We are home!

Saturday, November 22, 2008

It is good to be back. We had an incredible trip and are still processing it. I will try to post some pictures and write a bit but not yet. We are enjoying being back together with our precious children and trying to adjust to being back in this time zone, climate and routine. God is awesome and it was amazing to be part of His work in Cameroon. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you who were praying for us and our team as we went on this trip!

We are now planning another trip to Africa! In a little over a month, we will turn around and go again. This time the kids will also come along. We are privileged to be able to go back out and put on a kids program for the LB Missionary Kids from Chad while the missionaries have their annual spiritual retreat. We are so excited that Olson and Kaelen will be able to come along with us this time and to be able to share this life-changing experience with them. We will be leaving Christmas Day and will be gone for a few weeks. They are thrilled to be able to go, they think it is more exciting than Disney World. Kaelen is already packed and has been for almost a month now! We are amazed at these two opportunities that God has given us!

We are on our way!

Thursday, November 6, 2008

We are in Paris and will be leaving for Chad soon. Please continue to pray for safe travel! It has gone well so far. Not much sleep but that is okay. Please use our prayer calendar and pray for our trip. I included the link to it in a previous post. Thanks!

We are ready.....

Monday, November 3, 2008

almost! After a full evening of packing we have things mostly ready. I have a few more last minute items to pack tomorrow but not many. We have managed to pack everything that we wanted to and our bags are still under the weight limit. Praise the Lord! Three of our four bags are already zipped shut even, just one more left to finish! We fly out to Seattle tomorrow, spend the night and then met our team and fly out from the States on Wednesday.
The kids were sad tonight about leaving and both cried but we know that we are all safe in God's hands. Please pray for the loneliness issues that our family will deal with being apart. Kaelen wrote us the sweetest note on Sunday and gave it to us tonight. On the outside she drew some hearts and wrote, "God is with you" On the inside it said, "Dear Mom and Dad, I hope you have a great time in Africa. I will be lonely but I know that God is always with me. I love you! from Kaelen" What precious children God has blessed us with. It will be hard for this Mommy to be away from her kids but am thankful for what God is already teaching me about TRUST!
We covet your prayers. Please continue to lift us up! There is a link to our prayer calendar a few posts back with specific requests for the days and a bit of an itinerary. Thank you all!

Praise

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Just received our envelope from FedEx. They were kind enough to redeliver it after they came this morning and I was at Bible Study. They needed a signature so they couldn't just leave it for us. Anyway...our visas are correct so we are clear to get into both Chad and Cameroon. We are so thankful we don't have to scramble now to overnight them back to D.C. to correct the problem! Thank you God! We have passports, visas and tickets ready to go now!

More Visa Issues...With Less Than Two Weeks Until Departure!

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Just as we were about to walk out the door for church tonight we got a call from the travel document company that has been getting our paperwork taken care of.....knew that couldn't be a great sign. It turns out that there was a mistake made on about 50% of our group's visas in which the "powers that be" at the embassy gave out 1 month, 1 point of entry visas instead of the 3 month, multiple entry visas that we need because we will be flying into Chad, driving to Cameroon and then driving back into Chad to fly back out from there. Just another little bump in the road. Our passports with visas had already been sent out to us before the mistake was discovered so we don't know for sure if ours have it or not. They should arrive tomorrow at which point we need to check and see if they are correct and if not, we need to overnight them back to D.C. to get fixed. We are praying that they will be fine! Nothing like a little more excitement in the process!

On another note, we were privileged to be able to share about our trip with confirmation and high school kids at church tonight. It was an incredible blessing to have a room full of 7th graders lay hands on us and pray for us and for this trip!

Trip Prayer Calendar

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

We just wanted to let you know that there is a prayer calendar out with a general itinerary of our trip and also prayer requests for every day. We sure would appreciate you praying for us! You can click on the link and it should take you right to it.

www.lbwm.org/downloads/Cameroon2008_prayer_calendar.pdf

Flights are booked.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

After the first call Jeff made last night when the computers were down, they told him they would be back up in 90 minutes. So he called back at about 11:30 and they were still down so they told him to call back in an hour at 12:30. At 12:30 he called back and the air miles award service lines had closed at 12:00. So, this morning he called back and finally managed to get our flights changed. last night they had told us that there would be no charge for the change because it was due to the schedule change that they had made. So the flights were re-booked and our confirmation email was sent out. I checked the email and it included extra charges that were not supposed to be there. Jeff got back on the phone and was trying to take care of it before we left for church this morning. Nobody seemed to even know what the charges were for but they finally figured it out and took the charges off just a few minutes before we had to leave for church. I think everything seems to be correct now. Whew, that was a lot of work for a change on just one leg of our journey!