Thanks so much! We would not have made it this far without your prayers and gifts. We are so new to this fundraising thing, we are used to working for our income. It is very humbling, but it is a blessing to us, to see people getting excited with us, wanting to give and to know they are praying too! What a wonderful example you are for our children. These gifts are witnessing to them of how God is working through others to help us in a tangible way. We are also really blessed right now to be staying with Lora's parents in Kansas City, Missouri. Here we have the ability to go to daily mass and enjoy time praying and preparing for this new life God is calling us too. The children are missing their friends, family, and life in Oregon. At the same time they are excited about the adventure awaiting them. Our daily activities are teaching them and we know the Lord will be able to use this phase to prepare their hearts as well as ours to be missionaries. We are working on a thank you letter and a sort of update/newsletter kind of thing to mail out. If anyone has ideas or wants to help send us a note. We will also keep your prayer requests in our prayers.
We have made some really neat connections so far, one was put on facebook (http://www.facebook.com/markandlora?ref=name) the other day about the midwife that we found. She has a heart to work with missionaries and is very reasonable in her pricing for us. Thanks be to God. So it looks like we may stay here in KC to have this baby. Lora's mom and dad should be very happy. Another connection that has come about is with another large home schooling family at Nativity Parish who are using a Classical program for homeschooling called:http://www.classicalliberalarts.com/. She suggested Lora talk with the founders and inquire about a discount. Lora told them our missionary plans and they are really working with us and very supportive. If you visit their website you will see that they are also missionaries. Also we are going to meet with another family who uses that curiculum tomorrow and have tea and crumpits and guess what, they have been missionaries as well.
Well back to fundraising... which should really be called, fundraising and prayer requests, its uncomfortable but we do have needs. First to keep us and support us in your daily prayers, unless the Lord builds the house the laborers labor in vain. It is easy to dream about tomorrow when God asks us to say yes today. Pray that we would not get caught up in the what ifs and do what is necessary today.
Secondly, we need to start and have started raising and saving for the training costs. We are unsure about how much it will be for a family our size, but we have till September. At the same time the Lord seems to be starting to build a group of monthly supporters. Our van is having issues again, which with Lora's parents allowing us to use their vehicle, takes the pressure off that one and since we are praying about how long to stay in KC this helps to answer that question, atleast until it gets fixed. We also have homeschooling costs, (which I mentioned above as very reasonable for teaching 6 kids), expenses to do this fundraising thing (paper, stamps, envelopes) and daily living expenses. We are able to live very cheaply right now but we still need to sell or rent out our house in Oregon.
All in God's timing!
Again Thanks so much to all who are holding us up in prayer and supporting us financially!
Mark and Lora
No comments:
Post a Comment