11/25/10 Thankfulness at Thanksgiving

What am I thankful for at Thanksgiving?

• First and foremost, for my salvation.  That God would save a sinner like me is mind-blowing.  And then that He would allow me to have a personal relationship with Him, talk to me and listen to me whenever I want to talk….completely AMAZING!!!!
• For my family who love the Lord and love each other, for protected marriages , godly discipline of children & the raising of them in the love & admonition of the Lord
• For my friends, both new and old (I’m not talking age here!) – who love me, share their lives with me, pray for me, encourage me and undergird me in too many ways to list.
• For good health – this week I came down with a cold and it made me thankful for the bulk of the days I have no problems but hardly remember to thank God for them.
•  For water – we lost water here at the B&B for 3 days…I’ve never been so appreciative of a shower before.  What a blessing to have running water, hot water on demand and water clean to drink.
• For one of the leaders who let me shower at her house on Wed and provided 30 Liters of water to drink for our B&B.
• For my 3 lb bag of M&Ms that just ran out…almost sustaining me with delicious chocolate thru my entire stay.  I guess I better bring 2 bags with me when I come back!
• For Thanksgiving, which causes me to stop and remember with thanksgiving, all the Lord had done in the past year.  I think every country should have a similar holiday.
• For old “blood and guts” who saved me from a 4” spider the other day when everyone else was still in bed. After I got out of the shower, the spider was right next to my underwear drawer.  It was either kill him or stand their naked for the rest of the day.  I aimed for the main part of the body and my shoe did the deed.  I was able to get dressed and go to church.  My parents thought I should call myself Nimrod, the mighty hunter.  I’m not sure I like the implication!!!!
•  For the 26 women God brought to Sharing the Gospel Seminar last week.  What an amazing turnout!!!
• For the family of God and the many things we have in common despite differences in cultures.
• For hot dogs that substituted for turkey on Thanksgiving.  Since it feels more like summer than fall, I thought a cookout would be appropriate (and takes a lot less work!!!!).
• For Skype, gmail and cell phone technology that shrinks the miles separating me from friends and family
•  For friends that take care of details at home while I’m out of the country so I don’t have to try to deal with them from so far away.
• For both physical and spiritual moms who have poured themselves into me, mentored me and cared for me over the years
• That in 2 weeks I’ll be back in the states, in 3 weeks I’ll see my Phoenix friends and my dog, and in 4 weeks I’ll be with my family for Christmas
• That in 6 weeks I’ll be back in Joburg to finish out the year with my class here and further develop relationships with leaders and class members
• For God's foreknowledge and preparation that allowed me to walk away from my career and move half-way around the world to teach the Bible.  I can honestly say I would never have done that if left to myself.  But thru His training me as a TL to trust in Him for the details, it prepared me to say yes when He called this summer.  While my previous career involved deploying a system that saves physical lives out on the U.S. waterways and oceans, my current career is working for their eternal salvation.  What a promotion!!!
• For timely BSF lessons that motivated me to share the gospel with the people I was eating breakfast with this morning.  After the judgments & devastations described in Ch 24, how could I not tell them how to be saved (and besides, the one woman asked “What makes a person a Christian?”)?  I love when the Lord throws us softballs….
• For God's Word that is timely, alive, piercing, always fresh and new, and always relevant to whatever I might be going thru.

All praise and Glory to God who has done marvelous things!

Itsy Bitsy Spider....

I was recently reminded of a children’s song I learned a long time ago:

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout.

Down came the rain, and washed the spider out.

Up came the sun, and dried up all the rain,

and the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again

The question I have is….why is that the end of the rhyme?  I mean, what do you do when the spider then climbs in your window and decides to hang out on the wall?  And what if that itsy bitsy spider is more like 6” (18 cm) long?  Well, I can give you one version of the ending.  :-)  Leslie, the B&B manager when to bed last night and found the “itsy bitsy” spider on her wall.  She called Theresa and me to come help.  After quickly determining that it was a tarantula (YUCK!!!!), we were very cautious about getting too close as apparently they can jump a good ways.  Leslie loves animals (in contrast to Theresa and me who wanted to kill it) and wanted to knock it into a box and let it go outside.  So I donated a box and Leslie got a roll of wrapping paper so she could knock the spider off the wall, into the box, close the lid and take it outside.  I personally elected for guard duty…I was at the door ready to shut Theresa and Leslie in with the spider while I retreated to my bedroom.  I know…no guts, no glory.  :-)  To make a long story short, after about 5-10 mins of strategizing, trying to manipulate the spider w/ the paper roll and Doom (an insecticide…which by the way, seemed to have little effect on the tarantula), we got him in the box, took the box outside and put weights on it and around it so it wouldn’t blow over (we were all too scared to let him go at that point).  He’s still in the box as Theresa and Leslie are out and I don’t want to open the box if no one is here to call “911”.  And to think I was concerned about the ants…

That was the really exciting part of my week, the rest has been more routine (thank goodness!).  I am praising God for the 5 women He brought to Intro this week that had never been to BSF before.  They all signed up to come to class.  The bad part was we only had 4 spaces in our class (all our DGs are at 16).  But as the Lord would have it, we had  1 inactivation that hadn’t been processed yet and so in His providence, we had exactly 5 spaces available.  So why do I worry about things?  He knows better than I do what I need and He’s already taken good care of it.

I got to try a new restaurant this week…called Seattle Coffee Co…no relation to Seattle Expresso from what I can tell.  We had fish and chips…where the fish was Hake…a popular fish here.  It was pretty good .  They don’t have Heinz ketchup here but what they do have is pretty close, so it was worth putting it on the chips.  I liked the fish…it didn’t have a “fishy” taste to it.  It was the 3^rd or 4^th time I’ve been to a restaurant where they didn’t have Coke Lite (i.e. Diet Coke…Pepsi isn’t very popular in restaurants but they do carry it in the grocery stores).  Not as many people here drink Coke Lite as do in the States…I think they worry more about the chemicals in it.  I’ve seen several commercials on TV advertising products as “natural”, “unprocessed”, no “preservatives”, etc. 

Last night was some Indian holiday (I’m not sure what).  It’s somewhat equivalent to our July 4^th so there were a lot of fireworks going off after dark and there was a house across the street where some guy was singing (off key, very loudly) until after 11:30.  I realize sometimes we don’t like our homeowners associations because they seem to restrictive, but after last night, it makes me appreciate an effective one.  I guess since it was Friday night, we didn’t need to sleep.  :-)

This week has been filled with storms.  Yesterday, it started out as a beautiful day, started to cloud up, a bad storm came and it rained hard and horizontal for about 30 mins.  The clouds blew off, the sun came out and it was a nice day again.  About 2 hours later, clouds blew in, the rains came.  Needless to say, I’m not in Phoenix anymore.  The upside is that I’ve seen several rainbows (we could see the full half-circle) and a double rainbow.  I took some pics but I’m not sure if they came out so that you can see.  So I’ve had to take some breaks in my prep to go check out the weather…it definitely has been exciting!

That’s all for now.  Have a great weekend!!!!