Author: To Haiti We Go

Happy New Year everyone! We celebrated last night with staying in with the boys, building Legos, puzzles and just having a fun time together as a family! The boys LOVED the Sparkling red grape juice we bought 😉 It was also Zeke’s first birthday yesterday and so we celebrated him and it being one year since we got the call from our adoption agency that he had been born ❤ A New Year is always so fun because it’s full of so much potential & new beginnings! A fresh new start so to speak. I don’t think it’s so much about resolutions but more about taking that time and moment to stop, reflect, refresh, be still before God and see what He wants to do in you for the coming year and how you can grow in Him to make Him known more. I LOVE this time of year for that reason alone and of course you can do that ANY time of the year but it always is a wonderful time to do it with a fresh new year.

We wanted to share THREE things with you all…

1. Our T-shirt campaign we did has been so much fun and has brought in around $750 so far for our one-time moving costs! We will continue to do this fundraiser on and off until we leave because we have people continually asking if we are doing another one so we figured we can just keep it on-going so people can buy them when they want to or can. We combined BOTH links into ONE to make it simple so you can FIND and buy all the shirts on this link right here until the 25th of January when this campaign will end and then we will start another on sometime in February! https://www.bonfire.com/starkeys-one-time-moving-costs-to-haiti/

2. Friends of ours from church, the Carmeans, own an amazing online boutique called    Soul Revival Boutique and they are donating 10% of their entire sales in January and February to us, for Haiti. Isn’t that amazing! Here is their Fb page as well. They have AMAZING clothes that I love and I know you will too! So if you need some clothes or gifts in the near future, check them out because you will be able to buy, knowing that 10% of your purchase helps us! ❤ Here are just a few of their amazing items…

3. IF YOU GO TO CHURCH WITH US, you will be donating through the church instead of organization, if you want to be one of our monthly supporters! So to do that, please go to http://www.discovercommunity.org or a more direct link is HERE and click on the GIVE drop down menu and click on Starkey. Then put in the amount you want to give on a weekly or monthly basis. Next you will select the occurrence drop down menu to select weekly or monthly and then go from there to enter your payment info and then voila you are done and it will automatically do it for you so you don’t have to keep doing it each month! Thank you so much!

Happy New Year friends! Thank you for your support! We look forward to seeing what 2018 holds and hoping we will be in Haiti by the end of it or shortly thereafter! We have a big year ahead of us with preparing our family, our home, selling things, learning the language, culture training, raising the rest of our support etc so please keep praying for us ❤ If you are ready to become one of our monthly supporters, you can click HERE to do so! ❤

Merry Christmas everyone! One of my favorite things to do during Christmas time is worship Him! There is nothing sweeter than singing back a love song to the One who first loved us. Don’t get me wrong, I love ALL types of Christmas music from “I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas to Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow…however, there is nothing as good as singing back to Him, and in the same time reminding ourselves of His great love for us and thanking Him in that moment for coming the way He did, when He did, all because He is such a personal, loving God who wants a relationship with us.

So to kick off Christmas Eve I wanted to share my TOP 10 FAVORITE CHRISTMAS WORSHIP SONGS with you all right now! I will share links with each one so you can listen and worship along as well! I’d love to hear yours too, so feel free to comment and let us know! (There are in no particular order)

1. King of Heaven by Hillsong CLICK HERE
2. Christmas version of Hallelujah by Cloverton CLICK HERE
3. Light of the World by Lauren Daigle CLICK HERE
4. Here with us by Joy Williams CLICK HERE
5. How Many Kings by Downhere CLICK HERE
6. O Holy Night by various artists CLICK HERE
7. I Believe by Natalie Grant CLICK HERE
8. THIS version of Go Tell it on the Mountain by Cloverton CLICK HERE
9. Noel by Chris Tomlin/Lauren Daigle CLICK HERE
10. We Have a Savior by Hillsong CLICK HERE

I have SO many more including SO many traditional hymns and classics but those I think go without saying! Merry Christmas everyone! We have a Savior!

Merry Christmas,

The Starkeys

Time is flying by! Can you believe we are two months into our deputation journey already? We won’t lie, it’s been filled with a lot of growth in the patience department. 😉 We are realizing more than maybe any other time in our lives, how dependent we must be on Him and to seek Him daily about this because if not, it can quickly become daunting. However, we’ve also already seen Him work in some really neat ways to encourage us on this journey and for that we are so thankful. We are incredibly blessed to have so many people in our lives that we know are praying for us on this journey. We love every single time He reminds us that HE is the one bringing the money in, not us. He owns it all, and He knows the exact people He is going to use to send us to Haiti.

WHERE ARE WE AT NUMBERS WISE? We are currently at 15% raised for our monthly needs. This means we have 8 awesome families and 2 amazing businesses who have committed to sending in a certain amount each month, to help us do our ministry in Haiti. We need to have 100% of our monthly support raised up before we move so we are thankful for this start and cannot wait to watch it continue to rise. We are needed over there as soon as we can get there, so as soon as we have all our monthly supporters, we will start shipping our things over and preparing the big move.

FUN FACT: (Just dreaming over here 😉 ) If we had 200 people/families commit to $32 a month, we would be fully funded and be able to move and stay there. How awesome is that. Now of course I know that is probably not how it will work, because God has His plans of how He wants to do it but I still think it’s neat to see how MANY hands can come together to do great work! We have supporters all over the board from $10 a month to $500 a month and we are thankful for each and every single one of them!

WHAT HAVE WE BEEN UP TO: We’ve met with around 10 people individually so far, 4 pastors, spoke at our home church and are scheduled to speak at two other churches this coming winter, in the new year! We are starting our Creole studies soon too. Along with wanting to connect with churches to partner with and speak at, we are also looking for small groups, bible study groups & sunday school classes where we can speak at as well so please let us know if you’d like to have us. We also would love to meet one on one with any of you that would like to hear our story, whether it’s over video chat or in person. We have found out from other missionaries that the way missionaries raise up their funds now looks so much different than it did years ago. Years ago it was mainly all through church support, now its almost all through individual families giving as monthly supporters.

OUR STORY: If you would like to watch us share our story of how God called us into the mission field, and you are on Facebook, feel free to follow this LINK  to see us share at our home church recently. Start watching around 14 minutes into the video to catch our part.

PRAYER REQUESTS:

1. For our family as we start our Creole studies in January. (Jim will be starting more advanced studies since he already has beginner/basic Creole understanding)
2. For God to help us prepare our home to sell and know the exact time to sell it.
3. For April as she tries to balance homeschooling the boys while doing deputation work.
4. For our families and us, for God to continue to prepare our hearts for this journey.
5. For wisdom during this whole journey, to know what to do each step of the way.

PLEASE CONSIDER BEING ONE OF OUR MONTHLY SUPPORTERS! We would love to have you as part of our ministry sending team. If you can start supporting us monthly RIGHT NOW, that would help us greatly, as we need that thermometer to rise up to 100% before we can move. IF you just cannot commit to monthly giving right now but you want to help maybe with an end of the year (tax deductible) special gift to help us with our one-time moving costs, please consider that as well. Thank you all so much, truly! 

DONATE BY CLICKING HERE

Hope you all have a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS! May you feel His presence ever so near and be reminded of His great love for YOU. What a personal, loving, faithful God we serve. Our RESCUER, who loves us and wants us even though He doesn’t need us. Emmanuel God with us!

Love,
The Starkeys