We have less than one month until we leave for New Zealand. We are all getting very excited, this will be our first international adventure as a family!
Our family has been focused on transitions - I (Carl) have been transitioning work responsibilities (last day is Friday!), Amy has been turning over her women's ministry responsibilities and the girls finished dance classes for the year (pic to right is from the year end recital) and are wrapping up homeschool for the year. Now we turn our attention to preparing for our adventure...
We are so thankful for those that are praying for us, here are some things you can stand with us on:
- Preparations - As you can imagine, we have many things to prepare and every day we find more! We have our list and are working at staying at peace as we work to accomplish all that is needed.
- Health - In the busyness of life, we've not been as disciplined as we should and as such have a little bit of physical tidying up to do. We are just wrapping up a 21-day "purification cleanse", are generally feel much better and are praying that we can continue on in our new found disciplines so that are bodies are more prepared for the challenges of international travel.
- Family - Besides re-locating our family, another big change for us is that we will be together 24/7 for the next 6 months. We are super excited, as this something we've been dreaming of, but it's a little scary too! We've already been hanging out and doing things together more and are trusting that we'll continue to grow in love!
We are the Lefever family (from left, Amy, Ascher, Mala, Bente, Carl & Soren) - pretty much a standard American family, living life and growing as a family, and as you can see from our picture, trying to have fun together along the way. We recently made a decision as a family to do something a little different from the norm…in July we are departing on a five month journey in volunteer missions that starts in New Zealand and ends up somewhere else in the world - we don't exactly where yet!
I know…pretty exciting and scary all at the same time, but we really feel like this is significant and are expecting this to be a milestone event for our family! We will be leaving the US on July 19 and then spending the next 12 weeks on a missions base a town called Matamata, which is on the northern island of New Zealand (if you've watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy, this is the town where the Shire was filmed). The base is run by an organization called YWAM (Youth with a Mission), which is a large missions organization that runs over 1,000 bases across the globe. While in Matamata, we will be going thru training with 11 other families like ours for about three months and then afterwards, participating in volunteer missions work somewhere else in the world, potentially in New Zealand or another part of the South Pacific or Asia regions, for at least another two months. As of right now, we are planning to return home in December, but are open to potentially spending more time doing similar work depending on how this adventure goes…
We'll be posting updates on our journey along the way, we hope you enjoy following us on our adventure!
