Thursday, September 24, 2009

You can’t go around hugging missionaries!

Dan and I are at our daughter’s college (Trinity College of Florida) missionary conference.  We set up our booth yesterday a.m. and were prepared when classes were dismissed.  Dawn walked by our booth with a group of her friends.  When she got to the end of the table, I was standing there and she gave me a big hug.  One of her classmates gave a gasp, her hand flew to her mouth and she said, “Dawn you can’t go around hugging the missionaries!”  Dawn turned around and “She’s my mom!”.  Her friend’s eyes flew open wide and the look of chagrin on her face was priceless.  Everyone around had a great laugh about it.  She knew Dawn was an MK, missionary kid, so she figured that due to that Dawn felt a real affinity toward missionaries and was going around hugging the missionaries.  She didn’t know we were her parents.  It really was hilarious!

As the students were milling around, perusing the booths, the school’s 4 Haitians found our booth.  One of them picked up the Creole hymnal that we have out and found her favorite hymn.  She started singing and the others joined in.  They stood there and sang all the verses.  A crowd formed and listened to the impromptu concert in a foreign language.  It was cool.  Each one of them have made an effort to find us from time to time during the day to say hi and talk about Haiti.

Yesterday, the first day of the conference, also found me having an interesting conversation with the Child Evangelism Fellowship missionary at his booth.  He is what I call a ripple effect.  He quit the military to become a missionary because of the ministry and influence of my dad who was a CEF missionary to the US military in Germany.  When he got to the US for CEF’s training institute, my dad was one of his teachers.  One can never tell how far out your ministry will ripple!  It brought tears to my eyes.  I wish my dad knew how far his ripples have reached!  (My dad died of ALS in 2002.)

Today has been a good day of interaction with the students at our booth, at meals and in chapel.  It’s been fun to meet Dawn’s friends, too, and to see her going through “the college experience”.  Tonight Dan will have 7 minutes to share with the student body.

Tomorrow we will have a 45 minute workshop (one of several offered).  The conference ends at lunch time.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Rob is in Haiti

One more update:  Rob is in Haiti this week, Sept. 21 – 25, 2009.  He is working on RMI’s finances there and taking care of other administrative details.  Pray that the electricity stays on and the internet is stable so that he and the missionary staff will be able to accomplish all that needs to be done during this time.  Pray for Becky as she is home alone with the kids.

We have power and other updates!

The RMI office finally has power!  It was turned on at 6 p.m. Friday.  We started the work with in the 20th century….there was power, but no internet and no phones.  Dan had to work all day on that.  After a frustrating day, he was finally able to resolve it and bring us into the 21st century.  Wow.  We are very thankful that we can get down to business now.

Debbie sent out 4 orders of orientation materials today!  Teams are preparing for their upcoming visit to their Sister Churches.  We are really excited about the updated Orientation Training that we now have available.  Our goal is to make sure that a team member is well prepared when they arrive and ready to minister and be ministered to.

Dan and Debbie had a great time in Ft. Lauderdale.  The team there did a fantastic job of sharing their how their visit with their Sister Church impacted their lives.  They had a great video and photo collection, shared a Creole song and testimonies.  The pastor worked his message around the team, challenging the church to get out of their comfort zone (as each person on the team had done) and minister locally and globally.  We were there for all 3 services and had 2 meals with the team.  Dan had gone to Haiti with this team, so it was good to re-connect with them and see how their trip had impacted their lives.

Friday, September 18, 2009

The Stone Age, Travels and Hard Work

**The RMI has been thrown back to the stone age. We have all been working from home, Panera Bread and cell phones for more than a week now. Thieves stole the power cables (a LOT of thick, heavy cables!) that fed a transformer from the street and then from the transformer to the office building a week ago. This left the office with no power. It took a while to diagnose the problem since the cables were all underground, then a police investigation, then the power company and electricians had to re-install everything, then the county inspection…….and now we are waiting for the power company to come back and flip the switch to put us back on the grid. Wow! We are so reliant on electricity to power everything, even the phones. It’s been frustrating to say the least. If anyone has been waiting for orientation materials to be shipped, information or answers to your questions, or calls to be returned, please be patient with us just a little longer. We are praying that power will be restored today and we can start the new week back in the office.

**Dan and Debbie travel to Ft. Lauderdale this weekend to be with Florida Bible Church. They are a new Sister Church and their first team to go to Haiti is giving their report to the church this weekend in all of the church’s services. It’ll be great to see the team and hear how their lives have been impacted.

Dan and Debbie will travel to Trinity College of Florida (where their daughter, Dawn, is a freshman) this coming Wednesday to participate in the college’s 3 day missions conference. They’ll have a booth set up during that time, but will also have an opportunity to share in chapel and have a 45 minute workshop for the students. The workshop is entitled “I am Green, how about you?” It’s not the being green concept that is thought of today. Pray it’ll bring in the students that God wants to challenge for missions.

**Rob and Becky are hard at work raising their support. They are at 80% of their monthly need and 26% of their one time needs. These last funds are traditionally the hardest part to raise, so really uphold them in prayer as they face this challenge. Rob is also hard at work at the office trying to finish projects and get things ready for him to hand them over to someone else. No, we don’t know who that “someone else” is yet, but we are earnestly seeking God’s guidance as to who that “someone else” will be!! Pray with us – it is a very key part of running the day to day operations of RMI.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Moses News!

From the Moses' blog:

Yes, we have closed! Hooray! Yipee! Yes! and any other words that you can think of to describe our joy.

After 8 long weeks we finally closed last Wednesday August 26th. We were in Texas during the first part of June and put together a contract to close on June 28th. The Moses family returned to Haiti and packed all of our things and headed to Port-au-Prince. In Port we boarded a DC-3 to Ft. Pierce, FL with our 3 dogs and 2 cats. We spent the night in Ft. Pierce and woke up the next morning to life in America. We loaded up all of our belongs and animals with the help of Rob Thompson and Dan Shoemaker into a 16 foot Penske Truck and headed to Texas. This was on a Friday morning. By Saturday evening we were in Texas. Welcome home to the Lone Star State! We were tired, but very excited to be with family and to be moving into our new home on the following Tuesday.

Oh but wait! The mortgage company and the US department of agriculture got involved. We had worked out our loan through the USDA because they were offering a $0 down program aimed at developing rural areas. This is a great deal except for one thing. Everybody in America it seems, that is purchasing a home is doing it through USDA. As a result, every day we would ask…today? And every day we would get the response, “no, maybe tomorrow”.

Finally everything was approved and we were able to close last Wednesday. We were so excited, we started moving in that night and slept there. By 10am the next morning, our storage room was empty and most of our stuff was at least in the garage.

We are very grateful to God and are enjoying setting up our new home. The animals are beginning to settle down and feel like they are home too.

Now if we can only figure out where to put everything!!!!IMG_5129

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Read about Rob and Becky's adventures in Haiti

Rob and Becky had a great time in Haiti.  They were able to accomplish quite a bit, experience a lot and came back glowing with excitement about their impending move there.

Here is the beginning of their blog entry when they got back:

"It was truly phenomenal.  We are excited, and want to go tomorrow.  But, funds must be raised first and cross cultural training must be acquired.  Our plan is to go in March.  Help us get there!

For those who are interested, here is an overview of what we did… "

You'll find the rest of the entry, a day by day account of their adventure, at Rob and Becky's blog.  We share their joy and excitement!