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7 Days . . .

. . . til we leave!  I'm amazed how fast this past year has flown by.  The trip is now completely upon us.  My kids are leaving in just 5 days, and we are leaving in 7.  It is so very exciting, but at the same time I am feeling nervous and inadequate. 

In truth I really am inadequate, and that is just the way God wants it.  Because the more inadequate I am, the better God can shine.  Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians that he could boast in his weakness, because God was made perfect in his weakness.  Paul was nothing, God was everything.  I want to be just like that.  I want to boast in my inadequacies and allow God to use all of me on this trip.  Less of me, more of Him.  7 days . . .

Bracelets are DONE!!

This past week I was able to get all the bracelet packets done with the help of my children and some neighborhood children.  We have put together 400 of them.   These are "salvation bracelets".  The black bead represents the sin in each of our lives.  The red bead represents the blood Jesus shed on the cross when he died for our sins.  The white bead represents how Jesus has washed us white as snow and forgiven our sins.  The green bead represents how we grow as Christians.  We start to show fruits of the spirit like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, and self-control.  The yellow bead represents the streets of gold that are found in heaven.

Taylor was such a huge help, and happy to do so!

Me working with Taylor. :)

These are what the packets look like.  We have 400 of them!

Ethan helping.  He didn't last very long though before he got bored.

Preparations continue . . .

I was looking at the calendar a couple days ago and realized just how soon we will be in South Africa.  I must admit that I am starting to feel just a teeny bit of panic creep into my mind.  I am so afraid that I will forget to get something that needs to be done, done before we leave.  I'm sure that most of you think that surely there isn't that much that needs to be done, or remembered, but you see I have the lovely job of also packing up 3 children and shipping them off to grandparents, a house-sitter coming to watch the house/garden/dog, besides getting myself and my husband ready for a mission trip.  So we have to get a will written, medical permission slips made and signed, passports to pull out, luggage to be dug out and counted (to make sure we have enough for everyone, so that is 4 large suitcases, 5 carry-ons, 5 backpacks . . .), 300 + bracelet making kits made, a dog to get groomed, make a dog/garden care sheet, Malaria pills bought, medicines and sunscreen bought and packed, VBS planned (the whole team is working on this), new songs learned, and we have to find enough things to do to keep everyone happy on their plane rides.

 I'm sure there is more that has to be done, but I am having a tough time collecting my thoughts at the moment. lol.  I am confident that everything will get done with God's help, but I'm afraid if it were just up to me, it would be a complete mess.  It is times like this that I am reminded how very small I am, and how very big He is!

In my last post I had written about how we had a mission team meeting coming up on June 28th with our missionary.  I had hoped to get some pictures also from our BBQ we had the Saturday before that meeting.  Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures.  For some reason my brain has just been overloaded lately and I keep forgetting to take pictures to document what is going on.  I am hoping that soon I will clear this fog of a brain and start thinking more clearly.  We did have a wonderful time at the BBQ with everyone and their families.  It was a great way to get to know the whole group better.  The meeting with Dan (our missionary) was terrific.  He really helped us understand the culture a little better and see more clearly what it will be like.  My heart breaks for these children that we are going to minister to.  Such a hard life they have.  I pray that we can help be Jesus' hands and show these kids his love for them.

Please continue to pray for us as we prepare our VBS materials, crafts, and songs.  It has been a struggle to de-americanize material so that it is appropriate and relates to these children.

16 days away . . .

One month away . . .

The countdown continues and now we are one month away from our trip!  We are so very excited but have been swamped lately with one family issue after another.  Seems the devil is on the attack!  However this only makes us more sure that we are in God's will.

The remainder of our monies is due this Saturday and it looks like thanks to all your generous donations, and a lot of hard work fundraising, we will be able to meet the requirements.  Thank you all for your support- it means so much!!

In the next couple weeks the kids and I are going to start putting together kits for the children that we will have at our vacation bible school in South Africa.  The kits will be for a craft project of making a salvation bracelet.

I purchased the leather cording several months ago and the plastic colored beads, so now all we need to do is cut the cording into appropriate lengths and put a piece of cord and one bead of each color into a snack sized ziplock bag.  One for each child.  I think we have enough to do almost 500.

However I do not have any snack sized ziplock bags!  

If you have a package laying around in your house that you don't need, or you want to pick up a box or two and donate it to our trip, I would so greatly appreciate it!!   Just shoot me an email and let me know that you have some or are going to get some.  (jeewbee@me.com)  I need to have them by the July 4th weekend so that we can get these packaged up in time for our trip.  That would be such a great help if several of you can help us out that way!!  Also if anyone would like to come over and join us in putting these together, let me know and we will make a party of it! :)

This coming Saturday we are looking forward to having the entire mission team and their families over to our house for a BBQ.  It will be a great time to get to know everyone better in a relaxed environment! I'll be sure to get pictures and post them on here afterwards.

Thank you all for your continuing prayers for our family as we prepare for this adventure.  We are incredibly thankful that Ethan's bellybutton problems seem to be getting better this week.   Also that God was able to get us in to see a pediatric surgeon finally last week who had good advice, and Ethan will not have to have any more surgery.  We were getting quite worried that his problems would interfere with our trip.   It appears this will not be the case anymore.   God is good.

Getting closer!!

It's hard to believe that tomorrow is June 1st!  Wow!  That means we are leaving in just a month and a half.  Excitement is building, and we have been busy preparing.  Our fundraising is gearing down, and we are about to step into preparations for our trip.  

On Easter weekend our church put on our annual "Eggstravaganza".  Our mission team mainly helped out in the food tent, with assembly lines of hot dogs, and passing out food and water.  It was a very long day, made more difficult by the mess of mud from all the rain that we had gotten that week, but it was still such a fun time.   I personally worked the entire time on putting hot dogs in buns and then wrapping them in foil wraps.  John was in charge of the security and parking personnel for the event.  Our kids were troopers and were there the whole day with us.  The girls helped in the egg hunt area, and Ethan, who was supposed to be with the girls, ran around playing the whole day.  The highlight of the day would have to be after it was all finished when we had to clean up all the smashed plastic eggs that had gotten embedded into the muck in the muddy field.  What a mess!!

This is Greg Nave.  He is one of our mission team leaders.  His wife Krisie, and son, Jake, are going on the trip with us also.  They set up this little booth in the food tent to tell people about our trip. 

This is Mikki, who is also part of our team.  The camel was part of the petting zoo that was at the Eggstravaganza.

Here is Krisie Nave and her daughter.  Krisie is married to Greg, and they are both leading our team.

Look at all those eggs!!  And people!!  They had to spread straw on the ground because it was so muddy.  By the end of the day the straw was floating in the water on the field.  Yuck!

This is Nick.  Nick is part of our team going to South Africa.  His wife just gave birth to their firstborn, a girl.  Nick loved the hair nets we had to wear. lol!

Hot dogs!  It was kind of chilly that day (thus the excessive steam)

A happy customer!

It was disappointing that we didn't have a good response to our "Crop for Africa" scrapbooking fundraising event that was planned for May.  We ended up having to cancel this event.  The church had purchased 100 scrapbooking totes to sell at this event, so now we are doing our best to sell these totes.   We are selling them for $15 each.  Let me know if you would like to purchase one.  :)

This month, John and I made the difficult decision to purchase tickets to fly our three children to California on July 19th, by themselves.  They will be met at the airport by John's parents, and they will stay with them in California while we are in South Africa.  It's was a little frightening to make this decision, but God is giving me more peace about this as the days go on.  So the kids will fly out 2 days before we leave and then return 2 days after we return.  They will have a wonderful time with their grandparents and with their uncle, aunt, and four cousins.

Two weekends ago was our annual subdivision sale (garage sale).  It is always so much fun, and this year was no exception.  I was in charge of it for the second year in a row.  Which means I got to do all the promoting, advertising, and signs.   Here is one of my signs-

I had 7 signs up with balloons, plus two large sandwich board signs with balloons at the entrances to our subdivision.

We tried to sell some of our scrapbooking totes at the garage sale, but didn't end up selling any.

We put up a couple tables at our garage sale for all the purses that our church donated a few months ago.  We did sell quite a few of these used purses!  We also had some people just give us cash donations which was really wonderful!  

I think we ended up raising about $1,000 at our sale for our trip.  Isn't that great?!!

I promise I won't wait so long to update you in the future!!  I will try to get everything updated on here this week.  I know our fundraising totals are not up to date yet.  :)

Plane Tickets . . .

This past Sunday our group had a major deadline.  We had to have the money paid into our church for the purchase of our plane tickets.  Thankfully because of all your generosity and all the different fundraising events we have done, John and I only had to pay another $940 into our account.

So it is officially official that we are going on this mission trip!!  Not only that, but everyone from our group is also going, as everyone was able to make the deadline and had their money in!!  Praise God!!  Thank you so much to everyone who has sent in donations to help us get to South Africa!!  :)

The tickets will be purchased in the next couple weeks and then we will have our set dates of travel.  I can't wait!!