update the blog and the happenings here!

We are going in to our 5th week here.  I can't believe it!  The time is flying by - literally, our days come and go quickly and before we know it, we're into our next week!
Our typical day is something like this: Breakfast 6:15-7:15. Classroom time 8am-12pm.  Prayer room or small groups 1pm-3pm. 3-5 off with kids. 5pm-6:30pm dinner.  Mondays and Thursdays we have evening stuff as well.  It's a busy time but it sure makes us appreciate our downtime that we do get!

We are learning so much more about God and about ourselves as well.  It has been so great.
In a quick nutshell, we have had different topics of teachings each week with a different person teaching them as well.  We have had a week on "Pure Heart" - a lot of inner healing things spoken about in this week. Very powerful and wonderful. It's such great teaching and although I've heard it before, it never gets old.  I love it and learn something every time.  It's a deep cleaning :)  Another great week was with Brian Brennt who came with a message of Freedom.  Just going over the simplicity of the gospel and how easy it is to find freedom from things that have bogged us down for years or decades.  Loved it! Learned a ton!  This coming week we get to listen to a lady - Amy Sollars.  I cannot wait for this!  I think it's going to be fantastic and have high expectations.

As you may haveread already - we have found out where we'll be headed for outreach - and it's right here! haha.  We have teams going to South Africa, Uganda, India, Nepal, Tibet, Amsterdam, London, Washington D.C, New York state, Los Angeles and Hawaii!!  All such super exciting places but also super rural places where it'd most likely be pretty tough to be going with kids.  So, we are posted here in Hawaii and we are truly excited about what's going to happen.   I'm still learning a lot about this place and there is quite a bit of poverty in some areas.  Also a lot of tension between the locals and the Marshallese people that live here.  Hawaii also has a few of the the "top 10" worst schools in the nation.  There is a lot of opportunity for us here and we are excited to see what it all will look like.  I'll keep you posted as I find out more of what our particular focus will become.
Our team consists of 1 single and 7 families.  It's so great.  We love our team so much and can't wait to get to know one another even more.

Today we celebrated one of the girls birthday (5 this week) and went to a beautiful place where the kids could swim and see dolphins and all sorts of other sea life.  They loved it! And I finally was able to see some whales jumping out in the distance!  It was so great! And so great that we can have all this free entertainment - God's creation!
We missed "dad" though as he has gone for the weekend (on his way back as I type).  He went to Los Angeles for 4 days with a team of about 20 others from our school to be part of wildertour.  The link highlighted will be able to tell you more about it than I can but I can't wait to hear all about it tonight!