SURPRISE!

I am still a little hesitant to put this up because there are a few people we want to still surprise, but I also feel like everyone deserves an update :) Hopefully you remember the post about the visas we put up a couple of weeks ago! If not, the title is: "The Battle is Over, We Have Won The War".... Our appointment with the consulate in Atlanta was scheduled for December 27th. We were pretty excited about the chance to come home for the holidays until we started looking at the cost of tickets. $6000.00 in some cases. Yeah right! Normally, flying into Miami is the cheapest route by thousands of dollars - but that comes with a 10 hour car ride after flying halfway around the world. I was looking for tickets all around the 27th into Miami $2,700 here and $3,600 there and that was just for one person. I was pretty bummed because that meant we were going to have to reschedule our visa appointment, which just put more time in the mix for things to get messed up, again. Four hours in to my ticket search I stopped to pray, "God please show up here, please get us some tickets home for this." Apparently, I should have started praying sooner! I decided to GO BIG, and simply put what I wanted on the ticket search engine. Fly out the 21st stay till the 28th : $6000..... UUUGGGHHH! Sometimes God wants us to go even BIGGER . Fly out the 19th, come back the 31st, skip Miami and fly into Charlotte with a car rental: $1100.00 WHAT! We will take that one! Surprisingly enough, the trip went really well until we got to the car rental place. "Yea we have a reservation for you, but it has not been paid".... I knew that price was too good. Although, I did have a receipt that said it had been paid in full. Apparently they only charged for the reservation fee - I asked the lady if we would be able to get the rental for the same price as we had on the reservation. The answer was a big fat NO.... Actually, it was twice as much and at $800.00, Liz and I were backpacking, hitch hiking, or hanging out at the Charlotte airport for 12 days... I told the lady that. I looked her dead in the eyes and said, you are really going to make us stay at the airport for 12 days over Christmas.... "Let me see what I can do" - The Lady
         Liz and I brought back 4 suitcases of stuff back for other missionaries since we could do it for free. We had our 4 big suitcases and 2 carry on items a piece. The Budget lady looked at all that stuff, figured it wasn't going to fit in the compact car we had checked out, and hooked us up with an SUV for the same price as the compact car. So, God hooked us up with better tickets than we have ever gotten before at Christmas time, messed up our car rental stuff so we could get something better for the same discounted price, and we got to surprise our family for the holidays! You should have seen everyone's faces! My mom actually thought that the rapture had happened and that we were all on our way to heaven! LOL Vicky just busted out into tears! It was certainly an awesome Christmas Gift for Liz and I to see our families for the Christmas holidays! God certainly takes care of those who seek after Him!

BIBLE UPDATE

 The total cost on the Bibles for the students at AVA was $1011.00 and some change. We have currently reached $900.00 of the $1100 goal. Plus, the people at Lifeway were awesome in helping us gather the Bibles - they even gave us a little discount to help out! If you are looking for a Bible, Lifeway is the place to go!





As far as the Bibles for Nigeria go, we are working with the Gideon's to get those Bibles out to them. However, we do still need to get the study Bible for the pastor (which is listed in a previous post). Hopefully, we can get those to them soon, Lord Willing!