Lebanon Update

Greetings from Lebanon! We will be sending out our updates via email for the next 6 months until we get back to the US. If you want to keep up with our travels please join our mailing list by clicking on the "Join Our Mailing List" link above.

Blessings,

Douglas, Karen and the boys

On to Europe

Hey all! Our journey has officially begun. After a whirlwind exit from Costa Rica we spent a wonderful week with my family in Houston Texas. It was over way too fast bit we are excited for our next leg of the journey.

We are currently at the Houston airport waiting for our flight to Amsterdam where we will spend a week with friends and then from there on to our next destination.

We will post when possible but have no idea when and where we might get internet access.

Pray that our bags arrive with us and that we have a smooth flight.

Blessings,

Douglas, Karen and the boys.

Almost there!

Hello Friends and Family,

We are so excited to give you a quick update on the progress of our fast approaching trip. Just over a month ago our airline had a great deal on tickets and with the help of some friends were able to purchase the tickets but we are still needing to raise the funds to cover most of the cost. We have also had a lot of extra expenses as we prepare for our trip so if you would like to help us with some of these costs it would be a great blessing and encouragement.

It is crazy to think that we leave for Houston in less than two weeks. We will spend a week there with Douglas' family and then head on to Amsterdam for a conference and from there on to other locations. We posted more details in our last blog post so if you want you can read there.

We have rented a storage unit to store our belongings here in Costa Rica. It is nice and not to far from our house. We have already started moving items but the big move will be this coming Friday/Saturday. We are still praying about our van, whether we should loan it to someone while we are gone or just store it.

Please be praying for our family as we say good by, some of our friends will not be here when we get back and that has been very hard already. Pray for the boys as we travel around a lot this next year and for their home schooling that we will continue to stay on task. Pray for our packing process that we will not stress out too much and will be able to get everything done on time. Pray also for all of the tasks that have to be done as we tie up loose ends here in Costa Rica. A big answer to prayer, we had a family offer to take care of our dog, Sparky, while we are gone. The boys are so happy!

Also so you all know we will be more discrete in our communication, using email more and putting less on the blog/facebook.

Thanks for all your prayer and support. God has already shown himself to be so faithful in this whole process. We will see you all in December!

D&K

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

As we take a minute to look back over last year and look forward to this new year in front of us, we are so thankful for Gods continued direction for us as a family and for us in our ministry. 

Most of you know about two years ago we started home schooling the boys knowing that God was calling us to be more mobile. That has been such an amazing blessing as we have been able to travel as a family. Back in April last year many of you will remember that  we were able to travel through Central America. Then just a few months later we had a visit to the States where we got to see many of you and make connections. It was a great visit but too short as we missed seeing so many people we would have loved to see. (That's why we are planning a much longer visit at the end of this year, but more about that later.) And most recently as you hopefully saw in our last few posts we got to travel to Nicaragua for some meetings that were held to bring all the bases in Central America together. It was so amazing to go and feel like we were among family. We knew people from every location and felt so at home with them. Douglas was also able to meet with a group of them that are interested specifically in unreached people groups like we are.  Karen took Zachariah and headed to Honduras where she had an amazing time teaching and ministering to the staff and students of the base in Siguatepeque. In all of these times home schooling has been a blessing as we could all go together but at the same time these last few months have been so busy that is has been a challenge. 

If you look back at our post from October we listed some of the events that kept us possibly busier then we have ever been; including Douglas teaching in D.C., Karen hosting Thanksgiving for about 165 people,
 








 






She was also in charge of Christmas decorating and Christmas dinner at the base.




 











 

We had a National YWAM retreat where Karen got the pleasure of baptizing a girl she has been disciplining,

  
And during all of this craziness we had some of our favorite people come for visits including a last minute visit from Karen's best friend from childhood, Holly. It was so great to see familiar faces from home.





 To top it all off our car ended up in the shop for about 6 weeks! But we kept pressing on and with God's faithfulness made it through to another Bible school graduation followed by a short break for Christmas and New Years.
As we have shared before we are very excited for what God has laid on our hearts for this next year. Starting in just a few weeks we will lead and participate in an Islamic studies seminar at the base here. Then in March we will be taking a big leap of faith and traveling to another part of the globe where they have not heard the Gospel as openly as we have. We will take a course on reaching unreached peoples and then travel to different locations with the purpose of making contacts, living in the culture and seeing what God is doing first hand. In all we will be there for about 81/2 months hopefully with a week long stop in Holland at the beginning of the trip for a YWAM conference and a quick visit with some good friends. After the 8+ months comes to an end we plan to head to the States for about three months to see all of you. Then back to Coast Rica to hopefully use all of our new found knowledge to raise up and send out Latinos into those areas where people so desperately need the Gospel.  

We have already started sorting through our house and are beginning to pack up as we know the next couple months are going to pass quickly. We are also needing to buy tickets soon and as we look at the cost of the trip  we are hoping that once we are there our current monthly support will be enough to sustain us but the major extra cost of course will be travel. We will most likely be looking at several different tickets, One from Costa Rica to Houston then Houston to Europe with a stop over then continuing on to the destination of the course we will be attending. After that we will hopefully be traveling between three to four different countries. Then we would head back to Houston, then on to Portland and home to Costa Rica again a few months later. Of course we won't need all the travel money before we leave just enough for the first leg of the trip which we believe will be around $1500 each person. This includes one way tickets to Houston then our round trip tickets from Houston to Europe/ME and back again. We have found some great deals, but know we need to book soon. 

Please be praying with us as we prepare both in the physical packing etc., and spiritually as well. Please pray against anxiety and stress for all of us and that we will continue to trust in the Lord as we  move forward.

Many blessings in this New Year,

Karen, Douglas, Gabriel and Zachariah