May has been a whirl wind of a month for us at the Rousehouse. Busy busy busy! Thankfully we are holding up well and have experienced the joy, strength and peace that the Lord can give. Thank you for all of you who have been praying for us. KEEP IT UP!!! Let me catch you up on a few prayer points from last month to start…
- Decisions on what to do with our home. Rent it or sell it?
After many conversations, prayer, wise council, weighing the options, and moments of grieving we have decided to sell our home. We love our sweet little house and realize that it was given to us by the Lord for this short season to enjoy and that is what we have done. We will always remember this blessing from the Father!
- Finishing up fundraising, 100% by June 1st
Almost everyday this past month was filled with meetings, speaking opportunities, and lots of conversations. We are now super close to being at our 100% monthly financial goal!!!! We are in need of just $200 more a month! PTL! If you would like to help get our family across the finish line check out how to partner with us here or email us at spanky.rouse@gmail.com. We do still have some set up cost needs too so any special one time gifts would be very much appreciate as well.
- Ears to hear, eyes to see, and hearts to know the Father’s leading in every plan and decision as we prepare to move
This season has been tough but priceless, for sure. I don’t know that we have every heard from the Lord clearer, seen Him at work, and experienced His presences like we have recently. We are reminded that His plans for us are the BEST and that He desires to care for us more than we could ever imagine or ask. We are learning that you get to experience this part of the Father the most by going through tuff stuff which in the moment isn’t too fun but we are learning is worth it.
- Successful silent auction fundraiser and all the planning that goes into it.
Lara killed it! She worked really hard and it paid off! It took a lot of work on her part to put it all together and I am grateful for her! We also had some amazing people that donated a whole lot of awesome gifts and packages for auction. Lara and I wanted to keep all of them for ourselves because they were so great! Thankfully we had many of you come out and bid on them instead. I had a really fun evening with our friends and family celebrating my birthday as well as we were able to raise over $3100 to go towards purchasing plane tickets and vehicles in South Africa. Definitely a great night!
- From our family’s prayer card, the letter J – joy: That we may be filled to an overflow of His joy. Romans 15:13
Some fun events this month have been celebrating our 15 year anniversary, Elly’s dance recital and 2 weddings.
I can’t believe that it has been 15 years since we got married! Definitely the best thing that has ever happened to the both of us and yes we are more in love today than ever and have so much fun in together! This is the only way we would choose to do life. We were suppose to go out of town for the week but ended up spending the night and next day sitting under a tree in the grass in the small town of Davidson. It wasn’t the week we had planned but it was just what we needed…it just needed to be much longer!
Elly did awesome at her recital! We could really tell that she has improved from the time she first began a couple years ago. Masterpiece Dance Studio is amazing and we will miss all of them especially Mrs. Jackie! Elly’s favorite dance was the Jazz dance because it is fast and she gets to “shake her booty”. She gets her dance skills from her mom for sure! It was a bittersweet time as well seeing Elly and two of her bff’s dancing together for a special ballet piece. Great memories and we got the DVD so we can watch it over and over and over.
Prayer points for this month:
- Visas – we need to be applying this week and praying that there is no issues with the consulate accepting and approving them quickly.
- Trip to NYC to apply for visas with the SA consulate
- Putting our home on the market and selling the rest of our furniture, cars, etc.
- From our family’s prayer card, the letter T – Travel arrangements: purchasing the best plane tickets, cost, routes, etc.
- To have 100% of monthly support finalized and one time set up cost in
- Strength: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual
The Lord is my strength and my shield;
in him my heart trusts, and I am helped;
my heart exults,
and with my song I give thanks to him.
Psalms 28:7
Over Spring Break Mac had the chance to go to the mountains with some friends from church. From all of the stories that he has told us it was lots of fun! He went hiking, zip lining, shopping, junk food eating, stayed up late, and played games. I think his favorite part of the trip was saying up late and hanging out in a hot tub in the cold mountain weather.
Oh yea, Mac also got his own Instagram account. It’s a new season for us as parents but thankfully our first teenager is a remarkable guy, therefore social media doesn’t seem too scary…yet! His Instagram name is causing_wonder incase you may want to check out some of his posts. He chose that name because he wants his life to cause people to wonder, why is he different? I think it is a very accurate description of this young man. I am constantly in wonder of this guy, he is ridiculously awesome!
. Our kids seem to have a different internal thermometer than we do.
Lara and I are staying busy with all of the millions of details around moving to another country, raising support, and transitioning all areas of our family’s life. We never knew there would be so many todo’s. You just buy a plane ticket and go, right??? Everyone just recieved passports in the mail last week, which is really cool. We can travel the world as a family now! We are currently at 60% of our monthly financial support needs and 25% of our financial set up goal. This is wonderful and we are constantly looking for, asking, and seeking God for more generous people to help meet these needs and goals. And we believe He will! There is still a lot to do like apply for South African visas, finding renters to move in and take care of our beautiful home, figure out what we are taking with us and what we are selling, while continuing to pray for God’s vision for the work in South Africa! We actually made a list of many of the details we have been praying about in the form of a prayer card with the kids. We love passing these out and inviting others to come alongside us in praying for these.
d because we loved the idea of our family living missionally beside these people we had been serving and fallen in love with. We loved the idea of our family being intentional about building relationships in a community of people that maybe didn’t look or act exactly like we did. We believe there is a great big God who is constantly at work in this great big world and by living our lives this way our family will be able to experience Him more and hopefully, just maybe, He would use us to bring others closer to Him. What a privilege!
Lara and I had the opportunity to travel to Cape Town, South Africa to visit a missional community that I serve with at UWM called East Mountain. As we spent time with this group of people we saw something that sparked a passion inside of us. The excitement began to grow as we saw how they serve and support the local church and how they live in healthy community with one another. It was also very exciting to see how they are partnering with ministries in South Africa similarly to how we have partnered with Piney Grove. As East Mountain is serving alongside these national workers God is using them to grow His church, strengthen indigenousness leaders, and do good works while living in healthy community with each other. Lara and I have patiently been waiting for God to provide an opportunity for our family to serve overseas for a few years and through this trip He did just that. Our time in South Africa was awesome, simply because we heard the Father’s voice calling us to something amazing.
Mountain is a community of people who love Jesus and are passionate about teaching, developing and empowering leaders. They accomplish this through one-on-one discipleship, training workshops, theological education, and spiritual formation as well as forming authentic relationships with leaders already engaged in excellent Kingdom work in churches, non-profit organizations, and schools. While we are there we will spend a third of our time doing a specific role/job, and third of our time will be spent serving as a family in one of these local partnerships, and a third of our time being developed ourselves as leaders and Christ followers.
The Rousehouse 