the big and small of it

I can't explain how big all the little things have become, both ways.

When you're fighting for fuel (we've had two orders out for days and trying to keep up with all the complications is impossible), finding 10 gallons of gas is HUGE.  We can make that last for a month of food purchases.

When you're fighting for propane (none for purchase for 4 weeks now...kitchen is cooking on charcoal, and I'm exploring the 9000 uses of the Instant Pot), your friends finding a tank feels like a huge victory, having an instant pot at all feels like miraculous provision.

When you're fighting being so cooped up at home for six weeks on end, having the internet provider down for five days now feels like a huge discouragement, a huge hit.  Having the cell phone network in and out and NOT even being able to call a friend down the road feels like a big deal.

When everyone has been SO sick and we still have friends battling Dengue, Ben's teething feels like a small thing. When he's moaning and groaning and fevering and teething for 2 days on end and your nerves are already frayed, it feels big.

When you can go to a church farther than on foot and worship with friends, it feels like such a big thing that the word miracle keeps resonating, when your husband braves motos and the roads and returns in one piece, when he continues teaching his growing evening Bible study and comes home well after dark, alive and well, miracles resonate again.

It's a season where the tiniest faith is enough to cling to, where GOD-BIG gives up hope each day, even when we are continually told there is none.

I can't tell you how many nights in bed we have talked and shared and I have rolled over with fear and depression in my stomach and said, "Matt, I just don't see HOW this is going to end, how is this going to resolve?" and he has repeated faithfully, over and over, "God has GOT a plan, and I trust it."

Can't tell you how many nights that small verbal statement of truth has brought me huge peace.

So it's no small thing that there are seven people from our beloved NorthRidge Church in Sabetha, Kansas, traveling to us right now. Oh, we've been back and forth a dozen times, their trip originally last February to lead OMS retreat and cancelled due to major insecurity. It's been rescheduled, replanned, waited on, prayed for, replanned again and they have been incredibly flexible.

We put some fleeces out there and the Lord has met EVERY one, so they prayed and planned and PACKED, and that is no small thing.

This week they will be joining us at Emmaus, fresh friends and faces to serve our students, to help here and at the Bethesda clinic, to help with homeschool and English students and major maintenance projects with Phil, and then on Friday and Saturday they will be leading/serving 6 local families in a retreat focusing on authenticity in our relationships with the Lord, our spouses, our children and our neighbors.

Today in Haiti is a crazy time to have a retreat.

But man alive, is it needed.

Don't give up hope for Haiti, friends. Don't give up hope for Haiti, don't give up hope for Emmaus, don't give up hope for the Ayars.

It is in times of fleeing that WE NEED LIGHT and help and life to COME. It is in times of utter weariness that we need fresh friends.  It is in times of courage that we badly need encouragement, in times of despair that our students need boosted, in times of frustration and anger and brokenness that Christ-Abundant needs to be FLOODING into Haiti.

All that said, I can't believe they are actually coming, and that after so much praying and planning, a family of five, the missions pastor and a mama we don't even know yet are on a plane heading IN...not out.

Just simply to have someone put their physical hands on us and pray out loud, just simply having someone else love on my home-bound children, just to physically have the encouragement of believers joining us on the front lines of His battle for Haiti for a few days...It may not seem like a big thing, but it is. I'm already crying...I know we are tired.

It's a big thing, their sacrifices, that I am abundantly thankful for.

Pray for this NR group, pray for the travel, pray for Matt as he brings them in, pray for our staff and students and families to be encouraged and fed through their faith in OUR God, pray for the seven of them to be abundantly blessed.  Pray for the families who will be a part of this retreat, that we might be fed in ways and places that only He can sustain, that we might be strengthened.

Yes, they are combining wisdom, but also courage, for all our strengthening, and that is huge.