What should stay? What should go?

So we have been going through all of our things and we have decided, for the most part, what to keep.

This is a good part of the items here. 7 Totes to be precise. We have already mailed 3 filled with books and a couple blankets.

This is the luggage that we are taking on the plane with us, plus Sampson's travel Kennel. We have been getting him used to it. In fact, he sleeps in that by choice more than he does in his bigger kennel. Hopefully that way he wont be quite as stressed for the long flight.

We still have to sell our cars and our TV. And in just over 3 weeks we will be off!

So many changes!

Wow! So much has changed in the past few months! The Lord has really provided for us in so many ways. Arround thanksgiving we prayerfully decided to start looking for a new place to live. We decided this because we figured we could find a cheaper place to live so that we could save more money to go back to school. Boy oh boy were we amazed at what God had in mind for us! We told some friends that we were looking for a new place. One of our friends from our church told us of a coworker of hers that wanted to rent out his house for cheap we couldnt help but be interested. To make a long amazing story shorter we are now living in a 3 bedroom house with a wonderful landscaped yard, with a fence, and even a hot tub! The really amazing thing is that we are paying $200.00 less a month for rent than we were for our tiny 1 bedroom! all we can say is Jehovah Jirah! The Lord does indeed supply!

We moved into our new house one week before Christmas. And had a very relaxing time celebrating Christs birth with our family. We got to go to Boise for new years eve to visit Amanda's brother as well as to go to a friends wedding from college. We ended up meeting up with two more friends from college and we were blessed to have them stay with us for two days. It was truly a blessing to catch up with them, AND to have a place for them to stay!

Bot of our jobs are going well. We are blessed to be establishing some new relationships with our co-workers and we are so excited to see how God is providing some great opportunities for outreach and we are so thankful for it.

We are still helping out with the youth at our church here, Christ Community Church. We are constantly challenged and encouraged by them. We have been teaching through a book called the Stranger on the Road to Emmaus, which is a chronilogical approach of teaching through the Bible. It is designed to establish a good overall understanding of Gods Word and all of the youth that have been going through it with us have really seemed to learn a lot and they all have really enjoyed it.

We added a member to our family right as we moved into our new house! His name is Sampson and he is a 1 year old Chinese pug. We were able to adopt him from a couple that could no longer have pets in their apartment and he has brought a lot of fun into our lives. It has been great having him to play with and it has also been great for us to have to learn how to work together a bit more on things. He is another great blessing to us, and we are thankful that we were able to get him.

As for right now, we are working on saving up for a newer vehicle, as well as for money to go back to school. God has been so faithful to provide our every need and we are so excited to see how He is constantly working!

We are still working for the goal of returning to school the fall of 2011. We are really loving it here, but our hearts yearn to finish our training. We are excited for so many things!

We are truly blessed by every one of you in our lives. We thank God for you and will do our best to keep you updated on things. Take care for now!

The Chaplins'

A Late Summer Update

So far this summer has just been flying by! We have been busy getting into our work routine as well as doing stuff with our church here.
We made it up to Alaska for a friends wedding and to visit Amanda's parents. Despite the trip going by way too fast, we had a great time. It was wonderful seeing Amanda's parents, and we had a blast going fishing up on the Talkeetna River and catching our limit of Red Salmon. :)
After getting home from Alaska we had a wonderful opportunity to lead part of the Missions rotation at our churchs VEBS (Very Exciting Bible School). That was great. There is a small missions conference coming up too, and we might be able to have a spot in that as well. We have signed up to help out with the middle school youth group this year. We went to a meeting the other day at our youth pastors house and had a great time. We are really excited to be involved.
Mitch has been working at a McDonalds down the street. He really enjoys it and is thankful for a fellow Christian that works there. They are both excited to have another brother in a town with so few fellow believers.
As far as our future is concerned. We are starting to save as much as we can. We are not sure about how long we will be here, but we are thankful for how the Lord has provided so far and we are excited to see how He continues to work in our lives. We are looking forward to continue our training with New Tribes, but will have to wait on the Lords timing to see when it happens.
Thanks so much for reading, take care and God bless!
the Chaplins

Upon Arriving...

We’ve arrived, got moved in, and begun to work. Everything has gone very smooth and we are so thankful in how the Lord has provided for us every step of the way! As we begun our move across the country we were no more than 30 minutes outside of Jackson when our Nissan blew a tire. We are so happy that nothing bad happened and that the car wasn’t damaged at all, but after 4 hours and 4 new tires we were on the road again. We arrived at our first destination (Lincoln NE) at 12:30am. The next day went much smoother. We stayed in Colorado Springs the next night and had a great visit with a friend. We drove to Salt Lake City on our third day and stayed with Amanda’s uncle. We had a short drive to Idaho the next day and arrived around noon. We got most of our furniture right away and got everything set up in our new home. Amanda begun work and bit by bit is adjusting to working 12 hours shifts. Mitch started work today and is very excited. He is working for a close family friend who owns a building business. This will be a temporary job that will end in the fall, but Mitch will be able to learn some great things that will be helpful in overseas work.
We are leaving in one week to go up to Alaska. A friend is getting married and we will be visiting with Amanda’s parents also. We really hope to be able to live up there for some time before we go overseas. But we will just have to see how the Lord works out His timing.
Yesterday we received some news that broke our hearts. After almost a year of fighting an aggressive brain tumor and dear friend of ours, Joanna Bergman, went home to see the Lord. Her and her husband, Curtis, were Mitch’s youth group leaders when he was in high school. They went through New Tribes and they were the ones that encouraged Mitchell to go there. They were on their way to Mozambique with their 3 young children-Natalie-5, Rueben-4, & Kaylie-18mo. We are happy to know that Joanna’s suffering is no more and cant help but to be jealous that she with before the Lord and this very moment! At the same time our hearts break fo Curtis, the kids, and the rest of their family. We pray that they would be comforted now, and that they would seek God for their strength. He is the only true source of strength and only through Him will they find rest and comfort, even in the midst of the pain. We ask that you too would join with us in prayer for this family. God is bigger than anything else and he knows exactly what they need! He hears our prayers and is faithful. What an amazing God we have!
Thanks to every one of you for all you do. We will keep you updated on anything new that comes along. We are pressing forward to save as much as we can as fast as we can. We also are desiring to raise support while we are in Idaho. We do have some debt to pay off as well. Please pray that we will be wise with our finances and that we will be good stewards of what He has provided us. We thank God for every one of you.
In Him,
Mitch & Amanda

Idaho! Here We Come!

Well, the time is drawing near for us to leave our home in Michigan and relocate to Idaho! We have 5 days left here in Michigan. We cannot believe how the time has flown by. It seems like just yesterday that we were getting here. We are so thankful for all the Lord has taught us and for all the amazing things He has done while we have been here. We are very excited to see how God uses this next phase in our life.
We will be leaving MI friday morning (probably around 9 or 10) and will be gong to Lincoln NE. Saturday we will go to Colorado Springs CO, Sunday will be to Salt Lake City UT, and then Monday the short drive up to Idaho Falls. Its going to be 2,100 miles and we will each be driving a vehicle. We have arranged an appartment and are thankful for its handy location (within walking distance to both of Amanda's jobs). She will be working at Bath and Body Works, as well as an assisted living home. Mitch is currently looking for a job and we are interested in seeing what the Lord opens up him.
We will be in Idaho for only 3 weeks then we will be going up to Alaska for 5 days for a friends wedding. We cannot wait to get up there and visit everyone! Once we return from there we will just be getting settled and getting plugged in at our church, Christ Communisty Church, as best we can. We want to get to know our family of believers that we have there, and cant wait for it!
Thanks to every one of you who are part of our lives! You all are very important to us! Untill next time...
Mitch & Amanda

Classes, Courses, & the Soft Winds of Change

Over the course of Christmas break Amanda began working full time. We also finally were able to complete Mitch's green card paperwork! What a huge process that has been! Sense then, Amanda switched her work schedule from working 2-10pm, to now working 6-2pm. It is much nicer having that because she is working while Mitch is in classes.
We had to go to Detroit last week to get some fingerprinting done for Mitch's green card where we were told some great news! They told us that Mitch's work permit should be in the mail any day now! We were not expecting it to come until April. What a huge blessing it will be to get it sooner! The job market in Jackson is especially bad, and we are praying that he will find a job and find one quick. We will be thankful for anything.
We are currently taking a course with our church called Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey. It is a great course on financial wisdom, how to get out of dept, stay out of dept, and how to be able to save money and handle it how God intended it to be handled. It has been great so far and we are looking forward to all that we will learn through it.
As we are looking ahead to the next couple months we are seeing lots of change coming our way. Right now we are working on paying off some of our debts so that we can save up money to move back to Idaho after Mitch graduates. The move is coming sooner than we know! We are beginning to sell some of our stuff that we don't want to move and to get rid of extra 'stuff'. As of right now we are not sure when we will be moving, it all depends on when we can get enough saved up to do it. It will all happen in the Lords time. :)
Well, that's all for now! We hope you all are doing great! We miss everyone so much and cannot wait to hear from you and/or see you. We are praying for you, and would appreciate your prayers as well!
thanks so much!
the Chaplin's

Amanda Graduated!

Hello to all! So...Amanda graduated on the 13th. The semester ended with a bang, as we finished classes and all of Amanda's classmates were frantically trying to get packed and prepare for family memebers and friends to arrive for the graduation that was held at the school in the auditorium. The graduation went very smoothly.

Now that Amanda is all graduated she is going to begin working. She will be working at the nursing home here and also at Bath and Body Works for the holidays. She really enjoys her job and likes being able to help the people there as much as possible. She is currently working 2pm-10:30pm and she is trying to switch to the 6am-2:30pm shift so she will be home more when Mitchell will be.

Mitchell will be entering his senior semester this January. He will then graduate in May. After that we are desiring to go on with our training with New Tribes Mission to that Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Camdenton Missouri, but first we need to take some time off to get plugged into our church in Idaho-Christ Community Church. We would also love to be able to spend some time in Alaska at Wasilla Bible Church to reconnect with all of the wonderful people that Amanda knows up there, and to be able to serve there, but we are not sure when that will happen. We are just looking forward to what is going on now in our lives, and also for the things that are to come!

We got the paper from the U.S. Government telling us when Mitch's appointment to get his finger prints done (Dec. 27th). After we get those done we will just be waiting for his work permit to come in the mail. As soon as he gets that he can begin working. He is looking forward to that.

We want to thank all of you again, our dear friends and family, for all your support. It means so much! We long to see you all again, and look forward to be able to spend some time with you.

With love,

the Chaplins