The Day Family Blog

Two weeks from today (May 29) we will be leaving on a plane headed for Cambodia! For those who are interested, we will be flying to Houston, Texas on United Airlines, then we will be heading to Singapore on Singapore Airlines (with a stop in Moscow for gas, we think), then we arrive to Phnom Penh, Cambodia at 8:40 a.m. on May 31.  It is really hard for me to even believe that I will be half way across the world so soon. Josh and I have both never been out of the country before, so we are going to be embarking on quite the adventure. Prayers for safety and good communication between the two of us would be awesome! My friend, Carrie, is living in Phnom Penh right now and it is so fun to go through all of her pictures of Cambodia. For so long, picturing myself in my friends photos has merely been me dreaming of going abroad someday. But it is really happening!  It is also hard to know how to prepare for a trip like this. In a way there is no way to prepare, but to pray. Prayin...

For those of you who haven't heard yet, we have reached our goal of $10,000!!! It is still hard for me to believe. When we first calculated this as our budget in January, there were some doubts in my mind. Though I had doubts, I chose to trust in God to provide. It would have been easy to doubt because that is our fallback. Our natural response as humans is to hesitate to trust in God, to put our faith into anything but Him. But we have a choice, we can choose to trust in the Lord even when there are doubts coming from within you and even from your closest friends and family. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, "God Provides, Always" even if God did not provide the $10,000 for our trip, He is still good, He still has plans, they just might be different than we were expecting, which would have been okay. But the Lord does love to give gifts to His children (Matthew 7:11, " If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will ...

We are raising money to go to Phnom Penh, Cambodia this summer (June-September). We will be working with an organization called "The Hard Places Community" which works to bring hope and healing to children who have fallen victim to sex trafficking and exploitation. (Read previous blog posts to find out more!) We have raised $5,050 so far! This is half of our goal of $10,000!!! But we still need your help! One way we are fundraising is by doing a Tupperware Fundraiser!  First, we will be having a Tupperware Party on: April 14th at 1:00 p.m. in St. Louis (505 Larsen Lane, St. Louis, MO 63126). You are all invited and feel free to bring friends! Mark your calendars! Second, we are selling Tupperware online at http:// order.tupperware.com/pls/ htprod_www/ !twx$eparty_ctl.p_guest_wel come?pv_eparty=197e81eafc7 8d43dfcc037a21ae6eff4 You can still send us donations at 202 East Jefferson, Apt. 302, Kirksville, MO 63501. Or you can donate to our Paypal account here ( https://www...

Raising support has been an amazing opportunity for us to see God provide in ways we couldn't even imagine. To give you an update, we have raised $4,315 so far!! Can you believe it, 43% of our goal already?! [I will be keeping our total fundraised on a tab on the right side of this blog]. It has been so cool to see God lay on people's hearts to give to us, people that weren't even on our support letter list. We have had anonymous donors, which was just a huge reminder that God is the one who is going to provide the money for us to go to Cambodia. For those of you who may be curious, I've added the budget HPC has given us below (Just a note: we have to multiply everything by 2 because we have 2 people going.). $10,000 seems like a TON of money, but it is all being put to use (There is about 160 left over with the total, but we are putting that to passports). And we don't doubt what the God of the universe can do to provide this.  Trusting in God to provide fo...

          Some of you may still be wondering, why are Josh and Gretchen going to Cambodia? Well in my first official blog post, I'm going to try and explain this long, but awesome story about how God has brought us to the place we are at now.            My freshman year of college I went on a fall trip to Peoria, IL for "The National Missionary Convention (NMC)" (Now called "The International Conference on Missions") with Campus Christian Fellowship (CCF). My friend Kait Hall and I went to a break-out session about sex trafficking that was being put on by Rapha House (if you haven't heard of them, you should definitely check out their website: http://www.raphahouse.org/). Rapha House's mission is "to love, rescue, and heal children who have been rescued from trafficking and sexual exploitation." They have a safe house and a half-way house in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia. And yes, that is the same city where we will be going this summe...

Hello friends and family! This is my first time blogging, ever. So bear with me as I try and figure things out! We will put up our first official blog post about Cambodia soon. We hope to blog at least once a month before we leave for Cambodia. We will keep you updated on how much we've fundraised, what we are doing to prepare for the trip, more information about our trip, etc. When we get to Cambodia, we hope to put up a blog post every week or two to let you know what we are doing! Thank you so much for all of your support, prayers, and encouragement!  -Gretchen