Thankful for freedom to share

When I arrived at church this morning, the sanctuary was packed out. It was the third service of the morning and I have never seen so many people at church before. At first I thought, where in the world am I going to sit? My "normal" section is full and I'm going to have to sit at the top of the bleachers. This ended up being true. From my seat, I could see the entire sanctuary and was blessed to see people continuing to pile in the room to worship and hear from Pastor Marcus Witt. He is a well known pastor and evangelist in Middle and South America, kind of like David Platt is in the United States. Anyway, the worship at my church is incredible and always a blessing. I love to worship in Spanish. As I sat and watch I was reminded of the freedom to worship in Peru. I have friends around the world who can't worship publicly. I am so thankful to be able to share the message of Christ freely and for friends around the world who are diligently sharing Christ in anyway that they can.

Thankful for my brother

I love my brother. We've had our ups and downs and fought like siblings do, but at the end of the day, we love each other and love being together. I don't know what I'd do with out him.

Thankful for Fresh Produce

I don't think I ever appreciated fresh fruits and vegetables until I moved to Peru. Now, I enjoy cooking fresh vegetables but it does take a little more time and effort. There are times I wish I could open a bag of frozen broccoli and pop it in the microwave, but that's not an option.

I also quite enjoy figuring out how little I paid for my produce. As I was walking through the market today I saw some beautiful strawberries and decided to buy some for now and some to freeze for later. Would you believe that I paid $0.32 per pound?! I love it! I'm thankful for fresh produce and a mother who taught me to search for the bargains.

Thankful for Sunshine

I had no idea how much I loved the sun, until I moved to a city that is sunless for a good part of the year. As I look out the windows over a grey city, I look forward to the day (or even part of the day) with the sun will break through the blah and bring brightness and warmth! It's almost funny now how excited I get when the sun comes out. It's like a new discovery and just makes me happy. So today, I'm thankful for sunshine and hopeful that it will return to Lima soon!

Thanksgiving Tradition

Every year at my home church we have a Thanksgiving Day service. It is one of my favorite services of the year because we focus on what we are thankful for and how the Lord has blessed in the past year. It's a great time of reflecting and glorifying Him. Since I can't be there this year, I decided to share some of the things that I'm thankful for from now until Thanksgiving day. So, here it goes....

Grace Church is my home church and I love it there. I have an incredible church family that is supportive, encouraging and affirming of me serving in Peru. It is such a blessing to have this group of believers behind me, praying for me every step of the way. When I reflect back over the years that I've been there I think of all that I have learned, about the people who have poured themselves into me, the friends that I've walked beside (and who have walked beside me) in good and hard times and how the Lord has stretched me in ways I would have never imagined.

Moving Again

I'm constantly learning new things about Peru. Today I discovered that hardware stores don't have paint chips that you can take home with you. I'm moving into a new apartment sometime next week and it is in need of a little makeover. With approval to get the apartment painted, I was quite excited to go pick out a bunch of colors to see how they looked in the apartment.

That's not how Peruvian's do it. From what we could tell, all of the paint on the shelf is white and you choose what color you mix and they mix it for you. Nothing was pre-colored on the shelf.

My friend (soon to be neighbor) Amber and I picked out a new color, and hopefully it will look good. It's hard to know how bright the creamy yellow shade that we picked will look. Pictures to come as the apartment gets painted and I get settled into my new home.

Long Time Gone

Well Blog Readers, (if there are any of you out there any more) obviously, Christine and I have been more than delinquent in updating the blog. I'm going to try to bring this thing back to life with much more frequent postings.

Let's see...a quick recap over the past 4 months. I traveled constantly through June, July and August. Many of the trips were with my student teams, 2 trips with my home church and a couple with Strategy Coordinator Churches. It was a wonderful summer. The students did an excellent job in their respective villages and really caught the vision for missions in Peru. It was a privilege to work with them. I'll try to share more stories in the months ahead about some of their work.

Plans for Christmas trips are well underway. All of the student teams are headed to the jungle to work with the Nelsons. I will be observing, and maybe helping with 1 of the team trainings, but won't be able to travel with any of the teams because, I'm going on VACATION!

That's right, my baby brother is getting married just before Christmas and the Lord has provided a way for me to go! I'm so excited that my entire family is coming together for the celebration. I can't wait to see them all. Hugs all around! I'm also taking almost 2 more weeks at home in Virginia to spend more time with family and friends.

Friends, if you are in the Richmond area in late December, let me know and maybe we can get together for coffee!