Update and Preparations

It's been a little less than one month since our last post, but so much has changed in regards to Australia. In the 2-week time period that we spent in Sydney for the 6-day campus ministry leadership training camp and for setting up our living arrangements, God has really moved our hearts in wonderful ways.

1. Dan and I feel 100 times more confident about and comfortable with our future mission work in Australia. Being in Sydney this time around, with the mindset that it will be our new home for at least one year, was entirely different from our initial vision trip. We looked at each street, house, building, person with a new lens. And it was great! It only got us more excited to get started!

2. We were tremendously blessed. This is the main reason Dan and I feel so much more at ease with the decision to jump the pond. Before we could only imagine the extent of our involvement, the people we'd be working with, those we'd be ministering to...basically our spiritual environment. And though we by no means got a full taste, we finally got our feet wet! (And that sentence had too many metaphors.) Both the SOW (Student Outreach to the World) training camp and the two Sunday worships that we had with HCC (Harbour City Church) were . I can't really find the right words to describe. At the SOW camp, Dan and I connected with so many of the university students and it only made us more eager to go back to Sydney and connect more! And at Harbour City, though the intimacy of a home church can be awkward and uncomfortably confronting, in some ways it is sweeter and purer. Worshipping with a handful of brothers and sisters who are committed to the same goal and share in the same ambitious vision with you is so spiritually....warming?? (Why does English feel like a foreign language right now. I can't find the right adjectives. Everything's a metaphor.) In any case, Dan and I can't wait to get to Sydney and start our work there!

And an update on where we are now, what we're doing:
We have officially started the preparations to make the big move. We've sent out support letters, made our health check up rounds, bought a full year's worth of our meds, paid our last month's rent, started moving boxes from our little studio into our parent's homes aka storage... and we've got our visas! That may sound like we've done quite a bit, but there's SOOOO much more! We have yet to sell our cars, cancel our insurance/phone plan/cable, transfer money to our Aussie bank, meet up with all of our friends at least one last time, do a missions presentation at our church, pack and so on! Plus we have about 30 birthdays this month including Dan's niece's dol.

So please do pray for us this month. Pray that we would get all these things taken care of soon, but pray also that in the midst of the chaotic hustle and bustle we wouldn't neglect the WHO in all of this. We need to daily spend time in God's word and in prayer because the last thing we want is to leave the States physically exhausted, mentally unprepared, and spiritually dry.

Oh! And please stay tuned for updates!