It seems I’m becoming personally acquainted with more and more missionaries. There’s a family from Good Shepherd that I pray for all the time, there a couple of my Perspectives students on my missions-prayer list now (naturally), and now there will be a couple from our small group, who are moving back to Africa. Also, there is a lady who was ( Read more... )

It was rather fitting that the first sermon of the year was full of the subject “Love”, my One Word for 2017! Our Young Adults pastor did an excellent job preaching on John 15, about “Abiding in Christ”, and was very passionate when he came to the part about love.

Of course, he emphasized how important it is, as Christ-followers, to be into God’s ( Read more... )

My year-end thoughts were pretty clear on a couple of things:

1. I knew what I’d learned this year: to persevere in prayer, especially for loved ones who don’t yet know Christ; always keeping in mind that God answers/does things that are far above what we can ever think or imagine. Of course, I knew this before, but this year I “learned it more”. (And ( Read more... )

Private post… meaning only visible to my lj friends. ;)

I’ve gone from “crying” about how Sam would make someone such a loving husband, to just longing for him to be involved in a group outside his parents, to wanting someone-“anyone”-his age to be in our Small Group. So now that there is someone, I’m very happy about it. And refusing to place any ( Read more... )

So here is what Randy & I submitted, to nominate Dad for the Chris Beer Award, at the “Champions Challenge”, and what Randy used for his speech at the dinner:

The whole story can be found in myriad photos, blog posts, Facebook events, etc. The first photo that comes to mind is from 2008, of Dad with his son and grandson, who had done the Meech Lake ( Read more... )

There have been a lot of great articles to read lately, and some are just calling me to make notes on them!

One by Mike Breen shows how humans can be such creatures of overreaction, “choosing polarities rather than living in tension”. It seems like not long ago that Christian leaders were saying how we were becoming too “inward”, constantly singing ( Read more... )

Yikes, I’ve signed up for yet another email feed! Not sure how often this one updates, but it was recommended by our church plant, and has some really good articles/resources. Plus, it’s all about being missional.

For example, an article about the question of celebrating Hallowe’en: “For most of us, Halloween isn’t a time where we celebrate the ( Read more... )

Do you sometimes feel like a failure? You’ve been trying and trying, honed your skills, done everything in the best way that you know, and still nothing has come through?

Well, it’s a statistical reality that home-run hitters tend to be strike out leaders, and: “people who are called to attempt the greatest achievements tend to experience the most ( Read more... )

During our small group Bible study last night, my husband’s response to one of the questions (I forget what the question was), was that we should decorate our homes in such a way (subtle, not blatant) that when people enter, they know that you’re a Christian. As I sat there amazed that he should have such a neat idea, he proceeded to suggest an ( Read more... )

Here is a quote from something I just read, that shows why “showing love” to people does not always mean doing whatever makes them happy.

The quote is from one of my Perspectives students, who writes a regular piece on the Torah (called Torahbybtes). This one is on some verses from Deuteronomy 7, where it talks about God destroying “those who hate ( Read more... )