Last minute

My brother and Carin were married this past saturday.  Carin is a great addition to our family. The wedding was beautiful and now they are off on their honeymoon! Congratulations Justin and Carin!
This past week has  been soo busy and focused on the wedding that we have been able to sit back and pretend we didn't have one thousand things to do before we leave.  We were able to just spend time with family and do wedding stuff.  Saturday night, as soon as the wedding was over, leaving became a reality to me.  Walking around saying goodbye to family friends started the emotions flowing again about leaving.  Yesterday our church prayed for us and we spent time saying goodbye to our church family.  So many people had such encouraging words for us and we were so thankful for what an amazing Church family we have.  After saying goodbye to one campus we then headed over to our other campus where Nick was able to preach one last time.  We spent time after that service saying our goodbyes again to some more friends.  We are so excited to get to Arusha but it is still so hard looking at our friends whose kids are our kids' friends and realizing they won't be playing anymore.  My friends who are in the same stage in life and who we have invested into their kids; knowing we won't be a part of their life was hard to imagine.  We have been soo blessed with amazing friends for our girls which makes this process a little harder. 
Last night we tried to get everything done so we could just enjoy today without needing to do much but even after working on our room for 4 hours we still have quite a bit to figure out how to pack! So, it looks like today will be lots of packing, running around to do the last minute errands, saying goodbye to some more friends, and hopefully some time with just our family. 
Thank you so much to everyone that has helped make this transition smoother.  We are praying for easy travel with our girls.  Last time I (Heidi) flew I got very sick.  We believe it was motion sickness so we are prepared this time but praying it will be different than last time.  Also we have been told that we will not be getting our visas in time.  We will need to buy our tourist visas when we get into the Kilimanjaro airport and wait to do anything until we have received our student/work visas.  Please be praying those will be processed soon. 
We love you all and can't wait to share our life in Tanzania with you!

So thankful for our family and friends

Monday night we had an amazing going away party.  Our amazingly thoughtful friends put together a memorable party that made us feel so loved and appreciated.  We are so thankful to everyone that came and spent time saying goodbye.  We are getting closer and closer to leaving and it is such a bittersweet feeling.  Thank you again for sending us off with such a thoughtful party. We will miss you all

Final Vacation with families!

Over the past month we have gone on 3 different vacations to spend some time with our families before we leave.  We were able to go to Seattle with the Forrest Family, to Bend with the Stevens/Forrest/Getsinger family, and to Lake Roosevelt with the Stagge/Pell family.  We are so blessed with the families we have and were so thankful we were able to spend that time with them.  Hannah and Hailey did great traveling everywhere, sleeping in different rooms (they did okay with that part:), and playing with all their cousins.  We are back now and are realizing there are soo many last minute things to do.  We have to get the girls their last shots (yellow fever and typhoid), cancel a lot of our accounts, pick up last minute things to add to our baggage, go through and weigh our baggage again to take out what we don't need and add what we need, etc.  So many things are running through our minds it is overwhelming and exciting at the same time.
 Right now Nick is in Oregon preaching at a church that is supporting us and then at night presenting at the church we went to in College.  We are praying that more connections will be made and we are excited to see what the Lord will do this weekend. 
This tuesday it will be 3 weeks til take off! It is coming soo fast and I find myself getting more and more excited about getting there and settling in.  Now that we are officially out of our house we can focus on the other things without the weight of that on our shoulders and I am realizing how amazing this is that we get to go serve the Lord in Africa.  I am in awe of what He has done to get us closer and closer to the dream He gave us years ago.  We cannot wait to see what is in store.  Thank you for all your prayers thus far.  Here are some prayer requests for those of you who are praying for us.
-All the lose ends to be wrapped up before we leave and nothing forgotten
-Visas be issued in time so we don't need to buy other visas
-Nicks grandpa is battling cancer and his grandma is battling a lot of sickness
-The remainder of our financial support to be raised
-Arusha's in a drought- pray for rain!
Thank you!! We cannot begin to thank you all for your support.  We feel so loved and supported throughout this whole process.

Prayer again for Visas!

We were just sent an email by the man in charge of sending our visas off.  They are sent off and already being processed which is a praise and means we will probably be getting them back in time but... He also let us know that as of July 1st  the fee for missionary visas went up from $120 to $550.  This was a shock to us.  This means that with the girls visas which went up in price as well, we owe another $970 for our visas alone.  This law was passed in 2009 but the president didn't want to implement it but now that they have a Muslim president he just put it into effect.  He wants to gain money for the government this way.  Please just pray that the funds will be met and also the two other girls that are going to do a DTS from our church have to raise even 430 more as well.  We know the Lord will provide and we were anticipating hoops that we would have to jump through to get there. We are just praying there won't be many more!:)

Yard Sale!

$4,000!!!!! We are soooo tired but soooo grateful. The yard sale was a huge success.  We were hoping to raise all of the money we needed for a car in Tanzania by selling all of our stuff plus donations from others.  About a month ago some furniture started coming to our house and we were able to put some stuff on craigslist.  We then realized we needed to start selling our stuff on craigslist to try and get a better price than at our yard sale.  After about 3 weeks of selling the bigger stuff, we already had made about $1,000.  Then after two days of a yard sale we started totalling up everything and it was amazing how much everything added up to. 
At first we were told that a car that we would want would be about $3800 but after we looked into it we found out with shipping costs and taxes it would be about $8,000.  We just got on last night to see if there were any cars that were on sale and found a perfect car that would cost around $4,000 all together.  It is amazing how that always seems to happen.  We weren't even shopping for a cheaper car, we just found a Toyota that we were told by our base leader was a good car that we should look into and they happen to have one on the site we went to.  We have the car on hold and he is checking with his mechanic to make sure it is a good car and then we will start the purchasing process.  The yard sale may have made the perfect amount to cover the whole car! 
This process is still so draining and overwhelming.  We are working on our house, going through paperwork that we have saved for the last 6 years making sure we don't lose anything, separating boxes to be stored at Nick's dads house (the things we absolutely don't want to get rid of), a couple boxes for my parents house (the pictures and girls memory box we want to keep completely safe), our bags for tanzania, the things we need this summer and the bags for the teams that come from church to bring with them of extra stuff that won't fit!  We need to have all of this done to move out of our house, into my parents house on the 24th of July!  We are on track but have to stay motivated to get through everything on time.  Thank you for your prayers and we were sooo excited to share the amazing results of the yard sale and the car we found. 

Praying for our visas!

We got some exciting news yesterday that Nick was accepted into the DTS (discipleship training school) at YWAM in Arusha, Tanzania. We have been waiting since March to hear so that was exciting but it also came with a little scare. Our visas for getting into the country need about 8 weeks to process. We are about 7 weeks away from our departure.  They are just starting to process our visas and they are not sure they will be done by the time we arrive on August 31st.  We have already purchased our tickets and there is a huge fine for changing our departure date.  Please pray that our visas will come through with no problems and on time.

The process

 The girls after a long day of going through everything in our home wanted some time in the front yard:) We will miss this house!

This process of moving has been a lot harder than we imagined.  We thought it may be hard to move out of our house and get rid of stuff but it would be exciting as well.  I didn't realize how much stuff we have accumulated over the past 4 years!  When we left 4 years ago to go to Tanzania we only had what fit in our car because we had been traveling around so much.  Now we have our stuff, plus our two girls!   It isn't so much getting rid of all of our stuff but the effect it is having on our family is way bigger than I had thought it would be.  Our girls are noticing their toys slowly going away.  Last night we took everything down off the walls in the girls' bedroom.  This morning Hannah walked into her bedroom and said "What happened here! This doesn't look like my bedroom anymore.  I want my bedroom back. Why did you take my bedroom away."  Every day we seem to have this talk about needing to get rid of everything so we can move to Africa.  After we talk through it with her, she seems to be doing better but to be honest it is so hard to see her face and we don't want her to resent Africa because it is the thing that is taking everything away from her. We are thinking of creative things to help her and letting her go through her own little things, like her necklaces and hair things, toys, etc., and finding friends she wants to give these to. 
This Friday and Saturday is our yard sale and we are hoping to make enough money to buy a car in Tanzania! We pray it goes well!