Our last letter in September had Katey in Mozambique, David and Kristen married and attending OSU and Jesse living at home doing his first term of college. All is well with our young ones, and for that we are very grateful to God. Jesse is at home and, besides attending school, is tutoring the various classes he took last term. Katey is madly in love with Africa, never wants to leave, but realizes she needs additional degrees to be able to start a school in Mozambique. That appears to be her ultimate goal.

I love family photos, probably now more than ever, so I am including a photo of the cousins at Christmas, since these are some of the people whose lives we will be missing when we are in Sierra Leone. Front and center in the photo is Jesse, and Grandma Fennig got into the action with the grandkids! I am also attaching a photo of Katey with some of her boys in the bush of Mozambique, just because it is Katey in Africa and we love it, too!

So, aside from getting the house ready to try to sell, the big news is we have set May 13 as our first possible date to leave for Sierra Leone. We do not know if this date is from the Lord or not, but we need a goal to shoot for, and this is the first date we think we can hit. We will only buy tickets a month or so in advance, so there is time to see how everything comes together.

What needs to happen to let us go? Well, first we need pledges of support or money in hand for the full amount of our monthly goal. We are at almost 50% now, and the Global Ministries office will need to know what people are thinking and planning in order to affirm that we can leave. They will not allow us to go significantly under-supported, so if there are friends, family members, or churches out there who are planning to join our support team, but have not sent that information to Global Ministries, it would help us to plan if you would let them know what you are thinking. Their address is: Global Ministries, 302 Lake Street, Huntington IN 46750

We have lots of Sundays open for church visits so if you want us to come share with your church about this ministry please contact us.

We are still working our day jobs, Toni at WPAFB, Randy as a very “part-time pastor”, only preaching at Prince of Peace when we are not visiting churches for deputation. This freedom allows Randy to get other things ready, including his latest project, restoring the 1850 Oliver tractor from his family’s farm in Indiana to take to Sierra Leone. He mentioned the idea to his brother a couple of weeks ago, and now the men of Westchester are joining in the fun and we hope the project will actually get underway in earnest this February.

Toni’s job at WPAFB is feeling like Elijah and the little bit of oil and flour, just enough to stay alive! We expect her to be laid off after the first week of February, but that dream of “free time” has been out there tantalizing her before! She is trying to get things done with working full time, but it seems the only time to make real progress is on long weekends, so the lay off would seem to be a necessity to actually pack up the house to leave for SL. Fortunately the Lord actually knows what is and is not necessary, so we are trusting Him for the time we need to get things done.

As we are preparing to go we are looking at the realities of work in SL. From our prior experience in Africa there are things we know would be essential or helpful for ministry in SL. Randy’s primary task is at The Evangelical College of Theology, but with a container going he cannot resist sending farm machinery to use in his “spare time!” Some of you may be interested in case you know where some of these things could be acquired.

We are in need of a vehicle with manual transmission, 4 wheel drive, probably Japanese manufacturer (easier to get spare parts in SL if it is Japanese made), double cab or SUV with fairly low mileage (under 75000?) and a diesel engine would be a positive. Vehicles like Nissan Xterra, Toyota 4 runner and Toyota Tacoma fit the bill. So if you know of someone who wants to sell one of the above to a missionary couple, feel free to put them in touch with us! We are not ready yet to purchase, but in the next few weeks we hope to be able to find the vehicle we will ship to SL.

And since we are shipping a whole container, along with a vehicle and the tractor we would like to include some basic farm equipment for use in SL. A chisel plow, a disc, and an offset disc are the kinds of things that would be pack-able and useable. Toni would love to be able to ship the materials needed to install a water system for the hospital and school at Mattru, but that will probably be in a different letter when we tell you about those plans!

The page is nearly gone, and we need to give you a new e-mail to reach us. Jesse is setting up a website at www.rfennig.com and the whole family will have e-mails with our first names. Once we leave Springfield we will not have the woh.rr.com account, so we want you to know the new e-mail addresses. We will start checking toni@rfennig.com and randy@rfennig.com this next week!

May 13 is 103 days from today, and that is a very short time for us to finish raising support (lots of Sundays open for speaking engagements!) and get all ready to go, say all the good-byes and get on the plane… we are excited, and we know this will not happen without your prayers on our behalf. We are so grateful to God for the people we have met who have promised to pray for us and for the work in SL. We look forward to seeing how all of your prayers will be answered.

With endless gratitude for His amazing gifts,

Randy and Toni Fennig

453 East Madison Ave.
Springfield OH 45503…. for a short while yet!