M is for Mommy

You may have noticed, we took a break for the month of July. Actually, we took a "pretend vacation." Since we've been on the field a year, we decided it was a good time to refresh and regroup. It was great. We cut out a lot of our superfluous activity. Blake was out of school, so I didn't volunteer at school. Our weekly team prayer meetings were cancelled. Bible studies and house church worship continued as usual, except for our annual mission meeting in São Paulo. We slept later, I cooked less, I let the house get dirtier, we read more. We didn't blog hardly at all, or spend much time on the computer. It has been very refreshing and now we're ready to go at it another year. Jeff has returned to blogging. You'll be interested to see his updates. Blake has also posted some, as has Parker .

I took The Sesame Street Personality Quiz and this is what it told me: You Are Bert Extremely serious and a little eccentric, people find you loveable - even if you don't love them! You are usually feeling: Logical - you rarely let your emotions rule you You are famous for: Being smart, a total neat freak, and maybe just a little evil How you life your life: With passion, even if your odd passions (like bottle caps and pigeons) are baffling to others So, who are you? HT: Dorcas Hawker

The Bible says, “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45). Well, right now, my heart is overflowing “I AM SICK TO DEATH OF BEING VOMITTED UPON!! I’M SICK OF WIPING VOMIT OFF OF THE FLOOR/WALLS/TOILET/OTHER BATHROOM FIXTURES*! I AM SICK OF THE SMELL OF LAVANDER-SCENTED PINESOL!! ” You see, we have a small family. A compact family. I have my two small children who are always well-groomed and frequently we dress alike as a family. We don’t confuse our children’s names. We don’t even have a dog (too much spittle), we have a cat (a ragdoll, named Montana’s Café com Leite na Praia). That’s who we are. We know those families with 4+ children who always have someone ill, who at any given moment have someone bleeding, who are known by name in the emergency room. But we are not them. We know those families who when you talk with them you have to guess to which child they are referring because they generically insert names because they never can remember the specific name ...

Fasting can add another dimension to our spiritual lives. We can be more aware of God’s presence with us, we can have more insights into His workings, we can have more power in our prayer lives. I don’t know how it works, but here are a few tips that I have if you’re interesting in adding this discipline to your prayer life. Fasting is mentioned in scripture, but we aren’t told a lot about how to fast. Most of our modern day teaching on fasting comes from Matthew 6:16-18 when Jesus said, “Moreover when you fast, don't be like the hypocrites, with sad faces. For they disfigure their faces, that they may be seen by men to be fasting. Most certainly I tell you, they have received their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head, and wash your face; so that you are not seen by men to be fasting, but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.” We can see two things from this: 1. Jesus expected that we would fast (His use of the word when...

Discretion in Prayer As you begin to pray under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, God will begin to show you how to pray and things to pray about. When people realize you are an intercessor (someone who prays for other people), they’ll begin to share their prayer requests with you. These things you need to keep to yourself, for several reasons. First of all, you want to spend your energy praying, not talking with others. I think we’ve all been to “prayer” meetings when the entire time was taken sharing requests and no time was left in the end for the actual prayer. We can exhaust ourselves talking to others, and feel like we’ve accomplished something; but actually the only thing we’ve done is exhaust ourselves. Another reason is that, whether it is from God or another person, you’ve been entrusted with that information and you’ll want to show yourself worthy of that trust. I’ve found that the best way to keep a confidence is to never let others know there is a confidence being kept. If ...