Remembrance

I lit a candle today
not in a church

I lit a candle today
on the shelf in my hall

to say
I remember

I remember that
you were due today

25 years ago
you were due

I lit a candle today
spontaneously

because it felt right
to think of you

we made it ten weeks
the two of us

and then you were gone

I lit a candle today
because you're somewhere

and you're holding
a little piece of my heart

You Can Find Us At...

You can keep up with us at my personal blog Let's Put The Kettle On

See you over there :-)

And Here We Are!

It feels great to be able to say we've finally arrived in Tanzania.

We are settling at Peter and Tammy's house and have the next six weeks to find a place to rent before they return.

We are tired but full of joy. Five of us here now and Jesse to arrive in June. He and Trevor will have the summer with us before they need to head back to Santa Barbara.

This blog will close now as it was just put up to keep people posted on the prayer requests and progress toward departure.

Many, many thanks for prayers along this road to Africa.

Blessings!

May 14th

May 14th is almost here!

We head to the airport Monday mid-morning LA time.

We'll be in Tanzania by Tuesday night, East Africa time.

NO WAY!

April News

Friends!

It’s April (and I pulled a good April fool on Byron! See “This Morning” on my personal blog

This past weekend I purchased our tickets to Tanzania! We fly 14 May. Six weeks and counting! We are deliriously excited and significantly freaked out. Agh!

What remains to be done?

*Quite a few dinners and coffees with people that we need and want to see.
*The final decisions/arrangements for shipping, insurance etc.
*Final decisions/orders for school materials.
*Paperwork/student loans and setting things in place for Trevor next year at Westmont.
*Shopping for what he needs to take to college with him.
*About one million injections we need to endure between the six of us.
*Dental appointments for most of us.
*The small matter of getting the website up. (Call me Procrastinator with a capital P!)
*Send another newsletter out snail mail.
*Welcome the Russells when they arrive for a couple of months in the States.
*Wild Hope board meetings.
*Making sure we haven’t let anything undone!
*And more time with family :-)

Things to celebrate!

*Wild Hope has purchased its second Land Cruiser with funds we’ve raised so the car we’ll drive will soon be shipped from Gibraltar to Tanzania!
*Even though we purchased our tickets fairly late, we got great rates.
*We have many kind supporters and praying friends.
*God is faithful even though I doubt, fear, shake my fists at him, worry, stress and generally make a mess of this walk of faith.

I’ll keep it short now.

lisa xx

Encouraged/Discouraged

As I've recently mentioned, we are very encouraged because funds are strong and it looks like we'll make our departure date of May something.

But we're feeling discouraged as well. About 90% of the funds we projected for buying the truck, purchasing plane tickets, shipping our stuff etc have come in and that's fantastic. But as Byron sat down and did the math this last week he's found hidden costs that are throwing us off.

The shippers who are sending our stuff from Portugal to Tanzania need about $5,000 more than we had anticipated. Ug! Air fares have increased. We are being advised to buy solar panels and batteries, which we did not plan for at the beginning... etc etc.

My emotions go up and down with the good news and the bad news. I need to tie my emotions to the faithfulness of God instead of the balance or the bills.

Sigh. Always growing on this path!

March Up-date

You guys are really, really good! Seriously! Last time I wrote for prayer we were at 50% of our outgoing needs. A couple of days later, we received a major gift that put us at 75% and now we’re at 90% !! Wooo hoooo! (OK, so maybe it’s God that’s good...) We will be booking tickets for Tanzania soon!

Our time in the NW was wonderful. Family, friends, supporters, churches, mission groups... We shared our dreams with all of them. We were totally blessed by the love and encouragement they gave us.

During the last month I’ve had the privilege of being invited to two events for college-aged women. One was at Westmont College and the other at UCLA. Both events focused on women sharing their lives and hurts and praying together for healing and freedom. I was so, so blessed to be present as a “mom-type” to pray with these young ladies. God is moving in this generation to release women into all they were created to be and it’s very cool! Please pray for lasting fruit in their lives and that the healing would spread.

Byron is just back from FL after time with his family there. As you know, Byron’s mom is in advanced stages of Alzheimer's and is in full-time care. Family is precious. We were all together after Christmas but we are thankful Byron could get some more time with them.

We have a couple potential trips still on our schedule before departure for East Africa. Both could lead to partnerships for on-going support but it’s a little tricky fitting them in now as the calendar shrinks before us. Pray that they will fit in nicely if we should go for them.

(Trevor was rubbing my shoulders for me the other day and he said “Mom! What are all these knots from?” “Looking at the calendar,”
I replied. His solution was simple. “You need to listen to more Bob Dylan!”)

Thanks for prayers. Our monthly support needs a few more committed donors and we look to the Lord for that and the final 10% of outgoing. More importantly, we want to finish this time in the States well and actually be ready to fly come May. Help us, Lord!!

With joy (and some early Bob Dylan for my shoulders,)

lisa xx