WE WANT AN ISAAC

You've been hearing about what God has put on our hearts to do for quite awhile now, and have been following each step with your prayers, and that, our friends, is invaluable.  Your faithful intercession is what has got us to where we are now, and what will get us to where God has written that we will be - so whatever you do - don't stop praying!!

Waiting is not easy, but it brings huge rewards.

Abraham and Sarah were promised descendants as numerous as the stars.  Twenty-five years into the journey, their arms were still empty.  Now before you jump to conclusions, it's not going to be another quarter of a century before we get our Isaac, but we DO want an Isaac, and not an Ishmael.

Like was mentioned, waiting is not easy, and 9,125 days into the wait, Sarah got a little antsy.  She'd been hanging in there, rehearsing God's promise to her soul month after month, year after year, decade after decade, and it just got the best of her.  In a moment of humanness, her flesh won over her spirit, and her thinking shifted from 'GOD WILL' to 'I WILL'; from 'GOD CAN do this!', to 'I CAN DO THIS!' and the rest is history...

They got their baby, but it wasn't the baby GOD had planned for them to have.  Oh, God loved and blessed Ishmael, but there were consequences that have lasted to this day because of Sarah and Abraham's impatience!  You know, most of the time when this story is told, Abraham seems like the poor guy who had to go into the tent and have sex with Hagar, but Abraham could haveand should have, taken Sarah out to the fields and pointed at the sky!  Abraham should have reminded his wife of what GOD HAD SAID WOULD BE, but he didn't.  He too gave in to the weariness of the wait.  

What's beautiful though, is despite their temporary lapse of faith, what GOD PROMISED still happened!!!  Ten years later, Sarah, although she was far past child bearing age, and Abraham. although he was as good as dead, conceived a baby JUST LIKE GOD HAD SAID WOULD HAPPEN and they called him Isaac, which means laughter!!!  

Our God ALWAYS keeps His word.

Always.

And...there is NOTHING that we can do that will erase what HE HAS HAD WRITTEN since before the beginning of time.

Nothing.

But here's the deal.  
We want an Isaac. 

Since God put His dream in our hearts for this nation He has prepared us for our whole lives, our prayer has been HIS WAY, HIS TIME, and all for HIS GLORY!!!  And as we've done our bests to listen to His voice and respond to all of His nudges, HE HAS BEEN FAITHFUL to WOW us over and over again!!!  

These past 18 months have been full of the miraculous!!!  

Maurice got his permis - his permanent residence status which enabled us to own land!!
'Dream Big With Us' was granted NON-PROFIT status which allowed us to open up a bank account, which GOD quickly grew!!  When we opened the account with a hundred dollars, the teller asked us if we expected large amounts of money, to which we both declared with massive grins, "YES!!!!  HUGE!!!! HUGE!!!! amounts of money!!!"  Within two weeks we had hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting in that account!!  
God led us to the most jaw dropping acreage of property in all of Haiti, had someone else pay for and construct the bridge across a river to get to it, AND ON THE SAME DAY, He sold my home for MORE than the asking price!!
God has blessed us with TWO TRUCKS, and 4 SHIPPING CONTAINERS, one of which has been modified here in Canada into a beautiful multi-purpose room, that we will ship FULL of provisions to Haiti, to house our teams, and to use as our first classroom!!
And while we wait for our faith to become sight, God has provided a beautiful haven for me to stay in, for which I thank Him for every day!  There are not enough words to thank our God, or the generous owners who have graciously let me borrow their home!!

Oh, there are many more miracles - like how He provided for me to go and spend a month with CJ and the family in Hong Kong, OR how He provided the perfect house here in Canada to purchase and then to rent, to generate funds for what He's doing in Haiti, OR how He blessed our first MASSIVE YARD SALE in so many ways, not just with $18,000 worth of sales, but the many lives that were incredibly touched that day in an undeniable and unforgettable way!! 

It's been an AMAZING YEAR AND A HALF!!!  

It's been an ASTOUNDING SIX YEARS of having front row seats to watching a tiny seed, grow into a flourishing TREE, that we KNOW will soon be a FOREST!!!  The MIND BLOWING REVELATIONS God has shown us on our knees, have convinced us that IT WILL FOR SURE, BE WORTH THE WAIT!!!!

So when is 'Dream Big With Us' going to be fully operational you ask?!?!
When will my feet finally hit the ground?!?!
When will we finally BE THERE, doing everything that GOD has showed us that He created us to do!!?!?!?

WHEN GOD MAKES IT HAPPEN!!!!

Maurice has been in Haiti for the past eighteen months pouring out his life, from sunrise to sunset.  He's been pushing through continuous obstacles that the enemy relentlessly puts in the way, because he knows what's coming is going to be well worth the blood, sweat and tears.  He's spent thousands of hours on our property clearing land to make a road, he helped complete the bridge so that he could get containers situated on to the cement foundations he poured, he built and erected a gate, not once, but twice, to keep truck-loads of garbage from being dumped on to our property - the first gate got dug up and driven away by a work crew when the highway was being widened!!  He's overseen the digging of our well, which included fixing the rig too many times; put in a septic system and gave our vehicles some 'love' as he would say, to make them road worthy!!  And along with all those tasks, he's loved the boots off our Nan Rasin family - taking them to multiple doctors visits and to the beach!  He treated them to barbecued chicken and chocolate and LOTS of ice cream!! He's taken the boys out for pizza and coke - both of which they never have unless they're with Maurice!!  He's done food deliveries to the poorest of the poor, he's celebrated birthdays and mourned the loss of Shiela, one of our kids who died too soon.  And on top of all of that, he's survived an 5.8 earthquake and typhoid fever!!  

It's been a really full and awesomely eternal eighteen months, and it's time for a rest - so in the next little while, he will return to Canada for just that - a good rest - and when our PAPA GOD thinks He's ready to go back, we will fly into Cap Haitian with hearts POUNDING with ANTICIPATION for ALL OUR GOD IS ABOUT TO DO!!!! 

SO while we wait...we ask that you wait with us, for the Isaac that our God has promised is coming!!!!!

We ask that you would continue to pray for us during this time of valuable preparation for all that’s ahead....and we ask that you would keep calling out to God to do what ONLY He can do, for our Haitian families and for this nation that God has called us to love....

AH...it won't be long!!!!  

Every day brings us one day closer to LIVING the next chapter of this most epic story He’s written us into!!!!  
Every promise He has declared WE WILL SEE and WE WILL LIVE - HIS way, in HIS timing and for HIS glory.....

Looking at the stars, persuaded that Isaac is on the way....

M & S