Hello!

Yes, we realize that’s it’s been a while and we realized we kind of dropped off the face of the earth…but WE’RE BACK and better than ever J God has been doing some great things and teaching us some great things in our lives this summer. Too much to even put on one post, but we’ll try…lets go back!

May – While stressing about getting a job, and finals and vacation (only we can stress about vacation, right?) and all the things that needed to be done, God provided in every way. Steve got a job about 2 days before he was planning on calling the YMCA to continue working there throughout the summer. He’s working a Summer Internship at Medtronic (a company that designs and manufactures medical devices). So, basically all summer he’s been doing stuff with defibrillators and pacemakers (or at least that’s what I get out of when he tells me all day). This has given us a chance to pay back HUGE chunks of my school loans and start into his before they start gaining interest! What a huge praise.

June – June was a month of fun things – we were able to spend some time together camping, going on some road trips and amusement parks. We finally learned that we don’t need to have a week off in order to have a great summer. We took advantage of the weekends and the great weather to have some fun.

July – At the shock of seeing July 1^st come around on the calendar and us looking and seeing that our support hasn’t really moved in almost 2 months, we realized that we needed to buckle down on our support raising. There are always excuses though – in May we said we’d wait until Steve was done with school and started his job and things “calmed down”; June came and we said that we’d wait until we got into the swing of things with both working 8-4:30 jobs, but when July came around we had no more excuses – well, except that I was going to be gone for 3 out of the 4 weeks for music festivals and vacations and my mom coming into town.

*Can I just take a break and say I don’t know how people do support raising. I know that it’s a full time job in and of itself and we just can’t seem to balance it. Eventually (as you’ll find out) we learned how to do it little by little, but it just doesn’t seem to come naturally to us. I mean, I get how Moses felt when he told God that speaking wasn’t his strength and he should really pick someone else. It’s been a challenge to just pick up the phone and call someone and let them know about our ministry. We’ve realized we need to stop making excuses and just do what God has called us to do.*

Ok, back to July. Finally, the last week in July, Steve and I, sitting at a Perkins, faced the facts that we’re not going to be able to raise $5,500/month on letters alone, and started writing letters to talk to people one on one. We’re just getting started and hope that the money comes to us in such a way that only God can be glorified.

So…here we are in August. Lives are getting back to “normal” (or our new normal) – Steve’s boss has invited him to stay as long as they can afford them, which we’re hoping, will mean until we leave for France. This has been a blessing as it’s hard to find a job for just 9 months in the Engineering field.

We would love to leave as soon as possible and are still looking for partners in this – so if you’ve been praying about it, give (just click the box to the right). We’ll let you know a little more about support raising later! Keep praying for us! We appreciate it!