2013: A Year In Review

After spending the afternoon updating all of the non-profit [I sit on the board of Ukraine Orphan Outreach] communication/website/social media sites, I decided I should jump over here and update our blog.

So what happened in 2013 that we'd like to highlight? In 365 days, there was a lot of things that happened, decisions made, friendships formed, chapters closed and new beginnings. So here's our top 12:

January: We spent a couple weeks visiting our family in Missiouri and Kansas. We got to spend a few days with Eric's brother who was in town from South Africa. Audrey celebrated her 4th birthday!

February: I hit my year-one anniversary with Ukraine Orphan Outreach. It had been a fun year of planning and it was gearing up for a very busy year of events.

March: I got an iPhone. [I still do not like it...I'm an android fan for life after giving it a try.] We took the kids to Disney on Ice where Jace was rocking in his stadium chair and flipped forward smacking heads with the girl in front of him. Poor kids were both banged up and I felt terrible for both of them. Fun times. UOO started it's massive push for ticket sales for our 1st Annual Benefit Gala. We, as a family, started our search for a missions agency. My dad turned 60...on vacation in Mexico....without me...still a little jilted he didn't pack me in his suitcase. [First world problems.]

April: Eric applied for a new position and passed two interviews at a new company, which he wasn't selected for, a downer for sure, but it's a position that you have to apply a couple times before they actually select you. He hit is 5 year vested date with the Sheriff's office which was pretty significant. I did my first "speaking" thing for Ukraine Orphan Outreach at the Town of Lyons, introduced ourselves and was the official representative - it was scary, I won't lie. Public speaking is daunting to me. Thankfully they were all very nice and asked good questions. My mom turned ...no comment...you never reveal a woman's true age.

May: For the first time ever, Audrey was "that child" at the store - totally screaming melt down, that resulted in us loosing our place in the checkout line to go deal with her behavior in the family bathroom. Thankful for the older lady who told me I was doing a good job by sticking with my guns to pull out of the line. We started doing Jillian Micheal's 30 Day Shred program....it works, but I hated her every minute of the workouts. We really started dreaming big dreams of being back in Ukraine - interviewed with a few agencies and had some meetings, all taking steps to get us back to the land where our hearts reside. Ukraine Orphan Outreach hosted our very first annual benefit gala. It was a massive success and we raised over $10k towards a transition home. What an exciting day that was! Also my long-lost cousin and his girlfriend and daughter came for a visit. He proposed at my parent's house and we all got to be a part of the beautiful moment!


June: This was a crazy travel month for us. We went to two weddings in June - our nephew's and Eric's highschool friend's [which ironically got rained out - pouring on all the guests, it was very crazy but the bride just went with it]. We spent loads of times with the family, a day on the Black River soaking in the sun [and turning myself into a lobster], and celebrated my 29+1 birthday with my hubby at a Cardinal's game in St. Louis. It was a great month of fun and traveling! Also started wedding planning for my cousin and his fiance.

July: Annalise turned 1 year old this month!! I can't believe it! My baby is no longer a baby any more. She officially loves her Hungarian Papa Sandor's chocolate cake - devoured it in record time at her birthday celebration with family! Ukraine Orphan Outreach sent a missions team to the Donets'k region of eastern Ukraine to work on repairing our boy's transition home; they also spent one week at a summer camp for orphans/troubled youth. My great uncle passed away this month, uncle Marvin was a unique and humorous man. We spent much of this month helping my parents clean, pack and re-arrange their home to put on the market in August or September - they are wanting to move to a lower elevation.Crazy time of wedding planning, getting everything pulled together for my cousin and his fiance who live out of state but were having a Colorado wedding.

August: The wedding day arrived! It was such a beautiful family weekend full of restoration [my cousin and his sister hadn't spoken in 7 years, and he wasn't very close to his mom at the moment either]. It really was amazing how God restored relationships that had been dormant for so long. The wedding was wonderful, beautiful and full of joy at the union of two people. What a day! Colorado also had one of the hottest months on record and the first few days of school were actually canceled [we Colorado people don't need no stinkn air conditioners!]. Audrey started Pre-K at Resurrection Fellowship School. We also lost one of our beloved church elders to cancer - he has been around since my childhood, and it's been a strange adjustment not to have him with us. My sister turned 39+1 this month...yep, she's ancient like nearly 10 years older than me ancient. I'm a spring chicken. Ha!

September: Happy birthday Eric! Hubby celebrated his 32nd birthday on the 21st. One of my bestie's came for a visit from Oregon for a week, which is always a highlight because we play a massive amount of board games while she's in town - lots of smack talking and making memories! I discovered the "Lizzie Bennett Diaries" on YouTube...late night marathons. Colorado was hit with a 1000 Year Flood. It was a really crazy week of being surrounded by water, all the canyons up to my parents house had the roads destroyed and the National Guard had our town on lockdown. WILD! We had our friends stay with us for a night that had been evacuated from their neighborhood. It was an intense time, lots of loss for our beautiful state. I'm still processing the memories as I now drive the reconstructed roads to my parent's home and see all the damage that the flooding did. Colorado Strong!

October: We were in full planning mode at Ukraine Orphan Outreach for the Old Russian Shoemaker tour group coming from Ukraine for a month. Last minute venue bookings and schedule planning - lots and lots of hours put in this month! Eric's parents came for a visit, and we enjoyed the family time with them. I also became addicted to the "Call of the Midwife" series...makes me want to take up a new profession.

November: Happy birthday to Jace who turned 3 years old on the 8th of this month! My sweet boy is growing up so fast. It's like all of a sudden he speaks in full sentences and we can actually understand them! November brought the Old Russian Shoemaker group to Colorado on Nov. 26th! My sister-in-law's family hosted all 13 of them along with our family and a few other guests for Thanksgiving. It was a loud and fun time watching the seven orphans from Ukraine celebrate their first American Thanksgiving!

December: The first three weeks of December were spent on tour with the Old Russian Shoemaker group. Ukraine Orphan Outreach in partnership with CBN's Orphan's Promise - Kiev office brought seven orphans and 8 cast/crew/staff members from Ukraine (and one from Virginia Beach, VA) for a month's tour performing the Christmas musical. We completely fell in love with the staff/crew who will be life-long friends, and the kids were just wonderful. Their hugs made my day! We also confirmed that UOO will be making a trip to Ukraine in May 2014 [I'm  GOING!!!] to visit the orphans, visit CBN in Kiev, and visit our boy's transition home in Kramators'k. What a wild adventure we had with the group! We celebrated Christmas with our family, along with Eric's brother who came and spent a week with us.

We are looking forward with great anticipation of where 2014 will take our family. At this time, our best guess is to Ukraine, hopefully by the end of 2014! Thanks for sharing the year with us!

Life's about to get HECTIC!

T minus 8 Days! Life is about to get a little bit insane! 

In eight days, 15 people will converge on us here in Colorado for three weeks of tour performances all over the state. The rockstar (but small-staffed) organization I sit on the board for, Ukraine Orphan Outreach, along with CBN's Orphan's Promise Kiev-Office, are bringing the Christmas musical performance "The Old Russian Shoemaker" on a state-wide tour.

So I'm finally hitting that panicked mode. I'm in hyper-drive deep cleaning my house. WHY IN THE WORLD do I want till the last 10 days to get that done? Well, my cleaning fairies went on strike about 12 years ago, so it's taken me awhile to get into the groove of picking up their slack. My family will be hosting 3 grown men for 17 days. Fun times. My basement is about to be turned into a bachelor pad. I'm glad they will have their own bathroom. Just saying. Don't judge me. 

The past six months have been a learning curve for me. I've never had to book venues and events performances before; while I've organized conferences, weddings and other fundraising events and galas, booking performances is was outside my skill set. Now I can add it to my resume. Six months ago I didn't even know what a "rider" was. (It's a list of requirements from the performers to the venue...so you can feel as informed as I am). I've learned a lot. I've made program flyers, designed and printed posters, booked venues, spoke with organization staff about the said rider requirements, booked flights for the tour group, arranged host homes, written a host home handbook (22 pages, thank you very much), updated the website, sent out Constant Contact please for donations....and it all comes to a head next Tuesday at 3:30PM when our tour group lands in Denver. Holy Moly Batman! 

So on Saturday night I stayed up way too late on Facebook, then I decided I needed a plan to get my house cleaned - a checklist. I love checklists. Thank you to those who make them for me. So this lady - the FlyLady is pretty much a genius in keeping your house clean and keeping your stuff together. I think some people are born with that gift - to keep things clean and tidy. I was not. I can walk pass a piece of scrap paper on my carpet for a week before I even "see" it and toss it - usually Saturday aka Cleaning Day! Saturday night I printed off her deep cleaning check list by "Zones". Basically zones are areas of your house, she breaks them down, pure genius I tell you!

On Sunday morning before church (we went to 2nd service since Eric had to work...slept in), I started on the first zone. The entry hall. By Sunday evening I had the hall all cleaned, coat closet the best it has looked since we moved in, baseboards oiled and windows cleaned. Boom. Zone 1 of 5 down! Hollar! (Yes Lauren, I know I'm white. Shut it.) So now it's Monday over the lunch hour, I'm working from home due to a sick little lady, and thinking about what I will get accomplished from 5-7pm before my hubby gets home from work. Zone 2 is the dining room, which when you have an open-living concept home, it flows into everything else. Not sure I want to tackle the living room tonight too...but considering I have 8 days and baskets of laundry upstairs in our room that need to be put away, it's either the living room or laundry tonight. If you know me at all, you know I LOATHE folding laundry. My bet is on the living room winning this round. 

Debt Update: We have $5700 left on the credit card to pay off! Little by little. That's $800 paid off since we first were rejected by OM International for having too much debt. Baby steps to financial freedom! So worth it!

Agency or No Agency? That is the question.

Yesterday we ended our relationship with one of our prospective agencies. It was a very good ending, kind of like just cancelling a coffee date with a friend. No big deal. The folks at TEAM.org are absolutely amazing. They have such a heart to evangelize the world with the Gospel message, being like Jesus in every aspect of their lives. Yet, they weren't a good fit for us. I'd highly recommend them for others though.

This agency search process is rather tedious. For the past two weeks, I've been thinking about nixing an agency and just taking the entire family to a language school to study for a year or two. Master the language then start out on the missions field. We had an excellent Skype meeting with the district administrator for TEAM in Ukraine yesterday. Their process is similar to this, they send you to language school for two years before you get involved in daily ministry life. It's absolutely necessary to be fluent in the local language in order to build relationships with people.

I never realized how good I had it being an independent missionary with our home church. We are toying with this idea again. There is a cost to going with agencies - about 10%-15% of your total income from donors goes for them to administrate your being overseas. It lightens your plate significantly, for a cost. Is it worth the cost? I don't think we've decided it's not yet. But we are considering the independent route too.

On the other side of the coin, we have now started to investigate languages schools. Doing that route first.
So now that's something more to consider.

But first, and always first, we ask God for His wisdom on where we should go next!

Lunch Meeting

Today we met with a missions agency, Team.org in regards to possibly partnering with them in Ukraine. The area is in Odessa, which is a beautiful port city in Crimea (the southern portion of Ukraine).

I always appreciate meeting with mission mobilizers, as they have such a passion for people. This connection was no different. They are inspiring and motivating.

Next steps will be reviewing some of their policy materials and application, meeting with the Ukrainian team administrator and seeing if we fit and they fit. We are still looking to head out in late 2014, but they seem a lot more flexible in timing on fundraising if it takes longer. I really liked their laid back attitude but heart for getting folks mobilized and working directly with your sending church and local in-country churches.

Funny enough, Odessa was one of the places I had tried to sell Eric on before we ever started looking at mission agencies. It has the seaside and beach and sub-tropical warm summer weather that I crave. It also gets the snow and cold that Eric loves.

We will see...Our only desire is to be obedient to where God would place us.

On a financial side note: We paid off our first credit card two weeks ago. We just put a huge payment down on our other credit card. That leaves us with $5500 in debt on the CC. Baby steps to be debt free! 

Exploring Opportunities

As the story continues, we are still in the working to be debt-free mode. Yesterday we paid off our smaller credit card balance. It was a milestone. One step closer to being on the mission field, wherever that may be.

We have also started exploring missions opportunities with other groups, besides OM. I don't know who we will end up with, but we've had some good conversations with various mission directors of organizations. It's been productive to learn about several agencies, along with their focus and ministries. We were asked if we wanted to stay in the US and basically head their conference department for a group out on the East Coast this week, but we turned it down. They are a great organization and very gracious when we declined their offer. We honestly have no desire to live any longer in the USA. Our hearts are for foreign lands.

So in two weeks we are meeting face to face with one organization over lunch, and then have a phone call with the Christan Missionary Alliance (which helps to place you within missionary organizations) in early November.

We are still moving forward, but as of right now, we don't know yet where we will be or with who. I have a sense that things are being put together even now as I type this post, but it's timing will be perfect for us and our family. God is sensational about connecting people together and I wait contently in His precense in the meantime.

On a side note, I had a nice time reconnecting with a woman who traveled with me when I was the tour director for ICCL Ukraine. She has continued her trips to Ukraine and even has become good friends with my former office administrator (my boss in Kiev). So through the grapevine, I was able to say hello and receive a hello from her. Makes me miss Ukraine even more today.

What else in life is going on? Well, I have been busy with making preparations for CBN's Orphan's Promise group coming over in December. They will be bringing a tour group of orphans to perform the Christmas musical "The Old Russian Shoemaker" in Colorado. I've been making bookings at churches, which is a new thing for me. I have never played "agent" before, but thus I find myself learning a new skill set. So come late November and through the month of December, life will be a bit hectic with transporting the tour group, hosting them and generally playing mother hen for 14 more individuals. Fun!

Well, I think I'll sign off now. Thanks for reading, we will update as we have more information.

Kelly

Prophetic Words

1 Corinthians 12:10 AMP
^"10 To another the working of miracles, to another prophetic insight (the gift of interpreting the divine will and purpose); to another the ability to discern and distinguish between [the utterances of true] spirits [and false ones], to another various kinds of [unknown] tongues, to another the ability to interpret [such] tongues."

 Prophetic insight is such a gift and such a confirmation to what has being going internally in my own heart and in our discussions as we wait for wisdom to move forward. We know that we are entering a new season of preparing to for the mission field. Yet, when something as silly as debt is what is keeping you off the field, you start to second guess what direction you had heard from God. 

Lately, I've been praying about what is next? I keep asking God to give us His wisdom on our next steps, as He said if we ask for, search out and seek for wisdom, it will not be withheld from us. We need His wisdom as we pay off this $6500 that is keeping us from moving forward. Yet, I'm not sure what to do with it. I need His understanding on the matter. 

Today at church, God sent TWO people to give me prophetic insight...to confirm what God was already telling us. He sent one sister to tell me that all she kept getting for us was the word, "Understanding". That we would receive understanding on that which we are seeking. 

Then the second was from a man who came up to me and said I have a word for you, "You are a GOER not a Sender"!! I immediately burst into tears. That's all he said and walked away. YES LORD, I HEAR YOU!

The entire message at church today was on abiding in Christ, being like Christ, moving and flowing with Christ. If that is not the purpose of a Christian and missionary, I don't know what is. Lord, help me to flow in obedience with you!

Debt Hindering

We applied and they answered. I'd by lying if I didn't say I'm disappointed. Time and time again, we do stupid things that delay us from moving forward. For us it was using the credit card a few years ago. We stopped using it two years ago and started working paying off nearly $10k in racked up debt. Frivolous spending. We now have about $6500 to pay off.

So until the time being, we are on hold with the missions move until it paid off. We are now in the process of pulling some equity out of our house to pay that off and improve our home for selling it next Spring.

It's a waiting game. No one got us into this wait, except ourselves. Thankfully the past two years we've worked hard on getting the debt cleared up and we'll continue.

Then we can move forward on our application with OM.

We Applied!

Well, we did it. We officially applied to be missionaries with OM International. Now we wait for more information and for them to contact us. 

The application date opened August 1st, but with coordinating a wedding for my cousin this weekend, we were too preoccupied to sit down and fill things out. 

We are also in the process of pricing our home for sale, estimating what it needs to fix it up for the market (new carpet, painting inside...you know the drill). We have one potential buyer in mind, but until the house is ready, we can't work out a deal. 

These first steps outside of your comfort zone are the scariest. 
We keep asking God, "Are you sure?" There's insane peace flooding through us right now, so we know He is sure...but it's that walking by faith thing that taking the initial action is massively terrifying. We have an area of the world we are focused on, we know we are going to sell everything and that this is the time to initiate the process.

Pray for and with us during this time. We want to walk in completed obedience in where God is leading our family, and to the land he is leading us.