This comes from Jeremy and Sara Boucher, who are interviewing to work for Kids Alive International in Beirut, Lebanon. Sara sent the following out after their recent interview:
I am full of joy and love for you all as I write this. We are certainly aware of the prayers of the saints as we traveled and had our interview this past weekend. I don't think I realize often enough how God's good hand covers us as we are going...and this weekend I may have gotten a glimpse of that. Bear with me as I try to articulate our weekend!
On Friday we went to Dublin. Thad did great - in fact, he did SUPER great. He suddenly decided the time was ripe for him to stand up and walk all over the house like he's been doing it forever. We said goodbye to sweet Thad and left him in his wonderful grandparent's care on Saturday afternoon around 4:30 to head to Ft. Worth where we met up with Jeremy's aunt and cousin. We stayed up late with them to see Baylor beat OU for the first time in history - it was totally worth it, even if we did only get 4 hours of sleep...
We woke up at 4am to head to the airport and catch our 6:30am flight out of DFW. The airport was already crowded with Thanksgiving travelers. We got to sit next to a sweet little 12 month old and her grandma on the plane and she did great. We made our connection no problem and arrived in Chicago right on time. A van had been scheduled to pick us up and we found it just fine - this van also had 2 other passengers who would be dropped off in Indiana near where we were. Okay, so here's where I said, "Okay, really??" The van was all but held together with bungee cords and duct tape!! I felt like I was back in our '85 landcruiser in Ethiopia...ahh memories :) To get my mind off the duct tape and my doubts about this vehicles road-worthiness, I asked the lady in front of me where she had just come from. She just let out a "don't get me started" kind of sigh and said (in accordance with her sigh) "Don't get me started!" haha! She had been in like 8 different states within the past 8 hours moving her recently graduated son into his new apartment in NYC. She got on the phone and Jeremy and I talked and generally let our eyes go blank from fatigue, when she turned around after her phone conversation and said, "Now what are you guys doing up here?" We explained about our interview with KAI and she just got so excited!! She asked if she could pray for us right then and there and as she prayed her voice rose in excitement - I can only imagine what the other guys in the van must have thought! It was awesome! She shared her story with us after she finished interceding for us and man, what a story. I'll share the depth of it with you later, but long story short, she has been tested and tried and has loved God all the more through it and for it!
We got to our hotel and collapsed for a few hours and then grabbed dinner.
Monday morning we woke up feeling just so refreshed. Thank you for your prayers!! We went down to the lobby and waited for Cambria and Gordon to show up. Cambria is our contact person at Kids Alive and Gordon is the Human Resources/Office Administrator. Cambria walked in first followed shortly by Gordon and we all sat down for breakfast at the hotel. It was great just getting to meet them! It was such easy conversation and good fellowship - the formal interview wouldn't be till later in the morning. After breakfast we headed over to the Kids Alive office where we met all the staff (there were probably 15-20 staff at the office - accountants, receptionist, assistants, church liaisons, missionary liaisons, etc) - it was full of energy and packed out! They're talking about building an addition because Kids Alive is exploding and they need more staff to keep up with the growing work load! What a great "problem" to have :). We got to participate in office prayer time when everyone stepped out of their door into the hall to share prayer requests and praises and seek God together. We got to meet the president of Kids Alive and he reminded me so much of my dad! ha :) Our formal interview began after prayer time and we stepped into Cambria's office. She asked us several questions, ranging from our salvation experience, our experience cross-culturally, to things that stress us out and how we handle those stresses...After we finished these questions, Gordon shared with us the three responses we could receive from the psychologist. The first is Not Recommended, the second is Recommend with Reservation (requiring counseling prior to going on the field), and the third is Recommend. Gordon told us the psychologist wrote "Highly" in front of Recommend - looks like we made a 4th option!! :) Our interviewers told us we would have an answer in 2 weeks - but to please go ahead and start writing our fundraising letters so we can get those out as soon as they give approval!! WOOHOO!
So, minus the tiny little 1% reservation I have to saying, "WE'RE IN!", we're pretty much in :) We felt so comfortable with everyone we met. We learned more about the organization and got to put faces to names. Cambria talked $$ with us after our formal interview and asked when we'd like to go - we said June would be ideal. It looks like for a family we'll have start up costs of around $10,000 that would be a one-time amount apart from our monthly needs, then around $3,500/month that we would need commitments for. 100% of our fundraising is required prior to leaving for the field. We need 50% of our fundraising before we can make reservations for missions training before we go. We aren't scared of these numbers - God has always, always, ALWAYS gone above and beyond when we seek Him! We have felt his guidance and his grace over us in this specifically since we decided to move to Waco. We are confident he will continue to take care of us and carry out His purpose in us throughout this process.
For Fundraising, I do have a few networking questions for you all. I know that many businesses (and even individuals) like to give charitably before year's end for tax exemptions. If any of you know people in our church who are business owners or might be able to give generously towards our one-time $10,000, please let us know so we can sit down with them and/or write them a letter. Of course, if they want to support us monthly, that would be fantastic, too! :)
After our time at the Kids Alive office we went straight back to the airport to fly home to our sweet little boy who we missed so much! We had some rough turbulence when we were coming into the DFW area due to the storms and I kept saying, "God, you're not done with us yet!" I said that throughout our stormy drive home at midnight and thanked God when we got back home and saw our adorable son with his footie PJ's on and hiney in the air in his crib...Jeremy's parents graciously brought him home last night and spent the night so we could have our kiddo with us this morning :).
We are newly in awe of our great big God! Forgive us, Lord, when we make you look like us. Forgive us, Lord, when we apply our limitations to You, who are limitless. Give us humble hearts and servant hands. Increase our faith and help us to do everything you ask.
Thank you for walking with us!
Jeremy & Sara
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