We are still fundraising. Our plane tickets will be about $400 more per person than we expected (even with flying standby.) If you can donate please do so soon. We may not be able to go if we can’t come up with the extra $800 needed. If you have any questions please contact us.

That means we have to make a choice soon. Do we just try again next year or attempt to fly standby to Europe (via my wife’s airline) and purchase tickets from Europe to India?

It looks like we will be trying the standby route. Abigail’s airline does not have service to India, but they do fly to Frankfurt, Germany. She is a flight attendant on furlough so she doesn’t have the active duty badge needed to pass ride for a discount on a partner airline that does fly to India.

It is important to note that there are possible problems with this plan. While it is likely that we will make it to Europe flying standby without a hitch; it is also possible that we won’t. There are all sorts of reasons this might not work including passenger loads, Abigail’s low seniority at her airline, weather, mechanical issues, etc. If we don’t get to Europe flying standby with enough time to catch our next flight then we lose our plane tickets to India and the trip is off.

As of today we have only enough money to buy the cheap non-refundable economy tickets from Europe on a no name airline to India. Is there that big of a difference in price between types of tickets? Yes. A non-refundable round trip airline ticket from FRA to HYD is around $800 each. A refundable round trip airline ticket for the same dates starts at $2,200 each.

Our Standby Plan

Once we get our India visas (hopefully in the next two weeks) we’ll purchase plane tickets from Europe to India. A couple days before we are to catch our flight to India we want to have already flown standby to Europe. That will give us time to get there, just in case we don’t make it to Europe on our first try flying out of Chicago. Please pray that things go well and that we don’t have trouble with any of our travel arrangements.

How You Can Help Send Us

We want to try and fly out of Chicago on September 27 in order to have a couple of days to get seats to Frankfort. It is possible we will be spending a couple of days in Frankfurt, Germany. Do you know anyone (or are you someone) who lives near the FRA airport and would like to offer us transportation and a place to stay the night? Please contact us. The same might be needed on our way home from India. If flights are full on the way back to Chicago we would like to stay with some rather than in a hostel. That will obviously reduce costs as well.

Don’t forget you can still donate towards our trip. We are still over $3,000 short of our goal! We are going to try and make it work with the whole standby thing, but all donations are still very much appreciated! Any left over money we have after the trip will be given directly to Fuel India to help with the needs of running the ministry.

There is one Saturday morning in particular I am remembering. My parents and both sisters were home for the day. We had breakfast together as a family. Biscuits and gravy. Yum. It was only that in name though, the gravy was without meat and thinned with water to the point it almost wasn’t gravy anymore. In place of biscuits we had toast. We didn’t always have what we wanted, but God always provided what we needed.

Over the last few days I had heard my parents talking in concerned voices at night, but I couldn’t make out what they were talking so seriously about. It was a bad month. We were driving a car that was about to die and the next months rent was due in a few days. On this particular Saturday morning things seemed better. I found out over the course of breakfast that members of our church gave my parents the extra money they needed to cover rent for the next month. That is why we were having biscuits and gravy. It was a celebration!

I remember this story and countless other times my family was the recipient of good will from friends, family and total strangers while I was a kid. It happened several times while I was a teenager too, but by then I had started to return the favor as I could to others in need. In 1997 I took my first international trip and spent two weeks at an orphanage in El Salvador. I was with a small group of adults that did some minor construction work during the day and spent time reading stories and singing songs with the kids at night.

The smiles on the faces of the children in El Salvador have stayed with me since then. It was a short trip, but one that was time and money well spent. I still get letters and emails from the orphanage to this day about how they are doing and what kind of lives those children, now adults, are living.

Abigail (my wife) and I want to go to India this October and help put smiles on the faces of children in need. Just like my childhood church did when I was young, and just like I did when I went to that orphanage in El Salvador we want to give hope to those in India that need it. We can’t go without your help though. I’ll be honest, fundraising has been slow. We still need over $4,000 in order to go to India this October. Can you spare $5, $20, $100 or $500? Any amount will put us a step closer. Please help send us and put smiles on the faces of children in India by donating today.

If you have questions about our trip please read our FAQs and/or contact us. Thank you.

We need to raise about $76 a day for the next two months in order to go to India this October. Can you HelpSend.Us? Donate now.

The goals of our trip to India include:

1.) Encouraging the local ministries already at work. As mentioned in our last post, Fuel International has a group of locally based missionaries running a newly opened children’s home in India and have ministry goals including church planting, village ministry and pastoral care. Beyond working with them for a few days we will be planning out the details for many of these ministry goals and setting up future projects.

2.) Experiencing the culture of India. Part of effective ministry is understanding culture. India has a very deep, complex and vibrant culture.

3.) Impact. Don’t think that our trip is too short to make an impact on the people of India. While we are there we will be encouraging, teaching and learning from our contacts. Not only will we be able to share our knowledge of ministry, but I am hoping that we learn. God can teach in many ways and I hope to learn from our friends in India things I would have never learned on my own.

Please pray for us as we fundraise and continue to plan out the details of the trip. Remember, we need to raise about $76 a day for the next two months in order to go to India this October. Will you HelpSend.Us by donating today?

Going to India has been a life long dream for me. If you were looking for a good cause to donate to or thinking about getting me something for my birthday *wink wink* there is nothing I’d be happier about. Either way, pass the word along…

Thanks!!!

-Abigail

We currently stand at $859 raised for our trip to India in October. We are working out the details now, but have a rough goal of $3,000 per person.

Also, if you have any shopping online to do at Amazon, CafePress, iTunes, Caribou Coffee and other places visit the shop link on our site. A percentage of each purchase goes towards our trip! *smile*

Always Learning,
-joel

Update (01.22.10): Three birthday wish donations for Abigail’s B-day wish on Facebook’s Causes App have come in… We are now at $931 raised for our trip. Just $5k or so to go.

Merry Christmas to you and a happy new year! We hope to have some great stories to share from our work and adventures in 2010!

We have a really exciting opportunity to earn some money for HelpSend.Us just by doing what we’re doing anyway this time of year – shopping for the holidays. Hundreds of websites like Target, Best Buy, and Expedia have agreed to donate a percentage of any purchase you make to our cause! All you have to do is download the Causes Toolbar and then it will track your online shopping and automatically donate a percentage to us. You don’t have to do anything else — download the toolbar and you’re done!

Download the toolbar: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/toolbar
Go shopping: http://www.causes.com/shopping?cause_id=355753

Thanks so much!

Always Learning,
-joel

Sadly we were unable to make our fundraising goal in time for our trip to Ghana in October 2009. The mission team we were to be traveling with from Fuel International will be traveling from October 8 – 19. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers for safe travel and a productive trip.

We have raised a total of $630, all of which will be transferred to a new trip for us to go on in 2010. None of the money will be lost. We are currently looking at dates, costs, volunteer project options, etc.

We will be taking the trip through Fuel International next year so any money we raise through donations will be tax-deductble. Our hope is to travel to India or Ghana next year. If you can, please take a minute to consider helping us with our fundraising efforts. A $10 donation (any amount is welcome) will help send us on missions in 2010!

Please feel free to contact us with any questions you might have.

Always Learning,

- joel & abigail gratcyk