Author: To Haiti We Go

A few weeks ago we went to Washington state for some training to continue to help us in our journey to Haiti. We went in not quite sure what to expect and knew we would be in training for 9 hours each of the two days there. They did a phenomenal job at keeping our attention from silly putty to hands on group activities to getting us up and involved.

We walked away from this training with so many tools in our belt. It was so helpful to give us so much wisdom, practical training and hands on practice with other missionaries as well. What we didn’t expect at all was to gain friendships that we did. We grew to love the people at our table and now have a group text chat with them. We also got to know 3 amazing people/couples from it as well. We LOVE what God is doing in their lives and we look forward to following their journeys.

We got in early the day before so we took advantage of it to drive around a bit since we were in the northwest and had never been before. We went to Multnomah Falls, which was absolutely breathtaking and then drove to Columbia River Gorge. On the flight home God gave me the gift of mountains. I had wanted to see mountains while we were there but we didn’t have time and the weather wasn’t cooperating. Well, on the flight home we literally flew right past Mt. Hood, which was the one I really wanted to see. I could also see 3 other mountains in the distance. It was INCREDIBLE!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IMPORTANT! We are doing something exciting online the second week in October for our FAR AWAY FRIENDS & FAMILY! We are doing our best throughout the past few months and in the coming months, to get together and share our hearts, calling & Haiti ministry to everyone in person that we live near but we wanted a more personal way to share it with those that live far away, that we can’t meet in person with. So we decided to create and do our own fun online event where we will have videos of us sharing about our calling, what we will be doing down there and a lot more fun informative stuff! It will be sometime the week of the 8th-12th, so if you don’t live near us and you’d love to find out more about how God called us (it’s pretty awesome, go God!) and what we will be doing in Haiti, comment below, message/text or email us and let us know and we will add you to the event once we have it up and running!

We are so thankful for each of you! Thank you for your support & prayers!

Love,

The Starkeys

Greetings from the Starkey clan! 😉

We have had a very busy but also relaxing summer, spending as much time with family as we can! We went camping a few times as a family and enjoyed some time around Lake Michigan. Our boys are awesome campers and love being outdoors so we try to spend as much time hiking and doing outdoor related activities as we can. Jim is enjoying speaking only Creole to Zeke and Zeke is understanding so well. April and the two older boys have been homeschooling for about 3 weeks now and April plans on getting serious with her Creole studies and focusing more on them here in the next month or so. We also had the privilege of going to the ALIVE Christian music festival with our youth group.

 

Throughout the summer we had the privilege of speaking at Hilltop Community Church and Faith UMC. Both churches were so welcoming and we were so grateful for the opportunity to share our Haiti journey with each of them. Two churches also picked our family to donate their VBS coin donations too. Both of them equaled almost 2k, which blew us away and was such a blessing & encouragement. Things have started picking up towards the end of Summer, which we are very excited about! God has done such amazing things that only HE could do, on this journey, to show us that this is His plan and we have loved watching Him work. Jim has been very busy meeting with people over coffee to share our calling & journey. It’s been an encouragement to him to build those relationships and share his heart with each person he has coffee with.

We are so excited to share that we now have 54% of our one-time moving costs raised, which is wonderful! We are doing so well with our one-time moving costs that we are focusing more now on raising our monthly support up because that is what we need the most in order for us to stay in Haiti long term.

As of today, we have 28 monthly supporters and are at 29% raised! 

We are so thankful for each of our monthly supporters, knowing that they will not only be blessing us to allow us to be on the field in Haiti, BUT because of their decision to give part of what God has blessed them with, back to Him to advance the gospel, we are excited for how we know God will be working in and through their lives! This is definitely a ministry that cannot happen without our monthly supporters and God keeps teaching us more each day, how important THIS part of our journey is because this journey of us moving to Haiti is not just about us, or what God will do through us but God specifically knows the families He wants to use and change through this journey as well. We love how God works!

TRAINING: Please be praying for us September 12th through the 15th as we head to the state of Washington for more training to help us on our journey to get to Haiti. Our organization is needing us down there sooner now if possible. Two wonderful couples have retired from the ministry in the past year and they are needing more missionary families down there with all the work that needs to be done and all the villages/churches we minister to down there. RMI has shared how our skill sets are what they are needing right now and they are excited for our family to hurry and get down there.  OUR NEW GOAL MOVE DATE IS MARCH 2019! So we need to raise the remaining 70% up in monthly support in the next 7 months so we can move down there. So if you have been thinking about starting your support or have told us you want to support us, we would love to encourage you to start soon so that we can officially add it to our count, so we can hurry and get down there. Thank you so much!

WANT TO JOIN OUR TEAM? We would LOVE to have you, get to know you more, pray for you and have you join this exciting journey! Check out the graphic below to see which levels we still need monthly supporters in to see which one your family would like to do! Then go HERE to start your support today. Thank you for considering being a part of this amazing ministry.

 

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to Him be the glory…” – Ephesians 3:20

With love,

The Starkeys

 

 

PRAISES:

1. Praising God for another church who donated their VBS coin money to our journey and sent in $900! We had a total of almost 2k from VBS’s this summer towards our journey!