one month and counting

It is hard to believe that we will be leaving our West Plains address in a little less than one month. Before I get to much written, I wanted to explain why I have not posted in several months. I was waiting to find out more information. I have been waiting for the Willow house to sell and for R.T. to get his Australian medical license. Neither of which has happened. We do feel God's direction in this trip and are looking forward to how God is going to solve these "minor" details. By the way, because R.T. does not have a medical license, that means that he does not officially have a job, which means that we do not have a work visa and also means that we cannot book our plane tickets----all just minor details. We have been assured that all those "minor" details will be taken care of. Thankfully, the Australian gov't is going to get our tickets for us, so we do not have the added stress of making reservations.
I must say that God is good and gives us just what we need. In my devotions, I have been reading in Phil. and this morning, I read Phil 4. It is comforting to know that if I think about what is right, lovely and pure that God will provide the peace that I need. It is amazing to feel His peace , when every earthly thing (activity) is stressful around us. Recently, my dad compared us to Abraham - he knew that he was going to be the father of many nations, but at the time he was childless and advanced in age( we do not feel worthy to be compared, but it does help us to know that we are not the only ones. We know what the end result is, but we do not know how it is going to be accomplished)
Sooo, how do we know that this is still God's will......This summer our house was under contract - for 6 weeks. We knew that we had to get visa's, plane tickets , medical insurance for my parents. We also had to get all the homeschooling material for the kids. All of these things fell into place. Yes, my parents have all the things that we do not have :-) Unfortunately, the sale of our house fell through the day before closing. It was very tempting to take that as a sign from God that maybe we should not go, but with much prayer and counsel from friends, we had to look at the big picture. God has opened all the doors, except the house. We have come to the conclusion that we need to go and trust God to work out the financial details. There is something comforting about being so completely powerless, that you have no other choice but to rest in the palm of Gods hand.
Our plans, we fly from St Louis to San Diego on Tues, the 16th. R.T. has a conf. there until Sunday. We will leave on Sunday and drive to our relatives house and we will stay there until the 29th. We will leave around 11 p.m. on the 29th and will arrive Brisbane on tues. R.T. does not start his job until Monday the 6th. We are unsure what we are going to do for those days in between. By the way, we do have a house and a car waiting for us in Australia.
I will try to update this on a weekly basis for the following 15 months or so. If you would like to be notified when I update my blog, let me know. My sister-in-law told me how to do that.

Australia

We have entered the world of blogging. We have created this blog to hopefully keep you, our family and friends, updated on our Australia plans. We will probably not update this very much in the next few months; but once we get to Australia, we will try to update this weekly...more if we are travelling.
For those who need a little bit of updating....Last October (07) R.T. and I went to a Family practice physician conference in Chicago. While there, R.T. was trying to avoid as many exhibiters as possible when he hastened past a booth that advertised a need for physicians overseas (this was the first prompting of the Holy Spirit). A couple of weeks later, I mentioned this to my parents to see what they thought about moving to Australia for a year - they moved to Missouri to be near us and have travelled with us on vacations - my parents were very excited about the prospect (Holy Spirit's working). Within a few days, that organization that R.T. had talked to happened to call us to follow up on the conference (Holy Spirit again). We were told about a town in Queensland that seemed to fit our families needs/desires, as well as, R.T.'s desire for a medical practice (notice the Holy Spirit's leading). We were offered a contract that far exceeded what we expected and they even emailed back the next day saying they would offer more than what we had said that we would accept (who does that except the Holy Spirit). The next step was for R.T. to talk to his partners about having a year off. They were encouraging, with one partner saying that he wanted to do the same thing (this was a big sign from the Holy Spirit). I could go on and on about the big and little ways that we feel God leading us to go to Australia.
Some have asked us if this is a missions opportunity. Our answer to this is YES! We feel that God uses us no matter what we are doing and where we are going. 14% of R.T's patients will be Aboriginal. This is a very tough group of people to witness to. Praise God that He has called us to the Aboriginals but also to the people who live in Kingaroy.
Please pray with us as we prepare for our move. Pray that God will work out the details of what to do with our house and cars...and kitty cat. Pray that God will sell our house in Willow - this is the one contingency that will keep us in the states. Pray most of all for those that we are going to be able to share God's love with.