Friends and Family,

In a little less than a week (either Friday or Saturday) we are going to be off driving to Minneapolis for our pre-field training. We just finished up the online class that is preparing us for this training, covering topics ranging from our expectations of going to Austria, to sharing our testimonies to learning about culture shock. We have learned a lot, and are very excited for the training! It officially starts Monday morning and is 3 packed days, starting at 8 finishing around 7:30 each day with homework for the evening. Needless to say, it will be a busy few days. We'll be going up early in order to see people along the way. After the training is over on Wednesday, we'll be driving down to Campaign, IL to visit Seth's brother Jeremy and his wife Janelle. Seth's sister, Joy, also recently moved in with them. For those of you that don't know, Jeremy found out 2 weeks ago he had a brain tumor. He had surgery on Wednesday to have it removed, everything went well, and he is now home! Praise the Lord! What a miraculous and gracious God we serve! He's doing well and it sounds like recovery will take about a month.

Fortunately, Alyssa's job at the bank has known we would be leaving for months now, and is very flexible with her schedule. They are really wanting her to stay on as long as she can and are willing to work around what we have planned. However, Seth's job wasn't as flexible. Seth was given just a day and a half of vacation time for the whole year and that was used a while ago. Since he didn't have any vacation time, and was going to quit in the next few months anyway, they didn't want to make an exception in letting him have off. As a result, his last day of work will be this Friday, August 24th. We are trusting God that he will continue to provide for us as he has been.

Since we won't be having the income that we do now, we are planning on moving out of our home September 15th and moving in with family. We are needing to get rid of a lot of things and make many decisions before that point. We're packing up things we want to keep and putting them in storage and are trying to plan what we want to take with us, and setting aside stuff for a garage sale. We're planning on doing a donation garage sale September 7th and 8th. We won't have prices on anything, instead people can set their own price. However, if someone is in need of something, they can just take it for free. Any proceeds will go towards our Austria fund. Please be praying that this will go well. If anyone wants to donate anything for us to sell, you can bring it by our house anytime, or give us a call at 402-641-3747. 

God has really put things in motion for us now and we know He will continue to provide. We have a tentative plan to leave for Austria in mid October, but we still have a lot of support to raise so we need a lot of prayer. We know that we need to trust God's timing and have seen that He is putting things in place, so we're working hard to prepare. We are going to be working on keeping this updated, now and while we are in Austria as well. We love you all very much and are very thankful for all the support that you have shown us. Thanks for all your prayers!!!

Love,
Seth & Alyssa Sander

p.s. - If you'd like to give now go here our number is 1753