We leave in six days!

I feel like I am in a dream most days as the whirlwind of sorting through our belongings and the emptying of our house continues. We are leaving NY on June 7th and I have mixed feelings about that. I have always lived within 100 miles of where I was born (Lockport for those of you who are wondering....) and I think it's starting to hit me that I am moving not only out of the state but out of the country!

So I am both excited and nervous as we get ready to take this next step for our family.

We are currently at 82% monthly support and are praying that we will be at 100% before we leave the country July 12th.

This is our schedule:

June 7th: Leave NY for TX
June 12th: Start training in TX
July 10th: End training in TX
July 12th: Leave for Benin, West Africa for practicum training
July 31st: Arrive on the M/V Africa Mercy in Togo, West Africa

And I'm adding a picture of my girls from their AWANA Awards' Ceremony May 5th where Deborah completed year 3 of Sparks and earned her Sparky plaque and Anna completed year 1 of Sparks and earned her Book 1 and Review Book Awards.

Introducing Izzy and Sold!!!

Izzy is the newest member of our family. My sister gave her to me a couple of months ago and since then we have had fun as a family placing Izzy in various places around our house, she's always up to mischief. We discovered that not only does she have magnets in her hands and feet, she also has a magnet in the top of her head to hold her hat on! This has given us much amusement because she 'sticks' to many objects in our house.

A few weeks ago we were taking turns placing Izzy around the house and I thought that maybe Izzy would like to go to Africa with us and be photographed doing various activities. Izzy is very excited to go on this journey with us and if you haven't figured it out yet, Izzy is the colorful sock monkey sitting between Anna and Deborah!



This picture was taken April 27th and though it's not surprising for us to get snow in April (or even in May) what was surprising was that my lilacs were in full bloom! We were about 3 weeks early this year though I heard on the news last night that it's more like 1.5 weeks early with this latest cold front coming through and slowing down all growing things. The girls were running around trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues.

And the big news tonight is that our house is sold. I'm not going to say we sold it because we didn't, God did it. This whole process has been a lesson in patience and it has been amazing to see God's hand in the whole thing. We are moving out the day we leave for our training in Texas, June 7th.

And yes, that is the other big news........we are less than $100 a month away from 75% of our monthly support so we were given the go ahead to serve with Mercy Ships! We are praying that more monthly support will come in before we leave so that we are much closer to 100% when we leave for Africa mid July.

Please continue to pray for us, I feel overwhelmed most days with packing up the house and trying to figure out what to throw away, what to store and what to take with us.

In other news, the girls have both completed school for this school year and the hitch is on the car so we are making progress little by little.

Until my next post........

Stuff

We have re-figured our budget and with the support that has been coming in we are now only $400 a month from being at 75% support!

Our house has still not sold and we need prayer as we decide whether to just go ahead and rent it out or to try and keep selling it.

The girls are in their last few weeks of school (we started last July) so hopefully that will open up May to packing up the house!

We did end up being in both local newspapers which was a lot of fun. There was no link to the weekly newspaper but there was a link to the daily paper but no pictures. Of course right at this moment I don't know where it is, I'll add it later if I can find it.

We are having a hitch put on our itty bitty Prizm this week. We are allowed to take 8 duffel bags on the flight to Africa and they do not fit in our trunk! I looked into getting a carrier for on top of our car and I still could not figure out how to fit all the duffel bags in our car. We are also picking up one of my nieces in Kansas (on the way to Texas) to nanny our girls for us while we are in training. So we need room for her and her luggage too! Thus we decided we will need to rent a trailer to carry our bags to Texas and therefore the hitch to attach the trailer to the car! Isn't that all exciting?

We had the chance to meet another Mercy Ships' family 1.5 weeks ago, the Rich family. It was so much fun having them over! The kids got along great and are all looking forward to seeing each other in Texas in June. The funny thing is that Josh (the Dad) and I (Nanita) grew up about 5 miles from each other and went to the same K-12 school! Josh knows several of my nieces and nephews from school and working at a local Bible Conference Grounds. We did not know each other because I am, ahem, slightly older......ha ha

One last thing, Deborah and Anna were blessed to be able to participate in our regional Sparkarama at a local college last month. Our church has AWANA but has not competed in the games for several years so we went to the games to watch the cousins participate. I had the girls bring their completed books just in case they needed some extra Sparks to fill out the teams. Sure enough they needed some extra Sparks so both girls got to play but not for the same team my niece was on! They were on 3 different teams! That was hard to cheer for. Deborah was in green, Jem in blue, and Anna in red.

In the Newspaper

We made this week's edition of our local newspaper and we are on the front page! Now if I could only figure out where the on-line version is? or maybe there is no on-line version? In that case you will just have to imagine it!

We were also interviewed by our regional newspaper this week and they sent their own photographer out yesterday to take some family photos. I will let you all know when we make our appearance there.

We are still at 45% support which has been rather disheartening to me. No new support has come in in the past month but not for lack of trying on our part. We have sent out letters with our information in them to various churches and Ray has called many other churches. Most of them do not reply at all, a few respond by saying they are not taking on any new missionaries and are not interested in having us speak at their churches and then there are a couple of churches who are actually considering having us come speak. Please pray that God will raise up faithful supporters for us as we prepare to serve him in West Africa.

We need $900 a month more in order to be able to go. I have made it more convenient for those of you who want to donate on-line, there is a link at the top of this blog that will take you directly to our donation page. Any size gift is much appreciated!

Please continue to pray for the sale of our house to go through smoothly. I tend to be a nervous wreck about these kinds of things and need to just trust God in this particular matter.

We are excited about what is going on in Togo right now on the M/V Africa Mercy. Surgeries started up last week and several screenings have taken place. Our friends the Jacobsens whom we met in Texas last June have written about some of these things on their blog along with posting some great photos. Click here to see their blog.

Some of you may wonder what pre-missionaries do with their time...... pretty much the same things you do. Besides calling different churches and sending out letters Ray is still working as an Electronics Technician, I am still homeschooling Deborah and Anna and we are all still involved with our church AWANA program.

Last weekend we had our first sizeable snowstorm which really wasn't that much compared to other years but it's the best we got this year. Anna enjoyed just making snowballs.

While Deborah worked at building an igloo.

Both girls tried to swing on our swingset.

Ray worked hard at shoveling us out.

And two weekends ago we got a chance to do an overnight at a hotel in Niagara Falls, Canada that was attached to an Indoor Waterpark. We all enjoyed the outside pool! It was actually snowing and some kids were throwing snowballs into the pool. The Waterpark was on top of the Casino's parking garage so we were quite high up!

And the girls especially enjoyed the wave pool. I think Anna spent most of her time here while Deborah went down every single slide in the park. It was a great time for all of us.

Thanks for praying for us as we prepare to serve with Mercy Ships.

House, Support, Interviewed.....Oh My!

We have a purchase offer!!!!!!! We are very excited to be at this stage. Please pray that everything goes smoothly with the selling of our house. It seems so strange to actually get to this point after 8 months of taking over a dozen prospective buyers through our house.

We are currently at 45% monthly support and we need to be at 75% support before we can board the M/V Africa Mercy. We are praying for 36 more families/individuals who will commit to $25 a month so that we can go.

We have the full amount for our plane fare and our training costs but we are still welcoming one time gifts! Any money that is given for us will be used to supplement our monthly support.

We were interviewed for our local newspaper last week and I am nervously awaiting the article. I am hoping it will be a true representation of who we are and what we are trying to do.

The girls want you all to know that they are very excited about going on the ship when we can finally go. I drew a thermometer on a piece of paper and hung it on the wall so that they would have a visual for when we would have enough support to leave.

Prayer Request and Hair

We have a prospective buyer interested in our house. Please pray about this situation since we really need to sell the house in order to serve with Mercy Ships.

Our support is steadily going up. I think I figured it out that we need 38 more monthly supporters giving $25 a month in order for us to leave, well, that and the house has to sell! We know that God's timing is perfect and so we wait.

In the meantime I decided to experiment with the girls' hair after getting some advice from a friend of mine. Friday night the girls washed their hair and then I did four french braids on each head while the hair was still wet. This morning (Sunday) I took their braids out and I love it!!!! It is the cutest style ever and so easy to do!!!

A Decision and More Shots!

We are not leaving in January after all. Our support is going up steadily, we are now at 32% monthly support and depending on the price of our plane tickets we may already be at 100% for our training and airfare. All money sent to Mercy Ships under our designation code of #2626 will be used by us at some point when we need it.

But we definitely do not have enough monthly support for Ray to give his two week's notice on Friday so we are waiting patiently for the next training which is in June.

And then there is the matter of our house. All interest has fallen off and it looks like we will have to go the traditional route and list with a realtor. We were hoping to avoid that and not end up going in the hole financially when we sell the house so you can pray about that with us.

We went ahead and continued with our vaccinations to keep on schedule with our Hep B shots. Last week the four of us had 11 shots, 2 of us had the flu mist and three of us had PPD pokes. Thankfully the two younger members of our family were covered by our insurance but the two older members of the family had to pay out of pocket at the health clinic. We have now paid over $1100 in shots for our family as we prepare to travel. And we have another 5 shots to go (just for Ray and me, the kids are done).

So that is what we are up to right now. We are done suffering and borrowed a bed from friends until we depart. It is much easier to get up in the morning now that I am not crawling out on the floor, ha ha.