Blessings Continue

Praise the Lord for His never ending blessings. We were able to speak in our home church this last Sunday and it was great to fellowship with people that are excited about what God is doing in our lives. I am no longer working at a local hospital, but this has allowed me to accomplish many task in the past two weeks. God has allowed me to contact and inform many people and several churches about our coming time in Japan. It is very encouraging being able to talk to people face to face and both Stephanie and I hope that this will help to grow our prayer and financial partners both in number and in their desire to see God move in Japan. We are still in Lynchburg VA but have set a date of June 18th for our move to North Carolina and a tentative date of Aug 15th as the date we would like to leave for Japan. We are still looking at plane ticket prices so that we can get the best deal possible but hope that we can purchase them soon. As of today we are currently at 17% of our monthly $3200 Support that we need to be in Japan. While $3200 seems like an insurmountable number it is nothing to our God that owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Ps 50:10- I like the farm reference). If we had just 55 more people that would commit to donate $50 a month we would exceed our goal of $3200. We are very grateful to those that have already committed to support us on any level, whether $5 a month, a one time donation, or committing to become a prayer partner. We are extremely thankful for the prayer partners because if somebody is praying for you then you know that they care about you and are willing to take time to intercede on your behalf. Thanks again for all of your thoughts and prayers. Please don't hesitate to call or email if you have any questions, ideas or thoughts.
David

We are moved!!!

Praise the Lord in His infinite wisdom and His perfect timing. Thank you for your prayers for us to get a renter for our home, and praise the Lord He has provided a renter that will move in Saturday, March 24th. We were blessed by several of our friends coming out this past Saturday and helping us move into a small apartment that we will be living in until June; at which time we will be moving down to North Carolina so we can be closer to our home church.

Preparing and Packing Part 3:

Our next stage in the area of preparing and packing is PACKING!!! Tony and Marcia Haug (the missionaries in Japan) told us that the main items that we need to bring with us are clothes. Mostly everything else that we need we will be able to purchase second hand. We were only planning on bringing one bag each with the necessities and purchase clothes there but we were told that we might have trouble finding clothes that fit our exact sizes. Because of this we will be bringing most of the clothes that we want to wear for the next 3 years. We will be able to order clothes online and I will try to go through companies that have free international shipping.

Shimonoseki Japan is very close to the longitude of Virginia, so we will need to bring clothes for all of the seasons. I have been going through our clothes and picking out items that I know we will need and want to take with us. Once we get to Japan storage of large suitcases may be a problem because space is limited in apartments so we are planning on using various sized duffle bags to pack our things because we can fold those up and then store them easily.

Along with clothes, we will be bringing various materials for our English teaching ministries. I have many classroom items that I would love to take with us from my teaching times here in the states but I have narrowed it down to a box full of my favorite things. Many of the worksheets that we want to bring will be scanned and put on a USB so we can print them when we get over there. We were told that this is the easiest way to bring all of the worksheets and materials that we want. 

Preparing and Packing Part 2:

When thinking about packing up everything you own into various sized plastic tote containers, the task can be quite daunting. However, I had some ideas about what I wanted to do. We currently have seven 45 gallon sized plastic tote containers, four that are half that size and a few more various sized plastic containers. I wanted to approach packing room by room, but I also have to consider packing things into some of these containers right before we leave that we will be using up until August. I wanted to pack things together such as all kitchen items in 2 or 3 containers, keepsakes into 1 or 2, and then all bedding and blankets into 1 etc. As I packed a container I wrote on the card and when the container was full I taped the card (along with 4 more copies) to the top and all 4 sides. Others may not know exactly what items are what, but we will. I taped a card to the top and each side so that whichever way the tote is stored, we can always see what is inside. 

Our spare room is being used for staging:

This is the tote that has all of our Christmas decorations, vases and other breakable's, as well as Grandma Kona's tablecloths:

It is ready to go to North Carolina!!!

One thing I also like about these totes is that 1 can fit into the back seat of our car. So as we visit North Carolina we can carry 1 down each time. 

I also sought out the packing advice of David’s Aunt Joy and Aunt Anita. Joy and her family are missionaries with Wycliffe. They served in the Philippians and are now preparing to go to Africa. Anita and her family have served for many years in Bolivia with SIM. These ladies gave me some great advice about specifics for long-term storage.

Heeding to their advice and ideas about how I wanted to organize our belongings I continued to pack and stage things. I have a few containers that only have a few items in them yet because when we have a renter set, these totes will be filled with specific items that we are currently using but will not use when we go to our 1 bedroom apartment. When we do move to an apartment we will be living with just the bare necessities. We are praying that all or at least most of our bigger pieces of furniture get sold before we move from our house. My next post will be about what and how we are preparing to pack to go to Japan.