Fundraising Update

Several things have transpired over the last few weeks worth mentioning. The Bell Trust and Natchez Trace have given us one time donations!  Westwood, Carson's home church has decided to be a monthly supporter!  We also found out that Gulf Coast Getaway (a campus ministry conference in January) will be taking up a contribution for our entire team! It's exciting to see things happening and fundraising beginning to come together.  However, we are not finished yet.  We are continuing to send out packets to individuals as well as churches and praying for supporters.  If any of our faithful blog readers know of a church that might be interested in supporting this mission let us know.  We anxiously anticipate seeing the amazing ways God provides for this mission. 

A Picture from Training

Just a nice group photo taken during a training weekend several weekends ago. The extra person is Sam Shumaker, the MRN person over African teams. No real updates, just more of the same. Continuing to fundraise, train, study Swahili, pray, and plan.

Swahili

I would just like to announce that I can count to 10 in Swahili!  Thanks to Rosetta Stone I can say several other things as well, but there is something about the numbers that is just really exciting.  Sometimes it's the little things that amaze...  We are really enjoying the program and it will be nice to be familiar with the language when we arrive in Tanzania.  We will spend our first 3 months in language school to expand our langauge skills beyond what we can get from Rosetta Stone.  And, in case anyone is curious, drumroll please... moja, mbili, tatu, nne, tano, sita, saba, nane, tisa, kumi!!!

An Answer to Prayer

Gallatin has taken out a loan for us so that we can go ahead and buy the truck! Some of the loan we will be fundraising to pay back, and some of it will be paid back by Gallatin as their one-time contribution to us. We are thrilled to be able to move ahead on this truck, thereby saving $20,000 in the long run. We are continuing to fundraise and pray for God to provide. 

In a way it seems like a bad time to be asking people for money given the "state of the economy", but we know that God can and will provide. While many in the U.S. have lost money in recent weeks, we still have more than most people around the world have ever seen. We pray that Christians will be willing to help us get to the people of Geita with the good news of Jesus Christ, even if it means a little sacrifice.

Prayer Request

I'm not really sure how many people are looking at this blog regularly, but just in case we have developed a huge following ; ) I thought I'd throw out a prayer request.  We will need a vehicle in Tanzania and have budgeted for this, but recently we found out that import taxes on vehicles have gone up making it a bit more expensive. We may have the opportunity to buy a used vehicle from missionaries already there, which would save us about $20,000. It is a quad cab truck that is not very old or used. They are selling it because it's not ideal for 3 carseats, a new need of theirs! The main issue at this point is that they, understandably, need the money sooner rather than later to pay for their new vehicle. We have been fundraising, but it is turning out to be a slower process than we would like. In order to buy the vehicle we need $21,000 pretty soon. We don't feel like we have to have a new vehicle (we don't now!) and we would like to make this move as inexpensive as possible. We know that our God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and we ask that you pray for Him to open doors in our fundraising, for this particular need and in general. We are planning to leave mid-March and it will be here before we know it! 

Team Training

We started our Interpersonal Relationships workshops last weekend and will finish it up next weekend. This is one of the training sessions we are doing with Missions Resource Network. I thought I'd share a few pictures from our downtime.

One night, a friend of the team, invited us to a football party and fed us well! This wasn't part of the training, just good fun that happened the same weekend.

These girls never run out of energy!

An intense game of Corn Hole.

Brett listening to his Auburn game on the car radio.

A Day on the Farm

A couple of weekends ago we were thrilled to have the Groens visit us on the farm. We had a lot of fun hiking and relaxing. I taught the girls to felt. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of that. Here are a few shots we took on the hike.

The girls building a rock sculpture, after seeing one that Carson and I made.

Sadie taking a break.

This picture just wouldn't upload any bigger. I do not pretend to understand computers!

Team Picture

We finally took some team pictures at our last meeting.

 From left to right- Brett and Christie Harrison; Calvin and Alicia Groen with Katelyn, Sadie, and Hailey; Daniel and Kasey George; and us.

and the funny picture!

Sponsoring Congregation

We are excited that Gallatin Church of Christ has agreed to be our sponsoring congregation. They will be our spiritual leadership as well as some of our financial support. We really love this group and are thrilled that they want to be involved in this mission. We look forward to spending more time in Gallatin over the next few months to rekindle old relationships and form new ones. 

Not Much News... Yet

Well as of right now we are beginning the fundraising process, bonding with our team, about to begin our team preparations with Missions Resource Network, and trying to learn anything we can to help us with our work in Geita. There probobly won't be a ton to report on this blog until closer to time to leave, but check back every so often for updates.