It's been a month and a half since we found out we are going to Mexico for a year. We have less than 2 months before we leave Trout Lake. What have we done and what still needs to be accomplished? If you thought that preparing a large family to move to Mexico for a year is time consuming, you are correct! We have already faced (and with the Lord's help, overcome!) some big hurdles.
One of the biggest hurdles we ran into is that we cannot take our wonderful 15 passenger van to Mexico. It is financed and the loan agreement prohibits us from taking it out of the country. Since that was the only vehicle that we had to fit us all, that created a bit of a dilemma for us. Fortunately, this past week we were able to solve that dilemma. My parents bought our subaru from us and Gabe was also able to sell his truck. With the profits from selling both of those vehicles, we were able to purchase a used suburban last Saturday. This will be the vehicle that will take us to Mexico and back. Please pray that over the next months we will be able to determine what, if any, maintenance should be done to the vehicle to prepare it for such a journey.
The next couple of months will see us busy sorting, selling, and packing our belongings. U-haul does not allow their trailers/trucks to go into Mexico, so we may be limited to only taking down to Mexico what will fit in the trunk space of our suburban. That's not a lot of space for an 8 member family! However, the housing we will be provided with is furnished, complete with pots and pans in the kitchen and bedding in the bedrooms. We will primarily need to pack clothes, toiletry items, and some entertainment items such as books, smalls toys, and games for the kids. We will have the opportunity to buy additional items in Mexico if we are in need of more, so I've been keeping that in mind as I try to figure out what to pack for us all. I attempted to have a yard sale over Memorial Day weekend in an effort to sell some of our possessions that I don't want to store away for a year (and to try and raise some of the money that we need!), but didn't have much of a turnout. I am planning on trying again later this month when the weather is better. While it would be easier and less time consuming to simply make lots of Goodwill runs and donate everything, I felt compelled to have a yard sale. Since we are asking people to give of their own personal finances to support us, I felt it would be fiscally irresponsible if we didn't do our part to try and raise some of the money as well.
While I am tackling the sorting and packing, Gabe will be kept busy trying to ready our house. We hope to find some responsible renters for our home for the year that we are in Mexico, but there are some home projects that have been on our to-do list for awhile and so now we are feeling a bit of a rush to get them buttoned up before we go. We are thankful that Gabe only has a week and a half left of the school year and then will have extra time to devote to all the household projects. We have found homes for some of our animals, but still need to find a home for our dog, Jax. We hope that whoever rents our home will allow our outside cats to remain here to keep the mice at bay.
How can people help? Honestly, our biggest need right now is money. We have been blessed with a few one-time gifts, but as of last week we have only heard from one person who was willing to give a recurring monthly gift. While our financial needs in Mexico will be limited thanks to having housing and food mostly covered by the orphanage, we will still need approximately $1,000 a month to cover health insurance, auto insurance, our cell phone bill, and misc items such as some food and toiletry items. We also are still in need of one-time gifts to help cover the cost of our passports and our transportation down to Mexico. If you want to donate money to help fund this opportunity for our family, you can either give us money in person (not tax-deductible) or you can donate through the Cord Ministries website. Donations through the Cord website are tax-deductible, but Cord does retain a small percentage to cover their own administration costs. If you choose to donate through Cord, please consider paying using your bank account information as opposed to your debit/credit card. Debit/credit card transactions incur a fee that we are responsible to cover (it is automatically taken out of the money that is donated), whereas a transaction made using your bank's routing and account number is free, which means more of your money is actually making it to us.
We trust that God will provide for our needs and aren't overly worried about our lack of financial supporters right now, but that doesn't mean we can sit around on our hands and not try to raise awareness of our situation. Please prayerfully consider blessing us with some financial assistance. If you can't afford to give on a monthly basis, maybe you can do a small one-time gift? No amount is too small, and every gift is greatly appreciated. Please help us reach our financial goal. Thank you!