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
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