Preparing to fly

Graduation was tonight for Jes and Cas and now they're busy packing their bags. Jes has an early morning flight out and Cas will also be leaving early to start the drive back to north MI. (Her mother is traveling with her, but you can still pray for safety as they travel through the snow storms.)

Me? I just finished my weekly IT report and am now finishing up Helpdesk tickets. Tomorrow I'll finish Christmas shopping, pack, sign newsletters, and maybe even play Cricket!

I'm also really excited about my Frisco church and the GFA Christmas Catalog. Pastor John challenged the church in his weekly to pitch in this weekend and raise the money to buy a house for a family in India who has lost everything in a natural disaster. Launa and Pastor John - you're amazing! Thanks so much for your help in sharing this opportunity with the church. I can't even tell you the extent of the lives that will be changed in Asia because of this!

Busy Saturday

We finished up prayer meeting last night/this morning and went to bed about 4:30. Got a good four hours of sleep before the exterminator came to spray the house for bugs. We didn't do the bedrooms. Packed a few boxes, cleaned stuff out of the chill room closet, mailed a long overdue package to Me and another one to Sheri. I ran errands and stopped by the office where System Admin and Phone Vendor were duking it out with the phone server. When I left, the phone server was winning, but Phone Vendor was making a comeback. Kind of like Missouri and OU. or not. Phone Vendor beat the phone server. Despite an entire quarter left to go, Missouri is not going to beat OU. Sadly.

I went to church tonight. I don't go to Saturday evening service very often, so my body clock was a little mixed up. Hope Fellowship passed out the Christmas Catalogs last week while I was in KS, so everyone was talking about them this week. Quote one lady, "We always do a gift exchange with our life group, but we decided that the group isn't going to do that this year. We're going to get something from the Gift Catalog instead."

Then I stopped by Target. Except I didn't make it there. Linens 'n' Things was going out of business. So I helped them get rid of their stock. Too bad their nice saucepans were still $50, even on 40% off!

It's my brother's 20th birthday today. I called him. He sent me to voicemail. Happy Birthday anyway, little bro!

Incomplete

Started to blog. Got distracted. Friday Night Prayer was great. Jes did a wonderful job sharing about her time in India. Lord answered prayers. Rested. Slept. Laundry. Clean Sheets. Hope Fellowship is going to be promoting the Christmas Catalog in December - yay! Hot chocolate and games with friends tonight. Good. Praise God for Starbucks gift cards! Needing to trust God instead of trying to accomplish things myself.

Convoluted connections - Jo Shetler (author of one of my favorite books And the Word Came with Power) spoke at MissionsFest Seattle this weekend. I wasn't there. But a friend blogged about her sharing time and included the comment: "She particularly emphasized the efficacy of prayer, saying repeatedly that God answers any prayer that will bring Him glory"

God answers prayer. I needed that reminder.

Gotta sleep. G'night.

Busy (Fun) Weekend

Let's see... Saturday morning was errands and cleaning. Saturday afternoon at Celebrate Freedom, we handed out Free Books and talked to people about child sponsorship. There was a steady stream of people for our three hour shift -- it was good we didn't have to talk much longer than that. We almost went hoarse from trying to yell over the noise of the bands. I shared the story of Nibun with two ladies that visited the table. One of the ladies sponsored a Bridge of Hope child and the other sponsored a native missionary. Praise God!

Sunday morning, I ran a 5K with my coordinator's 14 year old son. I hadn't trained at all and hadn't run since the last 5K on the 4th of July, so we took it easy and finished the race in about 31:29. I'll still be sore tomorrow. But it was a good race - ran solid, didn't walk, kicked it at the end... they've tagged me in some photos on facebook.

I attended late service and had an awesome conversation with my pastor. It seems the Lord had been teaching us the same lesson from the same verse during the last two weeks! We were pretty amazed.

We had a pool party at a staff family's home this evening - soccer, tetherball, hamburgers, pool... I tried playing basketball in the deep end for a while - and that completely exhausted me. And I was reminded: "The Lord is in control." It's basic, I know. But I needed to hear that.

Next week is the RYP conference - you can pray for me for details this week as we get everything set up to print and assemble the thousand+ nametags. I get to coordinate that and then I'll be helping with registration/general information during the conference. Oh, and please pray that my local pastor will be able to attend the conference!

Kenya Update

No, I'm not moving to Kenya. :) I was at Rosalie's house on New Year's Eve this year when we saw the news coverage about rioting and violence in Kenya. The breaking news that day was that a mob had burned a church with over 50 people trapped inside. The tallys rose across the country: over a thousand dead, over 600,000 without homes, nearly 400 churches destroyed. The violence died down in the first three weeks of January, but thousands are still living in refugee camps.

I have a couple friends working in Kenya - a college friend and the Chris, the missions pastor of my local church. Both have been involved in various parts of the relief work and it has made the news a little closer to home. Do you ever notice that? News about places you have friends suddenly becomes much more interested. Big K in Afghanistan (welcome back to the US, by the way) or Meg in Morocco or friends in Kenya...

The April 6th edition of the Pentecostal Evangel magazine is entirely covering the Kenya situation. Chris (in the photo) had mentioned on his blog that the photo team had been there, so I was watching for that issue. They interviewed the native pastor of the church that had been burned -- he was rescuing children from the burning building, but then was attacked by the mob himself.

Here's a few links if you want more information:

• The magazine in PDF format: http://tpe.ag.org/2008PDFs/4900_Kenya.pdf
• More photos from the trip: http://world.ag.org

In a sense, the violence in Kenya is like the tsunami that struck Asia. The violence may be gone and the TV cameras with in, but there are still thousands of lives and homes to be rebuilt. I know they would appreciate you prayers.

10 days later

My computer battery just said it's about to die, so this may be shorter than I planned.

We had a great time at Mission Arlington last weekend -- we handed out fliers door to door inviting people to attend a free Valentine Dinner. It was a pleasure to hand these out because I knew that the Gospel would be shared with each person that attended. Even as we handed out the fliers to the apartment residents, they were already commenting how much the Mission Arlington staff and family has meant to them. Praise God for this ministry that is planting churches and discipling new believers right here in the US!

Jes and Cas are doing well as the internship starts. Caz is still delayed, so you can pray for her soon arrival. These next two weeks will be busy for us. Between prayer meeting and classes, we're usually at the office from about 8 to 5:30. Plus evening stuff these next few weeks...

Monday Night: House Meeting
Tuesday Night: GFA Prayer Meeting
Wednesday Night: House Bible Study
Thursday Night: Special speaker at GFA.
Friday Night: House cleaning and grocery shopping
Saturday: All day at Challenge Course
Sunday: Free!
Monday Night: House Meeting
Tuesday Night: GFA Prayer Meeting
Wednesday Night: House Bible Study
Thursday Night: Free?
Friday Night/Saturday: Weekend (as a house) to spend in prayer/solitude.

Thanks for all your prayers! I'm so grateful when I picture your faces and know you are praying for me. I can't really express it in a blog - maybe I should call you. =)

This morning at church, I was hit by a wave of "me-ism." I've been doing that a lot recently--allowing myself to get tied up my own wants and thoughts, even when I know the Lord's promises. Right on cue, Aubrey and the worship team started into the song "Lead Me to the Cross." I needed the chorus:
Lead me to the cross
where Your love poured out
Bring me to my knees
Lord, I lay me down
Rid me of myself
I belong to You
O lead me,
lead me to the cross.

More critters!

We passed out 375 GFA Christmas Catalogs at Hope Fellowship on Saturday and Sunday. People were so excited about the idea of giving a Dalit family the gift of livestock for Christmas as a way of sharing Christ's love. I was thrilled at Pastor's support of the project and the response that the people had.

Here's the video that was shown:

Christmas Critters

Pulling into Wichita for Thanksgiving, I tuned in to KCFN - the local AFR station at 91.1FM. I was mildly surprised to hear a radio spot sharing, "Needing something special for Christmas this year? How about a goat or a pair of chickens? Or even a water buffalo? Stop by our website at AFR.net and click on the Christmas Catalog banner; brought to you by AFR and Gospel for Asia."

Tuesday night at GFA prayer meeting, I heard a familiar voice in the back of the room. Looking around, I saw Sharon Geiger - the morning news anchor for Dallas radio station KCBI. She traveled to India recently to see the ministry of GFA and had come to share about her trip at our prayer meeting. Sharon will be sharing about her trip on air at KCBI each morning next week at 7:40am and encouraging their listeners to get involved with the GFA Christmas Catalog. (You can listen live at www.kcbi.org.)

The GFA Christmas Catalog is catching attention all over the place. And this Sunday I get to share 500 copies with the families at Hope Fellowship - my church in Frisco.

My church family

My church was having a special time of praise and worship this evening. I found myself standing in the corner -- distancing myself from the rest of the congregation. I was feeling a little alone and was quite willing to continue my pity party--alone. But the Lord reminded me that I'm only as alone as I choose to be. So I slowly moved to one of the rows and slipped in beside a lady I knew. I was singing with the second or third song when I paused and looked around me. Teresa, one of my prayer supporters, was on my right. John and Barbara, financial and prayer supporters, were in the row behind me. Dana and Joe, prayer supporters, and their two boys were on my left. And I could see Pastor John and his family ahead of me and Jen and Aubrey worshiping on the stage. I was no longer alone, but surrounded by people who love me and pray for me.

I enjoyed eating afterwards with Pastor John and his family and Pastor Scott and his family. They treated me to Fuddruckers and I enjoyed their stories and conversation. I left tremendously encouraged. Thank you, my church family!

Lead me to the cross where your love poured out.
Bring me to my knees; Lord, I lay me down.
Rid me of myself; I belong to you.
Lead me -- Lead me to the cross.