Christmas time in Syracuse
by:John
Howdy all!
Oh man, did I just say “howdy”? Growing up in NY, my high school friends would have never allowed such slang to be slipped in to my vocab. However, life in the Midwest, as well as my southern friends (whom I have actually found to be quite intelligent 
) have left their linguistic stamp on my speech. Anyhow, being back in NY for the holidays has been great. There was enough snow on the ground to consider it a white Christmas, although it’s been pretty rainy since then. Rachel is really wondering if she will see the sun again, while I am actually strangely comforted by the low lying greyness that seems to hover overhead.
Spiritually though, it has been far cry from the weather. In fact, God seems to be pouring light into us as He stretches our faith. We are truly blessed to have good brothers and sisters speaking into our lives and praying for us and God is responding by wooing us to Himself, both in the prayer closet and His word, as well as in our daily lives.
Rachel and I both feel God’s assurance of His abundant provision and willingness to lead us. And, we are really getting excited about our Hyderabad internship. We have been reading together Culture Shock: India, a fabulous book by a woman whose name escapes me right now. It’s wonderful though to read about the cultural diversity and the sights, sounds, and challenges that we are soon to face first hand. It is bound to come with more than it’s fair share of blessings, excitements, annoyances and difficulties as we approach our expected departure date, we are all the more tingling with expectation!
Now, I can’t really say that it’s all warm fuzzies as we look to the future. Rachel’s last email spoke of some of the difficult emotions that she was wrestling with about the sheer uncertainty of what lies beyond. But, all in all, God continues to provide that emotional support that we need, in the way that we need it at the time that we need it. It truly is an amazing thing to step back a bit and see just how He has been leading us up to this time and has stretched us and prepared us in faith to tackle what we have to deal with now. He’s awesome! What can I say?
Anyhow, in case you are wondering where we are at budget wise, it’s a little bit unsure right now. I’m waiting to hear back from the finance department before I know with any certainty. I’ll update this as soon as I know but, for now, I can say that there’s lots of room to still give. We are hoping to buy our tickets very soon and we need to have 100% of our start up costs raised in order to do that ($5,000) and 75% of our monthly finances (~$800). As far as I know, we are quite a ways away from both figures but the start-up-costs are what we need most immediately.
Well, more later.
Blessings,
John Clancy