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

Our Next Step...Kenya!!

Dear Friends & Family,

We have some big news...We have been praying about our next step (aka, Lane's job) after he finishes his job directing a missions training school at our church this coming fall. Long story short, Lane is really interested in using his law background to help the poor and oppressed around the world. About 2 years ago he learned about a huge Christian human-rights organization called International Justice Mission (www.IJM.org) and has been stirred by their cause ever since.

So in this spring Lane applied to do a one-year fellowship with them overseas to be a lawyer and help rescue women & children from human trafficking, brothels, abuse cases, etc. We talked to our parents about the idea over Easter weekend in April. Since then, Lane got an offer and we accepted! Now we are beginning the process to prepare to go. So, where and when you ask? He got accepted to work in the Kenya office starting this August/September 2009....so that means in about 4 months we are planning to move overseas to Africa for a year. We have prayed a lot about this and feel like this is where God is calling us for the next step in our life. The plan now is to do fund raising, rent our house and just store our stuff for a year.

Thanks for walking with us in this new journey. I'll keep you posted!

If you want more info about this or want to talk about it, please email me at annamears01@yahoo.com. Also, this is an unpaid volunteer position so we are in the process of fund raising for our living costs for a year. If you are interesting in donating, go directly to the IJM website at http://www.ijm.org/getinvolved/internshipsupport and choose Lane Mears from the list of Intern/Fellows. All gifts are tax-deductible. Thanks!

Blessings,
Anna

Texas Bluebonnets

The tradition in Texas every spring is to take pictures with the bluebonnet flowers.

This year we were heading back from Easter weekend with both sides of our families and saw this patch of bluebonnets on the side of the road. We had to stop.

I love the bluebonnets. In some places they are so thick, it is just a sea of blue. It was really much prettier than these pictures show.

Luke 4 months old!

September 2008
Luke is growing and moving so much now!

Trip to San Diego

October 2008

What a great vacation! It seems like it had been forever, since we had been on a vacation.

And ohh, was it so great to relax, go to the beach and just enjoy being together as a family. 

Lane's sister lives out on SD and so we decided to go visit. 

We went to the beach several times and even got a visit to Legoland, which the kids loved of course.

Baby Luke Hooper is here!!

YEAH!!! Baby Luke Hooper arrived on Saturday morning at 7:56am. My water broke on Friday afternoon at 2pm and labored all night long. Then, about 6am on Saturday morning the baby's heart rate started dropping unusually with some of the contractions, a sign that something might be wrong. It is normal for the heart rate to drop some, but this was more than the doctors were comfortable. Then, about 7:15am it happened again and the doctor decided this wasn't good and it was time to go get him with an emergency c-section. So, things happened quickly after that and at 7:56am, Luke Hooper was born !!

He weighed 8 lbs 11oz and was 21 inches long! Bigger than we were expecting!! We are so thrilled and big brother Caleb and big sister Abigail are so excited to finally meet him. We came home from the hospital yesterday. We are so thankful for the blessing of this new child into our life.

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." Matthew 19:14

The name Luke is from the New Testament in the Bible. He was a doctor, travelled with the Apostle Paul and wrote one of the Gospel books of the Bible. The name Hooper is a family name after Anna's mother's parents. We have always respected them and wanted this child to carry their name. Also, Luke's great-great grandfather is Harry Hooper a baseball Hall of Famer who played for the Boston Red Sox with Babe Ruth (Lane loves this!!). Actually, we thought about naming him Hooper Luke and actually tried it on for a few days after he ws born, but then Monday night, Lane and I decided to go with Luke Hooper.

Trusting the Lord

I have been wrestling lately with how much I should try to intervene and "make" this baby come. There are a few medical and several natural ways that can induce labor. However, I feel in some ways that it is an issue of me trusting the Lord. God can make this baby come at any second. His timing is perfect. I need to remind myself of that and know that God knows more than I do. He knows that the baby needs to develop another day or that the right doctor will be on call on the right day. I don't know those things and I have to trust that He is orchestrating those events ahead of me. I am pretty sure my doctor (whom I trust a great deal) will want to do another c-section when I reach 42 weeks overdue, which would be on or around Tuesday May 27th next week. So, my prayer has been and continues to be that this baby will come on his own before that time. God know this and so whatever happens, I will trust that that was God's answer to my prayer. I had to release these exact thoughts when I was pregnant with Abigail, who was 15 days overdue and delivered via c-section. (By the way, I shouldn't be induced with medicine like pitocin because I have had 2 previous cesareans.) So, I have been down this path before, but it is a reminder again of my faith and trust in God.

Spring Bluebonnets

Caleb's Soccer

This spring we entered the world of competive sports. Or I guess you could say, I became a "Soccer Mom." Or maybe I should more appropriately say that Lane became the "My dad is the best coach ever!" So, I learned that at the 4-5 year old level, they play 3-on-3 and there aren't many rules. Actually, the goal of the whole game is for the kids to have fun, learn how to kick the ball, and get the idea of which direction to kick the ball (ha!). It took him a few games for Caleb to warm up to the idea of how it all works.

Flying Kites

We took advantage of a windy day about 2 weeks ago to "Go fly a kite". The kids loved it and it was so great just to be outdoors and enjoy the late-spring weather. Caleb is 5 years old, Abigail is almost 3, Luke will be born four days after these pictures!

Baby Luke Update

Well, we are due to have a baby any day now. Actually, this baby boy was due last week on May 13th, 2008. Thanks for all of your prayers and we hope to have news of a new baby any day now.

Caleb's 5th Birthday

Hi friends and family!
Welcome to our family Blog. I thought it would be fun to try this out as a way to keep up with folks. Especially, as we are about to have our third child any moment now :-) I will try to put some pictures and other fun stuff along the way. enjoy!

Here are two pictures of Caleb's 5th birthday in April! The cupcake picture was from our family party and the chocolate cake picture is from his party with his school friends in our back yard. He helped me make this cake. It is a "Star Wars Lego battle scene" if you couldn't tell what those little things on top of the cake are. He set up the whole scene on the top with the bad guys on one side of the river and the good guys (Luke, Han, R2D2, etc) on the other. All the other kids loved it and kept asking to get the slice with Luke on top. His cousins Aurea, JL and Jude and Grandparents came down from Dallas for the weekend as well.

Anna