January 2015

Dear Friends,

Happy New Year! It’s 2015!

We finally made it to Togo! We saw a series of answered prayers in the course of several days, and we are continuing to see answers to many more. So, I’d like to share some of our answered prayer monuments with you.

Our snowman liked warm hugs.

1.       1. Our first major answer to prayer was that we both passed our final French exams. I’m not sure I can really emphasize how incredibly happy we are to be finished with French exams. God clearly worked through our weakness and allowed us to pass.

2.     2. Our last trimester in France, AnnMarie kept asking me as we walked to and from school when the snow level on the mountains would come down far enough for her to play in the snow. She really wanted to build a snow man and have a snowball fight. So each time she asked, I prayed that God might give us just one snow day before our departure to Togo. Well, God brought snow. Boy did He ever! It snowed more than a foot on our last day before our flight, and you better believe we built that snowman and had that snowball fight.

3.     3. So our next prayer request quickly became that God would get us to the airport safely and on time. I even prayed that our flight might be a little bit late if we weren’t going to make it on time. Our flight was to leave at 10:30am, but we heard that traffic was really bad, so we decided to leave our home in Albertville at midnight to make sure we made it. We made it alright, and our flight was late; two hours late.

The complete Togo Aviation Team together at last!

4.      4.  So we began to pray that we would make our connection and that God might make the next flight a little bit late so that we would make it on time. Our first flight finally pulled up to the gate 30 minutes before our next flight was scheduled to take off. Poor AnnMarie screamed “Mommy stop running!” as I drug her through the airport to the next terminal. But, we made it out of breath and with one frustrated 3 year-old. We shared chocolate with the girls and let them watch movies on the plane as we waited one hour for the plane to take off. So God helped us to make the flight, and made it an hour late for us. We were so thankful.

5.       5. A few days before our flight out, we asked our Facebook followers to pray for our luggage situation. The airline website said that we would have to pay astronomical amounts if our luggage was too big dimensionally even if it was underweight. We were also concerned as the website suggested that we would have to purchase an extra seat on the plane to bring Ryan’s guitar. Once again, the Lord worked and we were able to get all of our luggage, including the guitar, on the airplane for NO extra fee!

6.       6. I also regularly pray that all of our luggage will make it to the final destination without any problems. I am thankful that God answered that prayer as well!

7.      7.  And finally, as far as travels go, we made it to Togo. We were able to see several old friends right away and are waiting to see or hear from others. More on that later in the letter.

As for a little family update: Leslie LOVES Togo and is doing well. Each day she wakes up and asks me when we are going to start homeschooling. She also has lots missionary kid (MK) friends here her age, so she is loving life at the moment. AnnMarie’s little personality has also blossomed here in Togo. She has already made some little Togolese friends and I’ve even heard her speak some of her French to them. Ryan and I feel like our family is finally where we belong.

Home safe and sound in Togo.

You may remember hearing us talk about the Gnamssa family who we had started a relationship with on our last visit here in 2007. Mr. Gnamssa told us that when we came back to Togo he wanted us to disciple all of his children. Well, some issues have arisen with Mr. G as he has planted some crops on our airstrip and they had to be cleared off. He was very upset and took our teammate to court. Ryan and I had the opportunity to visit with him on Sunday with our old translator friend, Komi. We brought him some photos of us with his family we took back in 2007. The kids laughed as they identified themselves as much smaller children. Overall, the visit went very well and Komi told us that we have a good relationship with him for the future. This is a huge answer to prayer. We pray that God uses our relationship with Mr. G to lead this family to Himself as well as to smooth relations between him and our aviation team.

A prayer request that we have on our minds these days is our vehicle. Praise the Lord that due to several sweet friends, we were able to purchase a Toyota Hilux back in September. It arrived in Lomé on Christmas Eve and is waiting to be released from port. ABWE had a tax exoneration due to the construction of the North Hospital of Hope that was to last until the end of the year. Would you please join us in praying that customs would honor that tax exoneration since the truck did arrive in December? If they don’t honor it, we could pay up to 80% of what we paid for the car to get it released from port. Honestly, we did not budget that kind of money. However, we know that God is in control and we have seen Him answer what seemed to be some crazy requests in the last few weeks, and we know He is always capable and even willing to do it again.

Thank you for hanging in there throughout the duration of this letter. We pray God’s richest spiritual blessings on you in 2015. Also, we love to know how to pray for you, so please do not forget to keep us updated on you from time to time.