SOLD!!!

I am sitting here typing this entry surrounded by tubs and piles of things. We have our "goodwill" pile, our "garage sale" pile and our "Alaska" pile. I am not sure how everything from our "Alaska" pile is going to fit into one moving truck, but whatever doesn't fit, doesn't get to travel with us to the chilly North!

For those of you that haven't already heard, the reason that we are packing up 4 months early is that our house SOLD in 24 hours at ABOVE our asking price! Talk about confirmation that we are in God's will! This does leave us with the challenge of getting things moved either into storage (our unit is the same size as our truck will be) or to Steve's parents guest room where the four of us will live for the next few months.  I actually enjoy going through everything and cleaning out all of the non-essentials. (Ok, maybe I packed a few non-essentials, but really, how can you expect me to survive in AK without my Keurig???)

When we traveled to Soldotna to interview for this position, we quickly realized that our cars were NOT going to work in the snowy conditions of Alaska. So we decided we would have to sell both of our cars and purchase Alaska-ready vehicles. The challenge is that both of our cars are pretty old, and not worth much. We began praying that God would help us to secure safe, reliable 4-wheel drive vehicles. Steve's friend (and one of our supporters!) Bryan found a great old Land Cruiser through his dealings in the off-roading world. It has more than a few love-marks on it, but it is in good mechanical condition and was an incredible deal. So Steve is now the proud owner of a 1996 Land Cruiser FZJ-80. Once we sew the seat back together and winterize the paint a bit it will be the perfect truck for Alaska! Steve is very excited- I even heard talk about "lift kits" for birthday presents.
I am keeping my eye out for a three-row 4x4 of some sort (Expedition, Sequoia, or similar.) Most in our price range have around 100,000 miles, but fortunately cars are built to last fairly long these days :)  If any of you hear of a good deal, let me know!

We are hoping to have a support raising dinner or two in the month of February, and our goal is to hit the 50% mark by the end of Feb. Notice the handy-dandy ticker I added to the blog! Mr. Snowman (the best thing I could come up with for AK, they didn't have sled dogs) will help you see where we are in our monthly support raising progress. If you are interested in hosting a support raising dinner please let us know. All you have to do is the hosting (serve the food, take care of the guests, etc) and we will do all of the presenting. We have a list of 40 contacts that we would like to invite to one of these dinners, and we would most likely split this into groups of 10 or so.

In other news, Steve was contacted by the publishing company Wipf & Stock who notified him that they have accepted his proposal for a Syriac Grammar. (It will teach beginners of the language how to speak and write Syriac, which is similar to biblical Aramaic.) He has a year to get it finished and edited and then they will publish it! I am so proud, and excited for him! Steve really wants to take his love and passion for languages and apply it to the Native Alaskan languages. There is currently no complete translation of the bible into modern Yupik. A translation of the New Testament has been completed and is ready for publication but from what we can tell, there has been no full translation of the Old Testament. This is something that Steve wants to pursue once we start our work in AK.

It has been so amazing to watch God work, I truly can't wait to see what He will do in the coming months. Please keep the students of ACC in your prayers as the spring semester gets into full swing. Pray for focus, motivation, and perserverence for each student this semester.

Thank you all for your interest in this amazing ministry!