Hi folks! The team participated in a great service at HPC on Sunday morning where we received a commissioning and encouraging send off led by Rev. Mark Collins (a leader in our church district) and the congregation. If you were to talk to any team member you’d discover that we’re really “pumped up” about going! It’s hard to believe that we’re finally zeroing in on our departure date.
We’re also really excited about being able to go and serve at the Village of Hope in Zimbabwe and meet the kids and the workers there. On Sunday we received an updated tally of the amount that has come in for the Zimbabwe 2007 Project and more recent donations bring the total to almost $45,000! That is the equivalent of nearly $10,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars. Praise God and thanks all of you who have given and supported this worthwhile cause. We know that the money will be put to good use in helping the children of the Village of Hope.
I’m looking forward to posting updates as we go through our journey but some recent news from the Cooledges in Zimbabwe indicates that the updates may be posted less frequently than originally planned. They are currently experiencing power outages anywhere from 12-20 hours a day along with intermittent phone line connection (which is how we’ll be connecting to the internet). This will mean for some creative use of the few hours we do have power and we’ll be putting the donated cordless power-tools to work for sure!
I also want to thank God for an incredible answer to prayer. One of our team members had trouble obtaining a passport because of difficulties with documentation and it wasn’t certain if he’d be getting his passport in time. However, we just received word that he’ll be able to pick it up tomorrow morning. Cutting it close but nevertheless it means he’ll be able to go!
Till next update…