Last Days in Napa...

...California and America! Yikes! We have about a month until we head out to Germany. Here is a bit of an update on what's been going on around here...

Planning: We have some major events coming up that we have been spending a lot of time on. This  Friday (sept. 27) we have a going away party for us being hosted by Yountville Community Church! Nearly 300 people have been invited, so hopefully it turns out to be a great evening with lots of family and friends! If you're in the area, please stop on by! You SHOULD have received an invite via mail and/or FB. If you didn't get an invite for some reason, come anyway! Free food and fun :-) We are also in the planning and organizing stages of our majorly major garage sale happening toward the end of October. If you have anything you and your family would be able to donate to the sale, that would be awesome! Just let me know! The garage sale will be October 18th and 19th- mark it in your calendars! Buy all our stuff! :-)

Packing: Ugh. I'm so tired of packing. We're trying to organize all of our things into 3 categories: Sell, store, take to Germany. We're trying to not keep much of anything, and take even less with us, it's just so hard to part with some of this stuff! God is definitely teaching me some major lessons about letting go. I'm a veeerrryyy sentimental person, so I'm trying to hold onto the good memories instead of the things attached to them.

Savoring: We have been trying to enjoy every moment we have left in this beautiful place. Napa is just amazing, we're going to miss it here so much! We have a list of places to go, food to eat, and walks to take before we leave. Since Ryan went back to work at the hotel, we've been using his tip money to go do some fun things while we're still around. It's been really great actually, to get away from all the stresses of moving and support raising, to just relax and enjoy. Grandma and Grandpa dont mind the extra time with Oliver if they babysit either :-)  

Support raising: We really feel that God is going to have to work a miracle in this department :-) While we are well on our way and feeling good about where we are at, we still have quite a ways to go and not much time to get there. We're still at around 70% monthly funded with 60% of our start up cost needs covered, which is awesome! We would really LOVE to be at 100% in both categories before we leave! We have faith in that God has called us to Germany, therefore He will make it happen! Please consider how you can be involved in sending us to Germany. The people who choose to GO need to be SENT by God's people. Please help send us to Germany!

That's it for now! Hope to see you local people at the party on Friday! Blessings!

xoxo elyse

Some prayer requests: 

-Please be praying HARD that we figure out our housing situation in Dresden soon. Pray that Gods provides us with an apartment that we can call home.  

-Pray that God provides us with the last of our funds needed for leaving. 

-Pray that lots of people come to the party on Friday, and that their hearts and ears are open to hearing about the need for more believers in Germany.