Here we are in New Brunswick, visiting family and awaiting the time to fly off to Africa. I can hardly believe that we only have 10 days left until we fly away. There are moments of excitement, fear, anxiety, thrills, and so on... But all in all we are ready to go. It would be one thing to embark on such a change as a single or married couple, but with 4 children in tow it makes things a little more challenging. Some of you have asked, "How did you come to this decision?". So I thought I would write a little about how we got to this point and where we feel God is leading us.
As children both Pete and I grew up in missionaries families on reserves across Canada. We both felt a call to the mission field when we were young. However, after growing up and getting married we drifted away from our vision of missions and began to pursue a future with a good job, kids, money, things, etc! However, we never felt at peace with pursuing happiness in that manner. A couple of years ago Pete went to a prayer conference that changed his life. God was working in my life also with a Bible Study that I was attending with a group of friends. God drew us both into a matching vision to pursue missions now rather than later in life (which we had discussed for years... "When we retire"). However God had other plans, and as He began to reveal His plan for us, we began to grow excited about what He had in store for us. So we began to search on the internet for the needs of the children in Africa, and through many hours, days, months, of searching, emailing, talking to people and seeking God's direction... We were directed to a church organization in Angola, Africa who had been working on developing an orphanage project for the past 5 years. We are thrilled to join them in a few weeks and begin this journey that God has for us working along side the UIEA (Uniao de Igrejas Evangelical de Angola... Union of Evangelical Churches of Angola).
For the first year we will work on learning Portuguese, learning the culture, developing friendships, becoming involved in the church in Namibe, and developing a vision for an orphanage near Namibe. We are excited with what God has in store, we don't know all of the details, but we know that God is in control and He will work out those details as time goes on.
We would appreciate your prayers as we fly out in 10 days, on June 28th at 8:15PM from Moncton NB arriving in Montreal at 8:44PM... Pray that we meet our connecting flight to London at 10:30PM without any problems, and that our luggage is transferred to our plane. We appreciate all of your prayers and love during this journey, we are so thankful for those of you who have been praying, writing, calling, and giving toward what God has called us to. THANK YOU!
God is GOOD... ALL the time!
Love,
Charlene for the gang!
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