Blessings

This week has been a mix of great anxiousness and great blessings. I am of course reminded of Philippians 4:6;

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

As faithful as I feel sometimes this is hard for me. I am a person who believes that I can make most anything happen and have been humbled by God many times as a result, some lessons have been quite painful. Anyway, this week have been telling friends and coworkers of our intent to move to Africa and have been met with mixed emotions. All are happy, few are surprised and some are heartbroken. Such was one today. We actually told a close friend last night and after the initial "I knew it would come" and an attempt at a strong outward "happiness" I was met this morning by pure emotional heartbrokeness. During the course of the day, many of my coworkers asked many questions about the work we want to do, were we were going to live and about support. We talked about all of these. During our talk about money the subject of how much money we needed came up and then "what will you spend that money on" was the inevitable next question. I told them about how we had to have new major appliances because we did not have 220 volt appliances here in the states and that Africa had 220 outlets. I also mentioned that my computers were very old and at this age, had small storage and were unreliable. We talked about other things like mattresses, couches, expenses for shipping containers, school for the kids and vehicles.

Well this evening our friend called and asked to bring dinner over and when she arrived gave me and Kristin each cards. In the card, besides tidings of love, were checks. In mine was enough money to buy a new Mac computer and in Kristin's was a check for enough money to buy all the major appliances we will need in Africa. I would like to say that I was stunned but I have to say that I have always been blessed by her love and generosity for our family and was not surprised by the great gifts. We praise God for her generosity and ask God to bless her spirit with peace.

Back But Ready To Go

Well, we have arrived home safe and we now have or at least know the location of all our luggage. We have suffered greatly from jet lag. We are cranky. If you think and adult is difficult to deal with when tired and jet lagged, you should see an 8 year old. We did not get along well yesterday.

We at least made it home safe. Now that we are home we have been anxiously preparing our first mail out for our mission to Rwanda. We have been writing letters, making budgets and praying.

We have began making lists and planning for our move and the details that need to be taken care of to make our move safe and successful. I thought I was a list person but now I am in overload. It is almost fun but at the end of the day, fun is not quite the right word. We pray that God will give us endurance and help us be complete and diligent.

I have begun to inform our friends family and coworkers of our plans and I can say it is aging me. Every time I have to sit down with a coworker, administration or friends, I get chest pain. We have been met by so many different levels of reactions. We have been mostly overwhelmed by repeated encouragement and words of encouragement. It is blessed to hear so many people say, we knew this day would come or, I already knew this would happen. It is so great to see that we have been seen as the people we have tried to be. This is a testimony to the Lord and His presence in us. We pray that His amazing spirit will continue to abide in us. We continually seek prayers from each of you and ask that you will remind others of our need for prayer.

God bless.

Ready to Go

Well, it's time to go. The Neal's (Don and Jane) are arriving soon to pray with us for our trip. We have been so blessed by their encouragement, as we have all of you, and we are so happy that they asked to come to the house this morning to pray over us.

I can hardly believe this step has arrived. The Cashes seem to be in such need of distraction. We hope God will give them encouragement while we are there. We hope we can adequately express the love that Glenwood has sent with us.

We are asking God to show us the need he has for us in Rwanda. We have asked God to let this trip be a learning trip, not a deciding trip. We have made our decision but God will make this trip what he wants. We have asked God to put us in the hands of others who are ministering to the Rwandans and to show us how we can provide love and hope to the people of Ruhengeri. We will be driving to Ruhengeri on March 18 and will need your prayers. We will be praying for the city and the people who live there and ask God to make us a safe home there.

God bless you all and thank you for your prayers.

Almost ready

Well, we are on the final countdown. I have one more day of work this week. We have began our packing. Kristin is awesome. She has packed each kid for each leg of their trips. Samuel went to my mom's house this weekend. Madelyn and Aaron will go to Kristin's parents tomorrow. Madelyn will get picked up by my mom in OKC next week. Grace will spend 3 days at Avon Adam's house then join us in our trip to Africa. Kristin planned and packed for each leg of each person's trip in addition to packing us for Orlando on Thursday followed immediately by the flight to Africa. We have packed 8 trunks for Africa, too many. It will cost us. We have been putting stuff in the trunks like puzzles. I suppose it is good practice for our own mission.

In the end we are ready and tired. We will overcome.

At this point Grace is more excited to stay at Avon's home that the trip to Africa.

In regard to our mission. We have been praying for God to show his continual faithfulness and show us some areas that he is going to support our family. Over the weekend he has given us confirmation that two churches are going to give us financial support for Rwanda. We don't know the dollar amounts yet and are still praying for this part. We are still praying for good people and good churches to step up and commit assistance to fill the needs that are remaining after these commitments.

Please pray with us for these issues. Pray for our children while we are gone. Please pray for our trip. Pray for the Cashes.