Even my words

Exodus 4
10 Moses said to the LORD, "O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue." 11 The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD 12 Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say."

I am constantly amazed when I show the least amount of intelligence, wisdom, skill, etc… I know that part of that comes from the feeling that I am inadequate. Part of it also comes from the fact that I’m not really that smart, I’m not that wise, I’m not that skilled. God gave me my brain, my intelligence, my skill. Every time I do something good it is because He allowed me to. Every good decision I make at work, every confrontation that I de-escalate, every decision I make on the Appeals Committee, every bad person I take off the streets, every person I protect is because He gave me that ability.

On Saturday night we were at Sam and Amy’s. Everybody there could sing except for me and Macguines. They decided it would be a good idea to play American Idol on the Wii. And guess who they picked to go first? Me. The game said I was doing so bad that it turned the song off. I really didn’t want to play American Idol but I wanted to play with our friends and I knew this game was right up Amanda’s alley.
Then Macguines sang and it did the same thing to him.

The second time I sang though I did pretty good. After watching for a while I figured out how to get it to let Macguines to sing a whole song. The rest of my turns weren’t too bad. I wasn’t close to Amanda, Sam or Amy but I wasn’t too embarrassed. I know that it wasn’t because of me. God helped me because I probably would have had a really bad evening if I sang as I normally do and I probably would have been embarrassed. Thank you God.

And when I was a missionary in Mexico we had to stand up on our next to last night there and give our testimony. Nobody had ever talked to me about my testimony. In fact when I started on the trip I wasn’t even saved. How was I supposed to give a testimony, I had been saved less than a week. But I stood up because everybody else was doing it and I didn’t want to be the stumbling block, or be embarrassed. So I stood up and started talking. I don’t know what I said. While we were there we were assigned translators. My translator had stood up when I did. The thing is afterwards she said that she hadn’t said anything. I talked for almost an hour. And to this day I can’t tell you what I said. I can’t even tell you in English what I wanted to say, let alone what I said in Spanish. I didn’t even have an idea of what I wanted to say in the first place. But when I was done? Wow. Everybody in the place went wild, so what I said must have been good. It was such an amazing experience that I will never forget it. I know that God took hold of me that night and used my physical body to accomplish what He wanted to. When I read the above passage I think that is what God means when He says He will help Moses speak. I still get chills thinking about that night.

Drason

Kenya and Artwork

As you may know, Greg and Lisa S. are good friends of ours who have moved to Kenya for the next 2 years to be part of an orphan outreach.

Orphans there are more common than children with parents. Aids, disease, lack of medical care, and dead beat parents have left an entire generation of children, fatherless, motherless, and in many cases homeless. If you want to know where the next generation of child warriors will come from - it will be from third world countries where the children are left to fend for themselves.

I visited Kenya this past summer and I was left humbled and heart broken by the abject poverty we saw there. I had a very hard time describing this to my friends and family. When you see something like that it makes you rethink how you look at the world, how you look at money, and how you look at your life.

I remember coming back and my husband wanting to take me out to eat. My favorite restaurant would run over a hundred dollars for the two of us, but I could not justify eating there. I had a hard time eating at the Red Lobster. I remember doing laundry and seeing just how blessed we are, even after the fire, my children have enough clothes to clothe an entire village in Kenya.

The words I write, the pictures I took do not do justice to the things we saw there. There is a song by Sara Groves that sort of describes the way it felt to come away from that experience, but even that is lacking. The best testimonial I can give you for why this is so important is that two of my very close friends sold everything they had, to move to a third world country to try to help the orphans there.

Greg and Lisa, have been self employed for several years, Greg is an artist, and Lisa was a make-up consultant for Mary Kay. Greg's art is available online at Greg's garage of art or: http://www.gregsgarageofart.com/

Please consider supporting Greg and Lisa by purchasing prints from his website. This is an easy and convenient way to support Greg and Lisa and also to enjoy this great artwork.

You can order these prints very inexpensively, please check out the website for more information, below are samples of Greg's work - he is extremely talented. (The pictures below are samples, copyrighted and are very small resolution - they will not print.)

Greg's most recent print "Fire's Out" - is not shown below