| From:
To: Bill Keyes Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2006 1:39 AM Subject: Ouellette family update! |
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A little over a week ago we asked many of you the question, "...what can happen in a week and 4 days?"
And here we are on the other side of that question: amazed.
What a week! (that's an understatement... read the PS to find out why)
When we invited you to pray with us we were at 70% of our monthly pledges and 87% of our outgoing costs. On Tuesday, we sat down and crunched the numbers. We totalled up all the pledges that have come in so far, including the ones from people who told us directly about their pledges coming in later. MBMSI also heard back from a church that we spoke at that is likely going to be joining as well!
If we have done our figuring correctly and if it all comes in, the new total comes out to be 100.17% of our monthly pledges and a little over 100% of our outgoing costs!! WOW.
...the tickets have been purchased! We are now officially on our way to Thailand on Monday, August the 28th! Right on.
Thank you so much for joining us in this! Thank you for praying!! We know that people prayed because nearly EVERY day we had things happening. We were writing them down until this past weekend when it got to be too much to keep track of! We are blessed by you. Your generosity and encouraging phone calls & emails have meant a lot to us.
I need to tell one story...
This past Monday night (the 31st!), I was putting Luke, our 4 year old, to bed. Spontaneously I asked him if Jesus had been saying anything to him lately. He looked up at me and said "Yup". A little bit surprised (not to mention curious) I asked him what Jesus had been saying to him. He said "Jesus said that tomorrow we will fill up the thermometer". ("The thermometer" is a printout of a huge thermometer that a friend made for us way back in February. We have been colouring it in as God has been providing what we need to go to Thailand ...and around the edges we have been writing stories of the creative ways he has provided [through many of you!]. It has helped us to pray and to be reminded of what He has done so far). Funny thing was that we hadn't been talking at all about the thermometer... Luke just spoke that out of the blue! That stirred my faith!!
God is faithful to provide what we need when we need it!
The peace of Jesus to you,
Greg & Becky and the kids
http://www.mbmsi.org/visit/gbouellette
PS Other important info:
- Farewell
Just a reminder that we are having an evening dessert farewell 6-8pm on Sunday August 20th. It will be held in the Youth Centre at Northview Community Church (the entrance to the Youth Centre is at the back of the church). Please RSVP if you are able to bring a plate of squares, cookies or fruit (rumour has it that there will be a Thai desert there for the curious or adventurous!). No RSVP necessary if you are just planning on coming! It will be an informal time where you can drop in anytime between 6-8pm. It's a chance for us to thank you for joining with us in this journey to Thailand, as well as an opportunity for us to share a little more with you as well as to say goodbye. For a map to Northview, see: http://www.northview.org/images/clientpdfs/map_to_northview.pdf (43 kb).
- Support Practicals
Some of you have tried to sign up for monthly pledges online. We found out that the online option only works for one-time donations. Sorry about that. For monthly pledges you need to call:
MBMSI at (888) 866-6267 or (604) 859-6267
or fill out the back of our prayer card and submit it to the MBMSI office. Our project code is CO497.
The Rest of the Story
(For those "Paul Harvey" types out there...)
Some other interesting things that have happened in the past week:
In addition to seeing our Thailand needs being taken care of, we saw God help us out with some of the legal paperwork stuff that we needed to do regarding our house. We had people from our church email us some helpful advice and even had a real estate agent call us up and offer to pay any legal fees we might have (about $400)!! We so needed to hear that at the time, since we felt a little over our heads in all the legal stuff. As it turned out, Beck had done the forms correctly and wound up paying only $20!!
We had someone call us up and offer free educational assessments of our children to help us understand how they learn. His passion is to see them do well in a cross-cultural setting. Becky and I wound up doing the tests as well (I am wondering how I scored!).
God's timing is perfect. This past weekend, we were sharing in our own church (Northview). And as God would have it, the person who winds up speaking is someone who married us 12 years ago! He totally affirmed us to the church and encouraged people to join our support team (thanks for that Dave!). It's been so amazing to have such a supportive church in all this!
We saw God take care of the needs of the rest of our team during the same time period (some of whom are clear across the country)! In 10 days another family on our team saw their monthly support go from 63% to 95%!!! The challenging thing for them was that they felt like God was saying to NOT try to raise the funds themselves... to NOT try to make it happen... but to watch and see Him provide for them. Hard to do when you know that you have a deadline to meet. In fact they felt like God was saying, "Paint your house". So they did... and they saw God supply everything they needed!
In the midst of all this (the timing was interesting to say the least) our youngest (Silas) was admitted to MSA Hospital after being diagnosed with Type 1 insulin dependent diabetes.... only to be released the next day with normal blood sugar levels and the diagnosis reversed! (I can't believe I just summarized that in 1 sentence - so much more I could say there). During all that we felt led to pray over him - so we did as did a few others who were aware of what was going on. We give God the glory for the outcome.