Over The Top & Time To Go

It may have taken us a full week, but that is a good thing!

I am talking about reporting on our fundraiser last week of course! Last Sunday, we were so blessed by the turnout and the generosity of everyone that came out to support us! There were so many donations and volunteers, it would take up an entire blog post, just to try to list everyone who donated, volunteered, cooked, donated, gave, spoke, prayed, prepared, and organized!

We are blessed beyond words with the support of our church family at FCC, our friends, and our family. Knowing we have a support group like we do that is investing in the Lord's calling on our lives and willing to take part in it is a special feeling. We know that the Lord has placed each one of you into our lives for this reason, and thank Him for doing so every day.

Here are a few pictures from the fundraiser...

Our goal for the fundraiser was to raise enough to get our account up to the point of being able to handle all of our one-time moving costs as well as set up a solid buffer for our ongoing work throughout the year. We raised, just over $7,000 and were able to get enough into our account to be ready to leave on schedule, the first week of December!

Along with this, we made a huge push on getting all of our monthly partners to get their papers or first checks turned in this month so that we would know where we were at for our ongoing monthly support. We expect to receive our October report next week and are hoping to be within striking distance of our monthly need!

Once we have our October report and we know where we stand for sure, we will be booking our tickets to leave the first week of December!

The next four weeks should prove to be quite a challenge as we prepare for the move. Along with Anna's oath ceremony for citizenship this Friday, we have to finish my Mexican work visa, get Kai's Mexican citizenship filed, finish getting our monthly support up to where it needs to be by meeting with everyone we possibly can, prepare all of our things for an oceangoing containerized shipment, figure out travel arrangements, and we also have a wedding in Texas in November, and Christmas at Thanksgiving with family!

It is going to be a busy month, but we are so excited to finally have a timeline! And, after more than a year of preparing, we are so looking forward to being in the place where the Lord wants and to begin seeing the plans that He has for us there!

Please be in prayer with us about a few things in this final month:

- Andrew's Visa paperwork goes smoothly
- Kai's Mexican citizenship filing goes smoothly
- All logistical details are worked out quickly, cheaply, and efficiently
- That we are able to get our monthly/quarterly/annual support team up to where it needs to be
- That the Lord's hand will be upon everything

Thank you for all of your support! It is because you that we are able to answer His call!

Back2Back Cancun Ministries

"So, what will you be doing down there?"

A defining question for a missionary putting together a partnership team, and one that I am going to try to start to answer with this post.

The Cancun site was started up in August of 2010. So it is young, just over a year old. In the first year, the site has now doubled in staff (including us when we arrive), and in only its second summer accepting short term groups, the summer of 2012 is already completely booked!

Matt & Julie Cooper, along with Mau & Lizy Davila, and now, Erick & Julie Mowery have partnered with two children's homes (Casas Hogares) San Jose & Esperanza, as well as two single mothers with several children in a very poor area of Cancun, and a continuing partnership with DIF, or the Mexican equivalent to CPS in the USA.

Each of these ministries have unique challenges and offer differing opportunities for being the hands and feet of our Savior.

Yesterday, we were able to visit two of these ministry partners, the CAT and Oti and her family in Tres Reyes.

If you do not recall what the CAT is, I explained it in our blog post from our trip last January and I encourage you to read about where these kids come from and why they are here. It will break you heart. You can read it here: CAT Blog Post
At the CAT, we were able to sing songs with the kids, led by Mauricio. There was lots of yelling, singing, and dancing!





The kids were also super excited to work on a canvas painting project for Anna and I's silent auction in a couple of weeks! So if you like what you see, you will be able to bid on this at our fundraiser coming up! We will also have one more of these that the girls at Casa Hogar San Jose will be helping us with!

After spending several hours at CAT, we headed over to Oti's home. Oti is a single mom raising eight children in Tres Reyes, Cancun. Back2Back is currently beginning to look for Shelter Program Sponsors for her kids so they can go to school!

We stopped by to drop off some clothes that had been donated for her kids as well as to get pictures of each of them so that they can be promoted for sponsorship. So, I set up all of my off camera lighting equipment, and got out the big camera, and it didn't take long till we had a makeshift modeling shoot going! They started pretty shy, but by the end, were twirling and posing like Runway stars! Meet Oti's beautiful children:

The trip is going so well thus far. Along with these opportunities to serve, I have also been able to gather lots of information on Staff guidelines and rules as well as housing for when we move and cell phone options.

The rest of the trip includes spending time getting to know the staff better, price checking everything we will need to get when we move so we can adjust our budget appropriately, and a few more visits to the different ministry partners, including the children's homes!

Looking forward to sharing a few stories with you all in person an a couple of weeks at our fundraiser! Can't wait to see you all there! Please join us if you can!

Destination: Cancun

Six weeks seems like a long time to go without blogging.

And so, we apologize.

There were reasons for the wait however, and I hope that this post more than makes up for the longing you have felt to keep up with what we are doing in our ministry... (Intended sarcasm, while hoping for it to be a truthful statement) ;)

So, what has happened in six weeks?

The list is long, but I will try to fill in the void as best as possible.

I need to preface this next paragraph to make it clear, that this is simply our personal reflections on what the Lord had called us to do, and was convicting our hearts of. God has certainly called millions into the professional world and in no way do we want to diminish their calling as if it were any different or lesser than ours. We are each called to serve a purpose in the building of the Kingdom of God, one body, many parts, all equal.

We are so thankful for the way that God used Haiti to wrest our attention away from our own little world. He truly used our time there and the experiences to transform our minds and hearts away from a life wasted seeking liberty, and the pursuit of human happiness. The American dream had always seemed like a good enough goal, but at the same time left us feeling hollow and empty. The idea of working in a job or a career our whole lives, was just not what we had been called to. And it took a trip to Haiti in May of 2010, right after the earthquake to shake us from the comfortable life that we had fallen in to.

So with that being said, we knew that God had used that trip to Haiti, to grab our attention and, as it turns out, our interest in Haiti, is what led to our being contacted by Back2Back. They were looking at possibly expanding their operations into Haiti and contacted us based on our interest. It was out of this that the Lord began opening the doors with Back2Back and closing the doors with the other organization that we had been interviewing with, CFM.

So after two wonderful exploratory trips to Cancun to visit the new Back2Back site, and to Haiti, to the visit CFM orphanage and a week with Back2Back and the ministry that they are looking to partner with in Haiti, Jesus in Haiti Ministries, the Lord had made it clear to us that we were to be with Back2Back. So, it was in March that we committed to Back2Back and officially became Staff Candidates pending fundraising in April after board approval.

We knew that Back2Back was the organization, but we still had not heard definitively from the Lord on the location that He wanted us. ( I say definitively because we had experienced a few signs and words, including this totally unexpected one as were driving from St. Marc, in the north of Haiti, back to Port Au Prince on the day that I just happened to be praying specifically for a sign from God for Cancun:

In case you can't tell, the little boy crossing the street in front of us in Haiti was wearing a shirt that said Cancun on it.

...but we were asking for just one more wet/dry fleece ;)  )

After beginning fundraising in May of this year, telling our support partners at the appointments that we will be in Mexico and then Haiti or may just stay in Mexico, it became more and more difficult to proceed and fundraise without having direct answers to some of the most important questions that our partners in ministry were asking us!

"When are you leaving?"

"Where are you going?"

"What will you be doing?"

These are important questions to have answers to, when you are asking people to sacrificially give from their hard earned money to assist you in building the Kingdom of God! As you can imagine, not having answers to these questions can be a bit nerve-wracking during such meetings.

So in August, our fundraising began to slow and plateau. We began to pray, to seek God for answers to these questions. We knew how it was affecting our ability to share our heart and vision for ministry and we knew that God had an answer that would allow us to answer these questions.

Patience ensued.

And more patience was necessary.

And we began having dreams, dreams about a place and ministry ideas for this place and God began cultivating our hearts to care deeply for those we had met in this place, He was breaking our hearts for what was breaking His at this specific location.

We began seeing the name of this location popping up in very unexpected and random places, and people were sharing things with us in regard to this place.

And still we were not sure.

And after it seemed all patience in the universe had been grasped, utilized and reused, Anna came across a sermon online entitled Decisions and God by Eric Johnson.

After we both listened to this, we began to comprehend what God was trying to say, so with surrendered hearts, we said yes to God and allowed his peace to immediately come over us. Once we had told God out loud that we would serve him in Cancun, the uneasiness and uncertainty of wether or not we were in the center of His will immediately disappeared.

I can't express the feeling to you in words, only that it was akin to the power of the Holy Spirit moving powerfully in a time of prayer or worship, breaking chains on your heart and soul that you did not even realize were there.

Many people have made remarks like, "you had plenty of signs, why not just listen to the first couple!?"

Well, honestly, we wanted to be sure, and there was a measure of selfishness and guilt that we struggled with for a long time.

Guilt, because we had originally thought Haiti was where we were going. We had been talking and making plans that way, and did not want to let anyone down who was thinking that we were going to Haiti for sure.

There was also the struggle with selfishness; for two reasons.

The first was that clearly, Haiti, was a much more difficult place to live than Cancun. In no way did we want to make this decision based on an easier lifestyle or the fact that we could not live without the things that we would live without in Haiti.

Secondly, we have family at the site in Cancun. Anna's sister and brother-in-law, and our two nephews. We did not want to make this decision based on a selfish desire to live by family.

These are just a few of the many, many reasons that caused us to take pause, and read deeper into each sign and word. To pray longer and seek His will even more about what specifically He was calling us to do.

So, back to the timeline. Five weeks ago, we sent an email to the Back2Back directors and Cancun site directors indicating what we perceived to be God's leading in our lives, and as some were away and traveling, it took several weeks for us to hear back that we had officially been given permission to join the blossoming ministry at the new Back2Back site in Cancun!

That was three weeks ago, and since then, we have been working like mad on our fundraising event coming up on October 23 in Elkhart. Please come out and support us if you can! Also, we have been working on logistics and fundraising issues related to our switch to Cancun from Haiti, and we have even started packing!

Andrew will be leaving this Tuesday, October 11, for Cancun for one week of meetings with the staff in Cancun, as well as seeking out a place for us to live when we get there and working out other details to prepare for our move there at the end of this year!

I think that brings you up to speed on our lives and just one of the amazing ways that God has been moving! Apart from these things, God has been moving mightily in our home church, FCC, and we are praying for revival and know that the Lord is bringing it!

So, Andrew will bring updates this week during his trip in Cancun and if you are receiving this email and we have not had a chance to get together with you to discuss partnering with us in our ministry, please shoot us an email at aaconrad@agconrad.com or come on out to our For the Orphan Chili Dinner/Silent Auction Benefit later this month! We want so badly to have time to meet face to face with each and every one of our partners! We really do not want to have to send an impersonal letter out in our last months to meet our 100% funding goal!

We just want to say thank you to our partners in ministry! We are closing in on 50-60% funded and would not even be in a position to leave on time without all of your support thus far! We pray for each and every one of you every week, that God would bless you and your families and provide in miraculous ways.