December 2010 Update

Seasons greetings from all of us to all of you.  I hope this update finds all of you well as we near the holiday season and look forward to gathering with our families and friends.

Family Update
During the week Lowell is helping with home schooling the kids and teaches music lessons every afternoon.  He has about 15 students per week.  On Sundays Lowell stays busy leading worship on Sunday mornings at a local church and playing guitar in the worship band at another church every Sunday evening.  Shay continues to concentrate on keeping meals on the table and upkeep of the house,  home educating our 4 children, and when she has time she loves to work on her art journal, read, or craft.  Our 3 boys Aidan (12), Liam (10), and Jude (9) all love to play music, build legos, skateboard, and have sleep overs with their friends - oh yeah, they love playing their Xbox too!  Olivia is 4 and goes to a homeschool pre-K class on Wednesdays.  She loves to play with kids in the neighborhood, sing, dance, and play pretend with her dolls.

Home
A lot of our focus and energy the past 9 months has been on trying to sell our home- but, alas, it's still for sale and there are no hopes of any offers yet. However, even if it sold or leased within the next few weeks, we'd still need a place to live temporarily until all of our support money comes in.  So... we are not as stressed about it selling and realize it's been a blessing in disguise for us to still be in our home since Lowell teaches music lessons here in our front study/music room. We realize that if we had to move into a temporary living situation,  this would make teaching lessons a lot more difficult!  We are now turning more of our attention to raising the remainder of our support.

Financial Support Update
It has been just over 1 year ago that we sent out our initial mission support letter asking folks to consider what they could give to help make our vision to move to Bolivia as missionaries a reality.  We are officially past the half-way mark in our support with 62% of monthly pledges in.  We received many one-time financial gifts in the last year which has been wonderful.  This up front money has gone in our savings account and will help us with our initial move to Bolivia with things such as plane tickets, visas, etc.  So far we have had to use very little of our mission support money and hope to not have to use any more until we purchase plane tickets to leave.  We realize many of you who will read this update have already either given us a one-time gift or made a monthly pledge and we are so thankful for the sacrifice you are making toward our vision to serve in Bolivia.  Since WE STILL NEED 38% WORTH OF MONTHLY PLEDGES we are humbly asking the rest of you to pray and ask what amount you might be able to pledge monthly to get us closer to our goal. We want you to know that we are trying to plan on leaving in 6 mos. or sooner but this is contingent on selling our home and how close we are to our financial goal.  We can't leave until we have 100% of our monthly pledges given.  Our remaining need is $1700 in pledges per month to reach our goal.

Here is one way to think about how we can get to our goal:
136 people giving $12.50 per month = $1700
68 people giving $25 per month = $1700
34 people giving $50 per month = $1700
17 people giving $100 per month = $1700
8.5 people giving $200 per month = $1700
4.25 people giving $400 per month = $1700
*Reminder our total monthly goal is more than $1700 - this is just the remainder of what needs to be raised to meet our monthly goal.
If you decide to make a monthly pledge, feel free to begin giving now or defer your giving until we are on the field.  We will keep you informed of our progress by future newsletters.

How To Give
There are 3 ways you can contribute financially to us.
  1: ONE-TIME GIFT
Mail check to:
The Ballews
3023 Manor Bay Court
League City, TX 77573
OR - Send money to our PayPal account: *Instructions:  Send to: lballew73@gmail.com then click on the tab that says PERSONAL then click GIFT.


  2: MONTHLY PLEDGE
RIPE FOR HARVEST
PO BOX 487
MONUMENT, CO 80132-0487
*Note Accnt. #304 on check.
-Click on Monlthy Bank Draft Form below and mail in with a voided check:
MONTHLY BANK DRAFT FORM

  3: GIVE ONLINE - click on the link below to go to website to give.
GIVE ONLINE
*NOTE - once you get to the website please click the drop-down tab at the top "please select one" and select Ballew Lowell - #304

Thanks to all of you who have been praying for us this past year.  We can't do this without your continued prayer support.  We look forward to hearing from as many of you as possible in the days to come!

In His Time & By His Grace,

The Ballews
Lowell, Shay, Aidan, Liam, Jude, and Olivia