Tag: moving

A quick update

Hello friends, family, and partners!  Thanks for stopping by our blog.  We don’t have a lot of new information to report today but I wanted to give everyone a quick update on where we are right now with fundraising and timing.

First, we are very close to being done with our monthly pledges!  We only have about $700 left to raise to meet the minimum monthly income requirement for visa approval.  This is a huge praise for us!  I know a few of you have received partnership letters in the last couple of weeks and are still praying over those.  We understand how tight monthly budgets are, but we are so appreciative of your prayerful consideration of our partnership request.  We know that it will only take about twenty more people to partner with us to close this gap, so we’re praying and trusting the Lord for y’all.

For those of you who have not yet received a hot pink partnership letter from us please consider this our official request to you!  We want you on our team and we would love to talk with you about the work we are planning to do in northern Scotland and how YOU can be a part of making that happen.  Don’t be shy – just send me an email, text message, or give me a call and I will be happy to get you whatever information you need to help you make that decision and get you set up on our secure online giving page.  Every single dollar helps us get to Scotland. 

If you’re one of those people who have already said “yes” to monthly partnership and you have not yet signed up on our online giving page, please, please, please do that as soon as possible.  The online giving platform is our way of verifying our monthly income to our UK sponsors.  They have to see that we have our minimum monthly income covered by pledges and/or monthly gifts before they will agree to sponsor us.  Without a sponsor we cannot apply for visas.  If you have said “yes” to monthly partnership but aren’t able to begin your giving today, please set up your online giving profile and designate a future giving date so we, and our sponsors, can see that you are in fact a part of our monthly support team even if your gifts won’t begin until later in May, June, or even July.  The website address to do this is: www.risegroup.us

We still have not settled on an exact travel date yet, but we have committed to the Buckie church to be back in Scotland by the middle of July, baring any unforeseen difficulties or delays with the visa process.  Currently we are awaiting the return of our FBI background checks and the wheels of Government move like sap in February.  We are anticipating these documents to return around the middle of June, although our prayer is they return much sooner.  As soon as we have those documents in hand we will begin the visa application process, which takes about 3 – 4 weeks for approval.  I’ve been watching airfare prices like a cat on a mouse and the sooner we can travel the better it will be for us financially.  July is the absolute most expensive month to fly to the United Kingdom.  We know God is in control of it all and He knows what we need and what we can afford.

In other news, we have been super busy around the farm getting things cleaned up and cleaned out.  We have been sorting through books, journals, study materials, and personal memorabilia, deciding what to pack, what to ship, what to store.  We do not intend to ship many things to Scotland as the shipping costs are outrageously high, but there are just some things that we cannot get in our suitcases and we don’t feel we can live without.  It’s much harder than I thought it would be to sort though all the trappings of life and decide what’s genuinely worth keeping, and what’s just stuff.  In all of the goodbyes the Lord is continuing to grow me and teach me about trust, faith, and what really matters.

I was blessed to have my parents, Mike & Connie, come up for about two weeks at the end of April and they got so much accomplished around the farm in the way of spring cleaning.  Mom spent hours and hours in the garden, weeding beds, cleaning out containers, and getting old grass and weeds off the fenceline.  Dad mowed all the pastures, repaired damage the pigs had done to the pastures, and ran the weed-eater all around the yard and house.  We also managed to get a fence taken down and a ton of miscellaneous farm debris that had piled up in the last year taken to the dump.  There’s still more work to do (it’s a farm, the work is never really done!) but it looks so much better already.

As our time begins to run down we are looking to plan a trip to the Omaha area in June to visit our friends and partners at East Side Christian Church in Council Bluffs, and Sam’s children in Lincoln.  We’ll also be in North Carolina for a few days later this month visiting some dear friends and partners there.  We hope to get back to Florida one more time for a visit with all our family before we hop on the plane and fly away as well.  The list of goodbyes we want to say is rapidly growing, but that is another powerful reminder to us that we have been incredibly blessed with amazing friends, family, and a network of supporters that we are going to miss like crazy.  July will be here before we know it!  The next ten weeks or so are going to be super busy!

Thank you to each of you for your prayer support, your words of encouragement, and your financial partnership with us.  We love you!

 

 

Closing a Chapter…

Sam and I both enjoy reading.  Sam tends to be the kind of reader who is able to read multiple books on various subjects, and usually has several books going at one time.  He can read a few pages in each of his books every day and keep up with the content.

I, on the other hand, prefer to read voraciously in spurts.  I favor espionage and crime novels mostly and will cabbage onto an author I love and read everything they’ve written before moving on to the next author.  I especially love it when an author writes a series of books based around a main character or story line, like Brad Thor’s Scott Harveth, or Tim Downs Bug Man, or Patricia Cornwell’s Dr. Kay Scarpetta.  Currently I’m reading a British author, Peter Robinson, who writes the DCI Banks series.

Regardless of which character I’m reading about I always find myself a little bit sad when I finish a series because I feel like I’ve really gotten to know and love these characters, and I hate to see their stories come to an end, even though I’m about to discover a new story line and set of characters that I’m going to love just as much.

Right now, our life is a bit like the ending of a great series of stories.  One beloved chapter is coming to an immediate end, while another, equally exciting one is about to begin.  Our time in Georgia is drawing to a close, and in approximately 10 weeks we’ll be loading what’s left of our worldly possessions into a couple of suitcases and boarding a plane for Scotland where we’ll begin the next amazing chapter in our story.  Our emotions are all over the board, and most days we would sum them up to one word: bitter-sweet.

We are super excited about how God is working in our lives right now, both personally and through our partners.  We have re-discovered just what a big God we serve as we’ve seen him remove barriers, obstacles, and distractions in ways we thought weren’t possible.  We have been blessed daily by unexpected words of encouragement, the faithfulness of our partners, and watching people enthusiastically embrace us and this ministry.  We have felt new life breathed into old and tired bones as discouragement is replaced by vision, purpose, and determination.  And we have been able to rest in the peace of knowing that we’re walking right in the center of the Lord’s will for our life as the pieces begin to fall into place for our move.  Just in case you didn’t already know, we serve an awesome God, y’all!

One of the biggest changes that has happened for us in the past couple of weeks has to do with our farm.  Many of you know we purchased a little farm about four years ago.  At the time, we felt it was our dream property, and an avenue for us to stay in Georgia permanently and live a more self-sufficient lifestyle.  For the past two years as we’ve prayed over and wrestled with this opportunity to return to Scotland we had not felt comfortable with selling our little piece of heaven.  It’s paid for, and it seemed like a good security net should we have to return to the States for whatever reason.  Sam and I have talked at length about renting it out, using it as a short-term home for families in transition, leaving it empty, moving Sam’s children from Nebraska or my parents from Florida into it, and a variety of other options that cropped up.  As we explored the possibilities both Sam and I felt uncomfortable and burdened by each option.  In the last month or so our prayers have seemed to morph from, “Lord, please open the door for us to keep our farm by…” to “Lord, please give us peace about our future, whatever that might be.”

Oh how I love the way our gracious God works when we truly surrender our will to His!!

A few weeks back we were meeting with a friend from church about partnering with us financially.  At the end of the meeting he asked us what we had decided to do with our farm.  We told him we just weren’t sure, and shared some of the options we’d been tossing around.  He listened intently and when we’d finished running through the list of possibilities he just asked us if we’d pray about selling it to him.  WHAT?!?!  In that moment we were totally blown away because he was one of the options we’d thrown around in the early days and then dismissed because we didn’t think he would be interested.

Friends, I would be remiss if I didn’t share with you that one of the most important lessons I’m learning right now about true surrender and trust is to not say “no” for people when God has been preparing them to say “yes”.

As this part of our story begins to come to a close, we admit to having mixed feelings.  We are sad and dreading the emotional roller-coaster of saying farewell to friends, family, our church, and things we have grown to love and cherish; but we are also anxious and excited to move into the next part of our story where we will write a whole new chapter full of new friends, family, and memories.

Thank you friends for being a part of this journey!