Starting off with praises!

Hello and welcome to our blog! Our plan for this blog was that we would start it once we arrived in Honduras. Well our leave date has been pushed back, but we've decided to start keeping everyone in the loop of our days up til we leave as well. And I am very happy to say that our first blog is chock full of good news. Anyone who has talked to us recently most likely was aware that our support raising was not going so well. Our goal for the year is to raise $24,000 and after a month and a half we were hovering around $2000 then it slowly crept up to around $3500. Still a LONG way to go! We were feeling very discouraged and even entertaining some thoughts that maybe we weren't going to be able to go. Very disappointing. Things turned around in a major way last week. We had a garage sale with donations from our church (Chrio Communities), Mountain Park Church and other friends, family and neighbors. On Friday, as we were pricing our items our brother-in-law's mom stopped by with a few more things and this:

At first, you think it's a large container of cookie dough. Hmm, maybe we can make cookies and sell them at the garage sale. But wait! Those aren't cookies! Here's what's actually inside:

And this isn't any ordinary bucket of change. Sue does a lot of walking in the mornings. As she walks, if she finds a coin she'll pick it up and then she'll pray over it. She'll thank God for financial security and ask Him for financial wisdom in their business and life in general. She has saved all of the blessed coins and on Friday she gave them to us. I felt a little weak in the knees as she told us how she had acquired them and how she is passing them along to us because she believes in what we are doing in Honduras. This is 20 years of prayer filled walks that she was passing on to us! Somehow, that gift completely changed our entire outlook on our support raising situation. We felt hopeful again. I kept reminding myself that we hadn't actually raised more money yet, but the hope was still there!

Now it's Saturday morning and we're setting up for our sale. Throughout the weeks leading up to the sale I was a little worried because we didn't seem to have that much stuff to sell. Well I think we experienced our own little fish and bread miracle because this is what we ended up with:
We completely packed our entire driveway and front yard, plus we used our neighbors driveway as well! Our goal for the sale was $900 which would pay for most of our language school. We blew that goal out of the water as we raised $1500!! And we still have enough left over that we'll be having round two in the near future. Of course it helps when people find out what your doing and pay you $60 for a set of cups!

We continued feeling very encouraged, then on Monday I received an update email from Heart to Honduras on our support. Somehow we went from $3500 to $11,000 in support! Then on Tuesday we were told that a very generous couple had bumped that total up to $14,000! In the span of 5 days we went from being quite discouraged to thinking we're pretty close to being able to book our tickets. Such an amazing week.

For our remaining amount we thought we'd break down our budget so everyone knows what's left in each category and can directly donate to whatever tickles your fancy. =) If you would like to donate, click on the link in each category and it will take you directly to Heart to Honduras' donation page on their website. Please make sure you specify what you are donating to in the notes section of the Heart to Honduras website!! Here they are:

ROUND TRIP FLIGHT: $1000

It would be a mighty long walk to Honduras. Quite dangerous as well.

If you would like to donate to our ROUND TRIP FLIGHT please click here

LANGUAGE SCHOOL: $1200

PAID!!!!!

START UP COSTS: $500

We believe that our house will look similar to these shelves when we move in so we want to make sure we have some money in our budget for things like pots and pans and ice cube trays.

If you would like to donate to our START UP COSTS please click here.

FOOD: $700

We are planning on having our own garden in our yard. We're so excited to grow our own food! Unfortunately, I get a little queasy at the thought of killing animals and we don't know how to refine sugar cane, so some things will still need to be bought in the store.

If you would like to donate to our FOOD please click here.

HEALTH INSURANCE: $600

Health insurance is very important. Very.

If you would like to donate to our HEALTH INSURANCE please click here.

TRUCK: $4000

This is by far our largest expense. The entire cost of a truck will be around $8000. We will be living and working about 45 minutes away from the main office and School of Discipleship. With so many North American teams coming to Honduras all year is would put too much strain on the organization for us to take one of their trucks for our own use. The truck will belong to the ministry though and will be left with them when we return to the US. Isn't it a cute little truck? Aww.

If you would like to donate to our TRUCK please click here.

VEHICLE MAINTENANCE: $1300

We would prefer to not break down on the side of the mountain. In order to do this we'll need to keep the truck in tip top shape, and full of gas.

If you would like to donate to our VEHICLE MAINTENANCE please click here.

CELL PHONE: $500

In case we would break down, it's necessary to have one of these. (We discovered that in Honduras there are more cell phones than people. Ha!)

If you would like to donate to our CELL PHONE please click here.

STORY: $600

Some of you may be thinking it's crazy to bring a dog, but she was our ringbearer! She's like family! Seriously though, we are moving to an extremely rural area of Honduras knowing a very small amount of Spanish. But we really want to start forming relationships with the children and families in Santa Elena. She can do lots of tricks that will break the ice. (Disclaimer: this picture is not actually of Story. But she's in this position a lot...staring at you...or at least the ball in your hand.)

If you would like to donate to STORY please click here.

VISA: $200

In order to legally be in Honduras we will need to renew our visa every 3 months. We would rather not be kicked out of the country.

If you would like to donate to our VISA please click here.

VISA RUNS: $600

Along with renewing our visa, we also need to leave the country every 3 months. So this will cover the costs of transportation, housing and meals while we're out of the country!

If you would like to donate to our VISA RUNS please click here.