Here Comes the Big One!

Written By Christa Kastle

Well, Friends! Lot’s of exciting news and big prayers being prayed currently! Where to begin, where to begin…

This last month has been BUSY for us. We celebrated our eleventh wedding anniversary!! Three out of four of our parent’s had birthdays as well as one grandparent’s birthday! All while in the thick of jobs, raising support, meetings, and finishing up homeschooling for the year… We definitely underestimated how much time and energy would go into contacting and connecting with so many to raise support! Jeremy has basically been working two full time jobs! He’s handled calling over two hundred and fifty people (as well as reaching out to over 15 churches) to ask them to be apart of our prayer team and if they’d like to team up to support us financially. Although it’s been an exhausting endeavor, he has ultimately been encouraged. He’s gotten to see how the Lord has already begun the ground work through these conversations with old and new friends. He’s told me multiple times, he was blessed (and at times left in tears - good tears) getting to hear where each friend and family was at in their walk with the Lord and getting to witness their faithfulness in coming alongside us.

While in the midst of phone calls, we have sent out over 100 prayer cards. It’s just a little somethin’ to put on your fridge with our photo, a tidbit of info and quick links to give or look up updates on the blog! If you would like one, you can submit your information at the bottom of this page or contact us personally and we’ll get you one! Additionally to alllll that, we are waiting to hear back about approval of visa and should know in roughly four weeks. Please pray there are no hiccups!

AND LASTLY! Our budget has been finalized and approved, which is huge, because we can now come and ask humbly for the Lord to provide specifically. While our “cold calls” were the jumping point for this with a good estimate, we now have a hard number of what we need and where exactly we need it. There are two separate buckets to fill - our Start-Up Bucket and our Monthly Expenses Bucket. So what does that mean? I’ll give you the gist of what each bucket entails:

Monthly Expenses Bucket

  • rent

  • insurances

  • groceries

  • sponsorship fees

  • utilities

  • school expenses

  • taxes and admin fees

  • newsletter and mailing resources

  • etc

    $8,500 USD/month

Start-Up Bucket

  • visa application fees

  • one way flights for the family

  • purchase of a vehicle

  • health insurance

  • house set-up

  • school uniforms

  • legal fees

  • taxes (US & UK)

  • banking set-up

  • cell phone set up

    $32,000.00

As of now, our monthly expenses will come to around $8,500.00 a month. Start-up costs are coming to around $32,000. These both feel like daunting numbers but we fully believe that if this is what the Lord has, the amount will be provided. We are on the way to having our Start-Up Bucket filled - praise God!! It may only be about 25% so far but this is a huge milestone already.

As for our Monthly Expenses Bucket, during Jeremy’s faithful phone calls, we were excited to hear people say they would like to pledge. Inviting people into the atmosphere of what the Lord is doing in Ireland in this way has greatly grown our faith already and hope it’s an opportunity to further grow those partaking as well. As of now, we don’t know *exactly* how much we have pledged monthly until said pledges begin to be submitted by each individual. So hopefully our next update will have an accurate number of where we stand with this.

Either way, whether it’s the Start-Up Bucket or the Monthly Bucket, if you feel lead to partake in this way, God never wastes what we offer Him. If you would like to set up a one-time or monthly gift, you can do so here. This is our ACTION landing page (our sending organization!), where you can go to anytime you’d like to give.

Though we are on our way, we still have a long way to go. We are prayerfully moving forward with haste in these next couple months. The hope and prayer is that we have the funds we need to be able to be fully relocated in August, no later than September. I know, that’s SOON. Those numbers up there suddenly feel a looot bigger when we think about how many weeks away August is… Why August? Well, our plan is for the kids to be attending traditional school near where we will be living and the start of the school year is in September. This would give us time to settle in and acclimate while still not letting the children fall behind in their studies. Likewise, EdenGate is. definitely ready for us to jump in - they can’t wait for Jeremy to make their tech lives easier - and we can’t wait to join our ministry partners on the ground.

So, now we get to see God move. We make plans but He’s the one to put them in motion in His timing and He knows what we need when we need it. And so we ultimately trust in this.

“Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and He will establish your plans” - Proverbs 16:3

If Jeremy hasn’t been a pleasant pest to you in the last few weeks, let us know and we can set up a phone call if you’d like to hear from us. In the meantime, if you haven’t already, would you prayerfully consider partnering with us in monthly support? Thanks for doing life with us! We love ya!

Christa Kastle
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