it grows

I'm thankful for a field leader and his wife who love and support and pray for and encourage us. I'm thankful for their legacy of  some 60 years of mostly international ministry in Haiti, Russia, India, etc., and for the testimony they are to us of mercy and wisdom, perseverance and service. I'm thankful they happily answer Lily's many questions, that Marilyn always makes Sofie her favorite pudding and will tell me what she thinks, and that when they leave they always pray for us first, something I know they do continually. 

I'm thankful for friends who come and help us do the many, many things we can't.  Like Rick, this past two weeks fixing the sandbox, hanging pictures, building/pouring benches, and fixing the thousand little things around campus that needed fixed before the new school year starts Monday.  Like Carol, who has a crazy finance brain and has trained and helped me patiently for years, and now is training Jodenel and Mano and making this transition so smooth...and who borrowed a sewing machine and took in all kinds of clothes we needed taken in today.  Like Nick who spent the morning helping to install some weird type of air conditioner, like Gertha who week after week finds finds the produce we need at the market in half the time and for half the money.  

I'm thankful for four healthy, busy, chatty, messy, ornery children. I remember when four children seemed like a LOT OF CHILDREN, and...oh wait.  It still seems like a lot of children :)  But they are mostly happy and mostly healthy and learning more about who God is and who He's made them to be every day, and they are always, always a gift. 

I'm thankful for the men and women on the Emmaus team who have humble hearts and are anxious to love and help and equip our students well, and I am thankful for the men and women God's hemming into Emmaus this year.  We are ready for Monday, and genuinely excited, even after all these years of bringing in new students, to meet the priceless people God's calling and using...even some who aren't sure how yet.

I'm thankful for our dear friends Jodenel and Esther, expecting in November, and Leme and Guesica, expecting in the spring!! I'm so thankful for their friendship, for how God has been at work in their lives and marriages, and for these miracles in their lives!

I'm thankful for friends who write. Who check. Who ask. Who message. Who pray. Who help. Who love us. I'll never stop being amazed at how God speaks to us and loves us through others.

I'm thankful for this house, today incredibly full of people we love, and for the way He never stops poking and pushing and meeting our hearts with His Word and His people and His love.  

I'm thankful for Matt, for how he makes me laugh in the middle of blessings and burdens, how he always strives to love us well, and how he thinks and waits and prays and searches Scripture and ponders until it is clear the direction to go, and then he is courageous and faithful.

I'm thankful for Sunday, a day to cease our striving and to rest in Him. A day to sit in the middle of corporate worship and give Him all the joys and burdens. A day to worship in whatever language, whatever style, because of who He is, not because of how we feel. I'm thankful for a day to family and a day to remember that we trust Him...a day to gather our courage. 

I'm thankful. 

As soon as I try to make a list...it grows.