Addition to the Team

I had a plan for what I was going to blog, but things changed...

We went to dinner with some friends and when we got home I had an email in my inbox that had some exciting news.  Another church has joined the team sending us to Honduras!  New Valley Church has approved supporting us.  Amen!  Thank you God and thank you New Valley Church!

This is the second church that has pledged to support us monthly (our home church was the first).  In the last few months especially, we have been calling/sending information/emailing/visiting lots of other churches.  It is awesome to see God use the work we have put in and surprise us with this support.

I was going to write about school supplies in Honduras, but just had to share this good news!  I may just have to blog 2 days in a row.

I will love them freely

I will love them freely.  -Hosea 14:4

"This sentence is a body of divinity in miniature. He who understands its meaning is a theologian, and he who can dive into its fullness is a true master in Israel. It is a condensation of the glorious message of salvation which was delivered to us in Christ Jesus, our Redeemer."  -C. H. Spurgeon

I was greeted with this message this morning.  It was a great way to start my day.

God loves freely!

Housing Need

We are moving closer to selling our house!  The bank has approved the sale and we had an inspection and an appraisal.  We should know in the next few days when our closing date will be.  It looks like it will be sometime between October 26 and November 5.  A lot of it depends on how fast some paperwork can be done.

We are so thankful that this sale is finally going to happen.  It has been quite a long time since we first put the house up for sale and also from when we got the offer.

This does however present a challenge for us.  We do not have a place to live from when we close on this house until we leave for language school in January.  We are asking the Lord to provide for us a place to live here in Phoenix.  If anyone reading this has a place where we could stay or knows someone who may be able to help, please let us know.

Praise the Lord!

The sale of our house has been approved (verbally)!  We have been waiting to hear from the bank for about 4 months, when we initially got the offer.  We should have documents by the end of the week and will soon have a closing date!  

It looks like we will be closing sometime around Nov. 15th.  This is a huge answer to prayer and a big step in our moving to Honduras!  

Thank you for your prayers regarding this matter.  We appreciate it so much!  

Wheeler Peak - Great Basin National Park.

Google Reader

We are closing in on a year since we fist got accepted by Mission to the World to be full-time missionaries to La Ceiba, Honduras.  In that time, we have met a lot of other missionaries.  We have spent time with many of these people at some of our different training conferences and some we saw almost every day of July in NYC.

The people we met at these events have been at different stages of their journey to get to the mission field.  Some have now left for the field and some are still traveling all over to raise support just like we are doing.  Some of the families started the process long before us and some after us.  We have been able to build relationships with other missionaries and hopefully those relationships will be long lasting.

One thing I realized today is that I follow/subscribe to a lot of blogs and/or monthly updates from a bunch of different families.  This is great because I can 'keep up' with them and know what is happening in their busy lives without actually seeing or talking with them.  There is no way I could call or meet with all these people regularly (especially since lots of them are in other countries/continents/time zones), so I am glad to get an email once a week or month in order to know how to pray for them and what the Lord is doing in their lives.

There is a negative to this as well.  I subscribe to the blogs of all my teammates on my google reader and so I get to see what is happening with all of them.  That doesn't sound so negative, but part of it is.  Two of my teammates, Shannon and Bethany, are in Costa Rice in language school.  Yay for them!  It is sometime hard to read about what they are doing because I really, really, really want to be there learning Spanish so I can make the next move to La Ceiba.  It can sometimes be discouraging for me to not be there and to see that they are getting closer and closer to being in Honduras.  Don't get me wrong, I am so happy for them.  It is just that they are where I want to be.

I know the Lord is in control and that He has a plan for Ashley and me.  I know that His timing is perfect and there is a reason why we are here in Phoenix a little longer than we hoped.  I can see this clearly with regards to our house.  We have been praying, and asking for prayers, that the sale of our house go though.  The Lord has planned for it to happen when he wants it to happen and not us.  If the house would have sold when we thought was a good time, we would not have a place to live right now.  He has provided us a comfortable place for us to stay!  Praise the Lord!

I love technology and the internet and skype and blogs.  I love being able to keep in touch with so many people that are in so many places all over the world.

The sun setting over Lake Tahoe.

I took this on my road trip across the country.  It was just one of the incredibly beautiful scenes I was able to see.