Christmas from Cornerstone

Sunday, they spoke with Matt's parents at church.
Monday, they ate a huge Haitian meal at our table.

Pastor Paul and Rick are safely here from Cornerstone Church in Bear, Delaware! They have come down for a few days to see what Haiti is like, see what we do here, and to be able to share better with our Cornerstone family about their ministry role in Haiti. They came in first thing yesterday morning, and started out on a whirlwind day that didn't finish until 10 pm.

They saw the new seminary site. They saw the radio station. They saw all of downtown, ate lunch with some of our missionary friends, went with us to pray for a student and his family, and then joined us and several other staff from the seminary over a huge Haitian meal. They also brought us wonderful presents...ziploc bags and cake mixes and worship music (thank you, Marlene and Vikki!) Having them here is like Christmas!

Today they went to class with Matt, and then headed off on a day of adventure with Matt and a friend. They are off to the Citadel, even though today is one of the hottest days we've had in a while! Tonight they have asked to take us out for dinner~ This is a very rare treat and we are both pumped!

We'll be sure to get pictures up soon.

It is a joy to share our lives with them...to introduce them to the people they have been praying for...to show them the things that break our hearts, change our lives, fill our days. It's a joy to share our lives with you in the same way...Thank you for being a part of our lives by following our blog!

maybe we are not anonymous.

One of the few luxuries my sister has continued to bless me with even after coming to Haiti is a monthly subscription to "O Magazine: The Oprah Magazine." For those of you who have never read it, yes, the articles are expectedly filled with some ideas I don't agree with. However, the photography is divine, the the writing is consistently good and creative and vivid writing. As a photo-journalist, each issue fills me with creativity and satisfies brief longings for my own culture: jewelry, women in pants, fresh blueberries.

This past issue was on "the spiritual side of life," and it was so interesting to read about dozens upon dozens of people's thoughts on what happens after death, why we are here, and why life is important. It was also quite sad, and I realized that Haiti is just a tiny little fraction of the huge mission field out there for lost and hopeless and blind people.

Since meeting a tirade of young people in college straying far from the Lord, though they knew about Christ, had been "around" God their entire lives, and had been raised in Christian families, I have been interested in what makes our generations increasingly "independent" of needing or accepting God. So I found the article "The Doubter's Dilema" to be quite profound.

"To pray or not to pray? To believe or not to believe? And how to explain the things that look suspiciously like miracles? Kelly Corrigan speaks for a generation of people pulsing with thankfulness but not sure they can give it up to God."

Already I am interested. If you are overwhelmed with thankfulness, what do you do with that thankfulness? Can you just "be thankful" for something, without being thankful TO someone?

I'll share a few more thought-provoking exerts...

"Both my parents shudder over our discerning, noncommittal generation that has something to say about everything, but nowhere to go on Sunday mornings."

"Both of our cancer was gone. But I had not beseeched God to make me well, nor had begged God for my father's life. Among other things, I didn't want to be a user, a phony who thought she could get what she wanted by conveniently nuzzling up to someone she usually snubbed. I liked my friend's take on things: Up with people and their hard work and their cool medical inventions. But I kept thinking back to my father's initial prognosis. The urologist to whom I attributed my dad's stunning recovery had told us to brace for the worst. Ten months later, when he declared my father a healthy man, that same doctor said he couldn't explain how on earth my dad was disease-free. Could I really give all the credit to a doctor who shrugged his shoulders and said it was anybody's guess how my father survived?

"If there is a God, he knows how much I want there to be more to human existence than a series of discrete physical experiences that start with birth and end with death. I want all of us--and all our lives--to be meaningful. But small. I'd be elated to learn that this go-round is only part one of something that has a thousand parts...Maybe there is something between and around and inside all six billion of us, and maybe that something knows every hair on each of our heads. Maybe we are not anonymous. Wouldn't that be outrageous? And beautiful?

"Faith is the tallest order, the toughest nut: the humbling of yourself before purposes you don't--and cannot ever--comprehend. Let's face it, believing that there is a God who might get involved in your tiny little life is beyond anti-intellectual. And this is why I doubt. But when I'm honest with myself, I have to admit that there's doubt within my doubt."

WOW. I want to let everyone think their own things about this, but when she said, "Maybe we are not anonymous...wouldn't that be beautiful?" I was just overwhelmed with YES. IT IS! It IS beautiful. It IS non-sensical. And it IS outrageous.

I think of just this morning. With a few friends in tow, we drove almost 90 minutes to a church way out in the middle of "nowhere." And we passed, literally, thousands of people. Winding dirt paths led us past crumbling mud huts and twisting riverbeds with dozens of women washing clothes and naked children bathing. We passed thousands of people, and I tried as hard as I could, with this article in mind, to look everyone I could in the eye. Snotty nosed children. Worn down old men. Burden laden mothers.

Those thousands of people, largely lost and entirely removed from most of the world, they are NOT anonymous. Our God, He knows every hair on every head we drove by today.

We have a great work: to LET THE WORLD KNOW this. and it is beautiful work.

(pictured: one of Stacey's students was married on Saturday. Sunday, visiting Bay-Limbay)

peace.

A fellow missionary showed us a picture of their log cabin this evening. It's a picture perfect small log cabin, nestled right in the middle of nothing but woods and fields. Something within us both just snapped: WE MISS THAT. We miss being able to walk out the door and not step right into the middle of a missionary compound, with the seminary 20 feet to our left and 20 missionaries, the mission office and the clinic are 20 feet to our right. We miss going outside in our pajamas...or even being INSIDE in our pajamas without a steady flow of people coming to the door. We miss going places where there is NO ONE, miss being invisible, miss blending in.

The last few days have been rough (thank you all for your encouragement). I have come down with a cold, and problems at the school have served us a few very long days. We are tired!

However, today has brought us some unexpected answers to prayer, and the added joy of it being Friday! (one of which being the expulsion of the student causing all of the problems all week...and all year.)

A log cabin in the middle of solitude
or a mud house in the middle of ministry...
beautiful, happy days of seeing much fruit
or long, difficult days of sowing seeds on dry, rocky soil..
We will take them all, because the Lord just continues to be our unwavering peace.

A magnet my sister sent us says this:

peace.
it does not mean to be in a place
where there is no noise, trouble or hard work.
it means to be in the midst of these things and still
be calm in your heart

Praise the Lord for the peace He continues to give us despite our surroundings. We can handle missing things, as long as He continues to lead us, provide for us and gift us with His unconditional peace!

(pictured: Matt translating a student's testimony for a Wednesday night seminary presentation. Also pictured, our new kitty "Bundy", also quite at peace here in Haiti :)

thanks be to God

Today was a just plain rough day. There will always be those days, I suppose, when something you have poured into deeply disappoints you just as deeply. It was one of those days.

It has us praising the Lord this evening. Praising the Lord that we are NEVER disappointed whenever we pour into Him. And that when we are disappointed by people, He continues to be faithful, and to encourage us, and to pick us up.

"For we do not preach ourselves
but we preach Jesus as Lord,
and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.
For God, who said,
'Light shall shine out of darkness,'
is the One who has shone
in our hearts to give the Light.
For we have this treasure in earthen vessels,
so that the surpassing greatness of the power
will be of God and not from ourselves;
we are afflicted in many ways,
but not crushed;
perplexed, but not despairing;
persecuted, but not forsaken;
struck down, but not destroyed;
always carrying about in the body
the dying of Jesus,
so that the life of Jesus
also may be manifested in our body."
2 Corinthians 4

"But thanks be to God,
who always leads us in triumph in Jesus,
and manifests through us
the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him
in every place."
2 Corinthians 3:14

field trip

Sunday brought another "first". As part of my marketing for the seminary, we decided to do a trial promotions Sunday. At 8 am, we loaded 6 guys in full suits in the back of a truck, and headed off for Milo, which is at the very base of the Citadel (ie...FAR). Every 10 minutes or so, someone would "tap-tap" on the top of the truck, and we'd pull off to the side to pick up another students. We got to see almost a dozen of our guys live, and by the time we got to Milo, we had 20 rather wired guys in the back. They were dressed to impress, but were so excited about the "field trip" that you would have thought we were taking a group of middle school boys bowling or something :)

After 90 minutes of bumpy bumpy roads and constant chatter, we arrived a rather large church. Our guys sang several songs, one of them preached the sermon, and our Dean of Men shared a little bit about the seminary and gave people an opportunity to receive more information and an application. It went really well, and it was great to sit back and watch the guys DO what they do, and to give them an opportunity to share what the seminary has meant in their lives. It was also a blast to spend time with them outside of school. We left around 12:30, stopped along the way to pray for someone with a broken arm (and by "pray", I mean, sing 3 songs, recite Psalm 23, share a brief meditation, participate in group prayer, sing another song, and then each personally greet the man.)

Another hour down the road, and we stopped at one students house just to "see it". Moments later, we were all being served a full meal after a large bucket of water and a withered bar of soap was passed around. We had rice, beans, onions, beets and "some kind" of meat, all perfectly proportioned out by the elected server. (Food is such a need here that we frequently see this done...because food is so sought after and rare, someone always has to make sure everyone has the exact same amount before anyone eats...one onion slice each, one small beet, 1/2 cup rice, a smile chunk of meat.)

Matt and I were quite touched by this student's family, who thanked us over and over for blessing their home. Before we left we prayed for their family and their home, which also consisted of several songs, prayers, devotional thoughts, compliments and a long set of greetings and thanks.
We dropped guys off along the way home, and even though we were exhausted by the time we arrived at 2 pm, it was a blast of a day and a joy to be with these men. We are constantly learning so much about them, about their culture, and about their God. We are blessed even more to realize that despite all the differences between how we do church, how we worship, and even how we talk about Him, we worship and serve the same God. They are expanding our world-view about our Father...This has to be one of the biggest blessings of being on the mission field.

Please keep praying for these men: that they would be protected, clearly directed and have the courage and humility to forsake all else to follow after OUR great God!

our Pruner

Whew! It's been a busy week without a lot of internet! There is a lot to tell you about, but we decided to share one specific thing that happened on Thursday and Friday that was pretty unbelievable, and a definite work of the Lord and your prayers!

There is one student at the seminary that has been an almost constant problem since he came a few years ago. Not only does he frequently skip classes, disrespect teachers and refuse to do assignments, but he is also very politically-driven, and constantly riling up the student body during already politically tense times (like, the past 2 weeks.) He failed out of Stacey's English class after skipping over 15 classes a few months ago, and has been particularly verbally abusive to her since then.

For three years, the administration has been trying to work with him, meet with him, pray with him, encourage him, discipline him and make allowances for him.

These past two weeks, Matt and I have felt particularly burdened about this student and one other student. We began praying urgently that the Lord would either change them completely or remove them, because they were truly beginning to do harm to the seminary, staff and students, and were not at all reflecting a relationship with Christ.

As the situation has intensified, we have prayed this pray more and more. Thursday night, we went to bed, feeling heavy. At exactly the stroke of midnight, Matt was startled awake by a very clear and strong voice. "Concerning the problems at the seminary..." he heard. And then again, "Concerning the problems at the seminary..."

Immediately after the word "seminary", at exactly midnight, he heard a large coconut outside of our bedroom widow THUD to the ground.

"I just knew" Matt told me the next morning, "so clearly, that the Lord was telling me that He would take care of the bad fruit...that they would fall by His hand, and to let Him take care them."

Friday afternoon, the other staff were in a tizzy at lunch, going on and on about this same student. "What happened now?" we asked.

"Nothing!" we were told. "He came in first thing this morning and dropped out."

After three years of battling with him and two weeks of intense prayers, the Lord DID indeed take care of it. PRAISE THE LORD. We are absolutely calling this a miracle, and trusting God completely to take care of the other student as well. He's refining the Seminary. Please continue to pray for us, that we might stay on our knees and out of His way!

(pictured: Saturday we had a break at the beach with friends who are returning to Illinois next week. They've tried unsuccessfully for 6 months to teach Matt to float, and so were quite amused by this sign at the beach!)

no holiday

"Beware of the thing of which you say --
'Oh, that doesn't matter much."
The fact that it does not matter much to you
may mean that it matters a great deal to God.

Nothing is a light matter with a child of God.
HOw much longer are some of us going
to keep God trying to teach us one thing over and over?
He never loses patience.
You say--"I know I am right with God";
but still those places in your life remain...
there is something over which you have not obeyed.

Are you protesting that your heart is right with God,
and yet there is something in your life
about which He has caused you to doubt?
Whenever there is doubt,
quit immediately, no matter what it is.

Perhaps you are all right in the main,
but in the rest you slip;
there is a relapse on the line of your concentration.
You no more need a holiday from spiritual concentration
than your heart needs a holdiay from beating.
You cannot have a moral holiday and remain moral,
nor can you have a spiritual holiday and remain spiritual.

God wants you to be entirely His."

--Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest


This word from our morning devotions really encouraged us both to actively clear out everything that might come between us and the Lord, and to stay sharp on pursing Him.

We are blessed with continued relative peace here in Cap-Haitien...please keep praying for the people, for the peacemakers, and for the major issues we are facing (gas and food prices and shortages) to be improving.

We are also blessed (hang in there, Dad) to have picked up a little kitty today: Sophie. She was looking quite near death and was trembling with hunger, but as you can see from this picture, her little belly popped right out after we gave her some tuna. We've never seen such a sad looking kitten, but we think the Lord's blessed us with each other (we've missed our cat, and pets in general, so much!), and she'll look better in no time.


The rains are finally coming in again after quite a long stretch of almost no rain...pray it brings joy and peace to this dry and weary land!

food and family and faith

Unrest and desperate need continues to plague Haiti. Rioting in Port-au-Prince has cut off all transfer of goods from there to here, so resources, such as fuel, are dwindling. Fighting and police have appeared at gas stations, and gas prices are around 80 dollars Haitian, or $11.40 US. So, we are all adjusting some...staying close to home, walking, doing without some products we can only purchase in town, and helping out as many people as we possibly can. Heightened tensions in the country have spread into some heightened tensions at the seminary, clinic, etc...

However, it is during this difficult time that we are seeing a few beautiful Christ-followers step up. One such young brother is Janiel, and his faith seems to just be unwavering. He is a fourth year student in the mornings, a janitor in the afternoons, a night watchman for our compound, a pastor of a growing church down the road, a husband and a father of two little ones. He is known for being an beautiful annoyance to visitors on the compound because he won't let them come and go without hearing about Jesus. His joy is SO clearly in our unchanging God, and therefore ever strong despite this rather depressing time.

After a hard day at the seminary on Thursday, he caught up with Matt while he was walking home. "You are discouraged," Janiel immediately said to Matt, grasping his hand knowingly. "My people and my country can be so discouraging! Put all of your strength and your energy into your faith in our God."

Later that evening we asked him to stop by our house in order to pick up a box of food to take to the most impoverished of his congregation. He took the box happily, but would not leave until he had prayed for us. "Lord," he said, "help the people who receive this food know full well that it is food from YOU. Give them YOU because of it, and bless Matt and Stacey over and over."

We are so humbled by his example! Whatever we are going through right now, it is nothing compared to being unable to feed our children or living in unstable villages. And yet we hold on to our joy and faith so loosely. They are some of the first things to go on difficult days!

Please keep praying for the people of Haiti, and please keep praying for family like Janiel. Pray that we might be consistent lights, despite circumstances. Pray that many might come to know a sustaining and transformed life in Christ, though they seek fleeting things such as food, peace and money. Pray that the Lord might use us, and use you, and use our brothers and sisters here in a mighty way during this difficult time.

(pictured: for fuel-free entertainment on Saturday, we climbed a mountain with good friends...from the top, all seemed right with the world!)

one thing never changes...

...Jesus continues to be all that Haiti needs!

It is hard to believe that in a country this beautiful, there are so many ugly things. Much of the beauty is being replaced by these things right now, as you've probably seen on the news.

With an estimated 55% price increase on food and fuel in Haiti since June, "What we're seeing in Haiti is a new face of hunger," says the World Food Programme. "Rising prices means less food for people that are already hungry. Even in places where food is available on the shelves, there are more and more people who simply cannot afford it."

This "new face of hunger" is being described as "eating Clorox" by the Haitian people because of the burning feeling in their stomachs that comes from days without food.

The ugliness of starvation is now being paired with the ugliness of desperation: anger, theft, protesting, confusion.

It is so difficult to read of similar things happening around the world: in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal.

But it is devastating to SEE these things happen, to hear them happen, and to watch them happen with people that we have come to love. It is devastating to hear of their hunger and anger and fear, and to be unable to fix it.

We don't know much about how to deal with any of this, but know well the One Who Does. And in a time when anger and lies are flying, we intimately know The stabilizing Truth. We live in the midst of a hungry people we cannot help, but we speak with the Bread of Life.

"For the bread of God
is that which comes down out of heaven,
and gives life to the world.
Jesus said to them,
'I am the bread of life;
he who comes to Me will not hunger,
and he who believes in Me will never thirst.
But I said to you that you have seen Me,
and yet do not believe." John 6:33...

Please pray with us for the people of Haiti and for the people of the world that are hurting.

Please pray for peace, pray for food, pray for lowered prices. Please pray for the spiritual hunger that is even more apparent lately than the physical hunger. Pray that anger would be exchanged for peace, confusion for truth, darkness for light.

Please pray urgently with us! You have been alongside when we started this journey almost three years ago, and were with us the day we moved to Haiti. Please continue to walk with us in your prayers

Hebrews 13:3 says "Remember the prisoners as though in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated as though you were ill-treated, since you are in the Body!"

We are encouraged by your life-changing prayers, and standing on His unwavering promises.

As a quick side note to parents and grandparents...WE ARE FINE! Things look much worse on the news than they truly are, and we are still teaching and working as normal :) Love you!

a few things on our heart...

Our field has been praying urgently for something every since we moved here, and it finally occurred to Matt and I that if we are praying about it continually, we should let people know! Our short-term field treasurer is leaving in June, and we have NO prospects of someone to replace him. As a field with several ministries and projects, and lots of daily financial needs, having a field treasurer is a Must.

We have been praying fervently that the Lord would heavily lay this burden on someone's heart and then provide for them to fulfill that calling. If you've been feeling the Lord leading you in a new direction, or feel that He has been asking you to step out on faith to serve Him somewhere different, and if you are an accountant or a treasurer, we would LOVE to get you some more information about this! Send us an email...

Secondly, we are also praying urgently about the food crisis here in Haiti. We mentioned in our last newsletter rising food prices, and about how difficult life is therefore becoming for our Haitian brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, food prices have continued to grow, and the desperation and struggle is beginning to turn into anger and protest. Please pray for Haiti, for the families that make it up, and for peace to continue despite circumstances.

Also, we want to give God all the glory for a practical way He has been providing for us through you! A few months ago, we let you know about a need that we have for a vehicle while we serve here in Haiti. We needed $35,000, a sum that seemed like it would take 5 years to raise. We told the Lord that we believed reliable and available transportation was a need that we had to serve here in Haiti.

Praise the Lord, we can tell you today, only 3 months later, that we are 77% funded for this vehicle, with only $8080 more to go! We continue to see God do things that were impossible, and continue to see Him provide for us in so many ways. His faithfulness, and yours, is such a constant encouragement to us! Please be praying with us that God would minister through us in more powerful and widespread ways because of this little truck.

If you haven't already, check out our summer schedule to the right...we are so excited to see you in just a few months! (and to eat lots and lots of ice cream, steak, milk and pizza!)

a glimpse of His radiance

We are just back from a truly awesome experience...wish you could have been there! One of my English students has been asking us for months to come to his church. For one reason or another, we have never been able to do so, but this morning we finally got our chance.

Every Haitian church we have been to thus far has been some kind of a block building, usually with a poured floor, wooden benches, and a tin roof. This church, however, is located crammed between houses in in a very poor part of downtown, and is nothing more than a shaky structure made of metal siding. The metal siding was all painted pink, and bed sheets hung across gaping holes. Toilet paper covered a few wood posts, and fake flowers topped the shaky altar. The floor was packed mud, and was quite uneven and, well, muddy, and our bench, long since snapped in two, had been nailed back together.

It wasn't the churches building that made this experience so touching, however. It was this churches joy. A large group of people we never knew existed were made known as brothers and sisters today. Equal numbers of men and women and children filled the "room", and there was a personal feeling that we haven't felt anywhere else before. My student is one of the friendlies guys we have met, and that spirit exuded throughout the church and the service. Visitors were brought to the front, greeted everyone, shared a few prayer requests and were prayed for. Each member with an April birthday was brought down, prayed for, and was given a small gift. Many different people helped lead, and the obvious gap we often feel between the pastor and the people was completely absent.

It was obvious that this congregation was not at all used to having missionaries visit, and we were quite warmly greeted and then stared at :) Our pastor friend brought us to the front to introduce us, and then insisted that we share a little about ourselves. Most churches are content simply to have Matt share, but Pastor insisted that everyone would be greatly saddened if they couldn't be encouraged by us both. Before we could sit down, a procession of church elders and lay leaders joined the pastor in giving us a gift for worshiping with them: a framed diploma, written in English, thanking us for coming (pictured).



My student preached the main sermon, "the consolation we have in Jesus Christ," even giving a brief newly-learned science lesson about outer space, and the power of God :)

They were incredibly encouraged simply by our presence, something we would truly not understand at all, except that we were so equally encouraged by THEIR presence... Most importantly, God's presence was felt so nearly as Christian love and worship poured out of this little muddy shack. After the almost 3 hour service, Matt and I still found ourselves glowing...

It was church the way church is supposed to be: not necessarily air-conditioned or clean or comfortable or wealthy (communion consisted of crackers because they had been unable to purchase a loaf of bread) or modern, but it exuded the joy of Christ, people who obviously loved, prayed for, and cared for each other, earnest worship, Biblical preaching, and an obvious love for the Lord.

Every time we see our framed diploma, we will remember what a blessing today was, and of the way this church reminded us about what the Lord REALLY wants: US.

space travel

Today launched my English 1 class into a whole new world: outer space. We have begun a two week unit on space travel, which is supposed to simply introduce them to the vocabulary they already know in Creole. However, as I quickly realized today, these guys don't KNOW any space vocabulary. They don't know anything about space. They don't have any CONCEPT of space.

We started with an awesome chart that my sister sent me of all of the planets in orbit around the sun. They were blown away by the sun.

"Why is it so big on the picture?" one student asked. "It is only actually THIS big" he motioned towared the space between his thumb and forefinger.

So, we talked about the sun, and how it is actually a star, and about how big it really is, and I showed them some photos of this huge ball of fire.

"Sooo," one guy finally said, "If we walk on the sun, we must be very careful!"

"We learned in school that there is only the moon, the sun, and the earth, and that the sun and moon simply rotate around the earth," another guy said. "So what is all this other stuff?"

"Earth is three from the sun, so Venus and Mercury are inside of the earth?"

"The difference between a space shuttle and a rocket is that one flies flat and one goes BOOM."

and the best question..."Is this poster the only thing there is published and known about space?"

I am in over my head! We had a blast, however, and they are so thirsty to understand some of this stuff. We didn't, however, learn much English. It's hard to explain something my guys have no concept of in a language they are just beginning to learn!

I think on Monday I will try to show them a clip or two from Apollo 13 or something. Thankfully, a semi-understanding of space travel will not hurt their ministries or churches. One thing that blessed us all, however, was a bigger concept of our God.

"If the earth was just a little closer, or a little bit farther from the sun, we could not exist," I told them. We talked about the other planets, incapable of housing life. We talked about the air, and the water on the earth.

Finally, a fellow professor that sits in on my class every day started to nod. "God," he said, "God is truly God. He knows what He's doing. It is perfect, because of Him."

With joy I watched the realization of this appear on each guys face.

"Look there at little little earth!" another student said. "And then think of little little Haiti on the little earth. And then think of little little me on little Haiti on little Earth."

"Yeah, and..." everyone said...

"...AND," he finished, "When I talk to God, God of all this, He listens to me! He hears me and He cares. THAT is something BIG."

And it is...

(pictured: my first year class standing in front of their new poster. Thank you, Lisa!)

in His hands

"The pot will not say to the potter, 'Why did you make me like this,' will it? Does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same wet lump of clay one vessel for honorable use and another vessel for common use?...As He says also in Hosea, 'I will call those who were not my people, MY PEOPLE, and her who was not beloved, BELOVED, and it shall be that in the place where it was said to them 'you are NOT my people,', there they shall be called SONS of the living God...

He who believes in Him will NOT be disappointed." Romans 9

On Saturday we travelled with another family to a village where they make pottery. In awe we all watched an old muddied man pull and shift and shape wet clay, swiftly forming it into various vessels, skilled from obvious years of work bent over the same pottery wheel. What an awesome image it gave us again of our Lord shaping us even now...pulling and forming and shifting us into a vessel that brings Him glory.

What great dripping hope we have...that these people may be HIS people, that these unloved and broken may be HIS beloved, and that these homeless might be sons and daughters of the LIVING God.

This belief we have in Him, this confidence in Him which allows us to allow Him to mold our lives, has yet to leave us disappointed...The blessing of our lives is simply to be HIS.

If you're not there yet, know that our hearts desire and daily prayer is for you to know that you're in His hands...and always have been. We want to give you such good news.. The living God greatly desires to love you and mold you and shape your life into something beautiful! We love you and won't stop praying that you might seek the One who has never stopped seeking you.

Class starts again on Wednesday! Thanks for your prayers as we finish our last four 2-week sessions!