Adventures in Africa

As many of you know, we just returned from our first overseas mission trip with our church to South Africa.  Since we've returned, many people have asked "Well, how was it?"  That's almost impossible to answer in one conversation, so we decided to create a blog... and hopefully we'll continue to update it throughout the year with other family news.

We're completely new to the blog scene so it may not be the most beautiful blog out there, but you'll get a taste of our experience in Africa.

Russell and I both knew that God wanted us to go on mission for several years, but we always found an excuse to not go.  We knew about the church's involvement in South Africa and both felt a stirring about it, but never explored the possibility of going.  Last year Pastor Trevor, a pastor from the church we're partnered up with in SA, visited our church and gave life changing message.  Actually we don't remember what the message was about, we just remember his passion and excitement about our God.  On the way home Russ and I both realized that we needed to be a part of that.

There were a few things that God had to work out though.  #1 money... the entire trip for both of us was going to be about $7000.  That was way more than we could ever afford.  #2  Leaving Lucas.... Lucas would be 15 months old and mommy would be halfway around the world.  I couldn't even talk about it without tearing up.  Finding someone we trusted to watch him and being ok with being halfway around the world was going to take a lot of work on God's part.

Amazingly, of course, God made it all happen.  We saved and scrimped as much as we could, many of you contributed through our support letters, and our Life Group at church helped fundraise as well.  God took care of the entire amount.  As far as being away from Lucas- he really helped me through that.  My trust in Him took an incredible leap, but He provided family members that we knew would do an awesome job with Lucas while we were away.  While we were gone, we didn't worry about him at all.  I know there were several of you praying about this with us, and God is good- it is amazing to me still that  He calmed my spirit and showed me how much he cared about us and our son.

So that is the quick version of how we came about to go on this mission.  We can't wait to share more about our journey.