More Stuff Happening...

Dear Friends,
A quick update from the Mears!!

- Lane is currently on a scouting trip to Kenya for a week to find us a place to live, meet folks at the IJM office, and get a feel for the city before the whole family arrives. Here is an email from Lane...

I arrived in Nairobi last night after nearly 24 hours of travel. All is well. I spent today looking at apartments/houses for us to live in this next year, and saw a couple that are real possibilities. I met the IJM staff I will be working with, had lunch with a couple of them, and it is now 5pm local time and I am seriously jet-lagging.

Thank you for praying for me during this trip. Please continue to pray that I would find the right apartment/house/condo for us as a family. Please also pray for the IJM staff, as they are in the midst of investigating and/or prosecuting several key cases right now. I am so looking forward to being a part of this team and using my legal skills to fight for justice for those here in Jesus' name. Tomorrow I will visit Caleb's school and look at a few more housing possibilities.

- Good news...we jumped to 60% of our budget raised in the last week. Thank you Lord! We are praying now for the remaining amount to get us all of the way there. Our goal is to get there before school starts on August 10th. Pray with us that God would provide the funds for us to get to Kenya to do this amazing work!

- Our friend, Tom Landis, is hosting a Fund-raising dinner at Texadelphia in Dallas at Lovers & Greenville on Saturday June 27, 6-8pm. Cost is $20 per person for all-you-can eat. Wohoo! Pray for lots of people to come!

- We are also having a Dessert and Info night in Austin at 7pm on Thursday July 2nd at the "Awake, Awake" coffee shop on 4407 Monterey Oaks Blvd (same building as Hope in the City church). Mark your calendars, we'd love to see you there!

- Keep praying for us to find renters for our house. We have had a few nibbles. Pray for the right folks.

Many blessings to you!
Anna

Preparing To Go...

Friends,
We love knowing that you are praying for us in this journey. It has been a while and so I thought I would update you. There has been a lot going on...please keep praying! We just realized that we are two months away from when we want to leave.

IJM Training Week in DC Last week, Lane and I both went to DC for our training week. It was awesome. Lane had to be there, but I am so glad we both went. It really helped me see what this is all about, because as you know, Lane was really the one with a passion for this work. At some point I asked Lane if this is still what we should be doing. And he said 'Absolutely!'. We also got to meet the 2 other interns/fellows that will be in the Kenya office with us. And listen to this... one lawyer gal named Jennifer is staying for a year like us, loves kids, and offered to babysit for us while we are there. Yeah! That is an answer to a little prayer I had for living there which was that we would probably never get a date night since we wouldn't know anyone who could do that. Thank you Lord for that surprise blessing! Thank you for your prayers for the kids. They did great with both sets of grandparents. Oh, that was such a relief!

Support Letters & Meetings
We are in the middle of fund raising and as of today we are about 38% of our budget. Thank you Lord. We are trying to follow up with folks right now that we sent letters to already. (Email me if you want a letter or go to the link in the last blog entry). Lane had several meetings with people this past week, so pray for those folks to partner with us. I am specifically praying for 50 more people to join our support team. Good news: a friend in Dallas who owns a Texadelphia restaurant has offered to do a fundraiser night for us on Saturday, June 27th. We are sending out lots of invites to Dallas friends (high school, etc) and we'll go up to be there for the event. Pray for lots of folks to come to that! School starts August 10, so that is our goal to get to Kenya. Pray for God to provide the funds for us to go. We are confident that God has called us to this next step so we pray that God will provide the finances. Please pray with us!

Lane's Scouting Trip
Lane will leave tomorrow Tues 6/16 for a week to go to Kenya for a scouting trip. The goal is to go to the IJM office to get acquainted, visit Caleb's school called Rosslyn (www.rosslynacademy.com) , find us a place to live, and get a feel for the city. Pray for the trip and me at home with the kids while Lane is gone. He'll be back on Tues 6/23. Today, I am packing 2 boxes of our stuff for him to take and leave there.

Life at Home
- A BIG PRAYER right now is that we find someone to rent our house for one year starting in August. Spread the word if you know anyone.
- We are down to one car! We just sold the Xterra to our neighbor and are loaning the Jeep out to a friend while we are gone. Actually, I am kind of enjoying this right now, because it means time for us as a family in the car together. :-)
- I think we found someone to take Lizzy, our dog for the year. yeah!
- Things were kind of comical at our house this weekend. The other day a light went on in the car that had to get repaired. The A/C broke this weekend, ugh. Pray that we can get it repaired quickly in the next few days. And then, Lane was opening a cabinet door in the kitchen yesterday and it cracked in half and fell off. Ha! I just started laughing and praising God for our wonderful family and kids and anything else I could think of. :-) All we could do was laugh :-) Now, Luke is pulling out all of the tupperware. Oh my!
- Luke turned one year old!! He is running everywhere now and his favorite thing is to put his hand on his ear and say "Hada" and start babbling like he is on the phone.

Thanks for walking with us in this journey!
Anna