Can you believe it’s only 50 days until we fly to Africa?! It seems like we just yesterday we went to the Visiting Orphans leadership training. We are getting more and more excited each day! I think what I’m most looking forward to is seeing some of the same kids we saw last year. We can’t even imagine how much it means to those orphans that someone came BACK to see them, and that they were not forgotten. I’m so pumped.
I just wanted to give y’all a little update about our lives and our preparations for the trip. Many of you probably already know this, but I want to post it on here so that each of you can be praying for us…I have quit my job as a choir teacher. My resignation has been approved by the Board, and my last day is May 24th. I am so excited about what God has planned for me. But I’m also really nervous because I don’t know what that plan is yet. I know I want to do something to serve “the least of these,” particularly orphans. But I don’t know how…or where. Should I use this time to go back to school to get my Master’s in something more practical on the mission field? If so, how can we afford it? What job could I get to support going back to school? Should I move to Africa? Should I stay close to home? Where would Blake work? Where would we live? All these questions seem very overwhelming at times, and I have to remind myself that God is always in control, He loves us, and He will provide for us. Please pray for us as this is a very stressful and important time in our lives! We want to be in the center of His will, glorifying Him to the best of our abilities.
So anyways, We have officially started preparing for the trip at this point! We have a team of 14 super awesome people (most of whom were on our team last year), and we have begun having conference calls to go over trip details. I seriously just get giddy when I think about reuniting with all those crazy kids from last year! Plus I’m so excited to make new friends and experience the amazing relationships that are built in Africa on a mission trip. It’s like none other. We are also learning what it means to be team leaders, and what all that entails. So far we are really enjoying it!
I also want to give you an update on our fundraising progress. When we first decided to return to Africa this year, we were a bit worried about asking people for money a second time. Plus we just did a big fundraising push for Best Family Rwanda in December, and we were a bit worried people would be sick of hearing us ask for money. Well, thankfully right when we first decided to go, we had a couple of large donations which took care of the majority of our costs! We felt super confident that in the following months, we would get more than enough and have additional donated money to take to the kids in Rwanda. Well…it’s been a few months and so far not much has come in. We are still about $2000 short of our goal, and ALL of the money is due by June 3 (only a couple weeks away). If you would like to give, please click on the green button that says Donate on the right of the screen. It will give you all the instructions. Thanks so much for your continued support of missions! Please pray for us as we prepare for our trip: that our team would be unified and that God would be glorified!