in the beginning...

the story goes that i got involved with sweet sleep because of the founder, jen gash. jennifer babysat my kids when they were little. her story and how she went about starting sweet sleep is one worth reading. i would volunteer here and there....no biggie. but the more i got involved the more i wanted to help do more significant things. i would ask jennifer about different trips they were going on and she knew that eventually i would go on a trip with them. yeah, yeah. i knew i wanted to as well but there was never a good time. also, i am not a fan of flights longer than two hours! fly me to chicago...perfect, to new york city...i am good...but thinking about crossing the atlantic and two continents with two overnight flights...forget it. i approached jen about going to haiti to help with work after the earthquake. yes, sweet sleep is involved in haiti but she wasn't really thrilled about my asking about haiti. she didn't show much enthusiasm but her words to me were "how about uganda? i am just throwing it out there!" to which i responded "heck no! i am not going to africa. don't even ask again. i will not go to africa." june 11-21...i am going to africa. what? how did this happen? let me just say this is not normal for me. i am much of a germ freak, i am weird about foods, i am a creature of habit (but i do like adventure) so after talking with jen a bit more i was more at ease and felt relatively calm about the possibility. “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of God is this: To visit the orphans and the widows in their distress” James 1:27 i was actually getting excited! not only did i want to go but i wanted to involve my girls. i have 5 daughters and i thought why not take some with me? emily, my 2nd, has been wanting to do an international mission trip for several years now. my husband, mason, has wanted us to go on a mission as a family but we could just never find the right trip or time. i thought well if i am going to africa i might as well take a few girls because i most likely will never go back (never say never). i realize that the timing is not perfect but it's perfect timing. times are tough. finances are tight for most all of us. what i mean by this is that i feel very pulled at this specific time to go. this specific time is the right time to sow the seeds of compassion in my oldest girls. sometimes we are so caught up in what we have going or what we have to do and feel we don't have time to do anything for anyone else because we are barely keeping our heads above water. that being said, for some reason this is the time. now. even though i have many, many things going on in my life that you would think should keep me here. some (but very few) people are telling me i am crazy to do this or that i am not thinking this through enough or that i am being irresponsible and expecting too much, etc. i can see their point but honestly, what God has put on my heart cannot be denied even though i am a little uneasy about it. when i was initially talking about this, my brother, greg, told me "this is one of those things you just do. you decide you are going and you get on the plane and you go. you don't think about it." he was telling me about when he decided to go to the ukraine. he wasn't really sure about it but he went and said he has never regretted it. i also spoke to my sweet friend,susan, who is my go to girl about things like this...big things in my life. i told her about my conversation with jen and asked her what she thought. she said let me think about this and pray about this and i will get back to you. the next day we talked and she said simply, "kelli, it just seems right. i think you should go." also, another friend, teresa, didn't know exactly what i was talking about on facebook when i explained i needed direction on whether or not to go on a mission trip. she said "if it's with sweet sleep...go!" i had not even mentioned sweet sleep yet but she knew of it through my previous volunteering. i thought of proverbs 27:9 "perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of one's friend springs from his earnest counsel."

"God doesn't call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn't come through." -Crazy Love