It's here...

I never got to finish the last post, too much was going on and happening for me to conclude my thoughts from my previous post.
Do you ever have times where every scripture you read all you can think is Lord that’s nuts, who does that? I know I have read some of these stories countless times, but lately when I heard them I tell God ‘In the world’s eyes (and even the Church) this stuff is not rational, flat out dumb, foolish and crazy.’ We have all been hearing about the Christmas story and I can’t imagine what was thought about or said to Mary and Joseph following Gods plan. Then going backwards to Hosa, what would the Church think/say and act towards you if you told them “I am going to marry a prostitute?” I mean if a modern day believer told me that I would have some serious questions for them. Going further back- to the book of Judges 7:1-7 God tells Gideon straight up “You have too large an army with you. I can’t turn Midian over to them like this- they’ll take all the credit, saying ‘I did it all myself,’ and forget about me.” WHAT? WHAT? These examples are first and foremost request of trust and faith. It’s not even handing God a situation and saying “ok I trust you and I won’t worry about it.” Its “do this crazy outrageous thing and I am going to use it”. I struggle and believe many others do with requests from God like these. I know I am jumping around a lot, but these scriptures keep circling in my head that God uses the foolish things to shame the wise. How often do I REALLY believe God is going to use the foolish things/ people to do his will? I think about all the crazy things God has asked me to do, little and big. Sometimes I listen, sometimes I think I missed out to see God do something only He could do and I could not take credit for.
With that all said here is the news I know so many of you have been praying, encouraging us and taking steps of your own faith to see happen. We were cleared to go by Wycliffe! Yes we have the go ahead. It feels awesome, it feels crazy, it feels nuts, it feels weird, and it feels sad and joyful. We have not set a date officially however; we are waiting to the end of December report to come in before we buy official plane tickets and turn in our visa application.
Some of you might be confused right about now on how we got here. Considering my earlier post I wrote last week (added today) and we spoke to some of you about feeling discouraged over the last 2 weeks. This is our first longer term trip we have taken, and it has been a huge learning process for us. We had a misunderstanding of the qualifications needed to be released onto the field, we understood 90% to be the ultimate goal of our funding and have communicated that repeatedly with you. However, Thursday Mark received a phone call from Joy our WA main contact. She explained that with over $8,000 that has already been raised ($10,000 by the time we leave) and 3 consecutive months of exceeding (104%) our monthly support goal has WA ready to release us onto the field. So we are asking that you pray for guidance and wisdom as we move forward. Lord willing we will be flying out by the end of January. We still need $360 in monthly pledges/donations for our income in Cameroon and $110 monthly pledges/ donations for exiting money (plane tickets home). We have several people that have verbal committed to pledging monthly along with money we will be supplying from surplus from leaving (vacation time, ect) that have also not been factored into these amounts.

Where are we at?

We still need around 550 a month in pledges to purchase plan tickets and buy visas.
We have several of verbal commitments for monthly pledges, and they are behind of processing our donations. So we haven't had a lot of clarity on donations lately thus the gap in information. We have all the money we need to buy tickets and starter money but we still need to fill the gap in monthly pledges.

with love
from us

Update on where we are with Fundraising

Update on where we are at with pledges: As of current we need approximately $700 more pledged a month for us to book plane tickets and set a date. We would need this by the end of the week to make our goal of leaving by the end of November. Sometimes that number sounds small other days it’s a large wall with no entry. We thank you so much for all the prayers and words of encouragement we receive so much of.
Next week we will put out another financial report of our donations.
If you would like to give go to www.wycliffeassociates.org/links/donatenow. Put any part of the name (Janowiak or Mark and Leah) into the search box to pull up our name and click search. Enter your gift amount and click on the Add to Gift Cart button. Next click on the Continue to Check Out button on upper right. You will have the ability to set up the amount, date, frequency, and method of giving.

Status on where we are

In hoping to be as transparent as possible through our fundraising process below you will find our current financial status.

Pre Trip Costs: $3,400 (depending on cost of plane tickets)
Pre Trip Projected Raised: $3,266 (Based on current monthly donations)
Pre Trip Still Needed: $134

Monthly Support Costs: $2,200
Monthly Support Pledged: $1,265.5
Monthly Support Needed: $934.50

As you see we are still looking for more people to begin support before we can purchase plane tickets and visas and all together still looking for 29 people to support us or pledge $30 a month and we will be fully supported. Our goal is still to be fully funded by October and leave for Cameroon in November. If you’re able to support with less than $30 per month that is perfectly fine, we have just been using $30 per month as measuring unit. As a reminder, Wycliffe needs to see a couple of months before we leave to near our support goal so we can purchase our flight tickets and visas. If you prefer to begin supporting us once we leave for Cameroon please reach out to mrjanowiak@gmail.com or gracebyfaith@aim.com so we know what is being pledged and how often you plan on pledging that amount as we are unable to leave until our support is pledged or monthly amounts are coming in.