He made 'em both

It's been one of those Ecclesiastes 7:14 kind of days..."In the day of prosperity be happy, but in the day of adversity consider--God has made the one as well as the other."

We figure, that if God made both the easy days and the hard days, then He must have something to teach us and different ways to love on us, in both kinds of days!

Today was day 7 with a broken inverter. This means that we have no power from 10 pm to 6 am. Before we lost the inverter, I thought this would be no big deal, especially considering that most of Haiti has no power from 10 pm to 10 pm. However, no electricity means no fans, and no fans means 1) MOSQUITOS eating us alive, 2) a LOT of heavy and still heat, and 3) noises from the party over the wall to all of the rats playing soccer in our ceiling ALL NIGHT LONG. With the combination of these thing things, we really haven't had a good night's sleep since we got back to Haiti...this is starting to take it's toll!

We also got on top of cleaning out our office that we share down at the Seminary, only to find that the same rats that play soccer above our beds all night, have been partying heavy in our office all day :) Many books and papers were eaten and filthy, along with our screens. We spent a few hours cleaning today, and have another few for tomorrow!

We also discovered, officially (THIS IS SO EXCITING) that we are finished, finished, FINISHED funding for our truck, and have come in right at $35,000, the exact number needed for the approved Mitsubishi truck. This is such a huge answer to prayer, and we are SO very grateful to SO many of you that made this possible. THANK YOU.

We cannot WAIT to purchase it and were hoping to have it before school and most of our traveling needs begin (which is the 'bad day' news :) We also discovered, officially, that despite that fact that you see a lot of these trucks on the roads in Haiti, there are NONE available. Not on the entire island. The truck dealership in Cap-Haitien, who gets his trucks from the truck dealership in Port-au-Prince, is waiting for the next shipment, which could be 3 to 4...5...6.. months.

We've trusted Him thus far that the truck would come in His perfect timing, and we're just going to continue to do that!

On top of it all, all of the "I can't believe I feel so good"ness of the past few days rather rapidly vanished today, and I'm back to the vomiting and feeling poorly from the first 3 months. Lily has just NOT been happy in the heat and seems to be protesting.

So, you can see why, by our 3:30 mission prayer meeting today, neither of us were feeling very excited about going. However, just five minutes into this prayer time, the Lord brought us back to His side and used our prayer time the way He usually does: not to change HIM, but to change US. As we spent this un-interrupted time in prayer, thinking about all that He is, all that He has done, all that He has, all that He gives, the little "irritations" of the day became so minute.

As we prayed about the frustrations that sometimes come with this call on our lives, we realized how much He cares for us...to care enough to HAVE an individual call for each of our lives.

"Consider the works of God," Ecclesiastes 7 also says, "For who is able to straighten what He has bent? Who is able to undo what He has done?"

Praise the Lord, in the good and the bad, that He is in control, that He is not only in control but loving, and that what He has for us WILL HAPPEN...with sickness, health, heat, electricity, trucks, rats, etc.

We're so thankful for His great love and for your prayers!