LIfe lately :)

As I was sitting down to write this post the hymn came to mind "Great is Thy Faithfulness", in particular the verse, "all I have needed Thy hand hath provided, great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto thee." I have been wanting to write a post now for like a month, but never do in fear that what I am wanting to say will not come across as I hope. But I will try anyways. :) Life has been a crazy blur in the Loudermilk household lately! A couple weeks ago we made a trip to Ohio to visit all of our family there and had a few speaking engagements where we had the privilege of sharing our hearts for Africa. We had a great time and our time there flew! The day after we got back from Ohio, our two oldest "babies" started kindergarten! I am still in shock that we have TWO children in school. Kayden and Emmersyn are having a blast at school, and we feel very blessed by the teachers they have. It has been so fun to see them so excited about going, and Brian and I both agree that they both seem so much older since they started. They are so proud of what they are doing and learning and are loving making new friends. We are so proud of them! With the older two gone at school during the day, it has been much quieter in the mobile home during the day! It is interesting to see how Sophee and Harper's roles change when the older two are gone. So that is kind of a quick update with what has been happening on the home front here.
I wish I could put into words all that has been happening inside my heart over the past couple of months. We have been BLOWN AWAY by how God is providing and paving the way for our family. The peace I feel in my heart is so heavy and so real, it is almost as though I could touch it. So much has changed in our lives over the past four months, and it amazing to look back and see how God orchestrated all of it. Sometimes it is hard to see when we are right in the middle of something, how it is going to play out. This journey of our family getting to Africa has been a long one, about six years ago is when I felt the Lord first tell me we would be serving in Africa as missionaries. At some times it seemed utterly impossible, and so far off it would create a sense of defeat in my heart and mind. Now that we are oh.so. close, it is truly amazing looking back. God has been so faithful and such a gentle and loving Father throughout the whole process. There really is SO much peace and joy in this chapter of our lives, as we prepare to head out to the field. I feel like one of the biggest things I am learning right now is the joy of obedience. If you would look at our family from a worldly view, you might honestly think we were crazy. Selling our home, moving to a mobile home, selling our possessions in order to take our four kids to a third world country... so on and so forth. We have NEVER been happier though!!! That is what is so amazing to me!!!! When we follow the call on our lives, (and it is different for every single one of us), there is truly joy unspeakable!! I love thinking of my family and friends and seeing all the different callings they have on their lives. They all have different passions and gifting and seeing them walk them out is amazing. It (most of the time) seems so easy and just comes natural because that is what they were created for. That is how we feel with Africa. It is always so funny to hear people's reactions about us moving there, mostly the shock you can see on their faces. But for our family, this feels natural. I tried fighting it and denying it for awhile, and felt incomplete. Africa truly is our fifth child and it feels as though that baby is about to be born. The anticipation leading up to the "due date" (or also known as our launch date) is more than I can handle sometimes. Although it is hard to think about leaving our friends and family here, we become giddy when we talk about living there. Knowing that our lives are going to be changing in such a drastic way in the next few months, and also knowing there will be challenges along they way, but having peace that truly surpasses all understanding is amazing. There is no where else we would rather be right now. Sometimes at night when laying in bed, and looking around our room in the mobile home, I will become overcome with thankfulness and amazement at how God is taking care of our every single need. Needs that we weren't even aware that we had, and yet He still provided for them!
Brian and I were talking the other day of how the time is going to FLY before we leave. September is almost already here and my parents are taking our family to Florida for vacation for a week, and then my sister and nieces will be coming to Iowa for a week as well, so I know that month will go by so quickly! Then you have October, November, and December which will include all the holidays, our (9th!!) anniversary, family visiting from Ohio, trips for our family, and just the ever day business of life! Then January, Brian will be off staff of our church, the new year and preparing all the last minute details of us leaving, and then February is here, and (Lord willing) we will be gone! Crazy!!
There is also so more exciting news we have, but you will have to wait until our next couple of newsletters to hear about! So if you don't receive our newsletter and would like to, get me your address and will add you to our list. Thank you all so much for your prayers, as our family feels totally covered in them during this season. If you have any interest at all in joining our monthly support team please contact us at brokenforafrica@yahoo.com. We can guarantee it will be a worthy investment!

Heart Change

There has been a heart change going on in me lately. Since I always want to remember this time in our lives, I am going to try to put it out on paper. Our journey to Africa has been a long one. :) Praise God that His timing is always perfect though! The most amazing thing has been going on lately in my heart. One one hand, I have always been excited about going to Africa. There is an undeniable call in my heart to go and serve the people there, as well as a deep love and compassion for them. On the other hand though, it is one thing to say you are willing to go and a completely different thing to actually mean it in the depths of your heart. Since we moved out of our house a couple of months ago, there have been some hard moments for me. Just missing the house, missing living across the street from my parents, missing having a "home", missing what felt like a normal life. It is a very odd way of living when you know you are going to be moving to another country in a few months. Certain things in the past have made me pretty sad. Holidays especially were hard. Knowing they would probably be our last in the States for awhile, things like that. Just a bittersweet way of living, I guess. So, while I was very excited about going, there was still a little bit of me wanting to be attached to our lives here, that didn't want to let go. I am so thankful though, as I see the Grace of God covering that area in my life. Yesterday was the 4th of July. This is one of my absolute favorite holidays. Love everything about it. So, (even though I am embarrassed to admit it), I was a little nervous that I would be a little sad most of the day. Was I ever wrong! Yesterday was one of the best days of my life! Starting Tuesday night we have been surrounded by family and dear friends that we love and cherish, eating and cooking out, playing games and just being together. I don't think even once I though, "Poor me. Having to give all this up.". It wasn't until last night we were at some fireworks and I overheard one of my friends say to another how she was so excited that they were going to start coming back to these fireworks every year together now. And you know what? With excitement I thought about how we would be celebrating the 4th in Africa next year! That is huge for me! Now, please don't take what I am saying as I am not excited about going to Africa. It is not that at all. I am talking about the secret place in my heart, that place where only God can see, and that HE is working on it and I see it happening! It is very exciting for me. I can literally feel the change happening, and there is so much anticipation building up for us to get there, and at the same time savoring all of our moments while we are still here. It is wonderful and I feel so blessed.

Update!!

Oh man... it seems overwhelming to even start writing this post, in fear that I might turn it into a short novel since I have so much I want to write about. I do fully intend to (for real this time!!) start keeping up with this blog as a way for people to keep up with our lives in between our newsletters. Here is a quick (OK ... probably looong) recap of what has been going on with us.
Probably about a year ago we (Brian and I) had decided to put the brakes on raising funds to get to Africa. We still knew the call was there, but were uncertain about the timing. I had made the mistake of letting fear creep into my heart. It was ugly and it overtook me. I just felt like it was too overwhelming for me to even imagine taking our four kids to a third world country, away from everything the knew.... what about the heat? the bugs? the diseases? would they be angry at us for taking them away from all their family and friends? .... and so on and so on. Fear and worry are ugly things, and once I let them get a foot in the door of my heart, they kicked that door down and overtook the place. Also, a big problem we had, we were unable to sell our home. We had been trying for about four years off and on to sell it and nothing was happening. Sure, we had alot of people come look, but that was it. We felt like we tried everything. We used a couple different realtors, put it up for sale by owner, had a church work day and were extremely blessed by our church family coming and help fix it up. Nothing. It was a little disheartening to see our dreams and have the mountain of our house in the way. So we just decided to put everything on hold for awhile, and focus completely on the ministries we were pouring into at the time here.
For a little while, everything was good. A couple months later though, the restlessness began again. It still amazes me, the desire to be in Africa. We are so happy doing what we do here. We really feel like we have the most amazing life. We love our church, our family is close, our friends, our ministry. Yet, our hearts are daily drawn to more. We decided we would just pray about it and seek the Lord's timing for our family. A few months later, the longing in my heart ( to be in Africa) one day was deep, it was more than I wanted to handle. I told God I didn't understand why we felt such a desire to serve as missionaries, but yet there seemed to be no way. Why wouldn't our house sell? When would the desires of our hearts be granted? As funny as it seems, I felt the Lord tell me to put something on facebook seeing if anyone wanted to buy or rent our home. That day a friend from church called and said that her son and his wife were interested and wanted to come look at the house. I called Brian SO excited!!! The couple came and looked at our house that night, and within about 2 months from then we were moved out and they were moved in! :) Just like that. It really was so easy, and we felt that God was saying, " I am paving the way... now is the time." People would ask us... where are you guys going to live when you move? We would always be like... that's a good question! We really had no clue! We were just completely trusting God that He would provide the perfect place for us, and of course He did! About 4 weeks before we had to be out of our house my Mom found a mobile home online that was perfect for our family. Such small details that God takes care of that make us feel so loved. So we packed up and moved into our new home. We feel so incredibly blessed to be living where we are.
We felt in our hearts that it was time again for us to start back up with raising funds and GET TO AFRICA!! We met with our Pastors, then our deacon board, also flew to North Carolina to meet with our missions agency (FIRE International). Everything is really coming together so perfectly, we fully trust God is in control, and now IS the time for our family. We are experiencing so much JOY in this journey, and growing along the way.
Our church is beginning to phase Brian out of his roles as youth and children's pastor. His last official day will be December 31st. Brian has been on staff at our church for the past seven years,and we love love love what we do there, and this is definitely a bittersweet transition for us. We have peace in knowing we are doing what we are called to though, and look forward to the future.
I think I will cut myself off here. If you made it through all of that, way to go! :) If you are not an official"follower" of this blog... please become one! And feel free to leave comments! :)
Please pray for us as we are really pressing in to get our monthly support raised. We have been very blessed and have almost all of our start up costs (which is a MIRACLE!!), and now really need to focus on the monthly support. In my next post I will share with you what we will be doing as soon as we reach Tanzania. If you are interested at all in supporting us in any way, please contact me and I will be happy to let you know how.
Blessings!!

What's YOUR dream?

If you would have told me five years ago that my dream would be to take my four kids to live in a third-world country, away from our family and friends and everything we knew to be "normal", I would have probably literally laughed in your face at the thought. I was just entering the new world of being a mommy and was "one of those moms". :) You know the kind, right? Overprotective, overbearing, worrying constantly about every little detail. Then one day God dropped a dream into my heart. Africa. Out of nowhere did I see this dream coming. There are certain special days in our lives that we remember so vividly. For me they would be the day I got engaged, our wedding day, the births of our children... and so on. I also remember the exact moment God put Africa in my heart. I remember telling me friend sitting next to me at a conference, " I know this sounds crazy, but I think God is telling me that my family is called to Africa." From that moment on my life was never the same.
Fast forward five years to this weekend. This was a very special weekend for me and my family. We had the privilege to go and share our hearts for missions and Africa at the church I grew up in. It was a very surreal experience for me. I just love how God works. It was so special for me to be able to share something so dear to us (Africa) with people who have known me since I was a little girl. I remember missionaries coming to our church when I was growing up and being so intrigued, and now it was MY family there to share our call. It was so much fun seeing people and remembering all they had deposited into my life growing up. We so deeply appreciate all the prayers, kind words, and support we received from everyone this weekend. I love that five years ago God told me we would be going to Africa, and I could not even begin to fathom how we would get there. Let alone that we would be adding three more kids to the picture before it happened!! :) I love that He is the one orchestrating it all, not us. I love that everything is coming together so smoothly that it brings so much peace to my heart knowing that this is what God has for our lives.
So, what is YOUR dream? What do you feel like God is calling you to? Breath life onto that dream today! I have found from first-hand experience when we let our callings go without any attention or stirring up of that dream they can seem to disappear (even though they don't really). I know that they can seem overwhelming at times, but I have seen it over and over that ALL things are possible with God.
We are so thankful for every ones support!

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!