Clocks

I just added clocks to my world clocks page on my iPod. Just seeing Madrid and Frankfurt and that it was almost 8am there made me sad. There are people and places that I love over there. I miss being there more with my soul than I missed living here when we were there. Sure I missed my friends and I wasn't happy with the people I worked closely with. It's hard to love it when you feel constantly judged but taking all that away, I miss it. More than I missed being here. Oh to see the beauty there again.
A RA who was there when we were went back to visit and posted photos recently. Oh that was hard seeing them. Someday we will go back of God calls us back there.

Children and the world

I want to make sure we take our kids places. Right now due to financial constraints, we can't but I can put them in experiences to meet other people from different places.
As I've mentioned, the ESL ministry I help out with is one of my favorite activities. I was apprehensive at first about having my children in childcare during that time. I'm not even sure why. Maybe I was worried that the other parents wouldn't understand the sick kid rules. Who knows. Now I'm very glad they've gotten a chance to be around kids from all over the world.
It's easy to have a very narrow worldview growing up where we live. There are a lot of international people here but you can pick your activities so that you really don't have to interact with people from different cultures.
I didn't have a grasp on the international students I saw some in campus while at college. I want my kids to understand that ministry opportunity NOW even so that when they get to college they can effectively interact with those students.
It's about being purposeful. Our church has an all nations and a Chinese service. I love it. The church has grown beyond just a lot of white people to a variety of color!
My son has already noticed the difference in skin color so we've gotten to talk about it. Half of his second Sunday school hour is African. One of his friend's parents adopted a child from Africa. His best friend in ESL is Japanese.
I want to continue make my kids interact with all the cultures we have in our area which is a lot. I want to make them live overseas again so their worldview is broadened. I want to take them on mission trips to Haiti so they can see that no matter our incomes we are all the same.

Getting Excited

Since both of us are now actually mentioning to people that we want to do foster care, I'm getting excited. When I'm just talking or thinking about something it doesn't make it very real. When my husband starts talking about it, you know it's more of a reality.
I was going through some half made tiny baby diapers and thinking that I need to finish them up and make more! I've got some big enough for a 2 mo old but not for an itty bitty. Not that we would only get itty bitties but I want to be prepared!
I hope that we don't get denied because of our house size. It's only two beds but we would keep the baby in our room which is allowed until the child is one year. I don't know if they would then take the child or if we would be able to see out the end of their case if we moved one of our kids into our room for a few months to see a child through their time in the system.
I guess this is what it's like for people who try to get pregnant. Both my kids were surprises so I never experienced that anticipation of trying to get pregnant. I really would love a third baby of our own, but I'm happy to be a temporary mommy to a third baby over and over again. I just need to not want to keep all of them!!

Longing for Something

In Sunday school today we studied the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. To make a long story short, Jesus pointed out that the woman was search for something and she was going to men to find it. She had already had five husbands and was with a sixth man. There was a longing in her life that she was trying to quench.
My friend's husband was leading the class. He's an excellent teacher. He posed the question if Jesus sat down with you what would he say you're trying to replace the longing inside of you with?
I understand that longing. It was nice to have it verbalized. Granted I'm not filling my longing with man after man but I have been searching for a purpose since coming back to the states.
I think part of my longing won't be satisfied until we are back overseas. But I have found a way I can happily do something missional. We are going to look into fostering babies.
I feel like now we maybe be doing something more than just waiting to leave again.

Busy Life

I've been very neglectful over here, but it's not like anyone has been reading my posts anyhow. 2012 is a year God is going to do a lot of good in. I just know it.

Cold Make Me Miss...

Over Christmas, I had an intense longing for Germany. I'm not sure why Christmas spurred it on. It's kinda funny that it did because in Germany, we didn't have any family around for Christmas. So you'd think that of all times, I definitely wouldn't be longing for being away at Christmastime. But I was.
I wonder what brings on longing for places sometimes. I think it's neat that some day we won't have longings anymore.

Matthew 5:13

"You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men" Matthew 5:13

We studied this verse in Sunday school a few Sundays ago. I learned a lot about salt through preparing for this lesson. What is the big deal about salt? Salt preserves, it was a valued commodity in the past, wars were fought over it, economies were based on it. Salt creates thirst.

What does that have to do with anything especially being a Christian?

Preservative - the world is rotting a decaying. Just look at the news, our country is going to hell in a handbasket. There is no morality anymore, okay there is some but its getting harder to find. Every day it seems like there's another big moral dilemma in the news from a boy joining the boy scouts to abortion to gay marriage. What do we do with it all? How do we make sense of it? I'm not really sure, but I do know that it's our fault, as believers, that this has happened. We have stopped standing up for what is right in fear of being ridiculed, persecuted, etc. Salt preserves. We are the salt. We should keep the world from rotting by our moral stances, but because we didn't and don't, the world hasn't been preserved.

John Stott: And when society goes bad, we Christians tend to throw up our hands in pious horror and reproach the non-Christian world; but should we not rather reproach ourselves? One can hardly blame unsalted meat from going bad. It cannot do anything else. The real question to ask is: Where is the salt?

I think we have failed to be the salt, which is sad because it isn't a challenge. It's a command. You ARE the salt of the earth. Salt cannot become tasteless, it's a dumb analogy which just drives in the fact that we HAVE to be the salt. We have no other choice, yet we choose to follow the world and bend to it instead of preserving the world.

Thirst - salt makes us thirsty. Our presence around others should make them thirsty and ask us why we are the way we are. But we have to make sure people can see this and that there is a difference between us and non-believers.

Are we using our money like Christians? Talking like a Christian? Leading our families like a Christian? What do we do with our leisure time? How can we stand out? Do we stand out?

Healing - Salt in a wound kept it from festering, but it was also painful. Christians are to stand for the truth, but there will be opposition 1 Peter 2:12. Salt can heal,but it's not going to be easy. It's challenging in this modern day.

I hope thinking about being salt is challenging. It's causing me to be more bold in telling people why I do what I do. To not shirk back from the fact that I served on the overseas mission field when they ask why I was in Germany. I know my husband's coworkers when they knew we were about to leave, they were very curious. That's good. I want people to ask us why we went, not so we look awesome but to see that there are Christians who sacrifice their "American" lives for the sake of the Gospel.

We need to be different. Salt has a distinct taste, so we need to have a distinct taste. We don't need to wear non-modern clothes like the Amish, but I do believe we need to not conform to this world. We need to make a distinction on why we do what we do and not be afraid to tell people. Bold and salty. You are the salt of the earth. Go and make people salty.