April 28, 1999
Our 14^th Wedding Anniversary

Dear friends,

Thank you for sending your donation in response to our appeal for personal financial assistance in the LifeSavers newsletter. A total of nine people responded, giving $450 in one-time donations, along with an increase of $6 in monthly commitments (so we should now receive $56 per month in personal donations). What a wonderful blessing it has been to receive these unexpected gifts from people we've never even met, from all over our nation (Connecticut, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Arizona, Oregon, and of course California).

These contributions have enabled us to pay some of our overdue bills, and we even had enough to buy a new $50 toilet (we had been using a bucket of water to "flush" the old one manually since it stopped working a few weeks ago)! Some bills remain unpaid, but we're hoping for increased business income in the coming weeks.

My computer job shows signs of improving. I've been able to finally solve some bugs in my main program which have been plaguing me for years. (My attempts to solve the bugs have required me to spend thousands of dollars worth of time on debugging without being paid. So hopefully I will be seeing a sharp increase in business income soon.) I work on a project-by-project basis for my primary client, Gary Waller of Visalia Inventory Service. This week I prepared a project for him which would have cost him almost $3000, but he rejected it. I will be offering him another project in a few days; please pray that it will be accepted.

I have also been spending two days each week (Wednesdays and Thursdays) in Delano working at Truth Radio Network (which is owned by my parents). However, my time commitment at TRN should be decreasing in the days ahead, because they have hired someone else to take over some of my responsibilities. This should enable me to focus more on my computer work, which should have a positive impact on our personal finances.

As you know, we are hoping to be able to move out of our three bedroom home into a bigger house. Over a year ago, we looked at a five bedroom home in Tehachapi. Terri immediately felt that this was the home for us (although it took me a while to come to the same conclusion). The home is still on the market, and we have had several conversations with the owner, explaining our situation. In spite of our inadequate finances, he has told us that he would really like to see us get into this house. We have sensed that God may be leading us to this house in a similar way to how He led us to the LifeHouse (which, at the time, was also way out of reach financially). Please pray that God will provide a way for us to get into this house, or that this door will close so that we can focus on other possible solutions for our family. Terri had been hoping that we could be out of this house by the time the baby is born, but that seems impossible now.

Our eighth baby is due to be born in about five weeks. Terri's pregnancy is progressing fairly well, although she is (understandably) very tired. Last week was especially difficult for her, as Caleb had very serious asthma and Micah was also experiencing one of his many struggles with asthma.

Our heart's desire is that God would be glorified, not only in our ministry efforts, but in our family. It's a constant struggle to balance both of these callings; your gift helps us to be more faithful to our family responsibilities.

Fourteen years ago, Terri and I were married in a very special ceremony (probably one of the longest weddings in history). We selected some special songs (including two we wrote) to express our hearts' desires for our life together. Although we had no idea what we were getting into, as we look back over these years, we can see that this ceremony laid the foundation for what God would be doing in our lives.

As a token of our appreciation, we are giving you a cassette tape which includes some excerpts from the wedding. We thought this might be a nice way of letting you know a little bit more about who we are. It is not a professional recording, and the singing isn't always on key, but the messages it proclaims certainly touch our hearts--we hope it touches yours. (Please don't feel obligated to listen to it, though.)

If you would like to help us more, would you consider telling five friends about our needs? The kind of person who is interested in helping us is obviously a very rare individual, so these referrals are obviously very valuable to us.

May God bless you and your family for your generosity.

In Christ's service for the little ones,

Tim and Terri Palmquist