Fall Update

“This is a time of abundance in your life. Your cup runneth over with blessings. After plodding uphill for many weeks, you are now traipsing through lush meadows drenched in warm sunshine.”

This was a passage from one of my morning devotionals and it truly sums up our lives.  We have been overwhelmingly blessed since we last wrote to you at the end of September.  The Lord’s plans were truly better than anything we could have imagined.

To start with, our house has sold!!!!  Yes, that is a true answer to many people’s prayers.  We thank you for praying with us about this and give thanks and praise to the One who made this happen.  Our house was on the market for less than 2 months and the Lord sent the right family.  They are a wonderful Christian family who are making changes in their life so that they can begin doing more mission work with their church.  God answered both of our prayers with this!  He handles things much better when we surrender it to Him.

Language learning is progressing.  We would love to be fluent at this point but we are constantly reminded by our instructor and others here in the program that it doesn’t work that way.  Our instructor described it as standing under an umbrella that slowly starts to get holes in it and lets a little light through at a time.  We are starting to get more holes in the umbrella and are beginning to see a little more light.  Please continue to pray for ease of language learning and for more holes in our umbrella.

Another blessing is that our 90 day visa has been renewed.  When you arrive in Portugal you are given a 90 day visitor visa.  We must leave the country for a minimum of 24 hours before returning to receive another visa.  We were able to successfully complete this on Monday and now have another 90 day visa.

The girls are still doing really well with living in Portugal.  They dearly miss their friends from home but thankfully they have been able to skype or facetime with some of them and that eases the burden.  They love hearing from home so please contact them on facebook or email if you can.  We have also been blessed with other girls their age here that they have met.  God provides for our needs and He knows of my daughter’s need for friends.  McKenna has even been babysitting her language instructor’s guinea pig since the second week that we came here.  As most of you know, McKenna LOVES animals.

Our container made it safely to Angola.  It arrived in port the first week in November.  We had received the Ministry of Health document a week or so beforehand but only realized right before arrival that it had the wrong invoice number on it.  The Lord intervened again and what could have been a 2 month process was corrected in a week.  Praise Him for His continual faithfulness!  Now we ask for your prayers to see the container through customs and pray that they do not require an inspection.  An inspection can take quite a bit of time and can also cost quite a bit of money.  A good missionary friend in Angola is handling all of this for us and he went through the inventory multiple times with the folks in Angola before it was sent.  Pray that the Lord will see this through in His time!

We are so encouraged to receive emails or notes from you all.  We have even received some care packages from home.  It was like Christmas when they arrived!!  Your generosity is amazing and we deeply appreciate all you do for us!!  Thank you all for your continued prayers and support.  We couldn't be here without your faithfulness in supporting us.  Thank you all for joining us in God’s journey.

In Him,

Danny, April, Riley, & McKenna