What a week it has been.

First off... the South Africa Benefit was fantastic.

Thank you.

The shanty house the guys built was amazing, and the room kind of took shape around it. My friend Curt (of Katie and Curt fame) had this great idea to use old barn boards to hang our 8x8 images on... and it was fantastic! We put a bare bulb in the shanty and covered the walls with posters of people and homes from Emthonjeni and another informal settlement in the Cape Town area. We had good conversations and saw both people we love and people we don't yet know. Billy was so cute... when we got up to talk he said "Thank you all for coming..... and if I didn't' get a chance to say hello to you yet, or if I said hello to you three or four times not realizing it... thanks for loving us anyway."

We still have the movie we chose to show, Yesterday, if you want to borrow, or I saw it at the downtown library the other day.

You've been asking us "How did you DO at the benefit". Yup, I get that question. After all, benefit generally means raising money. That's a tough question though. We made a little bit on the event itself. By little bit, I mean... it's a lot of money, but when we are talking about this enormous SA budget, it is only about enough to buy almost two plane tickets to get out there. Or enough to last one sixth of one month in South Africa. This event wasn't meant to raise a ton of money in bulk. I have no idea how to throw a party that will bring in $100,000. But what our hopes and dreams are is that this event brought awareness to a new group of people... and provided a foothold for God to begin (or continue) inviting them into this story as well. We need people to come into this story and join into it with monthly sponsorship amounts. We need 50 people willing to send us $100 a month for the entire time we are in South Africa. (or 100 people willing to give $50.. or 25 people willing to give $200... the numbers all work out the same and honestly, God has them all worked out). We chose specifically not to hand out commitment cards and collect them at the end of the night- because we don't want anyone's supporting us be a coerced thing. We want people to be able to let God mess with them enough that the only right thing for them to do is respond. It has been God that has invited us into this place... we believe that He is inviting others to join us. But it

leaves us in the awkward place of just waiting for them to respond before we can make the next step ourselves. Yes, it is difficult. There is a piece of me that wishes we would have passed out those cards. I know it is human nature to feel something and then go home and forget... And we are now sitting here with no idea how to follow up. Except to pray.

Wow, this turned out to be a lot longer than I had planned... so I'll save my other stories for later. The kids are out of school. We celebrated Billy's birthday. I got to sing backups for my favorite local band at Festival (for real Mom!). We spent a fabulous evening on a boat with friends. Mady started JR HIGH youth group. And our first little baby tomato has been born and is growing beautifully. I'll be back, promise.