Signs of faithfulness

God remains faithful to us even when we aren't faithful to him, and this past week seems to be a gleaming reminder to me of that fact. To be quite honest, this whole process leading up to our departure has been really tough already and I have found myself getting crabby for no apparent reason. I've come to think of these (ever seemingly increasing) moments where I get really angry and then get really humbled as part of the growing pains occurring in this process.
For example... when we were in the midst of licking and sticking all of our crazy envelopes and re-folding letters I had a moment where I did a little Shirley Temple hands-on-hips and said "God! Why haven't you been faithful to us in this process yet? We have put ourselves out on a limb because we think this is where you want us and nothing has happened yet!! Grrr! Throw me a bone here!"
Luckily for me, on numerous occasions when my spiritual immaturity is hanging out for all the world to see, God whispers back a reply instead of making me the kid who gets spanked in the super market (don't you try to tell me you haven't been around for that uncomfortable experience!). Almost immediately I felt my heart stop racing and my eyes open to realize I hadn't even mailed the letters and already God had provided me with a summer job, people who had already started giving towards our fund-raising goal, and friends with amazing hospitality who have been our rock this summer. Man, I felt dumb. I quickly got back to work as we zoomed all of those letters to the post office and waved good-bye sending them with a quick prayer thanking God for his faithfulness and asking for eyes to see his work more clearly.
I'd love to say that since then that our goal has been accomplished and we are good to go, but at the moment that is not the case yet. Still, the encouragement and love that has been all around us and the presence of a holy dream seems very tangible at important times. I am looking forward to looking back on these times and pointing back down the road saying "see.. God was and is faithful. He did it again and worked a miracle."
Thank you dear friends, for being the vehicles for God's faithfulness.
B

Project Update

RELEASE THE HOUNDS!!!..... er.... LETTERS!
We released a huge load of support letters into the wild of the USPS this week asking for God's providence and thanking him for his amazing faithfulness to us.
What a feeling! It's good to have those out in circulation, but it is also difficult to let those finally go after the work it takes to get them out the door! Many thanks to the people who helped make that happen and those who have already begun to support us through various means as we step forward to serve abroad. I wish I had gotten a picture of all those letters grouped and ready to go... but sadly i spaced. So.. just in case you have yet to get your letter... here's the front of our postcard for your browsing pleasure :)
hearts!
B

Welcome to our blog

Welcome! We'll be posting shortly. We're excited for you to join us on our journey!
I&B

London!

(Copied from Bekah's blog)
They say first impressions are important. With that in mind I have put off posting for a few days for the sake of giving a positive first impression of our stay in London. :)
We got here at 7am local time Wednesday morning and Ian immediately left for school and I began my 3-day stint of full-time Nanny to a friend's child who was a ball full of energy. I felt bad for the poor kid because I was so completely bushed after being awake for 24 hours that first day, i was probably no fun at all! Still... cameras are a big hit.. especially when you can take pictures of the other person taking a picture of you... she though this was just grand!If I had not yet won favor, I think that my ability to draw pictures that looked like her Disney princess dolls may have done the trick. Ah... my college education at work.
SO... If I had in fact blogged before today that is pretty much all you would have seen. Myself and my new preschool friend and Ariel in her post-mermaid dress. THAT is what London is all about. NOOoooooo. Moving on...
Trafalgar Square! Finally today Ian and I got out for a touch of sight seeing. After morning service at Holy Trinity Brompton (which we enjoyed) we headed out to the center of vacation snapshots....
This so far has to be my favorite picture... maybe ever. I love this guy and this picture makes me so happy! He's amazing and I am thrilled we get to finally globe-trot more together.
And me! Those cars whirring past in the background were actually going quite quickly... maybe. That is one thing I am unsure of here.. are the cars really going faster? Or am I just ridiculously close to the road at all times?
Big Ben! Since we are mere mortals we saw Ben (which happens to only refer to the clock and not the tower.. did you know that?) from behind a rather tall gate.
We have been reading up on London, and we figured it was no time to stop. Ian was reading me from our tour book as we went along. He read, I took pictures. Pretty keen deal.
Just one more for fun... with the London Eye in the background!
We took a quick turn around the grounds of Westminster Abbey...
And then back past Parliament on our way back to the tube to go back home to our teeny flat.
Hooray! The rumors are true! We really are in London!!!!

Needless to say, I plan to revisit all of these sights again, but it was good to finally get to take a little look around at some of the iconic sights of this city. If it crosses our mind please pray for our health. We are still recovering from some jet-lag and just generally no sleeping as well on our 'dorm bed'.
Cheers!
B

getting it done

Hey there friends and family.
We're packing our bags and selling our furniture. Let us know if there is anything you were looking for specifically and we'll see if we have it and are willing to part with it.
We fly off to London on Jan. 5th... so holla at us sometime!
mucho luv
B

I've got the dough on that guy

in oven, originally uploaded by ian.kitterman.

I made this! So as some know when I get stressed, I make bread. I made this today, its beautiful. I even basically dropped the loaf and its still beautiful. Praise God for the little things. This is it in the oven and its good out of the oven. Though it called for an egg wash and I didn't have any eggs so I put an oil wash on it and its a little crisper crust than I would normally go for, but it still good.

Bailout perspective

Not to take over this blog too much and make it incredibly serious, but my friend Amanda has a wonderful blog where she highlights lots of different injustices almost daily. As with anyone I don't always agree with her, but I thought this commentary was excellent perspective. Its originally from an oxfam blog.
perspective:

"The arguments for a bailout to avoid systemic collapse are of course genuine and persuasive, but so are the arguments for aid and against standing by and allowing a child to die every 3 seconds, or a woman to die in childbirth every minute. To put the proposed Wall Street bailout into perspective. $700bn:

· Would clear the accumulated debt of the 49 poorest countries in the world ($375bn) twice over
· Is almost 5 times the annual amount of extra aid needed to achieve all the Millennium Development Goals on poverty, health, education etc ($150bn a year)
· Is about 7 years of current global aid levels ($104bn in 2007)
· Is enough to eradicate all world poverty for over two years (UNDP calculates it would take $300bn to get the entire world population over the $1 a day poverty line).

On the other hand it’s
· only a quarter of the cost of the Iraq war ($3 trillion on Joseph Stiglitz’ calculation )
· a half of annual global military spending ($1339 bn)"