Thankfulness

My heart is so full of thankfulness tonight.  There have been several times during this year that I have felt so blessed with the way people are supporting our family during this Zambia adventure and tonight I just can't rest until I let you know that our family feels very loved and supported by our family, church family, friends and community.

There have been so very many ways that people have been loving and supporting us.  I'm sure I would miss someone if I tried to name all of the ways but to let you hear a sampling of people's generosity I will name a few:  pocket change from a little boy, girls selling hair ties and giving the money towards our trip, garage sale money, containers of coins, people supporting our bake sale and brat sale, lawn mowing jobs, many generous donations, teachers supporting our kids at school with very kind words and gifts, people praying for us, the list goes on and on.

Tonight as I was praying with our kids I was thanking God for the blessings that He gives to us.  Sometimes He blesses us and we do not even realize it, and tonight I just can't stop thinking about all He has done for us.  It is because of His grace, we certainly do not deserve it, wow... I just don't know what to say.

Tonight, I want you to know that we do not take any gift that you've given to us, large or small, lightly. Every little bit helps.  And we are thankful.  My prayer tonight is that we won't ever waste these gifts.  We want to bring glory to God with our trip (before, during and after).  May God bless each and every one of you.  And if there is any way that we can be praying for you, please feel free to let us know.  We'd be honored to lift you up in prayer.

With a grateful heart ~ Erin

Brat Fry #2!

Tomorrow, May 18 our Zambia team will be hosting our 2nd Brat Fry for a fundraiser for our team.  Thank you for supporting our last one.  We were very encouraged.  If you live in our are please consider stopping by and enjoy a brat or hamburger while supporting our team.  We will also have baked goods available.  We will be at the Neenah Pick 'N Save on Green Bay Rd. from 11 - 5.

We continue to give thanks to God who is providing for us in amazing ways as we are preparing for our trip.  God is using family, friends, teachers, and people we do not know to encourage our hearts as we continue to trust in Him.  Thank you for praying for us, that is a great encouragement too.

Also, we won the Baker of the Day contest at Great Harvest Bread!  Thank you for voting for us.  We will be helping out Great Harvest Bread Co. on Memorial Day.  Stop in and support them and our team by buying some yummy baked goods :)  We appreciate you!

With a humble heart ~ Erin

Profound...

An internet search for the meaning of "profound" will return results that refer to intense feeling, completeness, depth of insite, or difficulty with understanding complexity.  So it seems a fitting word to use as I describe circumstances of these days.  It also conveniently fits with the alliteration we used in the support letter we sent out:)  If you haven't seen the support letter, I published it for you in the previous post.

So what's profound?

On Friday last week my brother and employer closed on the sale of his business to some of his employees.  I was aware that would be happening, and on Monday (of this week) I went in to work and, as expected, all of us who had been employed by my brother's company heard that we were unemployed because that business was no more.  We were then offered a job by the new company... For good reasons I didn't accept the job, and I believe I made the best choice for the moment.  However, that does present a new challenge to our family.  I have some ideas about what I might be able to do to provide for my family, but I have no idea what God has in mind for us.  I also don't have any idea how soon any opportunities will start to yield an income.  So we will look to the Lord, and remember that just because one Bible verse comes right after another it doesn't mean that only one moment passed in between.  Our hearts remember our good friends who unexpectedly learned the provider for their family lost his job last July during their family vacation.  We hope their story soon will be, "He lost his job last July, but now he works for..."  It's profound to me that whenever they make that statement (we pray it will be soon) the hardship of the time between a new job and last July is contained in the text, ", but".  Four characters and a space are all that describes everything between one job and the next.

Please join us as we look to the Lord to help us be righteous and faithful through this profound time of "comma but."

scott

Support Letter

If any of you are reading this blog without having received the letter we sent out requesting support, THANK YOU!

In case you're interested to know what we said in the letter, here it is (with a few small changes for the blog post.)

Dear Friend,                 

We’ve signed up to go to Zambia in August 2013!  Yes, all six of us!

Wow.  Why?  Well...

Perspective.  Have you ever noticed in yourself a ready tendency to feel like a victim?  Do you find yourself feeling like you deserve better?  Are your thoughts focused more regularly on having what you want then wanting what you have?  If you answered yes to any of these questions, we can relate.  We realize that our perspective, too often, doesn’t agree with God’s perspective.  So we’ve decided to change our...

Position.  What are your chances of winning the lottery?  Other than a miracle, we have no chance because we don’t play.  If we spent all our money on lottery tickets, we may not win but we’d have a better chance than we do now.  Unfortunately, too often we treat God the same way.  We want to see Him work powerfully in and through us, and change our lives, but we don’t put ourselves in positions where it’s likely to happen.  Perhaps we’ll be in a better position for God to rock our world through...

Partnership.  There are some people in the world who God is definitely using as instruments of grace in the lives of the needy.  We believe that Benedict and Kathlene Schwartz (check out www.akcli-voh.org) and others in the Villages of Hope are some of those people.  How might God change the perspective of one who is in a position of partnership with these people?  We don’t know the specifics of the answer to that question, but we believe it will generally be life changing.  So we’ve started saving our...

Pennies.  Literally.  It’ll cost approximately 2,100,000 pennies ($21,000 or 105,000,000 Zambian Kwacha).  We can’t afford to go on our own, but we are trying to save what we can.  It’s a family effort too.  We’ve set up a “Zambia” jar and we add money to it regularly.  From cutting the “fat” from our budget (even though it doesn’t feel fat, there’s that “perspective” thing again) to a child who convicts the rest of us by saying, “I guess I won’t buy that with my money.  Instead I’ll put it in the ‘Zambia’ jar.”  We are trying to pay our way.  We’ll never be able to do it on our own.  That’s why we need...

Prayer.  We’ll be the first to confess that we don’t know how exactly God decides to do what He does.  However, we are certain that God is able to make the impossible possible.  We know if He wants, He can and will pay the bill.  We also know from the Bible that He wants us to ask Him for help to accomplish those things that are important to Him.  We believe the spiritual growth of our family and others that we interact with is important to Him.  WILL YOU COMMIT TO PRAYING WITH US THAT GOD WILL DO SOMETHING BIG IN AND THROUGH US THROUGH THIS ADVENTURE?  And maybe God has put it on your heart to spare some of your own...

Pennies so you too can join the 

Partnership, and move yourself to a new 

Position.  Then perhaps God will mightily impact your

Perspective, even as we hope He mightily impacts ours.

May God richly bless you even as He blesses us through you,

The Ribbles

VOTE FOR CBC'S ZAMBIA TEAM AT GREAT HARVEST BREAD!

CBC's Zambia Team has entered the Baker Of The Day Contest at Great Harvest Bread Co. to fundraise at their Neenah store on Memorial Day.  YOU can help them win!  

What to do:  Stop by the Great Harvest store in Neenah and VOTE for CBC's Zambia Team!  No purchase is necessary.

Where to vote:  Great Harvest Bread is at 116 W. Wisconsin Ave., Neenah

When to vote:  Now through May 14th.  You can vote once per day, so stop by their store as many days as you can!

The nonprofit group that has the most votes will work at the Neenah store on Memorial Day, before and after the parade, and will collect half of the sales.  This money will help pay for the Zambia Team's travel expenses for their trip to Villages of Hope in Zambia this August.  THANK YOU for supporting our team with your votes!

P.S.  Thank you Chris for the picture :)