To the States and Back Again. A summary of March through August 2015

Oh my!  I shocked myself today as I made my way out to the blog to discover that there are no posts here for 2015 at all.  That is NOT good.  I guess this is not my strong suit.  Technically, a post to the blog means that life doesn't feel so hectic at this moment in time.  So I will write quickly, while it remains that way, because it will not last long I suspect.  There is a lot of ground to cover here, so I will focus on the major highlights.

We are already a month into our second leg of service here in the Philippines.  We have been home and back again.

When I left here, in March, I knew I was headed home to pack up the house.  I was not sure whether it was to rent the house or sell the house. Jim stayed behind to hold down the fort until June 1.   Based on the fact that Will moved to Tennessee in April to pursue his music career and Ben was headed to Virginia to go to school full time to expedite the completion of his Bachelor's degree, we decided we would try to sell the house again because our kids were moving on and moving out.

When you live in a house day in and day out, you don't notice the toll that time takes on it.  But when you leave for a year, the snap shop is pretty vivid of all that has deteriorated in your absence.  I spent about a bazillion hours fixing, painting, purging, and packing just trying to get the house on the market.  Many thanks go out to the Asia Team, the Smiths, Driscolls, Dorises, CTEAM and family members who helped us along the way.

On Memorial Day I had to put our 10 year old Cocker Spaniel down. On Sunday at noon she was limping and by 8 pm she couldn't stand on her back legs at all.  I knew then that Monday was not going to be a good day.  We loved that little fur ball so much.  She was the cutest puppy on the planet.  She was scheduled to be moved to Tennessee to live with Will.   We did not think she would fare the move very well.  God had that situation under control too.  We sure didn't see it coming though.

Upon Jim's return to the States we stepped up the house project, and listed the house on the market on June 8th.  We went through room by room and put away every thing that was not furniture.  We painted and painted and painted and neutralized most of what showed personality.

Some of June and most of July was spent doing festivals to share Threads of Hope with those who don't know us yet, or were our previous customers from a festival the years before.  We have also historically used the festivals to help us raise financial support for ourselves.  This summer proved to be a poor season for us to boost our support this way.  The return on our invested time was very low. We will need to decide if manning festival booths is a wise use of our time in the future now that we have so little time in the States to visit family and friends and our ministry supporters.

We are currently operating at 75% of our budget.  We can only continue to operate at this level for a period of time, so raising more support is a serious concern of ours.  Our thanks to those of you who have supported us financially in the past.  If you would like to partner with us in the future please contact First Love International to get signed up.  You can go to firstloveinternational.com, click on DONATE then SUPPORT A MISSIONARY, then follow the prompts from there. You will need to specify Jim and Julie Marsh as the missionary who will be the recipient of your tax-deductible gifts. Even if you can't help financially, we would really love your prayer support.

We made several trips to Marinette to see my Mom and one of my sisters and her family, and one of my brothers and his wife. They even had a bonfire for me on my birthday surrounded by cousins, siblings, my Mom and her twin sister.  One of my sisters from Colorado was there too because she had just helped us to do EAA in Oshkosh.  That was very special.  You see, since my Dad passed away while we were here in the Philippines in May of 2014, frequent bonfires have been used to burn up much of the scrap wood my Dad left in his outbuildings and as a way to get the family united for a time of just hanging out together. The night my Dad's funeral was the beginning of many subsequent bonfires.  My Mom even threw firecrackers into the fire "To make sure Dad could hear them in Heaven", she said.

In August we continued fixing things up and packing and purging on the house.  We took a day and snuck away to go to the Renaissance Fair in Bristol with Ben and Mike. There were many hours invested in these Viking costumes.  We were quite impressed with the craftsmanship the two them displayed as they worked the leather and designed their costumes.

In mid August, we finally took a long overdue break.We don't have a single picture to show for it however, because the camera was getting repaired.  We traveled to Nashville,Tennessee, to see Will and my younger brother's family, then we headed to Lynchburg, Virginia, to move Ben to Liberty University. Then back to Wisconsin we went to continue plowing through the house to get ready to return to the Philippines.  Sydney, our "pseudo" son, moved out of the house and into his own apartment after 5 years of living with us.  We sold him our truck.  We sold our van to some friends. On August 30 we were still packing up things in cupboards and filling closets with boxes so the house would remain show ready. We had a team of 6 people working well into the wee hours on August 31 to continue to pack the house and to finish packing for our return to the Philippines that day.  I thank God for all of the angels that he sent us in the process. We accomplished a great deal of work.

It was our hope to have the house sold in June, or atleast over the summer.  We didn't know what to do if it didn't sell by the time we had to return. So on August 31 we locked the empty house up behind us and left a set of instructions of things that needed to be done in our absence.  We left the country being very disappointed that the house had not sold, and not knowing if we would ever step foot in it again.  One more challenge we felt like we could have done without.  We have told God that we are very disappointed and we don't understand why we still own the house.  We are trying to be real about our emotions  Obviously, His plans are MUCH different than ours and fortunately He is big enough to handle our disappointment.  We will continue to WAIT on Him to see what He is up to.

Then, after we were back in the Philippines for a couple of weeks, Kelly Mercer entered onto the scene.  She asked if she could live in the house while it is still on the market.  She is keeping things ready for walk throughs and open houses.  Another guardian angel thrust into our lives.  We have actually had a decent amount of activity on the house, but no offers.  It appears that HGTV has damaged the housing market because everyone wants a perfect house with all of the latest upgrades and they want it cheap.  We have a nice house, but of course there are things that it NEEDS and some things that would be nice to do to renew it; neither of which we can afford on our current missionary income.  We bought and remodeled and added on to that house at a time when our income matched the task.

This concludes the review of our whirlwind lives from March through August of 2015.  Thanks for sticking around long enough to get to the end.

The next blog post will give a glimpse of  what we have been up to since we came back to the Philippines and what the primary projects should be for this year.

After that, we will post our observations about last year in the Philippines and how we plan to improve our approach to and execution of life as we move forward in our spiritual journey and in the operation of the Threads of Hope ministry.

Thanks for dropping in.
Many Blessings,
Julie and Jim