Colombia Story (Email 2 of 3)

I sent this email out on Friday, March 15th to our friends and family.  I was encouraged by several people to blog this email and the other 2.  I hope you enjoy reading about what's happened in our lives over the past month.

What a week this has been!  Lauren and I were talking this morning, and we decided that one of the coolest things we've taken away from this week, is that we've realized that so many people are for us - cheering for us, praying for us, providing for us, sacrificing for us.  It's been so cool to get phone call after phone call and email after email, from our friends and family, letting us know that they want to help.  Thank you so much for helping us raise the money that we need, to go visit the place where we will, Lord willing, spend the next several years of our lives.  

We reached our goal yesterday evening and still, people continued to email and call, asking if they could give in the "last hour," this morning.  What a blessing!   In total, we've received $2350 in given or pledged money!  Thank you so much to all of you who gave and prayed for us during this time.  We are so grateful.  For those of you who were waiting for this email to send in your money, please feel free to do so now!  We'll be buying the plane tickets this afternoon/evening and we're already in the process with the Passports.  If you wanted to give but didn't get around to it, please feel free to save that money for later.  If we move to Colombia in September, we'll most likely need to do this all over again and would greatly appreciate your donations at that time!  If you have any questions, please feel free to give us a call or email us.  We'd love to talk!

There are so many stories I could tell from this week that encouraged our faith in huge ways.  But I wanted to share one in particular that we thought was especially cool.  

We made the decision yesterday, that we were not going to take Annie with us for this short week in April.  A number of reasons went into that decision, but we felt like it was the wisest decision we could make, taking all things into account.  We were planning on letting her stay with my Mom (Annie's "Nana") and Dad during that time.  I was talking with my Mom yesterday afternoon though, and she told me that she was actually going to be in North Carolina for her Mom's birthday - she'd bought the tickets several weeks ago before we even knew of this opportunity in Colombia, and it was going to be for almost the exact dates we'd be gone.  For the rest of the day yesterday, we were trying to think of people who could possibly watch Annie for a day or two at a time.  I called my sister that evening to see if she'd be willing to help out a little bit, and she said she thought she could help out for a few days, but that their schedule is, very understandably, (with 5 kids) busy.  Last night, as Lauren and I were praying before going to sleep, I prayed very specifically, that a situation would present itself where Annie could stay with the same people for the entire time and that it would be a perfect fit for Annie, where she would have a ton of fun with people she already knew, and that we would feel very confident in sending her into that situation.  We finished praying, and literally, 1 or 2 minutes later, I got a text from my sister which said, "I was looking at my calendar, and seriously...Annie can stay with us from Tuesday (or even Monday night) until the weekend, we could even keep her the whole time!!!"  

Wow.  Thank you Lord!  What a joy it is to know that there are so many people who are for us.  But how much greater it is to know that our heavenly Father is for us, leading and directing us every step of the way.  We can't wait to see what He has planned for us in Colombia.

"What then shall we say to these things?"

Thank you so much for everything!  We'll be sure to keep you updated as things happen. 

For Him,

Robbie and Lauren