a synopsis of this moment...

Here's what's on my (perhaps our) mind right now...

1. We are starting to look at houses/apartments in Montevideo via e-mail. This is exciting but scary at the same time. The main concern we have is safety for our very busy little boy. We also want to be able to enjoy having people over to our house/apartment.

2. We take our final tests in Spanish in just a few weeks. We are so ready to really use well all that we have learned. We ready to be done with classes and at the same time trying to drink in all the instruction that we can while we still have our wonderful teachers here to help us.

3. We are bracing for the impact of another international move on our family. We can already see our kids, as young as they are, feeling the stress of the change. Change is almost never easy. In our case it is wonderful - something we have looked forward to for so long - but it is change, and change is hard.

4. We are dreading the packing that is going to have to happen in the next few weeks. Tonight I packed for a 2 night trip (our first with 6 people), and that was hard enough.

5. We are thankful for all that we have learned this year that had nothing to do with Spanish. Perhaps another post will come later about this, but for now, to try to sum it up...

We have learned that stressful times do not have to produce a spirit of stress. On the contrary, times of stress are actually gifts to us, calling us to cling to the peace of His Presence.

6. We are very aware of the high cost of a vehicle and everything else we will need to outfit our house/apartment. We are also very aware of the results of the last election and how this might impact giving, both to our support funds and to the individual accounts that will help us buy a car and outfit our house/apartment.

7. We are sure that the assignment hasn't changed. We know that the resources for this assignment are already in existence. Somewhere there are Kingdom workers who have already been supplied with the resources that we need to complete our assignment. We are trusting that those workers are going to walk in obedience, releasing the resources and being blessed and transformed in the process.

8. We want to hear from those who consider themselves part of our team. Your encouragement and exhortation are invaluable, letting us know that we aren't doing this alone.

I wish I could think of a way to close, but the fatigue is getting to me at the moment. Time for bed. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

a day trip...to the other side of town

This morning we decided to visit the coffee shop that our friends here in San Jose have started. This coffee shop would be about a 20 minute drive in a car. We, of course, do not have a car, and to take a taxi that far would be pretty expensive, so we took (including the trip there and back) 4 buses, 2 taxis, and we walked for about 20 minutes.

We left our house at about 9:45 this morning, walked to the bus stop, waited over 20 minutes for the bus, took the bus to one bus stop downtown, took a taxi from that bus stop to another bus station, then took another bus, which dropped us off about a block from the coffee shop.

Once there, we visited with our friends (this was definitely the best part) while enjoying some awesome coffee and desserts (Micah had fallen asleep on the second bus so he slept through the desserts - shhh, don't tell him), and then we walked down the road a bit to eat lunch at Subway. After lunch we repeated the entire process - bus, taxi, bus, then walk. Fortunately we didn't have to wait long for either bus on the way home because by this time we were all a bit tired. We got home at 3:00 p.m.

Did I mention that we did this with 4 kids ages 6 and under? Yikes! But it was great to get out of the house and go somewhere.

Can you tell that we are excited about getting to Uruguay (in less than 2 months!!) and getting a car???

Because of the incredibly high cost of vehicles in Uruguay, our vehicle fund still needs about $20,000.

We are asking you...
to pray with us for the release of these funds
to consider what part of this assignment God might be giving you
to pray that God would send us just the right vehicle for us after we arrive

To make a donation online to our vehicle fund, click here.

We cannot begin to say just how excited we are to be so close to living in Montevideo, Uruguay. This year has been incredible for so many reasons (future blog post coming).

Thank you for being on assignment with us.