Two Joys from Tuesday

Dear Friends of Mission Surge,

I want to drop a brief line to share with you two joys. 

First, in the last newsletter I mentioned our latest plans for the Dominican Republic.  We are planning a mission trip to 2 virtually unreached communities in the Dominican Republic:  La Mocha and Salcedo.  These trips will be organized by two of our partner pastors in the DR.  The unique part of this mission trip is that they will not be planning and organizing the mission trip for Americans, but for their own congregations!  They will each lead a team of volunteers from their congregations to spend a week in Salcedo and La Mocha.  I asked you just last week to pray with me for God to raise up 10 individuals, Sunday school classes, or churches who would be willing to provide the $100 needed to support one Dominican team member for this effort.  Since that newsletter we have had 5 sponsors!  We rejoice that we are half way to our goal and ask that you pray for the other half of the sponsorships to be provided according to God’s will.

The second joy I want to share is that today we had our 5^th child.  Silas William Ivy was born at 7:32 a.m. this morning weighing in at 7 pounds 9 ounces and 20 ¾ inches long.  

Mandy suffered under the knife for a fourth C-section which is always traumatic…usually more traumatic on me than on her it seems!  She spent Tuesday in a fog of morphine and pain.  Yesterday was a little better.  We plan to be discharged on Friday.  Please pray that she will have a speedy recovery and that Silas will grow strong and healthy and most importantly into an individual who knows, fears, loves, serves, follows, obeys, honors, pleases, and glorifies Christ!  

In conclusion, there was one more encouraging thing that took place this week while we were in the hospital.  Hopefully I will be able to blog about it next week!  Be on the lookout and thanks for your prayers for our family as we take this next step on the journey God has us on.  

Here are a few more pics of Silas' first day.

Luke (8) seeing his brother for the first time.
He might be the most excited boy in the family believe it or not.

Levi (8) seeing brother for the first time.

Jude (who has claimed Silas as HIS brother) and Miriam who is likely to be much more help than we could ever anticipate (a living, breathing baby doll!)