I'm Back

I am sure most of you have thought - Tess must be done with blogging. I am not, I simply was overwhelmed with things and when I got behind on the blog, I panicked. I had it in my mind that I had to catch up on all the past posts and that left me in a bloggers slump. I have evaluated this and have decided to pick up with the current day events and I will fill in the past few months as I can. That way I am free to blog without the self induced pressure of getting caught up! It is so refreshing to back and I feel it is just in time! Things are about to get interesting for us as we are leaving for our very first mission's trip on 20 days! It is very exciting for us but as you all know, we have some anxiety as well. As Craig and I were talking last night, I simply said, "I can't even think about the day we leave, it makes me want to cry!" My mind takes me to the morning where we take Micah to daycare and leave him there knowing we will not see him again for 8 day! Sigh.. I don't like to think about it, it makes me sad. I just pray that morning goes well and he handles it well because if he doesn't I can tell you mom and dad won't either!

This morning we shared our devotional with the the group we will be traveling with. Craig and I actually sat down last night and wrote it together so this will be Craig's first ever "partial" appearance on this blog! Very exciting..

In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” Acts 20:35

This will be our first time taking a mission’s trip and we are really looking forward to it. It will be difficult to leave our 5 year old son behind, but we feel it is a small sacrifice to make in order to serve our Lord and many others who are in need. We both share the desire to give and not receive so this trip has forced us to step out of our comfort zone. We have been truly blessed with tremendous emotional and financial support from our friends, family as well as complete strangers. To see the plans evolve for us has been a complete work of God and that has been very humbling.

We try to lead our day to day life giving back to others as that is extremely important to us. Through the up and down times, we have always remained steadfast in our understanding of how blessed we are. It is our pleasure to serve the Lord on this mission and we look forward to seeing exactly what his plans are for us individually and what impact this will have on our already strong marriage and family. It is difficult to think we will gain anything as our mission is to give, but we have no doubt in our mind that we will gain a tremendous amount. It will be amazing to see how God works through all of our hands and that is something we greatly look forward too.