Christmas Eve

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the houses,
Every creature was sleeping, except for Jessica and Rachel who were awake from all of their excitement…."

 Or something like that, anyhow.

 With Christmas Eve upon us, Jessica and I have only a few days left until we depart from Panama!

 
The fundraising is done.
Packing is nearly finished.
We are busy putting the final things we need into our bags, double-checking our packing lists, and excitedly texting each other.
 
Nerves.

Excitement.

Anticipation.

 

We were able to spend some time last night talking and shopping for some Christmas gifts for the island kids, and we are both ready to go! While there is still some anxiety for both of us, as there always will be with any situation that includes a lot of 'unknowns', we are both incredibly excited as well!

 

As Christmas Day approaches, we both have been careful to take a moment and reflect on the incredible gift of love and sacrifice, and the humility that Christ showed when he first arrived on Earth as a tiny baby all those years ago. Those qualities are ones that we hope to bring with us and display brightly as we tell the people in Panama about the true gift of Christmas - Christ - and what an incredible gift that was. It is such an excitement and joy to be a messenger to carry that good news to others, whether across the street or across the globe. Our prayer for you is that you would take a moment to pause in this season that, all too often, becomes hectic and busy, and rest in the peace of God's presence, in the Immanuel - God with us.

 "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." Isaiah 9:6

 

 Take the time to rest in His peace and His presence, and rejoice in His goodness and graciousness He has shown to us.

 

Merry Christmas!

The church on one of the islands has a homemade paper Christmas tree!

Final Update On Our Fundrasing

Hey Everyone,

Rachel and I are leaving THIS Friday!! We are so exited and can not believe we will be leaving so soon. The time has flown by so quickly. Rachel and I decided to commit to going on this Panama mission trip early in October, which meant that we each had to fundraise about $2,500 in two and a half months. The thing was - we knew we couldn't fundraise that much money in that short amount of time, combined with the fact that both of us were in college for those months which meant we were going to be occupied with assignments and classwork leaving us a limited amount of time to spend working on our fundraising.

Rachel and I are both fully funded!! Thank you!!

We knew we couldn't do it, but we knew someone who could. God could easily handle this task. Only God could provide for us in these circumstances. We trusted God to provide for us even when the time came closer and closer and it could seem like we couldn't make our goal. God used each one of our friends, family members, church family, and even strangers to complete the  fundraising goal. We are so encouraged by the thoughtfulness and generosity of everyone who donated. Your kind words of encouragement and prayers are also a blessing and mean a lot to us. We honestly could not have done this without all of your support!

Less than three weeks!

Hello everyone!

Well, with less than three weeks to go before we leave, Jessica and I are getting super excited!

We bought our plane tickets a few weeks ago, so our flight itinerary is finalized. We will be leaving the day after Christmas, and we have a pretty long layover in Texas. We'll be in Panama on the 27th! We have been finishing up our fundraising (watch for another post on that), buying some things we need to take with us on the trip, and are getting ready to start packing.

We each still have about a week left of the semester for school, so I know that preparations for the trip will really get underway as soon as we are finished with finals.

Some things that you can be praying about as we are leading up to the trip are:

Some of the flooding in the San Blas.

• Pray for the people of Panama, especially those we will be working with, that their hearts would be open to the Gospel.
• Pray that God would do incredible things in us and through us.
• Pray for our hearts and minds to be open to what God has for us.
• Pray for safety and health throughout the entire trip for the team.
• Pray for the safety of the families on the islands - they have had some pretty heavy flooding in the past few weeks.




More flooding.
 


• Pray for the last bit of our fundraising to come in!

The way that God has been bringing everything together for this trip has been incredible! Jessica and I have already seen him working in some amazing ways, and we can't wait to see what He will do once we arrive in Panama!