T minus 30 hours

Our team is packed, trained and ready to go! We are so excited about what God has in store for us.

Our team has changed a little in the past two days, as Melodee, Jesse and Molly will not be able to join us due to some unexpected circumstances. Our prayers are with them!

We have been able to find three new members to take there place. Andrea, Brielle and Tonya are joining us! For these three, this is an amazing leap of faith to join the trip with very little notice. I'm a grateful that they are able to jump in!

As we get all take care of the final arrangements before we leave, I would like to personally thank Melodee and Todd for their efforts in planning and leading the effort to make this trip a reality. Todd and I started the conversation about this trip 18 months ago, and Melodee joined in 15 months back. For different reasons, neither of them are able to make the trip. Yet both are selfless in their joy that our team is going. It has been a great privilege of mine to work with these two awesome individuals. Thank you!

Well, have to go finish packing. Our next update will be upon our arrival in Texas!

2 Weeks to go!

We are down to our last two weeks before we travel. We have been greatly blessed by the outpouring of support as we prepare for this adventure. Many of our financial needs have been met, and our request for tools for the trip has been graciously taken care of!

Our Spanish is improving... still not fluent but hopefully enough to communicate basic greetings! We have pre-recorded puppet shows in Spanish using a few of our talented, Spanish speaking teens on our team.

We have been told that the camp we are staying at will have internet capability, so watch during the week of Feb 25 to Mar 3 for updates. We will post pictures and stories.

Thanks again for your support!

God is great!

Our team has been blessed with substantial prayer and financial support so far. When our team signed up for the trip, we were estimating the cost to be $1500 per person. God has provided some ways for us to reduce this cost (we found greatly reduced airfare), but God has also blessed us abundantly with family, friends and other donors who have been willing to fund our trip.

In particular, we have two single moms on our team who have been trying to figure out how they were going to be able to come up with the funding. Each has sent out letters to family and friends who have responded generously. And both have had to write out some their own checks to make our payment schedule, even when they were not sure how they could put together the funds. Today God blessed our socks off with an anonymous donor who wanted to help out with "single moms and their kids" to be able to go on the mission. This donation provided the remaining funds for each of these families to now be 100% funded to go!

With the preparation and resources that God is providing for us, I cannot wait to see what happens on the trip! He has some major things planned for us... we just have to be faithful and follow His leading! This trip really is not about us anyways... we just get to be used by Him for His purposes. How cool is that!

God's Blessings and Merry Christmas!
-MJ