Since I am kind of lazy and it is late, I am copying something that I sent to my Aunt and Uncle when they asked how things are going. Here it is.
We are moving forward with our 2 year trip to the Dominican Republic. Our main focus right now is to raise the funds. A few weeks ago, we had a garage sale and raised about $1700. That is a good start to our goal and we had a lot of help for our friends who donated the things that we sold. What is so amazing about that $1700 is that most of it was not our stuff. What a blessing!
We are also preparing our home to either sell it or rent it, not sure which we will do yet. There are sooooo many things that we have to do to get ready to go, that we have lists of lists. It is easy to become overwhelmed, so we are just trying to take it step by step and Trust in God. Please keep us in your prayers.
If we can raise the funds in time, we plan to leave for our 2 year trip sometime around next March/April. Teri and I and our two oldest boys, Alec and Marcus are flying down there in late August to get a feel for everything from what we will be doing, to where we will live and also experience the culture. We will have to find a place to live and our contacts down there said they found us a fully furnished 3 bedroom home that we could rent for 20,000 pesos ($500) /month. This would be huge because finding a place that is fully furnished would save us about $5000, since we would not have to buy furniture. Along the lines of fund raising, our church is letting us stand up in front of the congregation on Sunday, July 7th and 14th to let people know about what we are doing. They will also take an offering for us during those services.
This is a great adventure and we are so thankful that God has put it on our hearts to go. We also know that it won’t be easy giving things up and leaving our family and friends. It is stretching us in a lot of ways, but that’s a good thing too. Looking forward, we would love to see family come down and work for a week with us in the mission.
Well that is about it for tonight and this basic update on how things are going. There is a lot more to share so more posts will come. Thanks for checking in.If you want to check out more about the mission we will be joining, here is a link to the site. If you do, make sure to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the home page and watch the video.
The Santiago Experience
Posted by Matt and Teri
