conference

WHATTTTT a great weekend! Matt's family flew in, and we all drove to Indianapolis, Indiana for OMS's Missions in the Midwest conference. What a joy to see so many dear friends, prayer partners, missionaries and founders. Haiti was featured at the conference, and it was unbelievably humbling and touching to have over a hundred people stand as people who had served in Haiti at some point or another. We were joined by other missionaries from our current field...the Bundy family, Mary Lou and Joetta, Guenson, Kate Ti Louis and Louisa, Met Jaque, and also many dear friends...Charlie, Judy, Martin and Sharon, Hugo and Joyce, Ron, Dave and Ann, along with many friends from training, support raising, headquarters...

It was just truly a blessed time...to be surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses and among so many that have served 10, 20, 50, 60 years in mission fields around the world...from Kansas to Japan. It was so encouraging to swap stories of what God is doing around the globe, and to remember that each of us are just a small part of the body of Christ.

If you've been discouraged by current events, or wondering if God is still at work in the world, keep good faith. He is very much so still on the throne. The God of Abraham, Jacob, the God of Jeremiah, Isaiah, God of the disciples, God of the many who have died for Him throughout the years, God of you and I today...He is still God, still working miracles, still transforming people's lives, still making Himself known in the world.

I'll have more pictures coming soon, but here is pictured from left to right Matt's family, Hugo and Joyce of South Africa, Ron of Wesley Biblical Seminary and my father.

first days home

We've had a wonderful first few days home! We hit the ground running, spending Saturday unpacking and with family. Sunday we spoke at Livingston United Methodist Church, and saw so many dear friends. From Sunday school teachers to missionaries we served with in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, so many friends and family came to support us. It was wonderful...to stand in the middle of friends and family of our history and present and be surrounded by their encouragement and prayers. We felt well loved and upheld, and that was such a gift.

Right after church and lunch with friends, my father and sister took us away for two days. We spent the time tucked away in a cabin in the woods, hiking, eating, golfing and spending time in the hot tub! It was GREAT.

Now we're preparing for OMS's Missions in the Midwest conference this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We're also catching up at the dentist and eye doctor, and at Wal-Mart :) Today was Dad's birthday, and it was wonderful to be together for the first family birthday in a year.

It is so nice to have good food...air conditioning, our pets, good roads, carpeting, easy medical care...the list goes on and on. They are such nice things to have, but it is our time with our family and friends that is making this time off so inspiring and meaningful.. We have missed, more than anything else, BEING there for our families and having them be there for us.

Praise the Lord for this time! Thank you for your prayers and support!

Matt's family joins us Friday, and we'll all head to Indy for conference together...

finally home

A cancelled flight (yes, that happened again), another 26 hours in Haiti, with 7 stranded strangers we brought home from the airport (including the stranded pilot), three flights, and we are finally home! We arrived home at midnight to a huge DQ ice cream cake with "Welcome Home" iced on the top :) My sister knows me well...

Its such a joy to be home, and Matt and I deeply enjoyed sleeping in the air conditioned house with our cat and the quiet! My dad and sister are here, and tonight we're going out to celebrate at our family's favorite restaurant.

Tomorrow morning we will be sharing at Livingston United Methodist Church in downtown Columbus and then will be enjoying a 2 day family vacation hiking at Old Man's Cave and staying at a small cabin.

We are overjoyed to be back in our own culture, but also truly enjoyed a great time with 11 Haitian brothers in sisters at the Chili's restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. God's truly given us a heart and calling for the Haitian people!

We are so thankful for family, so thankful to be a home for a little while, and really looking forward to seeing so many of you! Praise the Lord for our safe journey and for friends and family!

getting ready...

We are preparing to leave in just 3 days, and there is still so much to do! We've been blessed by the many friends coming by to wish us off, promising prayers of protection, safekeeping, and blessing with our friends and family, as we go to "the other place", as America is often called.

We are finding ourselves to be tired and ready to be home for a few weeks. We are in need of some of the invisibility and peacefulness that comes with being in your own culture, and anxious to spend time with friends and family that we have been unable to be there for. Several of our grandparents are in poor health, and we can't wait just to sit with them, BE with them. We can't wait to share with several churches: can't wait to tell and show them how God is using them here. We can't wait to do some of our favorite things: eat dinner out on the porch followed by family Speed-Scrabble, browse at Barnes and Nobles, order pizza and watch one of the movies that has come out in the past year, play with our pets...walk on carpeting :)

We also know that stepping away from this culture for a few weeks will have us ready to dive back into it, and we already know we'll be missing the friends that have become our Haiti family.

Please be praying for our travel on Thursday and throughout our trip.
Please pray that the Lord would give us daily ministry opportunities in the States to continue making Him known.
Please pray that our time with our families would be slow, meaningful and refreshing.
Please pray for us and our audiences as we share about what He is doing in Haiti around the U.S.

We cannot wait to see you!!!!

3 years and counting...

Today is our three year anniversary...hard to believe! The Lord has done so much in our lives since that sweltering June day in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. So much has changed, but it is a blessing to see that His love for us, and our love for each other, has remained so faithful. The Lord has graciously given us both a best friend, co-worker, partner and spouse in each other, and an unchanging center in Himself.

There were not a lot of options for a special celebration, but some good friends visiting Port-au-Prince offered us their home for the day, and it is nice to be off campus! We ordered in a frozen chicken, and will have chicken and stuffing and mashed potatoes and cranberry for supper, a hugely rare and special meal for Haiti! When we get to the states in just a few more days, we'll celebrate by eating out somewhere special (that doesn't serve rice and beans!).

Thanks so much to all of you that have helped to make our marriage what it is...your prayers, teaching, training, friendship, encouragement, calls and examples and His help have given us a solid marriage in a shaky age! May God bless your Wednesday with lots of love!

boundless confidence in Christ Jesus

We are busily about different work than normal, a refreshing change! Matt, in preparation for beginning his master's degree in a few months, has avidly taking up teaching himself Greek, hoping to test out in the fall. He is also creating a Hebrew textbook, in Creole, for the Seminary's library that will give future students a resource, and will allow for Matt to turn the job of teaching Hebrew over to one of our Haitian brothers in the coming years. I am finally picking back up several marketing projects that had gone to the back burner: June newsletters for both the seminary and the radio station, a new website for the seminary, and preparing our personal presentations for this summer.

We are also getting some valuable time to do some reflection on this past year: to read back through our blogs from the year, spend time in the Word and in prayer. We continue to be moved by the realizations of just how much God has done this year, in the seminary especially. We have seen miracles, seen prayers answered, seen promises kept and seen His faithfulness so clearly.

Oswald Chambers and Erwin McManus also have been speaking to us quite a bit, too, about living with a boldness and a deliberateness that is easy to stray from. We frequently spend so much time seeking "Christian principles" like kindness, tolerance, and unity at all costs, that we forget about some Biblical principals, such as accountability, standing for that which is right at all costs, and preaching Christ, not ourselves.

Jesus didn't come and die on the cross that we might live wishy-washy friendly, smooth, "what can Christ do for me" lives. Jesus never made a pristine call to a proper or safe religion. He is instead calling us to a path far from the easy road. We are seeking to be consumed by His presence, and to carry an untamed faith. We never want that fire that He has given us to die out to a watered-down Christianity, especially if we only have one chance at each day, only one shot at life.

"There is a passion for souls," Chambers says, "that does NOT come from God, but from the desire to make converts to our point of view. (scary) The challenge to the missionary (all of us) does NOT come on the line that people are difficult to get saved, that backsliders are difficult to reclaim, or that there is a lot of callous indifference; but along the line of his own personal relationship to Jesus Christ.

The one great challenge is --
DO I KNOW my Risen Lord?
DO I KNOW the power of His indwelling Spirit?
AM I WISE ENOUGH in God's sight, and FOOLISH ENOUGH according to the world,
to bank my life on what Jesus has said,
which is the ONLY CALL for each of us...boundless confidence in Christ Jesus."

Whew, what a rush...we want this in our lives. We want more boundless faith and less comfort and sweetness in our lives. Can we deal with people being upset with us, with being seen as foolish to the world, with doing things that are generally seen as crazy, for the sake of truly Following Him?

"When I have obeyed God," says Chambers, "the problem never comes between God and me.
Any problem that comes alongside of obeying God only increases my delight,
because I know that my Father knows,
and I am going to watch and see how He unravels this thing."

the love of Jesus

Sorry it's been a few days...Matt and I both have been fighting back some kind of a bug, spending quite a bit of yesterday and Sunday in bed. We're feeling better today, and trying to get back into the swing of things!

We have continued to see at least a student a day, coming by simply to "pass time" with us, pray with us and usually sing a song or two. It's a blessing to know that they'll continue to stop by whenever they are in the area.

The seminary also received a touching thank you note from a fourth year graduate yesterday, the kind of letter that you hold on to for discouraging days.

"I feel truly happy", he says, "to write to you this letter, and I am writing it to tell you thank you.
I did not feel well leaving the seminary without telling you my testimony of gratitude and without making it known everything that you have done for me.
I understand this stage of our learning must take much patience of instruction, and this touches me deeply.

I think about the fact that you have left your families, left your friends, left your church in your country, all to come and help other people in another place. I am sure there have been times that you have been discouraged, and even angry, by disobediences and struggles with the students, but you did not abandon us to return to your country.

Thank you for you helping us pay to be here, for feeding us, for giving us a place to sleep and a way to wash our clothes.
Thank you for your prayers, for your counsel and for giving us the love of Jesus.

I don't have anything to give you to accompany this letter except for my deepest thanks. I will continue to always be in prayer for you. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

We are definitely not here and not doing this work for the students or people to recognize that we are doing it. However, whenever someone recognizes that you have been giving them the love of Jesus, you can't help but feel a bit of success. This is why we're here, and little by little, that's getting through to people...Praise the Lord.