We want to spend a few minutes on this blog post answer some frequently answered questions. I will pose four questions and answer them to the best of my ability.
"So where are you with fundraising?" - That is a great question. Without knowing officially, but based on what we know people have been giving, we estimate we are about at 40% for our first two years. This entire fundraising experience has been such a new and exciting experience, it truly helps you depend on God and the church as well as breaks us out of our boxes to really talk with people about all aspects of life.
"Are you fundraising the whole 4 years right now?" - No, we are focused on the first two years. Once 100% is reached by pledges and donations, we will go to training and then to country. We will focus on the last two years as we enter our second year and return on furlough.
"When and how do you leave?" - We need to have the first two years 100% pledged or turned in, then we go to training. Once training is complete we would leave country 2-3 weeks later. One other option would be to go to training if we are close to 100%, but then return to work afterwards and finish raising our funds. We would then leave for country once we are at 100%.
"Where does the money go? It seems like a lot of money to live in Africa." - If you break down our total, 10% goes to EMM, to support them and all the training, tracking, and work they do for us. The rest is basically split 50/50 between in country cost and cost here in America. In country cost include daily living allowance, transportation, utilities such as cell phone, and language training to name a few. The stateside cost include taxes, health coverage, training, and flights and our furlough expenses. That is a quick breakdown of where our money goes. We will gladly sit down with anyone to go over this in more detail and answer any questions.
Those are the most frequently asked questions we have had. I hope these answers are helpful for those of you that have had them. As you read this, you will probably see that we live in a lot of uncertainty and we are just taking it a day at a time. As a planner, this can be difficult, but it has taught us to rely on God even more then we knew possible. Thankfully, we have a Missionary Support Team (MST) to help us with all of this and these decisions, so we are by no means alone in this journey.
We will do our best to update this blog weekly. If you have more questions or would like to make sure you are added to our prayer team or newsletter shoot us an email or a Facebook message. If you need our email address send us a direct Facebook message and we will get it to you.
Some prayer request we would like to share:
- for the remaining funds to come in and reach our goal before the June training
- for our family as we deal with many emotions. Some days we are full of excitement and some days we are full of sadness.
- for us to have no problems getting passports, visas, and all our shots.
Thank you for supporting us and partnering with us in this journey.
In This Together,
Michael & Karen
Jada, Lydia, Josiah, Micah, Isaiah Zane
