Hey everyone,

In typical Dave fashion, I have delayed getting this final trip
summary out by at least a couple of weeks. This time I have a good
excuse though. Possibly the best excuse ever. I was busy getting
engaged. Sarah said yes! (I was pretty sure she would, but it was
awful nice to hear it anyway.) I know the next question that will
come from all the women reading this: "How did you do it?" And so, to
avoid answering that individually to a hundred different emails, I
will give the pre-emptive answer here.

We went down to a spot on the St. Johns River in San Marco. It is a
place near Sarah's house and we have had a number of special moments
there…first "I love yous" etc. I have to insert some background info
here. On our third (I think) date, I brought a notebook and pen and
our date was sitting in a coffee shop and writing silly stories
together. She would write a line and then I would write a line. You
get the idea. We have done this a number of times since and always
had a pretty good time at it. So we brought the notebook and started
writing a story…which I was deviously steering into a story about us.
Eventually the story progressed to the point where I wrote: "and then
he asked her." She did not know what to write for the next line since
that hadn't happened yet. Then I handed her the pen and the ring was
on it. (Insert a collective AWWW here.) I got down on a knee and
asked her. She said yes. It was awesome.

But when you read this, it sounds really suave…but in actuality it was
kind of awkward and dorky…and very consistent with me…given that I am
most often awkward and dorky. See, when I handed her the pen with the
ring on it, she didn't actually see the ring. So, I had to get her
attention, grab her hand and show it to her. Then, after she said
yes, I tried to take the ring off the pen, and I was shaking so badly
that it took me at least twenty seconds to get the ring off the pen
and onto her finger. It was great…and perfectly "us" which you can
take to mean really sweet, but kind of dorky. I have stopped trying
to run from that. Anyway, we are getting married and are both very,
very happy about it.

Now, back to the Zambia stuff. First off, moving to Zambia is still a
go. Except now it will be that we are moving instead of I am moving.
(I really like the sound of that a lot better.) We are looking to get
married toward the end of January and move
toward the end of next summer. The timing of the move is still very
much up in the air and will depend largely on how long it takes to get
ready to go. We are trusting God to give us more direction as to the
"when" questions in all of this.

As far as the last bit of my time in South Africa that you all haven't
heard about, I can say that it was really good. I attended the Pan
African Vineyard's 25th anniversary conference and it was great. While
at the conference I got to sit down and discuss our future plans
(Sarah and myself) with the leaders of the Vineyard in Zambia (There
are 3 area pastoral coordinators (APCs) that oversee 36 Vineyard
churches in Zambia. These are the guys I was meeting with and they are
all indigenous leaders.). From the time I spent at a few of their
churches when I was in Zambia, and from much prayer and the many
conversations I've had with Sarah, I told the three APCs that we
wanted to come and serve them wherever they needed us most. They felt
that we would be a good fit with what they are trying to do in their
churches and said they would welcome us there. We discussed a lot of
possible things we could do, but decided that we would begin working
on training their leaders about HIV and also doing leadership
development training on a variety of topics. We'll be visiting a lot
of different churches to do this and will get to see many parts of
Zambia that we haven't been to yet.

Sarah and I are really excited about the way this is taking shape. We
are getting to start small and will have a chance to really learn a
lot about the country and the culture before we settle into one place
or undertake a big project. We also like the idea of serving the
local people as they do their ministry more than trying to get them to
help us start ours. God did some major work in my heart to get me out
of the "let's start a big…outreach, orphanage, church, or whatever"
mentality and get me into the idea of serving the local churches and
jumping onto their program.

The main purpose of taking this trip was to find out what to do next.
And in that respect, it was a huge success. We know what to do to get
started. We know who we are going to be working with. We know how to
begin preparing. So, thank you, to each of you that made this trip
possible. Everything that needed to happen, did. We would ask all of
you to continue in prayer with us; we need God's guidance in all of
the next steps in our life together.

Thanks a bunch,

Dave & Sarah