Author: Shawn

Fundraising efforts for 2 week trip

Posted by Shawn on June 2, 2008

I think we are coming to the end of the fundraising…. It is always hard to ask people for money and this time, like times before we did as much “working” for the money as possible. Jessica did 3 different yard sales, two of which was with donated items, the last one being at our house for 2 days. (Now, for the trips to Good Will and maybe the dumps.)

Thank you to everyone who donated or supported our efforts!

Now with less than two weeks remaining before we leave, we are preparing for our trip by packing items and getting things ready and planned for the kids who will be staying with grandparents. As any mother reading this would know, this is a hard thing for Jessica, to leave all her kids for 2 weeks, but the Lord is good and they will have fun.

June 13th leaving for the Dominican Republic!

Posted by Shawn on May 12, 2008

So, it is getting here fast! We are leaving for the Dominican Republic on the 13th and at this time there are 17 people on this trip. About 10 of them are High Schoolers (or close in age).

Please pray for those going, finances for the trip, and for God to use us throughout the trip to reach people, to bless His children and to give Him glory.

The Lord will be stretching all of us before and during the trip and the adversary will want us to be in discord, discouraged and overall defeated. We pray that we will fight the battle in the Spirit and not each other :~)

2 week short-term Mission trip to the D.R.

Posted by Shawn on April 30, 2008

Well, we still have the house, so right now we are just planning on going for a short-term trip in June. This trip will be about 2 weeks and we will be going to the new building in Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Currently we are raising funds for this trip, so if you are so inclined to help donations can be made to Helping Hands International here in Medford, Oregon. This trip, like many will be a combination of working on the facility there, ministering on the streets (or towns) and possibly doing something for a needy family. The plans are never set in stone, since we have to go on faith. That is one of the cool things about the trips, we get to see God do miracles.

This Saturday, May 3rd is the jogathon, if you want to pledge per lap or just a flat amount. Jessica plans on running about 24 laps, I…. well, she will probably be lapping me since I haven’t ran any distance for quite some time.

Please pray for us and the others going on this trip. There will be a few from Cascade High School going, but none of our kids will go with us this time. The kids will enjoy a couple of weeks being spoiled by grandparents.

Letter sent with our support letter

Posted by Shawn on April 16, 2008

We have had many ask in recent months how are future plans are coming. With a future trip on the horizon we figured now would be a good time to bring everyone up to date. First of all we are still moving forth with plans to move to the Dominican Republic. We do need to sell our home in order to free us to be able to move. Once that happens we will be on our way. We are currently praying for further direction beyond that. Before we head to the DR we might go to a language school to dig into the Spanish language. Costa Rica has a school for missionaries that seems to fit our families needs. We are unsure if this is what we need to do. It would not be a cheap undertaking and would take four months to do one session. Although it seems like a good idea we want to be absolutely sure that this is what the Lord has for us.

As far as ministry in the DR there seems to be two things we keep coming back to. The first being a Discipleship Trade School. The second providing a place where other missionary families can come and get some much needed rest and refreshing. Both of these will take time and resources to bring to pass but we know that God is faithful and that if these things are from Him than we will have all we need in order to accomplish what may seem impossible.

For now we continue to move forward. Shawn and I are planning on going on a short term trip in June for two weeks(see attached letter for details). Each time we go, there is more confirmation of the future. It also give us the opportunity to connect with our friends there and to meet others that we might work with in the future. One thing we have learned from our trips is that the more people you know in the country the better. We are looking forward to what God has for us on this particular trip.

We thank you all so much for your prayers and support of our family. Below are some things that we would ask you to keep in your prayers.

We need to raise $3200 for the June trip-we hope to accomplish this by group fundraisers, our support letters, and the selling of tamales (I’ll be taking orders soon)

God’s protection for the team going in June (about 20 people)

Pray for Shawn’s parents and the kids during the two weeks we are gone

The selling of our house

Whether or not to go to a language school before moving to the DR

Clear direction for ministry

Unity of mind and purpose for our family

In this time of waiting we would not grow weary or anxious but trust in the Lord’s perfect timing.

Language school?

Posted by Shawn on January 21, 2008

Now, those of you that know me (Shawn), know that I am not one for school. I am not against learning, I just dread the thought of sitting in a classroom bored out of my mind and my mind wandering. (I guess I do that anyways.)

You see, through high school all I wanted to do was my time and get out. I was bored. I did just enough to get A’s, B’s or C’s and move on. I really didn’t try in most of my classes with exception to Spanish or a couple of others. Needless to say, I didn’t go to college (or collage as one highly educated person I know of writes.) I filled out the paperwork for a junior college, but couldn’t get myself to turn them in.

Anyways, back to the subject – language school. We have been kicking around ideas on learning the language, which is Spanish for the Dominican Republic. We have thought about just moving there and hiring someone there to teach us, or for one of us to take some sort of classes there. We heard of other missionaries going to a language school in Costa Rica and in Mexico. So right now we are looking deeper into going, possibly the whole family, to language school.

Our friends, the Tunnicliffes, are heading down to Guadalajara this week and if they have the time will be checking out this particular school for themselves, which we just found out after already looking into it. Well, I just thought that was interesting.

House is for sale – listed today

Posted by Shawn on January 14, 2008

Well, we finally had my dad come over to get the house listed. He is a real estate agent and he won’t be taking the full cut to help us out. The house goes on MLS today so it should show up on his Medford Real Estate site.

We had to finish a few things first so it was ready to show. I had to get some moulding and trim up in a couple of areas.

I will post some of the things I had to do to get ready such as repairing, or should I say replacing one deck and repairing the other 2.

Plans for the Dominican Republic

Posted by Shawn on December 13, 2007

As many of you are already aware that we are planning on moving to the Dominican Republic in the near future. Jessica and I both have felt the call on our hearts to move their to minister to the people. We are very excited about this call even though it is a giant step for us to take. When we bought the house we are in now, we thought this would be the last move for many years, but you know what they say about making plans and God laughing.

Anyway, we want to keep everyone in the loop. We really aren’t quite sure about raising support for us to live there, we will still be pulling some income from our business (www.northwestgifts.com and www.urnsnw.com) but will be needing more than that to live on. Our desire, though, is to be asking for support when it comes to a particular project or ministry need.

Currently we are waiting for a buyer for our house, which most people’s first response is how bad the market is. Well, good news, we don’t have to worry about a housing market – If God called us to go, He surely can handle selling a house. So, if you know anyone needing a large house for say a big family with lots of kids – see here: House for sale

Stay tuned here or leave us a comment below.

Blessings,

Shawn