Will we quit or push forward

Well I believe we have suffered the first major blow in this journey. I was on a call of encouragement yesterday to one of my friends who leads a church and he was telling me how they are hurting financially. I tried to encourage him and remind him of who we serve. Then it hit me, his church was going to sponsor us $1000 a month. As we talked more, I realized that they would not be able to join us in this journey as a sponsor church. God was gracious to both of us and we had a sweet time in prayer over the phone. However, I left that conversation heavy hearted because of his discouragement and now the lack of funding. This is a big blow for us, but not one that I worry about this morning as I write. Last night was a different story, but God has been so good to us in this journey. Last week, we were given a promised gift of $5000 to go against our debt. That same week, we sold a bunch of big items which allowed us to pay the credit card bill on our assessment trip to Vegas. We also were given enough money, with the selling of items, to pay for our Launch training. So God has continued to affirm and encourage my heart.
Please continue to pray because we do need that $1000 a month but apparently we did not have it yet and the Lord knew this. This puts us at an unknown level of funding, so we are starting this process over. We are currently receiving $100 a month from two different donors (thankful for God at work in these people). Some of the churches and organizations that are promising to help fund the church plant will not start until 2012 and they do not know the amounts yet, so please pray for gifts to come in and help us print material, create a website, pay for two trips to Hawaii for vision and preparations (one is with Michelle and one is without), and finally for our house to sell! Thank you for praying, God has been doing the most incredible things with us.

There are more prayer requests that we have, please email gracecommunityhawaii@gmail.com to see these once a week. We desire your prayers so that you may see God at work on this journey and that we would partner together to build God's Kingdom!

Shawn

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