It was an exciting day yesterday when we officially bought our plane tickets to the DR. It’s been a long journey and an even longer one ahead of us but we are ready. August 1st is the move date!
Yes, we may have a mixture of emotions that come up at random times as a family. Emotions from excitement and ready to start, to feelings of being a little overwhelmed and thinking, “oh my goodness we have a lot to do”, to feeling sad about leaving family so dear to us.
Yet we know all of those emotions are normal for transitions and so we embrace them, work through them, talk to each other as a family and keep seeking God through it all! It’s a lot different doing this journey 5 years later with older kids plus a baby than it was when they were 9, 6 and 2! They have a lot more feelings, people they are connected to and things that they want to talk to us about through the whole transition. So we are doing our best to be there for them.
For our family of 6, the house that worked the best for us still needed one more bedroom. The upstairs had a big open living area that the owner agreed to let us put some drywall up and a door to make it into a bedroom for the two older boys. We were so thankful we were able to do this. The first picture above is taken from the bedroom looking out into the hallway. It was an open entry at first. The second picture shows the closed off dry wall they did and new door they put up.
Jim & April continue to do Spanish lessons although it will be much better once we are moved and settled and can actually spend a specific amount of time each other consistently studying the language.
PRAYER REQUESTS!
Good health, strength & energy for us as we finish here, fly our family of 6 to our new home and get everything set up.
Here are some little details so you can know more of how to pray for our first few weeks:
We have to make sure and have a vehicle lined up for when we arrive at the airport.
Then we have to find an airbnb to stay at for the week while we wait for Agape to bring in our items and for it to be cleared by customs so that we can unpack it in our house.
All of our pots & pans and dishes are still in Haiti waiting to come over, so we have to pick up a pan or two at the store once we arrive, to hold us over until our stuff comes, so we can cook food for our family.
We have to go out and find a baby gate and pack in play there as all of Amelia’s stuff will be clearing customs and we won’t have access to it right away. Finding these things will be a prayer request as well as we don’t know all the stores yet or where they all are.
Then we have to find a delivery truck service that will be ok waiting for us to be cleared by customs and then going to the airport with us to pick up all of our stuff when we get the OK. We have to set up a bank account as well and get the funds ready to pay customs for when we pick up our items.
It’s much different doing it in a country that is not your passport country and doing it with 4 kiddos as well. So we ask for prayer for all of these little details to work out. Our organization is doing a great job with helping us as much as they can from afar. This all just looks different because of us being the first ones there from RMI.
Pray for wisdom for us to know the best route to go for every thing. For us to be able to get our stuff from customs sooner rather than later. For our stuff from Haiti to arrive shortly around that time as well so we can have our household cooking items etc. For the kids as we work through all these details, trying to get our house in order the first few weeks.
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We are 80% raised for our one-time/moving costs. We need another $2,750 before we move. If you’d like to give towards that, you can go here and make sure you select our names in the drop down menu so it goes to us. If you want to give to us another way, just reach out to us! http://www.RMIbridge.org/donate
We need more monthly supporters as well. That is families, individuals or churches who sign up online and pick a date each month where they have a specific amount that comes out and is donated to us. If you’d like to support us monthly go here and click monthly, pick your date and amount and pick our names in the drop down menu. We greatly appreciate it. http://www.RMIbridge.org/donate
Love,
The Starkeys
bridgetohispaniola.com 