Mark your calendar: July 21st is THE DAY

As you may have heard in my video announcement, there was some miscommunication on what exactly we needed to have of our budget to pass the Beginning of July Deadline. Instead of 90%, what we had of 82% was plenty. But 82% isn't enough to buy plane tickets.

We are two months out from our anticipated departure date and we need to have some goal date for purchasing plane tickets. I didn't want to pick an arbitrary date and hold it up declaring it the deadline, especially if we're not really figuratively dead after it passes.

As I was pondering that, I began to talk with a travel agent about how to get over there. He found us great tickets, involving no overnight stays (blegh for having to get your luggage, find a cab, play for accommodations and food, find another cab and check back into the airport) and only 26.5 hours from the first departure to the last arrival! (I know that sounds like a lot but add a couple nights in Brisbane and a night in Port Moresby and the trip is taking closer to a week!)

BUT, our travel agent is taking a 19 day vacation on July 23rd and the 21st is his last day in the office. So we have our deadline target day, goal day, The Day!
If we don't have 90% of our support pledged on this day, we don't think our ship will be sunk. It may very well be possible to find other tickets from another travel agent.
But we've heard good things about this guy, we like these tickets, and we would like to buy them before he leaves town.

We need 6 people giving $46/month. Or 12 giving $23. Or 3 giving $92.

(Our campaign emphasizing giving 1% of our budget is to help put a graspable picture in your mind of how much we need and say it in attainable terms. 

Telling a stranger about our need, she said "$46? Anybody can give $46! I can give $46!" And she did. We certainly hope she's right and $46 isn't a daunting figure for anyone but we don't want to communicate that a smaller gift is unwelcome. After all, the story of the widow with two coins is about how valuable a sacrificial gift is to the Lord, it's denomination is irrelevant.)

Check out the How to Give Page to see how you can join our team!

We are so so so excited to be leaving soon. We've been working toward this goal for 10 years now. To finally be able to go over and start ministry, to live incarnationally with the villagers, to aid on their translation work and their literacy competency, teaching people how to study the Scriptures, and letting people learn about the God who loves them and who speaks their language.

And we're excited for all the members of our support team who get to have a hand in this. I'm excited to send them pictures of the country and stories of the people we meet there. These pictures and these stories will be theirs too. That's how a partnership works.

If you can't give (or give more (don't want to ostracize our current supporters from the then of this if-then)), can you pray that we find our 6 other supporters before the 21st?
(And if you can give (or give more), after you shoot me an email or check out our giving page, can you also pray? While you are an answer to prayer, your prayers are important too!)