Thankyou SO much also to all in the USA who opened your hearts, homes, and lives to us, feeding us, encouraging us, putting up with us, blessing us, making memories for us, and for inspiring us.
80 days, 11 States, thousands of miles by car and plane, and we are now home in New Zealand. We spend some time here in Auckland with family, then following a wedding I will be performing on 12 Dec, we drive back to Christchurch.
We really feel like it has been "mission accomplished" and that God has blessed this trip in so many ways. Parts of it were difficult, but as mentioned previously, when you are travelling with 7 kids in this way for this long, you are going to have some "moments" :-) But by God's grace, He got us through, and we are thankful our kids never once got homesick (apart from one 5 minute episode when Gabriel missed his bike).
Above all things, it is the relationships that God led us into, and that were previously in place but were strengthened, that has been the greatest blessing. We were very aware of God leading us to meet certain people, and are so blessed as a result. Many of these relationships will no doubt be life-long, and we look forward to re-unions in years to come!
WHAT NEXT?
Well there will be no dramatic changes in our lives as a result of this trip, and that was what we expected. Rather, we feel we have gained a massive reservoir of inspiration, perspective, wisdom, and encouragement, that we will draw from in the weeks, months and years to come.
We haven't been distracted from our vision for ministry here in NZ, but rather it has been strengthened and we are itching to "get into it".
Our desire as a family is to continue to be heavily involved in discipleship and evangelism, both in and out of the home, and with all of that ministry being firmly rooted in the local church. We hope and pray as our ministry progresses, that we can be an encouragement to others as a real family, with real struggles, weaknesses, failings, and yet through those things see God working in ours and other's lives by His grace, as we look to Him.
If you want to follow our ministry blog, it is presently on the Psalm 12:1 Project website (www.psalmtwelveone.org.nz), and you can sign up in the lower right hand corner. This is primarily aimed at encouraging Biblical Manhood, but now features posts and articles relevant to all the family. There are other video interviews we recorded in this trip, that in the coming weeks and months will be posted on our website once the editing has been done.
Thanks again to all of you - your prayers were sensed VERY often!
In Him,
Kris, Becky, Sarah, Holly, Abigail, Gabriel, Charlotte, Emelia & Naomi.