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!

Quick post

This'll be a brief update as I'm on my phone. But wanted to share what's been going on.
We had such a great week of speaking and have enjoyed it immensely. How blessed we are to be here and to be learning all that we are. Brian Brennt was the speaker this week and it was fantastic! Absolutely great. So much teaching on such simple truths. And so much freedom so easily for us. As Christians, we tend to complicate the Bible at times and don't realize how easy it is to take hold of freedom in our lives that the enemy has taken. And this week we were shown the simplicity of the gospel, of freedom, of his love. Thank you Lord!! There's so much more to say and will another time for sure!
Also, some super cool and exciting news!!!!........
We are doing our outreach here on the island!! And possibly to some other islands as well. We are really excited about this. There are 6 other families that we'll be going along side with. We have already gotten to know some of the families so well and they have become some of our greatest friends. God knew we needed them in our lives. About Hawaii- There is surprisingly quite a bit of poverty in certain pockets of Hawaii. Particularly within the people group of the Marshallese. I'm learning lots about Hawaii that I didn't know!
Anyway - like I said, this is super brief. A quick update ...and I now gotta run and get the kids from school. More to come soon!!
Love you all!!!

And here are some pictures for your enjoyment.

We Are HERE!

We are here! We've made it and it's already been a week!! Woohoo!
So, we arrived last Tuesday and stayed at a hotel for a couple nights which typically would've been wonderfully amazing but I was dealing with one of the girls being pretty sick.  A total of 5 days with fever and it was starting to stress me out a bit.  So, I was in a bit of isolation with her during that time.  Poor girl.  Our last night at the hotel her fever broke finally!  I was sleeping next to her and rolled over in the night to feel her soaking wet from the fever breaking and was so happy! 

                                          Flying in...

                                       

                                          This is just outside our room

                                          Our home for the next 3 months!

                                          The girls sleep up there and love it!

Then we headed on over to the YWAM base.  OH, and a huge THANKS to my long time friend, Kari, for meeting us at the airport AND at the hotel to help with gathering all 4 of the families luggage.  She was a life saver for sure!!  We would've been there for quite a few hrs if it wasn't for you my friend!  I love you!!!

YWAM Kona, Hawaii!

Registration day, then welcoming day and a meeting here, meeting there - it's been great.  We haven't completely fallen into a routine yet but being here is amazing.  Besides the weather, the ocean and the beautiful palm trees, being here with YWAM is great. 
God's presence is tangible.  I haven't felt peace like this in a long time or His love being poured out so generously - like water.  I feel like I am often on the edge of tears because of His sweet, sweet presence.  He seems so real here and I can only think that it's like this because there is such a hunger all around us.  A hunger for realness, for a tangible God, for RAW-GOD.  Not processed, legalistic,or a schedule, a list on how to worship or interact or pray - but RAW.  REAL God (As one of our speakers was sharing - Andy Byrd).  This generation doesn't want a guide book to religion or spirituality.  They want to experience God first hand.  Bible plus Us and God equals unimaginable things.  We want to let Him be free to do what He wants in us and through us without limiting Him.

Well, that was heavy! HA - especially for some of my readers.  And I don't want to appologize but would only say I hope something, some day may challenge you to check out this God.  There's so much more than religion and rituals - We aren't into that if you haven't realized that yet. :)

And, on a lighter note, the girls started their school here and are enjoying that. Again, routine will really start next week.
And of course Judah - Sarah is watching him everyday and they seem to be enjoying one another so that makes me happy. 

Oh - and I wanted to add this video that I saw on facebook that I thought was really cool because this is kinda where we were at and decided we wanted to be used by God and be even more purposeful than what we were doing:
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10151397745507577

Road trip to Cali!

We are almost there!!
We started our road trip a couple days earlier than originally planned and ended up leaving London on Dec 19th after the kids were done school. 
Our first stop was the border!  We were in the immigration office for about an hr or so and it was a tad stressful not knowing what was going to happen.  The lady only wanted to talk to Mike at first and then she had to talk to her boss, then he wanted to talk to Mike and then Mike was sent back to sit....all the while, Mike was trying his best with all our supported documents that we were there just to volunteer.  They seemed worried that I was a nurse and would take a job somewhere.  They were definatly not keen on letting us in, but in the end - Finally they did! Not happily though...but we were happy!! That was a relief!  All the while, I was praying hard for God's grace to allow us in!  Thanks Lord!
We cut that day short and made a long treck the next 2 days. Stopped 2 more times for sleeping and got to Texas Dec 22. It was a wonderful break to be with Mike's family in Texas. We stayed with one of his sisters that lives there while his parents and another brother and sister with her family came up as well. It was a great Christmas. I had a really great, relaxing time. The kids had so much fun with all their cousins. Too bad they live so far away!

 

                                              And there was snow in Texas for Christmas!!

We left Texas Dec 27th and met up with 2 other families doing the same thing as us (from Texas). And -BTW - we LOVE these people already and are so happy we have instantly connected with them.  We know they'll be life long friends for sure.
We headed on the road to Albuquerque. A long day but exciting at the same time as we were starting the 2nd part of our road trip. The next day we drove to the Grand Canyon and took the time to take a quick look. A quick look it was as it was pretty cold for the kids. Snowing and all there! But well worth it for us all.

                                                  All the daddies with their baby boys

                                               All the kids on the road trip! All troopers!

 

And on from there we headed to Bakersfield with beautiful scenery all along the way.

 

Bakersfield to Oakland was the next trip. Along the way we saw lots of produce farms - pretty amazing.  Following us was one of the families going to Kona with us and he's a farmer so we got well educated on what everything was which made it much more fun.  Then came upon beautiful rolling hills.  Sooo pretty!

So, now Oakland it is for 2 days until we fly out the morning of Jan 1. 
Right now Madison has a fever for 2 days.  Judah was sick over Christmas with a fever as well so I'm hoping it's just what he had.  Fevers always worry me though.  Please keep this family of ours in your prayers for health to be whole. 

Kona bound we are!!  We are excited to reach our long awaited destination!  Thanks to you all of you for praying for us through our journey. They have made a difference for sure.  Knowing all that we have gone through over the last few months, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that THIS is what God has for us as the next step.  There's just no way that without God in it, we would have been able to get to this point.  There has been so much GRACE over us.  God has been so good.  And there's no doubt that your prayers have made a difference.  Thank you! Thank you!

Not my most Favourte blogpost to write...

Alright, here goes... This is a hard one for me to write as I suppose it's pretty humbling and really puts it out there as to where we are as a family.

And besides what I'm about to share with you being hard, this is probably also the one thing I hate most about being a missionary! We have learned to be quite self-sufficient over the years and have been rather comfortable and blessed beyond our needs. God has been amazing to us and we are so grateful for that.

So...as you may have noticed on most of my blog postings, one of the prayer requests we ask for repeatedly is that God would provide us financially. We are believing that He will be wholly in this one with us as He has led us this far. We also KNOW this is how he is leading our family and that gives us comfort beyond anything else.

It kinda feels like selling the latest yummy treats like those mint chocolate smoothies from Rheo Thompson that are absolutely AMAZING and addictive. But not...Because instead of being able to give you these golden wrapped, delicious, melt in your mouth treats for a couple bucks, we give you something intangible and maybe a few nice feelings. It hardly seems like a good deal, right?

But I do believe it's a good deal...I believe those that give should hold on to those "nice feelings" a bit longer, a bit tighter.
 With EVERY penny that we get, there will be rejoicing and thanksgiving in this household. With EVERY penny received, we will pray a double portion be given back to you (PLUS - that's what Jesus said, look it up!!). We have already heard of a story of someone giving to us and being blessed HUGELY financially the next day!

Not only do these money gifts bless us; They make it possible for us to fulfill God's calling on our lives and to be able to make a change in others lives because of Him using us.

So, all that to say, we need your help.

And, in case you were wondering about these things:

Yes, we sold our house along with most things we own.
Yes, Mike has sold his business successfully.
But, surprisingly maybe, we have been able to pay our debts and pay for SOME of the DTS that we are doing in Kona but that is it. Thank God that we have been able to get to a place of being debt free! We are so thankful for this.

But this does leave us in a place of reliance on family and friends to help us financially. We are looking for one time gifts and for monthly donaters. No amount is too little - I mean that.

YWAM happens to be a non for profit organization and anyone and all that are involved in YWAM are "support-based missionaries". It's just kinda part of the deal.

So, we're asking that you'd consider supporting us in anyway that you're able to.

To all of you who read this - Thanks! AND a HUGE Thanks to those that have already began supporting us! It means alot to us. More than words can express. Thank you, thank you!

The best way to donate would be through paypal(that yellow button at the top right of the page that says 'donate' hooks you up with giving through paypal) or if you're Canadian, e-transfers (via email and online banking) are super easy too. Either one works great.

Thanks again - I promise not to write lots of blogs about needing money but felt the need to put it out there so that those who are wondering where we're really at right now know. That we aren't hoarding a bunch of money from the sale of a house or business but that it's rather the opposite of that! We are walking in financial faith! Of course we were hoping to have more so we could be comfortable but I think God had other plans and lessons to teach us.

Just about there...

What a crazy, insane, stressful, emotional month this has been!  But as I say that, the first thing on my mind is that God has definitely been in it all.  I know there is NO way any of this could have happened if it wasn't for His strength and humongous portion of grace He's covered us with. 
So, let me fill you in.

October 25 we moved out into a tiny space for 5 people to live in.  It was short lasting as the people we were renting from needed us out sooner than initially agreed to.  So, off we went to my parent's place in London.  We've been commuting the girls to their school every day - making it a lot of driving but well worth keeping them there until our departure. 

Mike's business was another hurtle.  Initially, someone had joined in partnership with him but a few weeks into that, he backed out of it and left us back to square one with figuring out what was going to happen with the business with just a month left before we would be gone.  There was a lot of emotions that came along with this as we honestly couldn't see a way to go.  So, this was up to God to do something. 

We have continually believed that this is what God wants of us.  It's been so strongly on both our hearts and the hunger to go has only grown.  It's been a journey to trust God, that's for sure!
My emotions have been pulled in all sorts of directions. To living in a basement, one bedroom home, to thinking we might not be able to go - after having SOLD just about everything we own, to not knowing where we'd be able to store our remainder belongings (Thanks Tarah and Mary!), to money concerns, to screaming needy children (yes, I'm talking about mine and also having to shower a 1 1/2 yr old is NOT fun - the basement home only had a shower to use), to having to move a 2nd time after moving out of our beloved home, to sicknesses.  Yes, it's been fun!  But, seriously - underlying all of this, there has been a gentle peace - faint at times but gave us enough sanity to get through this time
Right in the midst of this going on, I heard this song that brought a lot of comfort to me...here are the words of that:

"I lean not on my own understanding. My life is in the hands of the maker of heaven.
I give it all to you God, trusting that you will make something beautiful out of me.
I will climb this mountain with my hands wide open.
There's nothing I hold on to"

Mike met with someone interested in the business a few times and again this past weekend, Dec 1 who finally then agreed to purchase it!  Thank you Lord for making a way!  So, as I type this now, Mike is running around to organize all the final details for this. 
I'm so proud of Mike.  This has been an extremely difficult process for him.  This business has been his baby.  He has worked so hard to bring it to where it is now.  What a huge accomplishment he's made.  I'm sure he's sad to let it all go but I know his reward will be great.

So, onwards to go to serve our King!
PLEASE get in touch with us to see us before we leave! I'm working a lot but would love to see any of you before we head out!
We leave December 21, 2012 to head to Dallas, Texas where we will spend Christmas with Mike's family.  From there, we will be leaving with 3 other families that are doing the same school as us in Kona!  They all live in the Dallas area and we'll literally be 'caravanning' with them as we drive to Oakland, California.  Making stops in Albuquerque, the Grand canyon and Bakersfield, Ca. along the way. Flying out Jan 1/13.  Spending 2 days to recoup before our session begins Jan 3/13.

Hopefully we'll look happier than this car :)

Areas of Prayer:

1.  We are still in a huge financial need.  Here are more details:  SUPPORT link.  Most importantly, we are looking for monthly supporters - but again, Anything would help.

2.  Safe travels as we drive to California and that there would be NO problems at the boarder/immigration (we have lots of paperwork to backup our endeavors).

3.  That our family would adjust smoothly to our new environments

Until my next post - MERRY CHRISTMAS to you all!  Enjoy this time with your families and let us never forget the gift He has given us!