Blog

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

God has been so good and so kind to us this past month, as it’s been one of the busiest months of our lives. Jim has been traveling for most of it, which has been hard of him being away from us and hard on the kids not having him with us. Jim, April & Amelia traveled to Santiago in the Dominican Republic to find a home and get to know the area some before the move. They also visited one of the schools they hope to enroll Zeke in.

Then, Jim traveled to Missouri for a Missions conference with RMI’s President. It was a successful time there and they were able to share with many people about what RMI does.

By God’s grace, Jim and Micaiah went down to Haiti for a week and packed up 77 boxes totaling 2,500 lbs for Agape Missionary Pilots to fly over to Santiago for us later. We all had tearful goodbyes (they in person and the rest of us over video) as we said goodbye to each room, our home and our staff who became family to us. We still talk to them on a weekly basis, as they mean so much to us.

After a week or so of returning from Haiti, we packed up all our items here stateside and Jim and Isaac drove a U-Haul down to Florida and dropped our items off at Agape Missionary Pilots. While there, we also transferred our account from Les Cayes, Haiti to Santiago, Dominican Republic. If you ever want to send our family something in the mail, here is the address to send it to now:

Jim & April Starkey

c/o Agape Flights – STI 30007

100 Airport Avenue E.

Venice, FL 34285

We now enter the time of transition, where it’s the time to spend with family and those closest to you, to share those last moments with and say goodbye. This is one of the hardest times but times we treasure and know it’s needed to go through as you transition.

We are at 63% raised for our one-time moving costs goal and 47% raised for the extra monthly support we need to live in the DR. We are so grateful for this and are praying and excited to see how the rest will come in, who it will be and when! God knows! We trust!

We have been speaking at various churches and have one more to go. It’s been a blessing to share at all of these places, meet new people, see ones we haven’t seen in awhile and share what we feel God is having us do next.

WOULD YOU PRAY FOR US?

For the rest of the funds to come in! We’d love YOU to be a part, we have supporters that give anywhere from $10 a month to $500. ALL OF IT MATTERS AND HELPS!

Go HERE to sign up. Super easy and if you have questions just ask!

Pray for us as we transition, as we prepare for the next chapter but also try and close out this chapter faithfully and say our “see ya laters” to those who are so dear to us.

Pray for us to be aware of how it’s effecting our children and how to best be there for them through this transition.

Pray for all the details, even the things we can’t see but that God knows…to come together, for His glory! That we would follow Him, doing Kingdom work and not mens.

Pray for safety and good health for our family. Strength and energy to do what we need to do!

Thank you!
Love,
The Starkeys