I was supposed to be blogging every day this month. At least, that was the goal. But, life has take over in an overwhelming way over these last few weeks and writing has been low on the priority scale. And since I promised myself a long time ago that this place would be a no pressure kind of place for me to share and reflect, I’m ok with that.
I find myself, at the moment, with a few spare minutes and I wanted to share a bit on the crazy that has been my life over the last few weeks. Most of it revolving around our house and the sell of it – and ALL of it related on to our journey to the Philippines. So, grab a cup of coffee and sit back for a moment while I update you on all the happenings around here…
First, I’ve mentioned before that my husband has been a Jr. High School teacher now for you all now for 11 years. In May he put in his resignation so that he could concentrate on full time support raising so that we can get to the mission field in the Philippines. This was incredibly hard on many levels. He truly loved his job there and it was hard to leave all the kids. But even more so it was a hard step of faith knowing that after August 27th, he will no longer be drawing any kind of salary from there and we will become totally dependent upon all of our faithful monthly financial supporters through Wycliffe! This is a hard pill to swallow considering we are so far away from our goal and the income we have coming in from Wycliffe, at least at this point, does not even match yet what he was making at his teaching job. So we are truly relying on the Lord to pull us through!
For other family news, as most of you know, we found out this Spring that we are expecting our 8th baby (7th here on earth). While very excited, after losing baby girl last September, it has been hard to relax and enjoy this pregnancy. Not only that but I’ve had and extremely hard first few months with severe morning sickness. However, praise God, I am now finally feeling better and I am just over 20 weeks now. Last week on Wednesday, we heard and saw our baby for the first time – and found out we are having a boy who at this time seems happy and healthy! We feel very blessed!! It looks like he is due around the end of November/first of December.
Thirdly, our house. We’ve had our house on the market since March and had an offer right out the gate. That same offer is now turned into a contract and we are expected to close around August 15th (although we are still waiting on the bank for final approval!) We had a few weeks of looking around trying to find a place to stay, only to be disappointed and heart broken because we couldn’t find anything to rent in our budget OR that would be willing to accommodate our large family. We prayed about it and then found out just a few days ago that the Wycliffe/SIL training center in Duncanville, has properties that they own that they rent out to Wycliffe and SIL members either that work on campus, on furlough or are in support raising mode. They just happen to have a 4 bed 3 bath duplex available at the end of this month in a little neighborhood of about 3 or 4 streets that they are renting to us on a month to month basis (so there will be no lease to break) and fits perfectly into our budget. I can’t tell you what an answer to prayer this is. When we were looking at rentals that we could fit our family in (legal we had to have a 4 bedroom since we are renting even though we currently live in a 3), we couldn’t find anything in our budget that would allow us to be good stewards of our money. So this was a HUGE blessing!!! AND, to top it off it is FULLY furnished. So this means we can go ahead and sell everything that we don’t need for the Philippines which will help not only make the move easier but the transition to the Philippines that much smoother. Turns out if we’d had sold our home back when we thought we would at the beginning of the summer, this place wouldn’t have been available! It is amazing to see how God has worked through all of this!!!!
So, the biggest question everyone has been asking us is where we on support and when are we leaving for the Philippines??? Unfortunately, this is where things have slowed down a bit. Our goal, originally was to be over in the Philippines in start for the 2012 school year. However, the funds have not come in to get us over there by this goal date. So now we are just REALLY hoping to get over there as soon as possible. We are at just over 30% for our monthly support and almost 54% for our start-up costs. Our monthly support is where we are greatly hurting. We are so far from our goal. This is where we need the BIGGEST prayer support.
The other kicker with all of this is that because I am pregnant, in order for us to get over there this year, we need to have 100% of our support raised by end of September first of October, as it is not advisable that I travel in the last month of my pregnancy (it’s a LONG flight over there!) and many airlines won’t even allow it. So, if support does not come in by that time, we would not be able to go until after the baby arrives and then we’d need to wait at least 6 weeks to travel with the baby for health reasons, and to allow time for birth certificate and passport for baby.
So that is pretty much our life in a nutshell. Pretty much in that “total dependence on God stage”, and that “if God doesn’t come through we’ll be in trouble” stage. It’s kind of a scary place to be, put also, in a strange way a peaceful and comforting place to be.
Want to join in our crazy? We’ve emailed all of our prayer warriors to take some time and join us in a day of prayer – today, Tuesday, June 17th -specifically praying for our monthly financials support need. We’d like to ask that everyone pick a time – any time and you don’t have to tell us when – during the day and stop for five minutes and have a dedicated prayer time for us. Pray that the Lord would provide mightily, new people to partner with us financially on a monthly basis.
We know that God is faithful to listen to the prayers of HIS people. And this is what we are asking.
We know that we know that the Lord has called us to serve Him in the Philippines, He has already opened up SO many doors for us and paved the way. And we know all of this is going to happen in HIS timing, but we also know HE wants us to reach out to HIM and call on HIS name to open up the doors and touch hearts to move to support us.
Interested in partnering with us or finding out more? Click here: The Hall Tribe
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Your blog today was so encouraging. My family has been in flux for a while now. It has been such a blessing in disguise for me because I have grown so much through this experience and have come to know my Maker so much more intimately than I ever would have if He hadn’t ordained that we go through this time. I hope that through this experience that you are going through now that you will be able to come to know the God, who even now is knitting together the new little one inside you, in a more intimate relationship than you could have ever imagined. What an exciting time for you and your family!