The biggest fight in my marriage was over...

...tent camping.

Our first year of marriage, for our summer vacation, we went tent camping and water skiing at Lake Shasta in northern California for a week.  It was a hot one (over 100F the whole time) and Dan and I had loaned our nice big tent to a pregnant friend and ended up sharing a one-man tent.  It was pretty miserable, all cramped and sweaty in that small space.  I told Dan on our 16 hour drive back home that I would rather rent a cabin or do a different sort of a vacation (like a cruise!) next time.  As my husband thrives on roughing it and had invested tons of money into super nice camping equipment, he didn't like that at all.  We had a huge fight and then it was a very long, quiet, tension-filled 16 hour ride back.  

Don't you just love the delicious irony?!  For those of you who have been following our family’s transition journey the last year, you are probably chuckling with us.  Dan loves to say, “I have seen the Lord do incredibly miraculous things while doing ministry in Africa, but the biggest miracle of all is that my wife chose to live in a tent in Zambia!”

Our family of four lived in a 10' by 15' safari tent for 3 months just outside of Livingstone, Zambia while we went through Advanced Missions Training with Overland Missions.  It was the hottest season in Zambia in 12 years and was in the 120s for almost a month.  Our hottest day was 131F and when it cooled off to 80F after a storm, many of us put on jeans and jackets because we were freezing.  I know you are all laughing, but seriously, that was a 50 degree swing in temperature.  If your weather went from 90F down to 50F in 24 hours, you’d notice it too!  

We are in the states until the end of March, in South Africa for three weeks, and then plan to head on back to our tent in Zambia in late April.  While living in a tent is definitely still not my favorite thing, I am excited to get back to Africa and be a part of what God is doing there.  The tent will continue to be our home until we are able to build a house on base.   

We hope we will be able to complete a house by the end of 2012.

This is one of the homes on base and we hope to build one very similar to this by the end of 2012.

We’d love to invite you to be a part of building our home with us!  Here are some details for contributing to our house project fund:

We will need approximately $53,000 for this project.

 We recognize this is a large sum of money, but we are confident that Zambia is where God wants us to serve and live.  For those of you would like a cost breakdown, contact us - we are happy to share those figures with you.

We have already been blessed by the generosity of many of you.  Even before we have officially asked, we have already been given 15% of what we need.  God is so good to us!

Will you please consider donating towards our house fund?  Any amount would be a blessing.

You can donate online here www.overlandmissions.com/donate

please type “Hartley House” in the memo line to indicate it is for our project account. 

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By check - please write “3074 House Acct” on the memo line and mail to

Overland Missions

P.O. Box 566 

Cape Canaveral, FL 32920

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South Africans – our acct details are:

Daniel Hartley. 
FNB - Cresta/254905  
 

Acct: 62099953393

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About 2 years ago someone shared with us that they believe the Lord wanted us to know that moving forward, our ministry was going to be funded by new sources and that places we’d expect funding from would change.  Boy, has this been proven to be true!  Already we are being surprised at almost every turn with who God is bringing forward to partner with us.  We look forward to sharing more stories of God’s faithfulness to us in this process.

Also, we need a few more monthly partners to join us to reach 100% fully funded status.  If you are interested in joining our monthly support team, you can go to www.overlandmissions.com/donate to set up a reoccurring payment with your card, of you can send checks to the address above and indicate on the memo line it is for “3074 monthly support”.  

Thank you for your prayers for us and for your partnership!  God bless you.

Janell