goodbye!

well, i'm off to iowa tomorrow. goodbye to all my good friends here at home, whom i haven't seen much of in the past few weeks.....see you when i get back! please, please pray for us while we're gone. we will be essentially mucking out a deep dark basement, every day. and working with the youth group there, doing activities, etc. with them. please pray for team unity and a spirit of willingness. pray that with humility we will worship God in our service. and please pray that me and lori will be able to be in charge of food and worship to some degree of success!

Lord, i ask now for selfishness to be set aside. i ask that each and every person on this mission trip would see with Your eyes. make us sensitive to your Spirit and leading. grant us strong bodies to do your work and sleep on floors without getting sore! protect us as we travel and work. Thank you for providing us with such energetic teenagers and committed leaders. Thank you for your body, the believers in Christ. may we take your words to heart and serve others as we long to serve and pursue you!
AMEN!

we will be leaving tomorrow at 9am, arriving in iowa around 8 or 9 that evening. We will be back home on august 1, sometime in the evening. have an awesome week, everyone!

amanda!

just a quick note to say i am SO JEALOUS of amanda booy right now. she just spent a weekend at a music thingy with PAUL BRANDT, EMERSON DRIVE, TIM MCGRAW, LONESTAR and BRAD PAISLEY!!!!

oh my goodness. that's all i have to say. wow. i would LOVE that. who's with me???!

on a side note, this is a busy week, and right now, at this moment, melissa dyck is trotting down main street to visit the bank for the town of winkler. hello melissa. anyways, i should work, so that's it for now....

happy to report!

monday was a good day. i spent some time outside in the rain with God. i started reading over my journals from taiwan and the last year. what i'm astounded at are the words God spoke specifically to me. and i forget! so easily. my prayer is not that i can make myself less forgetful, but that i will live from my spirit, not my soul or body. all three are part of who i am, but it is my spirit that has been raised with Christ, and changed by God, so that is where i should live from! the mind forgets, but the spirit knows. something God spoke to me on my first day of ministry in taoyuan, taiwan, has stayed with me these past days.

reach down and love. reach up and love. go into the world and with joy, praise my name! sing freedom and love with abandon!

it almost sends shivers up my spine to think about how much God desires to LOVE us! he tells me, told us, to LOVE him! we are commanded to LOVE HIM! that is how badly God desires relationship with us. now in human relationships, we wouldn't trust this. we don't want to be vulnerable, but God's vulnerability is so much more beautiful because he is completely trustworthy. we can be COMPLETELY vulnerable with him, and we WILL NOT be let down. God is good. every other relationship WILL let us down, God will not. the answers to life's questions and pain are not available on the push of the "God-button", but the journey of loving and being loved reveals what you need. every need in your life can be met by a greater revelation of the character of God (last thought courtesy of Sandy Rosen).

and baseball yesterday... may i just say, it was as funny as watching luggage bounce off a van down in nicaragua! no really, it was a good time, but i must say, when you are playing scrub, it becomes beneficial for your legs/breathing ability to NOT hit the ball all the time and best to get out! my legs felt like noodles afterwards! and now i have a bump on my head, because a ball hit me. in my defense, the sun was COMPLETELY obliterating the ball from view, so i ducked. into the ball. but i'm okay.

my produce love story

so my two favorite produce workers got married on saturday. it was beautiful, and to top it off, the first thing the groom's mother said to me in the receiving line was, "you're beautiful!!", all teary-eyed and such. she always makes me smile....a very special lady.

i feel busy. i really need to concentrate on spending time alone. with God, with myself, but i feel like i'm constantly somewhere doing something. and when i'm home, i'm too uncomfortable with myself. i don't like this. not at all. i enjoy spending time with my friends, and doing things, but i hate feeling uncomfortable with myself. the most frustrating thing is knowing it and still not changing it. i enjoy feeling overwhelmed, but in the presence of God, not myself! like last night, there was incredible lightning again - incredible! and i wasn't as awed as usual. even the fireworks at the forks on canada day, i wasnt' really impressed. apathy. grrr. i hate apathy because it creeps up on you. and the irony is that you always know you're apathetic and you seem to wallow in it. by you i mean me. okay, so enough self-evaluation, i'm gonna go do something about it!

baseball tuesday night, it'll be a grand time, you should come out!!

frosties and lots of rain

last night phil and i took two of the Littles in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program to a Bombers game. they lost. it wasn't the best game - but we had fun with the boys! the best part was walking into Polo Park and hearing one say, "Look at those stairs!!! They're moving!!!" They'd never come to the mall before, and it was their first time seeing escalators! on the way home we drove through a crazy storm, with rain off and on, but it was windy and visibility wasn't the best. the lightning was incredible, though!

i've been listening to Jason Upton this morning. amazing. guess what?? this weekend is my almost free weekend of the summer! yippee! i'm looking forward to actually sleeping in and maybe even *gasp!* not working!!! it's lunchtime, so i will eat now!

was that too boring?

well, i'm cold. i worked shifts this weekend i hadn't worked in awhile and they were lots of dishwashing. being the clumsy person i am, i was very wet. on the saturday shift, i at least remembered to wear the plastic apron. not yesterday. i was so wet that it seeped down my pants so you could see it from the back. still, not as wet as the first time i did that shift, but wet enough to look questionable!!

we went to grand beach on friday - it was so much fun! the back of my legs are saying "why, marcia, why??!!?" but my book was so good, i didn't want to move or put sunscreen on! speaking of my book, i'm now on "white", third in the trilogy by ted dekker. AMAZING! i would love to see these made into movies. it would take money money money, but would be so powerful! and yet, there is something about the written word that makes it deeper.

dan and andrew did the message at church yesterday. what amazing men of God. seriously, i don't know many people who could be as challenging and straightforward as they were without sounding obnoxious or offending someone. but they did it, and God is so blessing their words! okay, well, it's time to be productive. i'm free wednesday and friday, people!