Keller Family Blog

We drove to Brisbane for a student conference. We were able to hang out with students from all over Queensland. We had a wonderful time encouraging and challenging students to think about what they wanted to do with their lives. Several are considering how they can serve God full time after they leave Uni (college for us Americans). A highlight of the conference was the Internet outreach time where with three students we interacted with nearly 20 people on 4 continents who were seeking Christ in a space of 2.5 hours.

Somehow I was charged twice and issued two tickets for the exact same itinerary for a recent flight. Once by the travel agent and another time at check-in by the airline.  I of course only authorised the charge once and never signed anything the second time I was charged.  Though they say that the ticket used was the second not the first “non-refundable” ticket.  Pray that this all gets sorted out well.  I guess it is not really my money. This ticket comes from Campus Crusade operating funds instead of what I raise, but still I have no desire to see $2000 wasted. (Did I mention that travel in and out of Australia is in general very expensive.)

Being in Australia less than a fortnight (common used term in Australia), I traveled to Melbourne to visit the new office. Looks like the new office will be a wonderful place for the ministry to have its headquarters here. I am looking forward to helping move the operations there. I also met several CCCA Missionaries in Melbourne. Overall it was a great trip!

Repeat of previous post in some ways.  However we have been making progress.  Today was a good day however, our telephone provider went out of business this week.  We had to switch to another at the last minute.  Hopefully all of that will go well too. Anyway back to packing and putting things away.

Lots of decisions. Lots to do. Packing, making arrangements for home repairs so the house will be here when we are back…  Need to pack, need to toss, need to store….

Well, we have placed an order for our tickets.  The cheapest we could find online was about $1500 per person. A wonderful travel agent named Greg was able to purchase tickets for us on the exact same flight for around $1050 per adult and $850 per child.  WONDERFUL.  Thank you Lord! That saved us over $3000 so the flight prices were less than $6000 total!
God certainly has a lot to finish before we leave. We are thinking that things are going to be happening very fast very soon.

Starting yesterday we had some major challenges and provisions. Chronological is the best way I can tell this. Probably should be 4 separate posts, but hang on…

Wow what a day. Yesterday I took a trip to the Post Office because the Hold order that I removed online still had not caused our mail to be delivered at the house. I found that the Post Office and the Carriers were no longer in the same building so I could not get the mail at that time. They will be delivering the mail on Thursday for me they said as they filled out a Red piece of paper.

Driving back home in the downpour, I heard a thump, thump, thump which at first I thought tire, but then realized it was coming from the engine compartment. It stopped as I drove. Car seemed OK to continue home. When I got home I discovered that the serpentine belt had missing portions on it. Ughhh. Not even our van, we are borrowing someone else’s Van! Our vehicles are in Indiana. I showed a friend and he said that it is not as difficult to change as I thought it could be so we decided to get it fixed instead of parking the van and not driving it the rest of the time here in Orlando. The friend even offered to pay for the repairs to bless us and the owner of the van. (Actually he said he was pretty sure God wanted him to pay so this is Provision 1 to Praise God for.)

I got up before 7 to go buy a belt for the van and take it to the repair shop. I took a shower and just as I was getting out Karlissa came in reguritating the meal of the night before. Looked like most volume yet in one throw up she has produced. Big streak in her bedroom, down the hall and all over the toilet and bathroom. We are pretty sure it is an intolerance to Onion of some sort. My grandmother, mother and cousin all have some intolerance of Onion. As mom said, “I like onions, but they don’t like me.” We thought Karlissa just had a problem with raw onions after an episode in January and had kept her off of them since then, however last night’s onions were grilled some first, perhaps not enough even though some were blackened. Perhaps it is a quantity of onions in a sitting, day or couple of days thing. Oh well, we will keep looking.

Around 9am a man showed up to work on the fireplace as it has not been safe to use since we moved into the house. The chimney sweep was here on Tuesday and he did a fabulous job. Today was the fireplace repairman especially here because the chimney on the house will come off in a tropical storm or hurricane. As he started to work, I took the van in to get fixed, while Crystal and a friend started packing up our books for storage or shipment.

The repairmain started in the firebox taking care of the steel that has started to turn color as a precursor to rust, by using a special high temperature black spray paint. Then something happened that had never happened to him before. He didn’t notice the downdraft in the fireplace or he would have placed fans on top of the chimney. My wife and friend needed to leave the room and attempted to seal off the kids hallway and opened up their windows. The next time she entered the room all she saw was a cloud of black in the room. She closed the door and talked to her friend and went back in to check. The cloud had settled on all of the surfaces in the room and in the foyer and in the kitchen and toward the front door, etc.

Fortunately the black paint dried in the air and it was dry paint that fell on everything. When I got home from getting the van fixed, Crystal was halfway through mopping the nearly black floor. The repair man was no where to be seen as he went to buy cleaning supplies. His father (the owner of the business) and he came back and started cleaning. They also called an upholstery cleaning company to come and clean the couch, loveseat and rocker.  I would say that now 98% of it has been removed. Our children’s feet were still quite black after they came through the house after dinner tonight amidst what we call a clean floor.

Crystal’s friend Julie that was here, was another wonderful Provision of God for both the emotional support, the herding of kids and the helping with cleanup efforts. Just her presence helped Crystal immensely.

Oh did I mention the other CCC staff that will be living in our house while we are in Australia, started bringing their stuff in while the cloud was settling. Fortunately we know that God is in charge and nothing like this is a suprise for him.  As Dr. Bright said since we are God’s servants, and God is in charge that we don’t have any problems, only God has the problems and we are just reponsible to follow his direction.

Now it is time to go to bed and see what tomorrow holds.  Hopefully it will be uneventful and productive.

Oh yeah the mail didn’t come either….but that should be a different story.

We are a bit overwhelmed…We are in Orlando for one week between house sitters, trying to make decisions on packing up the house. Do we take? Do we store? Do we pitch? Do we give away? Do we try to sell?  These questions over and over again for every possession.  The hardest part about this, really isn’t the questions, but the rest of life that continually interupts these questions.  Of course it is not really hard, we love our children, our friends and co-workers, so really it is just wonderful opportunities to connect.  But still please pray for wisdom as we pack.

When in Louisville, if you need a place to worship, I recommend Ormsby Heights. We were welcomed warmly today by many people. They were warm, inviting and sincere. Even though this was the first time we ever had been there, they brought us up front and prayed for our upcoming adventure to Australia. I was able to share with one Life Group about our heart for ministry and some of what we will be doing. I challenged them to allow God to use what is in their hands. Anyway we really enjoyed our time and will definitely need to make a trip there again someday in the future. Always fun to be at a church where God is visibly at work and the people embrace God’s movement.

Praise the Lord our Visa has been granted! The package was delivered 2 hours after the normal mail came. We now have just under 13 weeks to get to Australia before the Visa needs to be filed again. Well we’ll see how God works this out.  We will need to have our funding wrapped up in less then 8 weeks to secure the tickets and get the few items shipped. Plus we need to pack up our house in Florida and get it ready to rent, more on that later.  Right now we are celebrating.