God's grace, God's suprises, and God's timing

It has been so long since I've posted... I am still alive and growing tremendously in Christ which He sometimes calls us to do alone, or sometimes without those things we tend to hang onto... blogging being a most recent one these past couple of years...

Things in our life seem very normal yet they definitely are not. We are having an opportunity right now to do here what we hope to do in France and/or Europe someday. I came across a not yet launched church plant where the pastor felt called to start this church in downtown Raleigh, yet confessed was struggling with how to do it. We began visiting this church and after a number of weeks Ken had an opportunity to meet with the pastor and he was dumbfounded at everything we were seeing and everything that really needed to take place before you could successfully launch a church. He invited Ken to come talk with their leadership team and he blew them away also with all the information we had learned over the past 3-4 years visiting churches all over the U.S. and going to some really great church conferences. The pastor then invited Ken to basically help them start from scratch with everything they now needed to do, even offering for Ken to lead a conference for their leadership team and/or their core group leading them up to a launch.

For the first time I really saw how God has put together and prepared us (okay prepared Ken) to do what God has put on our hearts to do in France. We want to help people plant successful growing churches in France and Europe relevant to the needs of the people they are reaching. I always kind of wondered what it would look like... and now I really believe we could hit the ground running. God has prepared and trained my husband in very specific ways that are just amazing when he puts his personality and gifts with it.

For an update, we are still "in process" with the IMB (Southern Baptist- Inernational Mission Board) and really have completed all the paperwork and now just have to sell our house and pay off some debt to be able to go through the indepth interviews and training. We have a couple coming next month from New York to look at our house and sound very interested... but anyone who has sold a house knows nothing is a given until the papers are signed... and I know my God knows about the financial crisis here is the U.S., so we are just praying for patience and to grow in those ways we still need to grow in and learn as we wait on Him. BUT PLEASE PRAY WITH US, because maybe God just want more people to pray for this wall to be torn down.

Okay, now for the next interesting news that has kept me from blogging for the past month (you might need to sit down if you know me very well) but... we are expecting our fifth child in late February... I draw a blank even as I write this. It has been something very challenging for me to get my mind around....or to even talk about. We had not done anything permanent to not have anymore children b/c we did not have insurance the past few years... and now that we do have insurance, I guess God just wanted to slip this in in case we were feeling like we were in control of our lives.

So there I said it... I will blog about this more, but for now I just wanted to say hello and I'm still not sure if I'm back regularly... but since we all need prayer warriors to pray with us and for us and sometimes when we don't know what else to pray... for the sake of lost and dying people in France and Europe pray with us God would remove these barriers and we would be able to get overseas and help those who are already there waiting for us and for those we will recruit to help us. I write this with love and prayers to all who read this and especially to those who have been on this journey so long with us.