New Year, New Day, New Me

I have not done a very good job of posting on this site for multiple reasons. The main one is I only talked about positive things. I didn't want to show my doubts, fears. I didn't want my words to be taken out of context. I didn't want to give others fodder to talk bad about God. I am now coming to the conclusion that I can trust God. I feel he lead me to write this blog, and he can help me be brave enough to write about my highs and my lows.

Here is the reality. The team from our church leaves on June 10, and we will not be with them. We have not raised enough money for our family to go. To be quite honest we have not raised very much money at all. Since my last blog, we have had one additional donation from a friend. We held a fundraiser at two local Pizza Huts and only raised about $250. We sold fundraiser cards from Pizza Hut for a profit of about $75. Our family needs about $14,500 to go on the trip. Our current total is about $800. Long way off.

So now what? Good News! We have our passports. We have been to the international travel doctor and paid that $98 bill. They were gracious not to charge us for our daughters consultation because that was all the money we had. Literally, it was all we had. You see our family is living one day at a time financially. No savings, just daily bread. I understand the line from the old hymn - what your hand has provided. We did get our tetanus shots last week (free at the health department due to the flood) so another cost has been knocked off our list. Only four more shots for Woody ($250) and one more for me ($100). Our child has three to go ($200).

Why do we keep going? We have put our sights on the next trip in 2012.