This past week was a busy one! Darrin had a week of training at Olive Garden and is now officially working as a server. We are in full swing with school work all the way around...for the kids and for Darrin and myself. So far, so good for all of us! Even Hebrew is going well...but it is getting tougher. I translated actual Bible phrases (not entire verses) for this first time this week....that was cool! None of us have had a real test yet...a few quizzes, but nothing major. Darrin did turn in his first paper, but he has not received a grade yet. So, we know there will be more difficult school work in the near future, but for now, we are doing pretty well with it all.
The kids are doing very well in school! All of the bus issues seem to be ironed out. Adam is still enjoying school and doing well. The girls are liking it better and better. They are making friends and getting adjusted to the "newness" of it all. Kayla REALLY loves her modern dance class! While she has already come home bruised in several places from the crazy things they do in there, she just loves it. It is something that she looks forward to each day. It has helped to make her "new school" experience a good one! Speaking of her new school, we had "Meet the Teacher" night last week. I only got to meet 2 of her 4 teachers. I met her chorus and dance teachers. Her geometry and history teachers were not there. Anyway, getting around that place was INSANE! It is HUGE! We must have walked the distance of a cross-country race just getting to her classrooms. I certainly got my exercise for the evening, and I also understood why she was so overwhelmed those first couple of days. But she lead me around there like she had been doing it forever. :0) Emma is in class with a girl from Africa who speaks no English at all. Emma has been teaching her quite a bit. That has been a neat experience for her! I told Emma she needs to have that young lady teach her some African words....perhaps that will come in handy one day on the mission field! :0)
While everything is going well, I have been struggling with missing everyone and everything. I miss my friends, I miss my church, and I even miss my house. While there is nothing wrong with missing everyone and everything, I was allowing that to take too much of my focus. So I decided this week that it was time to get involved in some things here. I met a wonderful Korean woman in my Evangelism class who invited me to a "storying" small group. I went this past Thursday afternoon. It was a great time of fellowship, worship, and learning. We learned how to tell one of the stories in the book of Acts using hand motions. Each week we focus on a different story of the Bible and a different method, whether it be hand motions, drawing pictures, singing a song....just different creative methods of Bible story-telling. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am looking forward to going back! I also began attending a discipleship class at church. It is a class for women on emotions....understanding where they come from and handling them in Godly ways. We are blessed to have the writer of the study as our teacher! I am excited to discover what God has in-store through this class! It is good for me to begin to get "plugged-in" here.
Kayla had another really cool thing happen for her this week. The youth ministry at the church we have been attending, Richland Creek Church, does have a youth praise band. Well it just so happens that they are in need of a lead guitar player. She talked to the leader of the praise band last night. He told her to show up with her guitar and amp on the 23rd at 5:30! :0) Yet another way that God has gone before us! He had this in place for Kayla! Those things are sooooo encouraging to me!
All of those ways that He continues to show Himself and encourage us are very much needed. This is a hard transition for us all....harder than I anticipated. It is good, but still difficult. Another battle we are facing is the sale of our home in Danville. It still has not sold. We have had a couple of very low offers, but nothing we can really work with. It is coming down to the point that we may have to just let it go. That is really tough! Darrin has somehow been prepared for that all along, but I have not. I just knew that God would take care of it, and the house would sell. Please don't misunderstand...I know that God is in complete control. He is taking care of it in His Sovereignty...just perhaps not in the way that I would have chosen. But it is not my way that matters...only His. He still may allow the house to sell, or it just may be His plan that we let it go. Perhaps this is a bigger lesson on sacrifice than I anticipated. Perhaps He is testing us to see just exactly how much we are willing to give up for Him. I don't know what He is doing exactly, but I know that He is in complete control, and I take comfort in Romans 8:28 which tells me "God works all things together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose." I must rest in that and know in my heart that His plans are perfect, even when I don't understand exactly what He is doing. And really, in the grand scheme of things, and in light of eternity, what is a house? It's just an earthly treasure that moths and rust and thieves can destroy. In John 14:2-3 Jesus tells me, " In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also." That place He is preparing for me is my HOME...in Heaven with Him. And through my relationship with Christ, I am GUARANTEED that home WILL NOT be foreclosed on. :0)
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