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.