Whats new with us!

It has been quite a while since I blogged and I am really hoping to start back up more regularly. The last few months have been a time of processing everything that is going to be happening with our family for me. We took some time to just rest (as much as possible) with our family and enjoy this pregnancy and really just pour love into our children and pray about exactly when we were to head to Africa. There is so much I want to write about so sorry in advance for skipping from one thing to the next and than back again. :)
First off.... our new addition coming in December. We will be welcoming our fourth child, a little girl who we are already head over heels in love with, in about 6 weeks. This pregnancy has been so wonderful ( minus a scary few first weeks ) and I cannot complain. Just two weeks ago my blood pressure started to rise which has happened a lot sooner with all of our other children, so it was nice to have that happen later than sooner as it does make me feel really icky. This does mean that they will more than likely induce me at 38 weeks just like with the other three, since it just keeps going up. The girls are SO excited to meet their sissy and talk about her and to her all the time. Kayden is just really not too interested, which doesn't surprise us at all. We are anxiously awaiting her arrival and can't wait to see her sweet face for the first time.
We have officially started the fundraising process to get to Africa and set a launch date of 18 months from now, so May of 2012. We know this time is going to fly by. We have started meeting with families and are going to be going to local churches and speaking. If you are interested in meeting with us and hearing our hearts and plans for when we get there and possibly joining our support team, or know anyone you think would be, please let us know. It has been SO much fun meeting with people and getting to just talk about Africa. We are so passionate about what we are going to be doing and love talking about it. We usually just talk to each other about it though, and so its so much fun to talk with others and share this passion.
The past few months have been such a learning process and time of growth for me. While extremely painful at times, I cannot even begin to say how thankful I am for this time to reflect and confirm this call on our lives. Our six year wedding anniversary is in a couple of weeks. We were laughing the other night thinking about how much has happened in the last six years. If you would have told me on our wedding day that in six years from now we would be getting ready to have our fourth child and raising support to move to a third-world country with all of them, away from everyone/everything we know and love, I would have probably passed out honestly. That is why I am so thankful that all we have to do is follow where Christ leads us. It really is that simple, which I am constantly learning. He has been SO faithful to our family.

Please pray for us during this time of raising support. We are praying for supernatural stregth to get everything done that needs to be. It is very easy for me to start to feel overwhelmed when I think about all we have going on already with Brian's working his two jobs, having a new baby in the house and then raising support on top of it. It really is such a HUGE source of comfort and peace knowing that this is what we are supposed to be doing and that He will (and has been!) provide the strength for us to get it all done.
Please pray for our house to sell. We are totally trusting God to take care of this for us in a way we can't even imagine.
We are so blessed beyond what we could ever imagine. We have the most amazing friends and love you all and are so thankful for all of your sweet words and encouragement.

Truth

Sometimes the truth hurts. Right now the ugly truth I am wrestling with is that following Christ is not always easy and most certainly doesn't look like what we always thought it would. The truth for me right now is that I know the calling on our lives but yet it is very hard to not clam up in my safety mode, but instead keep pushing forward into a world of unknowns. I see us in Africa and I love it. It IS our home. The road of getting there is so unfamiliar and so many unknowns that it can really mess with my head. I unfortunately am someone that when life gets hard, will tend to look for the easy way out. The easy way out (in my opinion) right now is to try to close my heart off to Africa and say we will be there..... someday. When the kids get older and life gets easier..... but does that ever really happen? I mean life slowing down and getting easier? :) I would like to think so but have a feeling it is not the truth. I am clinging to the verse " I can do ALL things, through Christ who strengthens me." Phil. 4:13. HE has called us to go, so HE will provide the way and the grace/strength we so desperately need. I am thankful daily for His grace and mercy. I pray everything we do as a family is pleasing to God, this season in our lives included.

Who wants to buy a house? :)

Next up on our list of things needed to accomplish..... sell our house. This is probably one of the biggest road blocks for us with getting to Africa. We have been working on it as we get the money and will hopefully be putting it on the market within the next couple of weeks. Where are we moving once the house moves? Well.... good question. :) When I know the answer I will let you know. We have had some very close (and very generous) dear friends open their house to us as well as my parents. We are also considering an apartment. We would like the cheapest option, but at the same time the most realistic with 4 young children, one of which a newborn. So right now we are just praying about our options and seeking the Lord on them all. Once the house sells we are focusing hard core on paying off our debts as quickly as possible and then will eventually start raising our support.
This whole process is so raw to us. So many raw and new emotions, sometimes daily. Such a pull to a place we have only been once, yet feel as though it is truly "home" to us. Such an urgent feeling in our hearts to be there NOW, but going through the sometimes feeling never-ending process of actually getting there. 100 % complete and total reliance on God in a way I have never really experienced before. Selling the house we have so many memories in, and selling many of our belongings and the kids not understanding why all of it is happening and asking a million questions. And yet, knowing it is all SO worth it and it is the absolute least we can do for our King. I know for both Brian and I we are falling more in love with Christ and learning so many humbling lessons along the way.
Baby update: I am now 18 weeks along and we will be finding out what the baby's gender is in less than 2 weeks. Brian can't come with me to the ultrasound because he got a new job and can't take time off yet, so my mom is going to come. I am really excited for her to come and see the baby and share that moment. She has never seen an ultrasound before, so it should be a good time. :) I am feeling great pregnancy wise and falling more and more in love with this sweet little baby every day. The girls are in already head over heels with baby and talk to my belly daily. Kayden could really care less. :) I had a root canal last week and as awful as it was, it was so worth it!! My mouth which had been in pretty bad pain for a few months feels awesome now!!
We are learning to be steadfast in this process and are so excited for what the future holds. God has been so faithful to us and continues to blow our minds. Each day is a day closer to our goal. We would really appreciate prayers concerning our house selling quickly. Thank you all!

Hold on!!!

Life has been crazy lately..... a good crazy. I feel like..."Just hold on and enjoy this time Mandee". There have been many pretty big life changes in the last few weeks. I would say the most major of these would be the new member of our family that will be joining us right before Christmas time. We are so excited for our fourth child and cannot wait to meet our sweet little baby. The kids are all really excited as well and the girls ask me every day to kiss the baby and will kiss my belly and Emmersyn will talk to the baby alot. It is really precious. I am 10 weeks along and feeling great. Brian has been really great about letting me rest whenever possible and I think that is making a huge difference this pregnancy.
Another very exciting thing in our lives is that we got accepted with our missions agency, Fire International. When we were in Africa in January we met a couple there and fell in love with them. Our hearts and visions were right on the same track, and we felt an instant connection in our hearts with them. When we came back to the States we really felt God pulling us in the direction of the organization they were with and we researched FIRE and knew fully in our hearts that was where God wanted us to be. We love and so appreciate everyone at FIRE and they have be so very helpful at this very major part in our lives.
We will be selling our house and our realtor (and us) thinks that it will be best for us to just be out so the house can stay clean and look good. This is a pretty major deal and will be interesting how the kids handle it when we are living across the street with my parents and they can still see their old house. The kids have started to ask alot of questions about when we live in Africa. It brings tears to my eyes alot of the times when they ask if Grandma and Grandpa will be coming with us, or their Uncle or Aunts. I just have to trust God to bring comfort to their little hearts when the time does come.
We are going to be starting to raise support next week. Very exciting and yet kind of intimidating. I am so thankful that God has been daily confirming this call on our lives in my heart and just deeping the love in my heart for Tanzania and then people there.
We set our launch date a year from this June..... which I guess is now this month. We have alot to do but I have never had such peace in my heart before. I know more than anything this is what we are called to do and I can't wait to see how God provides and leads us along this next year.

I love my man

On Sunday while we were in Africa Brian had the awesome privilege of preaching at one of the churches in a village we had visited. It was Pastor Unity's church, which is also the school we got to play and spend the day with the children at. Before church began Brian was preparing and I was walking around exploring and taking pictures, and then a couple of women started to pray before church began. There were only about 6 of us in the room and as soon as they started praying I broke out into tears.... I am not talking little cries, more like sobbing crying so much that I had to leave the room because I didn't want anyone there to think something was wrong with me. The presence of God was so strong and these people were just pouring out themselves worshipping Him. At that moment, if I had any teeny tiny doubt in my heart or mind about coming and serving in Africa, it was completely washed away. This is what we had been waiting for the last couple of years. The feeling of being at home was truly overwhelming and unexplainable. Then people started pouring in and church started.

From what I understand it is typical for worship to be done in 3 parts there. First it was a song that they sang the same line over about 30 times, then it was singing and dancing, then it was a hymn ( I am pretty sure it was How Great Thou Art). Brian did an amazing job preaching. I know I am bias since I am his wife, but I have never been more proud of him. He did so great with his first time of having an interpreter, and Pastor Unity did a great job translating for him. We got to have a great time of praying with people afterwards. One of the really great things about church there was that it is a serious thing. What I mean by that is that when the people come in they are there for one thing and one thing only...... God. They come hungry and ready to love on Him. It was such a great experience and such a wonderful memory.

Some things I miss the most....

Sharing our hearts

Last night we got the privilege of telling our church family about our trip to Africa. We felt extremely honored and super excited to share with people SO important to us about SOMETHING that is so important to us. It was a beautiful merging of both. It went really really well.... in my opinion. I absolutely hate being in front of people. If you have ever met my husband it is obvious that one of his many gifts is being in front of people. So the plan was he would do most of the talking and I would just share whenever I wanted and a little 5 minutes about what was on my heart. Well.... I guess when it is something I am passionate about I have no problem talking. We got home and Brian was like , " Well for someone who doesn't like talking you sure made it hard for me to get alot in." ( He was joking. ) It was just SO awesome to be able to share all about our trip and Africa really is such a deep love in my heart. Brian put together an awesome 5 minute video of all of our pictures and short clips we took. I think the most exciting thing of the night was our churches response. It seemed like everyone was really excited about this call on our lives and extremely supportive.

Last night seemed very surreal to me. I felt almost like I was in a dream. I have been falling more and more in love with Africa over the last four years but never thought everything would come together as quickly as it has or so nicely. So to be in front of our church family, exposing what has been going on in our lives, putting it all out there and then getting such a great response, was incredible. I am just blown away by the faithfulness of my God daily. I put up all of our pictures from Africa on my facebook, so if you would like to see them check out my facebook page. There are just too many to put on here. Right now where we are at in the process is just taking some time off.

Going there for 10 days and then coming back to the States has been alot of work in itself, and there are many decisions to be made coming up and honestly it can all get a little overwhelming sometimes. We are focusing on our babies right now and getting back in a routine with our lives here and planning our next steps..... all while following the Lords leading. Please keep us in your prayers as this is a very pivital point in our lives and we are totally relying on our God to direct our paths.

Randomness

It is five in the morning and I have been up for an hour and cannot sleep so I thought I would put down some random thoughts going through my head while I am up and the house is quiet. :) I never knew my heart could be in two places at once. Although I am very happy to be here and have my babies with us again.... my heart can't help but ache and feel like big peices of it are still over in Africa. At the same time... I feel like my heart is here in Iowa, at Real Life, in the ministries we have going on here. I really love each place with a deep love and feel so incredibly blessed for both. I am very excited about the longing in my heart to be back in Africa. We had a great trip and fell in love when we were over there, but I was wondering if when we came back I would feel like it was a nice trip but not the place for us to move our children and our entire lives.
We were sitting in the Amsterdam airport and all of a sudden I just burst into tears, and it was such an intense feeling of wanting to get the kids and move there that I was overcome. I thank God so much for breathing more and more love into my heart for the people of Africa. It is a feeling I sometimes don't even understand. Wherever He leads us , I want to follow with a joyful heart.

I am so excited to put all of our pictures from the trip and some videos as well into a presentation. We are having the leadership from our church over tomorrow night to tell them all about the trip, and I am SO excited!! :) Brian doesn't want to me to put up all of the pictures yet because he wants the church as a whole to see them together, so if you don't go to our church, sorry, you are just going to have to wait to see those sweet sweet kids faces. :)

Thank you all so very much for your prayers. We for sure felt them on our trip and they really mean so so much to us. We know and have experienced the power of prayer, and it is awesome knowing we have such wonderful prayer warriors over here.

When we were at the house of some of our new friends on the trip, she felt like God had given her a word for us. It was a very powerful word and much appreciated. After she gave us the word she told us something along the lines of how when we stepped off of the plane on U.S. ground we were official missionaries. Tears came to my eyes when she said that. It just sounded good. :) We thank God for this incredible opportunity in our lives and are so humbled by His goodness. Please keep us in your prayers and the process of raising support is going to be starting. This is all new to us, and we are excited to see how God is going to work in all of it!

I will blog more about what we actually did on the trip in the next couple of days. I should probably try to lay down a get some sleep before the kids wake up for the day.

Its HEEEERRRE!

Somebody pinch me. Seriously... pinch me. I am going to Africa on Monday. No matter how many times I say it, it does not seem real. I remember the night my friend Alissa and I were going to go to Heartland for worship and for some reason she ended up not being able to go, so I went by myself. Which I have never done before or since. For some reason I am weird like that... not wanting to go places by myself. But that night I did. I remember walking in and seeing Leanne Goff there. I knew as soon as I saw her that I was there to talk with her. I knew she worked for a missions agency and actually that night (at home with the kids) Brian was going to apply to Iris Ministries for us to go to their 10 week missions school. We knew Africa was where we were called to serve and Heidi's ministry was the only one we knew of there and we LOVE and respect her ministry A TON. Long story short, Leanne ended up praying for me during worship and was telling me about what GMA (Global Missions Awareness) was doing in Tanzania. She told me there was another couple our age who felt called to Africa as well and they were going to be taking a trip there in January ( this meeting was like 6 months ago ) and we should join them. That night Brian and I had already had it planned to go to our good friends Josh and Alissa's house to pray about where and what exactly God had for us in the mission field.
So later that night we went to Josh and Alissa's and I told them about the conversation I had had with Leanne. I was still talking and I looked over at Alissa and her eyes were full of tears, but I wasn't sure why or if she was crying. But she was :) . She said that as soon as I said Tanzania she had felt the Holy Spirit so intensely that she just started to cry. Brian and I were both like ... wow. So we had a great night of praying with our friends and walked out of their house feeling so confident and excited about God's leading. I remember getting in the car and just laughing and telling Brian " This is one of the most life changing days for us so far. We woke up thinking we were going to Mozambique and then go to bed knowing Tanzania is where we are supposed to be. "
All of this to say... I remember everything about the moment when Leanne said we should go to Tanzania in January. And now its here. Time goes by so quickly. I am so so so excited about our trip. There are no words to say how excited. We feel so lucky that this is what Father God has called us to do. We should have Internet access there so I will be blogging while we are there to keep track of all that is going on. Please continue to pray for peace for me with leaving the kids. I think as soon as I get on the plane I will be ok, but until then it feels overwhelming thinking about leaving them for that long. Thank you for all your prayers.... we cherish them more than you know.

Reality check

I cannot believe our trip is almost here. It seems surreal. It is really weird when you have been waiting for something for so long and then ... its here. As we get closer day by day, new emotions come up, and they are all extreme. Extreme excitement about going, extreme sorrow over leaving the kids for 10 days, extreme joy about seeing friends I do not get to see often, extreme anxiousness (is that a word?) about the 24 hour trip. In all honesty, I have been somewhat of a basket case lately. I am not even sure why. It is also weird to think that when we return from our trip that the next time we go will be when we move. After we come back ... it is real. We are taking our babies to a third world country to live. Some place they have never seen before, with no one they have ever met, new foods, sights and sounds. But... it is SO reassuring to know this is what He has called us to. When these fears creep up inside of me I just get alone with my Heavenly Father and let Him love me and wash away all anxiety.
"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11

"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matthew 6:33-34

All I can do it take my life day by day. So that is all I will do. I feel the peace of God just writing that. He is so good and so faithful, so loving. I am so ready for this trip and can't wait to see what God has in store for us there. To see with our own eyes and experience what life will be like there... just makes me smile so much. Thank you Jesus for your faithfulness always.

My fourth child ....

No, I am not pregnant. :) Brian and I were talking the other night about what we say when people ask us how we feel about moving to Africa and everything that goes with it, especially when we have never even been there. This is the only way I know how to relate it... so bear with me.
I think of Africa as my fourth baby. The similarities are crazy to having all 3 of my other babies. I carried all 3 of my babies for 9 months, and during those 9 months fell more and more in love with them every day. I have carried Africa in my heart for over 3 years now, and fall more and more in love with the people there and having our lives there every day. I was induced with all 3 of my babies, so I knew the date they would be arriving into this world and when we would meet for the first time. I know that we are leaving for Africa 3 weeks from tomorrow and I will "officially" be meeting Africa for the first time as well. Most of all though, from the moment I found out (and even before) that I was carrying each of my children, I was completely in love with them. It didn't matter if I had never held them or seen them or kissed them. I loved them with a deep love, the way only a mother can love her child. This is how I feel about Africa. I know I have never been there, and don't really know excactley what it will be like. But I do know the love that God has put in my heart for it, and I know that it is a love that only He can stir up in me. I remember the anticipation before having each child, and knowing that my life would never be the same once they got here. I feel the same way about our upcoming trip. I feel like in 3 weeks when we get there, it will be like the first time I held any of my babies right after delivery. It will just (hopefully) be natural.
We have been getting everything in order for when we leave, but still have a few things that need to be done. Please keep us in your prayers as this is a very exciting and life changing event in our lives.