It’s hard to believe that we are just days away from 2008. 2007 has truly been an amazing year. It has been a roller coaster ride of hard fought battles and amazing miracles.

In January, I left my career to focus on Clear Vision Ministries and due to my health. The way we described it was “jumping out of the boat without a net”. We really felt it was God’s direction for us – and still do. This was the beginning of our year of miracles, faith and testing.

With that said, January was a busy month wrapping up everything from work, fundraising and Taylor’s birthday. We spent most of February preparing for our trips to China and Ecuador.

The China trip was incredible. We never thought we would be building a church in China. Almost every day seemed to bring us an experience only God could have orchestrated. As each team member smuggled Chinese Fire Bibles in our luggage, customs did not look at one bag. Jimmy preached in two churches and was able to baptize an elderly couple that had recently removed all of the idols from their home. Our main goal for this project involved building a new church in a village where no other Christian church exists. We were the first foreigners the people had ever seen. Our last couple of days were site seeing and shopping days in Beijing. We did our daily devotion in a guard tower on the Great Wall of China. That was a breathtaking experience. On our last day as we were headed to the airport, our Beijing tour guide became a Christian!! We gave him one of the Bibles we had smuggled in. He told us that he would read the Bible and do what he could to tell others about Christianity. That was a wonderful way to end the trip. We certainly saw God at work every day.

In April, Jimmy, Taylor and I traveled to Quito to work with Unsion Foundation. We worked with missionary Bill McDonald to give the organization some direction and organizational assistance. We also took some medical supplies to the school we visited the last time we were in Ecuador. We were able to give each one of the students their own toothbrush. As Taylor was handing out the toothbrushes, the kids jumped up and gave him a hug. One boy almost started crying when Taylor gave him a toothbrush. It is amazing how we can impact the life of someone with small acts of love and kindness. We have established an ongoing relationship with Unsion to coach, train and provide leadership consulting to help reach Spanish speaking people around the world.

After taking a few days to recuperate from our traveling, we worked hard on fundraising. This meant a lot of phone calls, emails and meetings. We were able to visit mom and dad’s church in Trenton, Missouri, to talk about CVM. Tony, Pam and Sarah Bolyard, missionaries to Romania, visited us in May. We had a great time just hanging out. We enjoyed several rounds of bowling on the Wii. Sarah also experienced her first trip to the zoo.

During the summer, we drove the wheels off our car! We made two trips to Texas and then to Indianapolis. In the middle of that, we went to Monterrey, Mexico, with 65 teenagers and youth pastors. We did some children’s outreaches and a youth camp. It was a ton of work, but a lot of fun.

We had a meeting early in March to talk about possibilities of a trip to Honduras. We had no idea at the time that we would actually lead a team to Honduras in 2007 and a return trip in 2008. This was a God-appointed meeting that would result in more life changing events. We took a team to Tocoa, Honduras, in mid-September to work with Open Doors Ministries. One of the big projects for this trip was enclosing the sleeping rooms between the walls and roof to prevent mosquitoes from coming in and biting the kids. We also played with the kids a lot, participated in the feeding station, and Dr. Reusser saw several patients at the hospital. We can’t wait to go back in March.

I left with the rest of the team to return home and Jimmy went to another destination in Honduras for another project. He worked with a team from our church building a church. When the team arrived on the construction site, they discovered there was no running water due to heavy rainfall. There was a lot of standing water on the ground, so several people started scooping the water into a big drum. The team used this water to mix the concrete. At the end of the first day, they had used half of the drum. The next day the re-filled the drum and again used half. The same happened on the third day. Then on the fourth day, the team arrived to the work site and the ground was dry and the drum was empty. They found out that the city water was finally turned on. That day, they laid fewer blocks than the other days, but went through the drum two times!! Miraculously, God provided the water necessary to do the job in a style reminiscent of the widow’s oil that never ran dry in 1 Kings 17.

The entire summer and fall was replete with one battle after another, one problem after another. In October, I became seriously dizzy to the point that I could not sit or stand without falling over. Even with several anti-dizzy pills, I still felt like I was going to fall out of bed at night. I saw a couple of specialists and was given a couple of different diagnosis, one which would require inner-cranial surgery and the other with no cure. This, of course, happened right before we were to leave for Romania. We were determined that nothing was going to keep us from going on the trip, so we continued as planned. The moment I finished zipping our last suitcase to leave for Romania the dizziness disappeared and has not returned!! Praise God!!

We had a wonderful meeting with our board at the end of October. God has blessed us with such a tremendous team. Their support, along with all of those who have supported us financially and in prayer, is crucial to our survival.

Romania was great. We did so many different things – working on the missionary’s home, painting benches at a church, children’s outreaches, preaching, and children’s worker training. The people were so appreciative of the supplies and the work that was done. After each trip, I ask Taylor to write a report on what he did, what he learned, etc. After Romania, he wrote: “When we went to the small villages, it made me feel that I am lucky to be living in America. Seeing the people there giving up so much of what little they had made me feel that people in America are not as close to God as they do not offer more of what they have even though it may be worth more but not compared to their everything.”

Taylor has done so well with the trips and home schooling. He is learning a lot and growing like crazy. I can’t believe he is almost as tall as Jimmy. We are also getting used to his new deeper voice!

We spent the last six weeks of the year at home. In a year where we have experienced tremendous battles, we have seen the hand of God at work so much. Month after month as we were down to our last few cents, God provided financially. When our technology and tools broke, God provided through generous gifts. When physically we couldn’t make it another day, God provided through supernatural strength and healing. When emotionally we were ready to give up, God provided encouragement and friendship.

We have had an amazing year with our friends. It seems like we have deepened so many relationships this year. The time we have spent with our friends has been encouraging --- and a lot of fun! We are extremely thankful for the people God has placed in our lives.

In early 2006, Jimmy and I were teaching a Sunday school class at our church. I had just finished teaching a 6 month series on expanding our view of God (we looked at the names of God, the story behind each name and what it means to us) and was following it up with a few weeks on how to respond to what we had learned about who God is. One of those follow-up lessons focused on our response in difficult times. I read one of my favorite scriptures. (James 1:2-4 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.) Then, I said, “Even though we may know the names of God and have an understanding of where each one came from and what it means, we will never truly internalize it until we experience God in our own life. We may know that God heals; we may have heard testimonies of people He has healed; He may have even healed someone close to us; BUT we will not truly know Him as our healer until He heals us – you – me. We may have read that God is our banner and understand that it means He is our rallying point, our hope in battle, that He has unfurled Himself as a banner in front of us and behind us and on top of us to stop the arrows from piercing us, BUT until we are in a battle, we will not really understand what it means for God to be my banner.” This year we have learned God is our banner, God is our provider, our peace, our strength, and that He is with us through everything.