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!

Another Prayer Request

Saturday, October 11, 2008

We are currently working on trying to change our flights to Seattle. The entire team is meeting in Seattle on the 5th of November and we will all be flying together from there. Jeff and I had booked flights to leave from here on the first flight of the morning on the 5th to get to Seattle in time to meet up with the team. The airline has changed their schedule though and we now have a half hour less time from the time we arrive in Seattle until we would have to meet the team. So..knowing the issues that airlines have being prompt, we feel that it is getting too close for comfort! We are trying to change our tickets now to leave so we get to Seattle on the evening of the 4th to make sure that we arrive there in time. We had booked tickets using airmiles so we called them tonight to try to jump through the hoops and get the tickets changed to leaving on the 4th. I think that it would have worked except.....the airline's computer system was down. Please pray that we would be able to work out the ticket situation. We're not stressing about it but would like to just get it taken care of.

Visas

We were thrown a bit of a curve ball this morning. After filling out all of our visa forms and getting them to the LB World Missions office almost two weeks ago, this morning we got an email from our team leaders letting us know that Cameroon has changed their visa forms and we would have to fill out new forms and mail them out to the travel document services company ASAP. This time they will not go via the World Missions office which means nobody with experience in these things will be double checking them for us. So, let's hope that we filled everything out accurately and correctly! Time is getting short so please pray that the visa process would go smoothly now and we would receive them with no more issues and no more delays. Thank you!

Less than 4 weeks

Thursday, October 9, 2008

We are now at less than four weeks before we leave for Cameroon. There is much to do in this time as we are praying and preparing for this trip. We are still working on the French and now I am trying to figure out what to pack and starting to put things aside for packing. I have had a recurring dream (nightmare) ever since our trip in '96 that I am going on another trip to Africa and I am not packed, don't have my passport, etc. and have to be at the airport within minutes. I do not anticipate real life to be like that...I certainly hope not anyway! Maybe I will get so organized this time that I will stop having this dream periodically.

Je ne parle pas bien francais!!!!!!!

Monday, September 29, 2008

Aaaaack! Maybe I should be saying, "Au Secours!!!!!!!", which if I remember correctly from my childhood days watching Canadian Sesame Street means "Help!!!!!!".

Please pray for us as we are trying to study and brush up on our high school French to get ready for our trip. We really want to be able to communicate on our own at least a little while we are over there. Please pray that our minds would retain what we are learning and that our tongues would be able to get the different pronunciations. French is such a beautiful language but it is a challenge for us as we are trying to learn it better. I guess I should write a disclaimer too that this is Kirsten typing. Maybe Jeff is feeling more confident in his French speaking skills....I hope so! I was just studying it now and feeling a bit frustrated so I thought I would take a quick break to ask you all to pray for this aspect of our preparations.

Also, all of our paperwork for our visas is now out of our hands and at the World Missions office for them to prepare to send them all in for the team. Please continue to pray that the process goes smoothly. It feels good to have our part of this step completed.

By the way, the title tells you that I do not speak French well (I think)! That is what I meant it to say anyway. :o)

Thank You!

Monday, September 22, 2008

We are so blessed. We just want to thank everyone who was involved in any way in the potluck and concert last night. It was such a special night and we were thrilled to have a great turnout. We owe a big thanks especially to Triumph's Mission Society and to Homespun! It is just so neat to see how God provides!

We also have a prayer request. We will be applying for visas for Chad and Cameroon in the next little while. We should get them with no problem but would appreciate your prayers that this process would go smoothly!

Again.......THANK YOU!

You Are Invited!

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Triumph's Mission Society is having a potluck/concert fundraiser for us this Sunday night. The potluck starts at 6 p.m and the concert at 7 p.m. Homespun Gospel is putting on the concert. Jeff's dad plays bass in the group and this will be their final concert, their farewell. We so appreciate the help that the Mission Society and Triumph have given us in organizing this as we are raising support for our trip and for Homespun for putting on the concert.

We are going back to Africa!

Saturday, September 13, 2008

As we are preparing to go to Africa, I was looking through some of our old pictures from our last trip in '96. Did these ever bring back some memories! I can hardy believe that we are going back again!

We are getting so excited as we approach our departure date. We will be leaving on Nov. 5th at about 5a.m. We have been busy getting shots, preparing paperwork, thinking about packing, trying to brush up on our French (oui, oui!) and most importantly praying about the trip and what God has in store for us there and for our children as they will stay here at home with my mom (what an answer to prayer she is!). We are still trying to raise support. If you would like to help out with that, you can click the link to our Cameroon '08 site and follow the link there. We are trusting that God will provide for our financial needs as well as all of our others. Our Mission Society has planned a fundraiser potluck and concert for Sunday, Sept 21. Homespun Gospel will be performing and I understand this will be their "Farewell" concert. Jeff's dad plays bass for them. We are so blessed to have this event coming up and we are very much looking forward to it. I will post more on that later.

Right now we don't have many detail about our itinerary. We will fly from here to Seattle and meet up with the rest of the team. From there we will fly to Paris and then on to Africa! We plan to fly into N'Djamena, Chad where we will get a chance to visit the Welcome Center and visit the missionaries there. The we will take a bus down to Garoua where we will begin work with the church there. As we get more details we will post them. We would appreciate your prayers as we continue to prepare.