THE LEARNING CURVE CONTINUES!                                            
                                                                                                                                                                                           

Jani here:
I want to keep you informed about each step of the journey we are taking.
Designing this blog has been really hard work! I really don't know what I am doing. But I do know that part of our vision is to take you all with us - and I think this is really the best way!
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3/20/12

I apologize for the long period of time it has been since I have written. Like the title says, “The Learning Curve Continues”…..

I would love to tell you how wonderful this getting ready time has been, but I must be honest – its been a lot of stress! I have learned many things, the most important of which is that

SUPPORT FOR THE MISSIONARY NEEDS TO START , NOT WHEN THEY ARE PRAYED OUT BUT WHEN THEY FIRST RECEIVE THE CALLING!

I learned that when you send out a mass mailing, most of the communication ends up in a spam folder! (this learning came when I found that most of the people I sent our newsletter to had no idea we were going!) I still am trying to slowly remedy that.

We need prayer. There are still many details to take care of.

We also want you to rejoice with us! We have had answers to prayer already! A friend is going to be staying in our house while we are gone, Beryl’s employers have been very positive about his leaving and coming back….my health has done well (had double Carpel Tunnel surgery and healed already!) and we have much more support than we previously had. (But that is still a prayer need. We are still short our need)

Please use our email berylnjani@gmail.com to give us prayer requests. We really do want to pray for you!

Blog Update - Beryl

Category: Things that need to happen BEFORE you get on the field.

Date 5/8/2012

It occurred to me about a week before I left (read - Holy Spirit spoke to me) I needed to get garbage service and maybe a yard maintenance service. I in my ultra frugal, “do it yourself” way of thinking I immediately dismissed it as over the top extravagance. Why pay $50.00 bucks for a service I can do myself for pennies? Well I’ll tell you why… No matter how clever I may be I can’t haul garbage to the dump from 500 miles away. Or mow the grass, fix the shower or get the mail, garbage service is less than $20.00 a month, quite a bit more than the $35.00 every 6 months I spent going to the dump previously but again the mileage would kill me. And you need the means to haul the stuff. Yard service is similar in that I can “weed-eat” the little patch of grass in three minutes, but not from central Idaho!

In retro; getting garbage and lawn service BEFORE we left and maybe retain a fixit handy man to fix the shower or what-ever. Preemptively spending  before I left would have kept big gobs of stress off of me and keep us from having to come home early to haul garbage. Having someone staying in the house keeps the stress off too… Not having to worry about the plumbing springing a leak or the roof. It means I can stay in the field doing the work God has for me and not having to worry about the house stuff.

In regard to banking, we thought it would be good to set up direct deposit and auto withdrawal to pay some bills. Cool, except for the part where it doesn’t work. We spent four full days (on different dates) of fussing with the bank, about how to get our money from one account to another or from one bank to another. In the end, we decided to buy a box of checks and mail all of the payments early enough to get to everyone on time. Oh I almost forgot (this is a good one) our insurance company took their money out of the wrong account causing a couple fees. When we pointed out the error they said no problem, we’ll write you a check right away. After two weeks our agent sent us the amount out of his own pocket saying “you guys are out there doing God’s work. You don’t need this kind of headache”. He seems to be a pretty nice agent.

I know this doesn’t seem like much but from my perspective (and this shows just how wise and mature I really am), every week I hear some news from home or some email alert from the bank advising me of some catastrophic fail. I just want to come home and burn the house down to spite the neighbors, poison the lawn to spite the landlord, or take a bat to one of my many bankers. As you can tell from my rhetoric, I’m not handling the distraction so well. But frankly this season, this event of my life has been the most fulfilling of my life! More so than anything I’ve experienced to date. Last week I was working through some rather peculiar plumbing problems and Jani caught me off guard with a question and I snapped at her. She reminded me of what I said about the fulfillment thing. I couldn’t come up with an answer. Later however, when I solved the problem, I did have an answer. I told her that I think my fulfillment comes from conquering the problem and its intensity comes from doing something to help promote and further Gods kingdom.

I’ve been working ten to fifteen hours every day in some of the most beautiful country I’ve ever seen. I end my day with a game of cards and a talk with my wife and a sense of satisfaction that I am facilitating and enabling missionaries to do just what God called them to do, the thing they love! While I do what God has called me to, the thing I love!

Another month and most of the urgent projects will be done and I can focus on some of the long range goals of the base with less pressure and more time to recreate, something to look forward to.

Don’t forget to always pray for us at all times in all ways! We need you , our brothers and sisters, lifting us up as we lift up and build up the body.

In His service, more later.

b