They are here.

One of my favorite days of the year was yesterday and today...the days all the students come home!  As much as God's at work through us and Emmaus sending people OUT...I love when they come in, too.  

Everyone is so grateful to be back together, most of whom were in full-time ministry all summer, and most of them, with very little support or help or family.  To be together again with their mentors and brothers and sisters and prayer partners and accountability partners and friends is a joy obvious to anyone.  As with every August, most are a little worse for the wear, this battle we're all a part of not easy.  Everyone's a belt notch smaller (and most were on the smallest notch to start with) and everyone's got stories of struggles and triumphs from the past 2 months.  

What really encouraged me, today, was to sit in the back and see 7-8 young men and women stuffed happily into each pew, HERE, voluntarily, asking for help and training in sharing and being and knowing and living the Gospel.  I mean, that's a miracle, isn't it?  

Isn't that deeply encouraging?  Today, there are 100 young men and women in HAITI, a place many feel to be hopeless, in a world many feel to be hopeless, gathered together from the ends of the country asking to be trained in and sent out in the Gospel.  Asking to live, asking to die, the Gospel.  

His HOPE is in that.  His HAND is in that.  For the thousand without-hope young men and women we drive past just to get to the airport, for the millions of young men and women without-hope around the world, there are those who know Him and who carry Him brightly, strongly convicted that their lives and futures are not their own, and who are coming in to grow, and going out to share, and no one is making them.  No one is asking them.  No one is forcing them.  

God's called them.  For those without hope.  

And they. are. here.

Right in front of me.  

That excited me today.

I hope it blesses and encourages you, too.

There are some special things scheduled for this afternoon...can't wait to see Him at work, and to share it with you!