You Are the Light of the World (by Thom)

I had this sent to me a couple of weeks ago. This picture is fascinating and I've spent several moments looking over it in details with my friends and family. Basically, it shows where evangelicals around the world are concentrated. Some of the places are obvious - most of the United States, South Korea, Australia, & New Zealand - and some places surprised me - notably Holland, Chile & Madagascar. I have many evangelical friends from Holland but I still let the stereotypes of 'liberal hotbed' define my perception there. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Burkina Faso and part of western Mali show up even if it is a faint light. At the same time, I was saddened to see the needs for the Gospel to reach a large part my own United States, especially in much of the west.

If you click on the map a larger version will appear in your browser. Enjoy studying it and hopefully you can use it like I am now - a prayer guide for what parts of the world have the strongest needs for the light of Jesus Christ.

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Au Revoirs and African Cuisine (by Thom)

It feels like we're in "goodbye mode" now. Yesterday Amanda cooked a great African dish for our friends (although everyone wanted to eat with forks instead of their hands - wimps!) and we said our goodbyes. Today we head up from Lima, OH where we've lived the last 5 months and arrive in Ann Arbor, MI. That's where Amanda's dad lives and we'll stay there our final week in the US. "Goodbye mode" isn't fun but we are excited to get back where we love to be - serving the Lord by serving missionaries in Africa!

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Car Fund Update (by Thom)

Once we found out we were going to be moving from Mali to Senegal to serve the mission from the Regional Office, we were faced with the task of raising funds for a new car. In Mali we had a 10 year old Jeep Cherokee, which served us well but was unable to make the move with us. In many countries over there you cannot import a vehicle over 5 years old. So for the past several months we've been mentioning to churches, family, and friends that in order to buy a car we need to raise funds. Our goal is $25,000. That's not a magic number or anything, and probably won't allow us to buy a new car (vehicles are much more expensive in West Africa), but it's our goal. If we can raise more we will be able to buy a sturdier, newer vehicle. That said, we now have $13,679 or 54.7% of our goal. To borrow an idea from the United Way, here's our fund-raising thermometer:

If you would like to help with this need there are a couple of options. You can send a tax-deductible gift to:

The C&MA
Thom McMurray Vehicle Special
P. O. Box 35000
Colorado Springs, CO 80935

There's also a secure way to make your donation on-line, through the C&MA's website. If this interests you, click here.

Thanks for considering this and praying for us. We'll keep this updated and hopefully start to see this car turn more red in the months to come.

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New Pictures

We uploaded quite a few new pictures to the site yesterday (29, in fact!), including the one below. Artistically this picture of Hannah isn't anything great but it's a very, very special picture. Yesterday afternoon Miriam came up to me and said, "I want to take a picture". I got my camera down, showed her where to look and where the button was and she went right to Hannah and took her picture. So, here is Miriam's very first try at taking a photo:

To see the rest of the new pictures, click here.

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The Countdown Officially Begins (by Thom)

We have our tickets to return to Senegal. We'll be leaving the US on July 2nd. We were hoping to fly sooner but this was the first available flight we could make.
For those who have traveled internationally, you should be able to relate to this: we are so excited that our trip is only 12 hours from the first take-off to the final landing! Our trip from Bamako to Detroit in January took us 27 hours. This will be our shortest trans-Atlantic trip to date. Miri and Hannah are great airplane passengers, but it's still a challenging day for all of us.
To our friends in Dakar: see you soon!

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Passports! (by Thom)

It's official: we have American passports for Miri & Hannah. Need visual proof? Check out the picture. We've talked to the travel agent and are working on getting a return date to Africa, which should be in less than 2 weeks. Yea!

The Happy Americans, Hannah & Miriam.

Postscript: For those of you who found our blog via Missionary-Blogs.com, you may not know the back-story here. Miri and Hannah are our daughters, whom we adopted in Mali, West Africa, in 2006. We've been working on the naturalization process for a couple of years now and it's finally complete! We've been held up from returning to Africa until we got their new passports. If you'd like to learn more about the miracles and blessings from the adoption you can read more of our blog or go here to see an article I wrote in 2007.

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I Already Knew That (by Thom)

We had Chinese take-out for lunch today. Afterward I opened up my fortune cookie and saw this message:

(click to see larger version)

I didn't need the wisdom of a cookie for this, though, since it's only about 2 weeks until we arrive in Dakar! (Ok, that's not really vacation, but it's sorta correct. I am looking forward to crossing the waters!)

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Kid Games (by Thom)

I like, Sissy? Airplanes.
I like, Sissy? Chicken.
I like, Sissy? Big trucks.
I like, Sissy? Mommy.
I like, Sissy? Dora.
I like, Sissy? Yellow cars.
I like, Sissy? Grandma.
I like, Sissy? Airplanes.
I like, Sissy? Meat.
I like, Sissy? Daddy.
I like, Sissy? Airplanes.

And so-on, and so-forth. This is a game that Miriam and Hannah invented for our car rides. Miriam holds a Magna Doodle in her hand and says, "I like, Sissy?" To that, Hannah replies with something she likes and Miriam will attempt to draw that thing or person on her Magna Doodle. It's a lot of fun to listen to, even though airplanes get mentioned a lot, and I love seeing both their creativity and who they mention in their game.

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Moving Even Closer (by Thom)

In the last update, we mentioned we had finally gotten Social Security numbers for Miriam and Hannah and were ready to apply for passports. Today was the first day we were able to get an appointment at the passport agency and things seemed to have gone well. They told us that, baring any unforeseen problems, we should be getting their passports in 5-6 days! If that happens then we're looking at leaving the US to head back to Senegal on June 26th, just two weeks before we celebrate the twins' third birthday.

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