Hello My Wife and I would like share our story and ask for your support in our calling to spread the gospel and meet the needs of people in foreign nations.  This story began approximately 2 years ago, we were in a church service together listening to our pastor preach on the importance of mission work.  At this point in my life, I was not looking to go do any kind of mission work nor did I feel I had what it takes to even go on a mission trip.  Somewhere in the middle of this service, the Holy Spirit started working on me in a profound way and by the end of the service I was ready to take the first step.  At the conclusion of this service, our pastor asked for every head to be bowed and eyes closed and then he went on to ask for a show of hands of anyone who feels they are being led to go into mission work.  I raised my hand and began to weep.  I was so confused.  Why would God pick me, I know God does not need anyone but for some reason I feel he chose me.  I’m the last person I would have chosen for this work.  Our preacher took a quick count and then said something that I thought got me off the hook.  “I want all you married couples to know one thing.  If you are married, God won’t call just one of you, you both will be called.”  Whew – I knew my wife was not the adventurous type and this sort of thing would not appeal to her at all.  Maybe I was just being emotional.  We left the service and neither of us spoke of the sermon until about a week later when I awoke in the middle of the night.  I apparently left the TV on and it woke me up just in time for me to hear a TV evangelist say these words. “If you have been called to work in the mission field, it is imperative to be obedient to your God by acting on your calling” I was freaked out to say the least.  I immediately woke up my wife and began to tell her what was going on.  She looked at me with tears in her eyes and said I know, and proceeded to tell me how she had raised her hand in the service as well.  At this point I could no longer ignore the call and we both decided to commit to being obedient to God and seek out exactly what he wants us to do.  Over the next two years, we focused on getting out of debt, testing our skills sharing the Gospel locally with individuals, telling our story… I won't detail all that transpired during the two years leading up to this point but i can try and paraphrase it by saying everyday was filled with challenges, why me! moments, studying the word, watching movies such as “End of The Spear”, and sharing God’s plan for us with others.  I think the latter was more about seeking validity due to our inability to comprehend why God chose us.  Basically we did anything we could think to do to prepare but something was missing.  What exactly are we preparing to do?  Were we missing the message?  We had to remind ourselves that this journey was not about us and it was not our idea so we needed to get out of God’s way, drop to our knees and pray for his direction and so we did.  We prayed for God to show us what to do because we were completely clueless.  Guess what, God did just that, he opened up two spots on a mission trip and put it right in front our faces.  It was undeniable to both of us that we needed to go on this trip.  We had no idea how we would afford it but knew we had to go and we had a year to figure out the rest.  We signed up immediately and began trying to figure out how to go and serve.  We sent letters, and pleas to many and actually got a donation of $500 relatively quickly.  The next $2000, we were able to hold back month to month until the month before trip date.  We were short about $1000.  We thought we would have to cancel the trip but God wasn’t having that and he did it again.  I went into work then next week and received a $1000 bonus for a project I had recently completed.  God is amazing!  Trust in him for all your needs.  That’s it everything is set, we are going to the mountainous villages of Nicaragua!  This marks the beginning of a relationship with an organization that is truly dedicated to serving our God. (XMA)