Today is our last day as "semi-permanent" residents of Indianapolis. Tomorrow we head off to Ohio to spend Thanksgiving with our families. It's such a sad moment for us. Six months ago we knew a total of four people here in Indy. God showed Himself faithful and opened up a wealth of relationships in the short time we've been here. We've seen our support grow, new friendships established, and our own hearts transformed. And, now we're moving on - sad that we won't be living here anymore, but excited that we're moving closer to leaving for Germany.
We'll be spending the next two weeks enjoying both our families. Through most of January, we'll be traveling around the Midwest visiting supporters and churches. We plan on coming back to Indianapolis for a short visit in February before we head off to our Pre-Field Training in North Carolina in the middle of that month. Please be praying for all of the arrangements that have be made and the traveling we'll be doing.
We just want to say thank you to all of our friends in Indianapolis. All of you have truly become a family to us, and we are so excited that we'll have a home for many years to come here. We will miss all of you. Thankfully, it's not good-bye. We can't wait to see you guys later this winter.
I just noticed today that we hadn't posted any updates since before Thanksgiving. My bad, guys. We had a really nice Thanksgiving spending it with family in both Ohio and Virginia. In the back of our minds, we realized that this was probably the last Thanksgiving we would spend in the States for a long time. Regardless, our attention was fixed on family fun all week. It was refreshing to be with loved ones.
Over the break we actually came to a very important decision in regards to support. On our way from my parent's home to Kathi's, we stopped at a Columbus Panera so that we could Skype with the GEM Germany field director. In the conversation, he affirmed our decision to change our status from long-term to short-term. This doesn't change our personal desire to commit long-term to the mission, but it does change our support status with the organization. The most immediate result was the lowering of our support goal by $1,000 per month!
With this decision, we are now "in the barn" so to speak (any midwesterners who played Euchre growing up would recognize that). We are at 88%, and we are on the verge of completing our monthly support. Please be praying for the next couple of weeks. We still have a lot to do here in Indianapolis for Christmas, and then after the holiday we'll be preparing for training in February.
