Here we go!

Well, this is the official start to the mckenzie5family blog. This is intended to document our experience as I, along with my three children, (Dan, Clara, and Paul) and my beautiful wife Brita, travel to Rehoboth Children's Home in the Philippines to help construct an expansion project for the orphanage. We will be there for 6 months, starting in February 2009.

We will be a-part of eMi(Engineering Ministries International), a non-profit christian organization that mobilizes design professionals to serve the materially and spiritually poor in the developing world. I had the privilege to be on the design team that went to the orphanage in September 2007. I was also on a work team to help finish the construction of the existing home in 2001. It is an amazing God story of how I am involved with this children's home again and I will save that for a later blog.

Right now we are raising prayer and financial support to spent the 6 months living in the orphanage. With airfare for 5, costs in the States while we are gone, living expenses, visa's, passports, immunizations, etc, we need $25,000 for 6 months. To date, we are almost 2/3 there with another $9,000 that needs to be raised.

Thank you to everyone that has supported us financially, and so much more in prayer! This is anything but normal but God is anything but predictable! To imagine taking your family, with three small children, and moving to a foreign country for half a year seems crazy to me as I write this. But I also remember the children at Rehoboth. They were kids that were rescued, redeemed from another life. I also saw the kids that have no home, no help, and seemingly no way out. In America, there are so many opportunities. There are so many organizations, both government and private, that strive to reach out to those who need help. In the Philippines, in Tanay the area of the children's home, there is no government program that helps these kids. There is no system in place to provide the most basic needs we take for granted. That is why this expansion is so important. It provides hope for these kids. It provides the needs every child has; food, clothing, shelter, and love. And most important, it provides them the opportunity to meet the One who knows their pain, their suffering, and loves them more than any person in the world could. The One that has a purpose for their life and is precious to Him.

That is why we are going. The One, Jesus Christ, who saved me, has filled my life with so much joy, peace, and an overflowing of gratitude. If He asks me to trust Him, what else can I say. Yes Lord!