Not another Missionary support letter!

Hi everyone,

I’m writing this on a Sunday after a fabulous morning at our church in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, Mexico. It was our church’s 8^th anniversary today and they had a huge potluck (although I don’t know if they call it that down here) with tonnes of great food. I ate grasshoppers for the first time. Actually, grasshopper. I didn’t need more than one. Michelle and the kids were having fun chatting with our new friends and we just felt “at home.” And I couldn’t help thinking to myself, “I really don’t want to go home early”. I just want to stay here until May 2009 eating tamales, learning Spanish and telling people about Christ. But that might not be possible any longer.

Why would we have to come home early? Well, for those that are unaware we have been trying to sell our house in Airdrie for six months now. Our realtor, Roger has been working so hard to get showings and a deal in the incredibly difficult market back home and has actually accomplished what many agents could not; two sales! But, because it is still incredibly hard to sell houses both of these deals couldn’t complete. So, we had hoped for no house to worry about and pay for while in Mexico and instead we have one that we need to pay mortgage, utilities and insurance for. Oh ya, and we don’t have any savings left to make any more payments making it very possible that we have to leave Mexico and return to Airdrie much sooner than later.

Anyways, Michelle and I realized a very unfortunate thing. We didn’t want to do this, but we believe we have been forced into it. We hope you can forgive us for putting you through this. We know your time is valuable but there are no other options. That’s right, it’s time for…

Not another missionary support letter!

So back to the painful process of telling you everything that has gone wrong for us. Since our house is still available for sale or rent it means that we are paying the mortgage ourselves. And we don’t have the income to do this. So we are making the urgent call to all of our supporters and friends (I’m ok with people supporting us even if they don’t like us!) to pray for a solution to the house situation. Hmmmmm, that sounds like a good movie title:

The House Situation

Kind of like “The Italian Job” except that Michelle and I are not driving Mini’s around the sewers (well, we do have a MINI van!) and this time you can cheer for the good guys (us) instead of Marky Mark Wahlberg.

So please pray diligently that something would happen with our house to enable us to stay in Mexico to accomplish the work that God and yourselves sent us to do. Pray for a sale, a renter or something else that would allow us to not make the banks mad and not have to borrow money.

Or I guess you could pray diligently that we are able to stay in Mexico so that we wouldn’t be back in Airdrie whining about having to come home early. Don’t fool yourselves, we can whine well if given the opportunity.

Our monthly financial need and the shortfall in donations

We have one other thing we need to bring up. And we could put pictures up of our poor starving children (they’re awfully cute and can look pathetic if needed) but we’re not going to…yet. For now we want to do a little math. Wait! Come back, please don’t stop reading. Math can be fun. I know at least two accountants who have actually laughed. Seriously, they actually saw or heard something funny and laughed at it. It might have been a misplaced decimal point or a debit in place of a credit, but who are we to judge their odd or lack of a sense of humour? Right? 🙂

$1700 needed – $400 pledged = $1300 each month for 7 months still needed

Here’s our financial situation for living in Mexico. We need about $1700 CAD each month to pay our room/board/tuition as well as buy food and pay other expenses. Right now we have pledged to us $400 monthly. That leaves a shortfall of $1300 each month. We also will have one time expenses like flying Michelle and Katria home (in May, right? We’re still praying for something to happen with the house. Remember, no whining Diks’ wanted!), Ryan, Chelsey and Jared driving back and an unexpected trip to Texas sometime soon to renew our Mexican visa.

The punch line

So, can you help? We’re not trying to be unserious (spell check didn’t say it was wrong so it must be a word) about this situation. We also didn’t want to bore you with another standard missionary plea for money. But the fact remains that we cannot pay our bills without people like our friends and family helping us. To this point we have not needed for one cent beyond what our supporters have given. These were mostly in one time gifts and we are eternally grateful for them. Praise the Lord! We just wanted to make everyone aware that the financial support is still necessary to keep us here in Tlaxiaco learning and ministering.

Thank you everyone for giving us a few moments to read this. And thank you to all of you who do take the time to pray deeply and honestly about the issues we are currently facing. We have no doubts that with your prayers added to ours that we will be able to give the update in the next few weeks that our God is great! (also the update that we already knew this)

Thank you!

Ryan, Michelle, Chelsey, Jared and Katria Diks

All gifts are valued and receive a tax receipt from Airdrie Alliance Church which is our home church. To give a onetime gift, please send a cheque made out to Airdrie Alliance Church with a note designating it for the Diks Family Missions Trip. If you would like to set up automatic debits from your bank account or use online bill payments, please contact the church office at (403)948-3818 or via email at office@airdriealliance.com.