Sweet Zoey...

This is a photo taken of our Zoey girl while she waits to be picked up by a VERY special person for her first sleep over at her house.....

I've posted before about how we needed a temporary home for Zoey while we are on our journey around Australia. Deb is the VERY Special and Lovely Lady taking Zoey into her home for us. We are Sooooooo VERY grateful to Deb, and Sooooooo VERY grateful that she is doing this for us. What she is doing is no small thing to do for someone, especially someone you don't know well.

Zoey's now been to Deb's house twice for a visit, and tonight will be her third visit and first sleep over at her foster family house. Hopefully it all goes well and she doesn't fret. I'm sure she will be fine!
It really is good for Zoey to spend some time at Deb's house before we leave, it will help her build a bond with her new foster family before she moves in. 
It would be horrible to drop her off at a home she has never been to before, I couldn't do that. I think it's much better for Zoey this way!
It feels strange and sad for us to not have Zoey around, jumping on our bed's, giving us her rope to throw for her and snuggling up on our laps, but its all part of the process we need to all go through to help her and us adjust to these changes.
Hopefully Zoey can have a couple more visits before we leave for our journey to help her feel more at home in her new foster home and help us (especially our Girl's) adjust to not having her around.

We believe Zoey's new foster family will take very good care of her and we feel very blessed that they are doing this for us :-) 
To Our New Friends.....Thank You VERY Much for taking care of our much loved Zoey while we are away xo

Take Care,
Dimi, Shane, Elissa, Serena xo

Change of Plans...

Hahahaha, What an absolute crack up!
Our plans have changed again....I just posted on Monday that our plans had changed and they are changing yet again!

Shane and I were discussing our journey/trip yet again and after thinking about it some more, we've decided to stay at a caravan park in Macedon instead of going to my mums house on settlement day (THANK YOU for offering MUM xo).
It seems to be the easier and better option for us partly because our caravan doesn't safely fit in my mums driveway and that would mean we would need to park it some where else.
Our Pastor (THANK YOU Rocky) agreed we could leave our caravan at his house, however we've realised we really need it with us. We need to prepare the caravan some more before the actual trip. Going to a caravan park on settlement day also gives us some time to adjust to caravan living a little bit while we are at a quieter site, and while we are not very far from home. We think its a better option before we hit the very busy sites throughout the school holidays. 

The girls can still go to school and we can still tie up our many loose ends. 
So the few plans we have in place can still remain the same, except for now we will be leaving for the start of our journey on settlement day (well only half starting it, we aren't going very far).

I really think it's GREAT, It is VERY scary but GREAT that we don't have too many plans in place for this trip because I can see them changing throughout our travels anyway.
Remember, this is our journey and we have lists of things we want to do, see and experience but it still is God led, so if our plans change, they change and we will just have to adjust to the changes and go with the flow.
It's both VERY exciting and VERY scary to me to not have too many plans in place but I really believe we need to just let go of control, hand it all over to GOD, relax on the over organising, don't over plan and just allow God to lead us.
When you take a leap of faith, I believe it is usually followed by many, many more leaps of faith...I believe we all need to grab a hold of God's BEAUTIFUL hand and allow HIM to lead us through this journey and throughout our lives!

Whatever Happens, Happens.....Am I scared? YES, YES, YES!...Will fear stop me? NOPE, NO WAY, Not at all!
Bring It On!

Have a Great Day and Take Care,
Dimi :-)

So Blessed...

We feel so blessed! 
So far while planning our God led journey we have been so blessed by so many different people and many of these people we have just recently met and got to know.
For example, on Saturday night we went and had a yummy BBQ dinner with some new friends we recently made. These new friends of ours blessed us with a yummy dinner and great conversation that continued late into the night. It was a great night for us and for the girls, especially since they to have two girls.

It is so funny, we have made so many new friendships since planing this journey and we will be sad to leave these newly formed friendships behind, but we believe God is surrounding us with these beautiful people to support us, encourage us and to believe in us and our vision and journey. 
We feel so blessed and so very grateful to these people and to God for this. 
Their support means the world to us!
I'm so very aware and its so very evident to me that God's hand is on the planing of this journey, and that alone is the only thing that brings peace to my sometimes anxious heart. Thank you God xo
Take Care,
Dimi xoxox

2 Weeks until...

Settlement on our home is only 2 short weeks away, what a shocker! 
The time has gone so very fast and it is hard to believe we only have 2 weeks left in this house.
Monday 14th of December is our final day here. We did plan to leave on our journey that very same day, but plans have needed to be changed a little.
We won't be picking up our 4WD until after our house settlement day and that is why we've had to delay our plans.
If plans don't need to be changed again, our new plan is to leave on Tuesday 22nd of December. 
We decided to stay with my mum for the one extra week we remain here until we get our 4WD. The good thing is the extra week also gives us that little bit more time to tie up some loose ends!
This also means our Gorgeous girls can remain in school for the final week of the school year. Our girls are happy because they both enjoy school and they will be able to enjoy an extra week of school with their school friends.
We are hoping we don't need to make any more changes to our plans, especially regarding the day we leave....However, my heart often reminds me of God's word.....
Romans 8:28
"And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose for them."

So, I'm trusting in God that all will work out just as it is meant to work out!
Take Care,
Dimi

Round 2...

Well, well, well...Google and you tube, sometimes you are more precious than gold, Hahaha!

So Shane and I had round 2 with setting up our caravan and awning. Last time it took more than 2 hours and we were totally spewing about it, 2 hours is way too long. 
We actually looked into purchasing a quick set up wind out awning, but after thinking about it for a short time we decided it was too expensive and not worth it. 
Shane did some homework and called the company that makes our style awning/annexe (Aussie Traveller) and Shane actually found out our awning/annex is great quality and is made from a really durable material, so that was great news for us and we were very happy to hear that. After finding that out, Shane checked out WONDERFUL google and found a clip on you tube that shows how to set up our exact awning (ours is just bigger), it took the man in the clip only 3 minutes to set up the awning (not including the annexe), only 3 short minutes. My golly gosh, it took Shane over 1 1/2 hours to set up the awning last week. 
Oh another thing Shane worked out by watching the clip was that he had the awning poles in the wrong way, that is why they weren't staying up properly!......What a Nutter!

Well, it was round 2...Shane and Dimi versus the awning and annexe, Hehe! 
This time we followed the directions on the you tube clip and set it up step by step referring back to the clip. To our complete AMAZEMENT we had the awning set up in an awesome and very short 15 minutes, and the annexe only took us about 11 short minutes.... 
We were sooooo impressed with ourselves we just kept giving each other a High five, we felt invincible, Hahaha! 
We are so wrapped it only took us a short 26 minutes on our second round, we even think we can improve on that time, YAY for google and you tube! 
Oh and round 2 goes to Shane and Dimi, WOOOHOOOOOOOO :-)

Check it out...

 We are so glad we decided to give it another go, YAY!

Have a good one and Take care,
Dimi xoxox 

The Gift that Keeps on Giving...

This Gorgeous gift box is filled with another answered prayer from God...

The other night Shane went to the young adults connect group end of year dinner. Shane leads the young adults connect group at Encounter Church. This dinner was the end of year dinner and it was also Shane's last night with the young adults group before we go on our journey.

Shane came home and he was a bit emotional and he placed the above box on the dining table and just looked at me. He said something like "what have we been praying for? and what were we discussing today?" I wasn't sure what he was talking about because we have been praying for a lot of things!

Shane lifted the gift box lid and I looked inside the box and that was it, we both cried.
Inside this absolutely Gorgeous gift box was yet another answered prayer from God. Yet another answered prayer to add to the list of MANY answered prayers.

This is what was inside the gift box.......

Answered Prayer...Bibles...

You see, from the beginning, one of our plans for this journey was to purchase some adult and children bibles to give to people as we minister to them, if and when they ask for one. We believe we will need many bibles and so we have been praying to God to help provide us with some bibles.

 I believe whether the young adults knew this or not, God whispered to them and used them to answer our prayers.

I'm not part of leading the young adults at all, Shane does that himself, but either way both Shane and I are so proud of the young adults. At Encounter Church in Sunbury, Victoria we have some AMAZING, Mature and God driven young adults that we believe are going to be world changes, we can just see it!

Thank You Very Much to all the young adults at Encounter Church who were a part of Gods answered prayer...We appreciate it :-)

Take Care,
Dimi and Shane xoxox

So many GREAT people...

Recently we have met so many GREAT people ...
We met one of our neighbours for the first time a few months ago. These neighbours moved in to a house across the road at some stage this year or last year!

This neighbour has a dump truck and he offered to allow us to use the truck because we had a whole lot of rubbish on our front lawn from cleaning out our sheds and house. We had nearly 2 trailer loads full of rubbish, what a shocker!
As offered, the other day our neighbour drove his large truck onto our front lawn and after a bit of hard work it was all gone! 
Another thing ticked off our to do list, YAY.

So many GREAT people!
Thank you Adrian, we appreciate it.
Thanks Heaps and Take Care,
Dimi :-)