So we had our dinner Friday evening and it went really well. We raised about $4100 so we are roughly a third of the way to our goal! This isn't to say that we don't still have a ways to go, but we are doing well considering the short period of time we have been fundraising. I want to thank all of you for bringing us this far this quickly. God has blessed us in so many ways and the journey has just begun! We will be leaving for training Sept. 12th and our commissioning will be the 13th. We still have a lot of packing to do, but we are very excited to begin training and see what the Lord has in store for us there. Thank you all again for your support!

Fundraiser and update

Hello everyone! We just wanted to you let you all know that we will be having a dinner Friday evening at Croghan Mennonite Church from 5-7:30. Cost is $9 for adults, $5 for children 6-12 and 5 and under are free. We will be having pork loin, cole slaw, potatoes, corn, bread and pie for dessert. Take-outs will be available as well. So far we are doing fairly well with fundraising. We have enough for training in Sept. which is a huge blessing, but we still have a long ways to go before we have enough to leave for Africa. If you need a support letter or pledge form please let us know. Thank you for all of your support thus far, you are all such a blessing to us and we are so excited to have this opportunity to serve our Lord in this way, while having a life changing experience at the same time. Blessings to all of you!

Jessica and Elias

The beginning of a new adventure.

First off I want to apologize to all of you that have already tried to look at our blog and found nothing. I just want to update everyone on where we are at. First of all for those of you who don't really know our story, we are planning on serving in The Gambia, West Africa for a year through a mission internship through Eastern Mennonite Missions (EMM). We received our budget in June and we have learned that we need to raise $31,298 for time that we will be serving. This will cover our stateside expenses such as trainings and administration costs along with all of our overseas costs like plane tickets, health insurance, basic needs, etc. I'm not sure how much we have raised so far since we just began the fund raising process. Currently we need to have $3000.00 by September for training, however we would love to have as much raised by that time as possible. 

Recently we were able to sit down with Gary and Denise and discuss some of the things that we will be experiencing in The Gambia along with how we will be living and what we might be doing. Jessica is hoping with work with a group called "My Sister's Company" which teaches women how to sew and make jewelry so that they can be self-employed. Elias could be helping a local carpenter or possibly focus more on relationship building and evangelizing. 

We are very excited for this next chapter of our lives and we feel so blessed that we are able to share it with all of you. You will notice that on our prayer cards the address for donations is a physical street address, if you want to donate and haven't yet please send all donations to P.O. Box 417 Lowville, NY 13367. Blessings to all of you and we will keep you updated as we continue on this journey!

Elias and Jessica Zehr