We have now entered a new year. Not just any year either, it's 2020! It's the year of potential and perfect vision. I've heard someone say it's the year of completion. I love finding meaning in things, and I feel like the year 2020 has such potential to finally be our year to get to Italy!
I'm going to be completely honest in this newsletter and share a bit about what happened in 2019 and what we're hoping 2020 will look like.
2019 did not happen the way we had planned. If we had met our original goals, we'd be in Italy right now! But here we are, hardly more funded than we were (many) months ago. Sometimes life happens in ways we can't even imagine, and that's kind of how our year looked.
As you know, earlier in the year we found out we were expecting a baby. This was the start of our plans being altered. We figured this might delay our plans by maybe a few months, but not long into the pregnancy I began experiencing a severe case of eczema which lasted throughout the remainder of the pregnancy, and is still clinging on today. With this new distraction, paired with pregnancy insomnia, our plans were essentially put on hold until things improved. Franklin was working full time, and would come home to take the boys out - something I could not do during the summer months without my skin reacting, meant very little time to focus on support raising.
On November 1, we welcomed our precious daughter Amaris to our family! We are overjoyed to have her join us, and we feel our family is now complete. Thank you God!
We decided to take the next two months off to adjust to our new family dynamic.
Enter January 2020! Here we are. We are refreshed and eager to finally get things moving again! We are excited to get onto the field and step into God's call for our lives.
We have been shown, with the birth of our daughter, that God is faithful and His promises are true. He is good on His word.
After our daughter Briela passed away, I felt the Lord say to me that He would give us a daughter. That was almost 5 years ago. When I first heard this promise, I believed I would have a healthy baby girl with the next pregnancy - but instead we had our son Tobias. After him we had a miscarriage. It just felt as though we weren't going to meet this girl, and we decided to shelf the idea altogether. But then, when we least expected it, he gave us our daughter - Amaris.
There are times when His timing seems too far off, but it is right. We sometimes need to remind ourselves that this isn't a race, but a carefully laid out plan that God is in control of. Sometimes it's hard to think that we were commissioned by GEM a year and a half ago and we're still here in Winnipeg, but God has us where we need to be, when we need to be. So with that being said, with 2019 behind us, we boldly step forward into this new year filled with peace. We will do our part, and He will do His. As much as we'd love to be in Italy right now (especially with it being winter - hehe), we know that we will be there at the right time.
So where are we at?
Our monthly contributions is still sitting at 20% (our monthly amount to be raised slightly increased with the addition of a family member), and our launch fund is about 30% filled.
In order to be fully funded by the end of the year, we'll be aiming to raise about $750 per month (monthly commitments). We're hoping Franklin will be able to step down from his full time job this summer so we can focus on support raising on a full time basis.
This is a lot! But we know God is our provider and has the right people/churches/businesses set up and ready to hop on board our support wagon.
We just want to thank those of you who are already supporting us financially and prayerfully. 2020 will be a very full year, and it's great knowing we have you standing behind us, rooting us on! We love you all!
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