Another Australian Adventure

"When you are in God's service, God provides."  

Recently heard someone say this and it certainly applies to a recent adventure we had to the great land Down Under again. Haven't blogged in awhile - haven't had time and also haven't had much to say. But now I'm hoping to have the time to share with you where we spent our last month and how God provided for us and led us and showed Himself to us in new ways that were awesome and amazing and incredible! To Him be the glory for what we recently saw and experienced!

The story begins about a year ago, early 2011, when we were asked by the committee organizing the 2012 Growing Families Australia (GFA) Conference if we would be willing to speak at the January 2012 conference, sharing several sessions that we have taught on previously. How exciting! A chance to go to Australia again? Pinch me! We sought the Lord to see if He wanted us to go and told the committee we'd get back to them with our answer. While we prayed, I couldn't help but daydream about another Australian adventure! We felt the Lord saying, "Yes" although, admittedly we couldn't say for sure that it was the Lord as we wanted to go back there so badly!  Sometimes it can be hard to discern the Lord's will when your own will keeps getting in the way.

Fast forward a few months to summer of 2011. Time to start researching and planning this next adventure. Uh-oh. Feelings of dismay filled Rich and I as we realized that January is the height of summer holidays Down Under and our American dollar has gotten quite weak against their Australian dollar. Airfare and accommodations were much pricier than we had anticipated and planned for.

So we stuck our heads in the sand by shutting down the computer and hoping it would get better! Okay, we most definitely prayed, too. Of course, we were wondering if we had heard God say, "Yes" or if we had just heard our own wills screaming, "Yes". But we had given our word and we certainly weren't going to go back on that.

Now it's late October and we realized we needed to get serious about planning this trip! We prayerfully logged onto the computer to research airfare, googled the current exchange rate AND....  AND... AND...  still just as expensive as ever. Oh boy. Thankfully God reminded us of some airline points we had that helped. 8 tickets booked.

Celebrated a fun Thanksgiving with my parent's and oh my! Now it's late November! We're leaving in a month and it might be nice to have some places to stay while we're there. (Nothing like waiting 'til the last minute!) Thankfully, our dear Australian friends, the Foote Family (who stayed with us this past July) from Sydney, had arranged with their sweet friends, the Ewing Family, for us to stay in the Ewing's home during our time in Sydney while they vacationed (or holidayed as the Aussies say) in Tasmania (Tassy). Wonderful blessing! But we still had a few more weeks that we'd need accommodations in other cities. Logged onto the computer and quickly got dismayed again as we realized:
1) it's holiday season - not much is available
2) it's holiday season - it's expensive
3) not many places are set up for 8 people

Rich and I shut down the computer (again) and prayed. "Lord, we need places to stay and we'd prefer to not break the bank to do so. Help!" I think God loves those prayers. He must have been thinking, "No problem... I was waiting for you to ask. I've got lots of my people who I will use to bless you." You'll learn about many of those people in the coming posts. Generous people who love God and His people and blessed the socks off of us. Within the week, we had emails coming with contacts making contacts and these generous people making offers for us to stay in their homes. God was already showing us the gracious provision He would shower on us the entire adventure. This is only the beginning...