52 days and 22 minutes

I can't believe we are 52 days away!! When we started this journey it seemed like a lifetime away and now it's a month and 1/2 away...it has FLOWN!

God continues, of course, to provide all our needs...He continues to challenge our thinking and yes, even satan has tried to attack us (as we knew he would try!) BUT...satan is a big fat loser, and God is God and so we know that every step of the way will be full of miracles and deliverance and challenges and mercies and ultimately life changing events...

As one of the sponsors, I've realized that my expectations for people are VERY high (sometimes too high i'm afraid)...I think i've possibly expected too much at times, from these sweet high school girls...i forget some of these sweet gals haven't ever traveled, and I forget sometimes, they ARE only in high school. :) I know i've been a little hard on them at times and at the end of the day my heart is that we look at this experience as a TEAM...sadly so much of the time in our lives (especially when you are young and invincible) we seem to look at the world and at every experience through the eyes of "me myself and I" and I so want this experience, even before we are in Africa, to be all about servanthood and work ethic and putting others before ourselves. I'll be honest, it's a lesson even I have trouble with so many times, but I do want these girls to be able to put themselves last or at least not first as we work together as a team to accomplish some goals that God has put before us to equip us for serving the beautiful children at the Village of Hope.

I've been OVERLY blessed by some of my friends who have been to the Village of Hope in the past couple of months. God allowed a dear friend in Dallas, Tara Seidman, to go over a month and 1/2 ago and just recently a friend from college, Jeff McMillon went to Ghana for almost a month with a group of his college kids from Oklahoma Christian. So many blessings came from this, but some of the prayers that God answered was that Jeff and his team took a TON of our albums over for us for the kids to do faith albums when we are there...when I say a TON, I mean hundreds of albums, pages, protectors and supplies. Tara and Jeff took lots of pictures for us of the sweet kids and now we have hundreds of pictures already developed to take over with us so the kiddos will already have pictures for their albums. Don't you just love how God ordained these events even before we are born knowing what our needs will be when we are obedient to His calling in our journey...it's so amazing that it's hard to really wrap your brain around...or at least it is for me. Anyway...I want to thank TARA and JEFF and RACHAEL (a professional photographer from Dallas) who graciously took lots of pictures so we would have them before we even went to Ghana...you all are a blessing and we THANK GOD for you!

Please be in prayer for our team as we work on our faith albums to take with us to share with the kids. We still have about $2000+ dollars to raise as a team to have the finances to finish getting the things we need for our projects we will be doing with the kids and even some of our girls are still trying to raise their money to finish paying for their flights and lodging. We KNOW God will provide, but we would love your prayers on our behalf.

If you have facebook, feel free to go to mine and you can see a ton of our kids that we are going to get to love on at the orphanage. It made it all so real and so much more exciting when I got the pictures and actually saw their faces and their eyes and even their hearts. I know God has AMAZING things planned for our time there and we just pray that we will be his heart and his hands in every way.

That's all for now...I'm going to try and be better about writing...so much on my mind, but my heart is to share as much as our journey with all of you as possible. Thank you for your prayers and for encouraging us however you are called.

Counting down the days ~ kimberli