Saturday, June 28, 2008

God Amazes Me All the Time

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." Ephesians 3:20 -21.

We had a garage sale last month and sold some things and God blessed us with over $300.00. We put all this money aside in a "Full Term Mission Fund." We talked about having another sale and seeing if the neighbors would want to have one as well. Today we had a "Block Wide Garage Sale" and 6 families participated in it. We advertised it as a Block Wide Sale with about 7 different houses to shop at. We had enough stuff left from the last sale and a few of our friends and family donated us some items to sale in this one. One of our friends donated us a dresser and a bunk bed set with drawers and a desk attached to it. We asked the Lord to send people to our sale as well as the neighbors. That He would pour out His blessing on our sales.

We got up at 6 am to pull things out for 8 am sale. At 6:15 we had our first "drive by shopper." We asked them to wait until we finished pulling everything out. By 7:00 we had 4 or 5 cars waiting and the sale began. We stayed SO busy until about 11:00 and then it was steady until 2:00.

God continues to amaze me! We made $699.40 at the sale today. After giving the kids some money for some of their things that sold we were able to put $649.40 in our "Full Time Mission Fund." I am still in shock. We have had several garage sales over the last several years and have never come anywhere close to making this much money. All the Praise and Glory to our Father in Heaven!

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Fully Funded for Summer Trip

As of today we are fully funded for the trip this summer! Praise the Lord! He amazes us each year how He continues to provide a way for us to go to Mozambique to serve and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to those who have never heard.

We have been busy around the house. We just finished a "deep" cleaning. We also painted all of the walls, base boards, doors and door frames. We fixed some places on the floor that needed to be repaired and replaced some fans that needed to be replaced. Now it is time to start packing for our trip.

Please continue to pray for us and our team as we prepare physically and spiritually. Pray that we will each spend time in the Word with God and that He will fill us to overflowing with everything that we need to share with people of Mozambique. Pray for the health of our team members and our families. Pray for safe travel. Pray that God will continue to prepare the hearts of the people in Mozambique. We also ask that you would pray for the extra week that we will spend there this year. We will meet with leaders of the Christ Baptist Church and Samaria Mission. We will also get to see more of Polokwane which is the town we will live in. We are excited to see all God has for us.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Huge Praise!

I want to update you on a huge praise that God has taken care of for us. It's a long story and I want to start in the beginning to share with you how God has blessed us.

This past summer we were given a car from Mark's dad. This meant we had 3 cars. It came at a great time for us. Our daughter had just started select soccer which meant we would be traveling alot more. Our Toyota wasn't really a good car for us to travel out of town in and the Expedition was beginning to get a little expensive to drive with gas prices starting to rise. The Bonneville became our new family car.

Over the past few months we began to think about selling the Expedition and the Toyota and buying a Mini Van. We wanted something we could travel in that got better gas mileage and was comfortable for our family. We hope as we get closer to going Full Time we will begin to travel and speak in churches around the state to raise support and share what God is doing through Samaria Mission. Since we will be moving soon we didn't want to create debt, especially in a car. We began to ask God to show us a van we could buy that would be in our budget. We knew if we sold 2 of our 3 cars that we would be able to pay it off.

Well, we looked for about 5 weeks or so and on May 9th we saw a van we hadn't seen before. We stopped to look at it and the salesman said it was a 2004 Dodge Grand Caravan. We new it was going to be more than we wanted to spend. He then told us that he just came out of his morning meeting and this van just happened to be "on sale." Of course I didn't really figure it was much of a sale and was preparing to head back to our car. He told Mark that it was $13,999 the day before and the sale price was $9,999. We took it for the morning and had our mechanic look it over and decided to buy it. It was right at the price we were wanting to spend and it was newer than anything else we had seen for that price. It only had 65000 miles on it. When it was all said and done we were able to buy it for $9,400.00.

We cleaned up the Toyota and Expedition and put them up for sale. The Toyota sold last week for $100.00 less than we were asking. We were so excited. We went to the bank and made a principle only payment in cash. As of Tuesday, we hadn't had anyone call on the Expedition. I was starting to get concerned that with gas so high we might not sell it for awhile. I asked God yesterday to just send someone to look at it. Our first payment on the van is due on the 15th and we really wanted to have it payed off before then.

Yesterday afternoon Mark received a call from a couple who was VERY interested in it. They called him 3 times before he got off work to meet them there. They didn't even test drive it. They offered Mark the cash right then and it was sold! As of 10:00 this morning we paid off the van. We give God all the glory for that!

We are busy cleaning out the house and starting to gather things for our trip. We leave in 36 days! We are only $421.00 away from being fully funded. God is so good! Thank you again for your prayers and support as we continue to follow the journey God has our family on.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Another Fundraiser

This morning we set up a "Coffee, burrito and Bake Sale" at the church. We sold breakfast burritos, muffins, cinnamon rolls and cakes as well as several different flavors of coffee. After expenses our team should make around $500.00 or so. We still have several bags of coffee available. It is sold by the pound and is $11.50 per bag. If you are interested in buying some coffee you can leave us a comment letting us know and we will get some to you.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Almost Fully Funded For The Trip This Summer!


Well, we found out this morning that we had 2 donations totaling $526.00 given towards our mission trip this summer. We are only $521.00 away from the original cost of the trip. We are so thankful for everyone who has prayed for our family as well as given financially toward our journey.


It reminds us of Romans 10: 13 - 15, "For, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”


Thank you for sending us!

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Garage Sale

Well, we had our garage sale yesterday. We made $355.40. Praise God! We have had several sales over the last 12 years at our house and they typically don't do very good. So we were excited to have made that much. We have a lot of stuff left and hopefully we will have a garage sale with the Hixons soon and raise even more money for our journey.

On a sidenote, we sold our Toyota this weekend for $2,200.00. Praise God. Now we just need our Ford Expedition to sell.

We were given some money this past week to use for supplies etc. for our trip this summer. We bought our new air matress last night for our "home sweet home" in the bush. These things are so heavy, it weighs 17 lbs. May not sound like a lot to you but when we are limited to 2 suitcases each that cannot weigh more than 50 lbs a piece, that's a lot. We usually have a bunch of ministry supplies to pack as well that we will use in our children's and women's ministries. So that 50 lb limit is not hard to meet. We are waiting to see if we are going to be affected with the new luggage rule ... paying for your checked bags. We will see. Only 47 days to go.