February 2004

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Dear Family and Friends,

Have you ever climbed a tall mountain and wondered why, until you look out at the view? Have you gone camping with friends, forgetting about showers and a good bed for days or weeks and wondered “What am I doing here” only to realize that you have become closer to those friends than you ever thought possible? These thoughts go through our minds when we think about the circumstances in which we find ourselves having taken our minds off the goals. Jana and I have had those thoughts for the last couple of months. Since November, when we went to New Staff Training, we have been called to do things that we never thought God had wired us to do. The amazing thing that we realized was that while God did not wire us to make phone calls or write letters, He did wire us to trust Him. So, with that said… here we are in February after a crazy but fun January and faith-building December, when Thad resigned from his job to work on raising support fulltime.

At the end of January, we began planning our Vision Trip. What a Vision Trip entails is mainly the opportunity to meet the people with whom we will be working, see the town in which we will live, take many pictures to show all of you, as well as to work out some more details about our jobs. Thad even has a business meeting to discuss plans for new servers in the office. We leave on Monday, February 23 arriving in Basel, Switzerland early Tuesday morning and will return Thursday, March 4 flying out of Paris, France. Basel is about 20 miles south of Kandern, Germany, so we will be renting a car and challenging those Autobahn drivers! It should be a very rewarding time for us to match faces to all of the voices we have heard over the phone, and more importantly to see first hand how God is working in this ministry.

Another exciting venture during our Vision Trip is the opportunity to visit with some friends of ours who are missionaries in London, Jim and Monica Erwin! Since our flight home leaves out of Paris (which is a 5 hour train ride from Kandern and 2 hour train ride from London), we are quite excited to spend the last 3 days of our trip in Paris with them!

In any journey, it is smart to set small goals to get to a final destination. If you will notice, we have a section titled “MPD Update.” In Campus Crusade, the process of raising support is called Ministry Partner Development or MPD for short. So as we initially raise our support, we want to notify our Ministry Partner’s of our monthly provision as well as our goals for the months to come. Please pray for the Lord’s provision and His timing in meeting these financial goals.

Thank you for climbing this mountain with us. We eagerly await the beautiful view that God has prepared for all of our eyes to see.

Blessings,
Thad and Jana