life lately

Apparently all my blog posts will now just consist of life updates and be about two months apart from each other.

Haha, hopefully not.  But I did want to just give you all an update of what's been happening lately in my life.

This semester is much busier than last in that I'm taking 6 classes (4 online), and I'll also be starting a new job next week.  It's nice to be busy, though, after a pretty boring fall semester.

As many of you know by now (hopefully most of you that I know personally will be getting a letter in the mail soon if you haven't already), I'm going to Kenya in July!  After learning about Project 82 from the campus minister of RUF here at NMSU, I decided to go for it and see if everything would work out for me to go on a mission trip this summer.  As it turns out, everything seems to be falling into place, so I am pursuing this opportunity!  It's pretty terrifying if I'm honest, but I'm so excited as well. I'll be going July 21-31, and I'll update more on here as I learn more.

At the beginning of this semester I finally found a church home in Las Cruces through Grace Bible Church.  I've really enjoyed getting to know the members there through a college Bible study and just hanging out.  Unfortunately, the pastor of Grace, Josh Allen, passed away Monday night.  He was killed in a car crash and leaves behind his wife, Shelley, and their nine-month-old son, Josiah.

Even though I didn't know Josh very well, I looked forward to knowing him better because he really was such a great man.  When I first started attending the church I emailed him with a bunch of questions about their fundamental doctrine and he replied in great detail, making sure he answered each question thoroughly.  I really appreciated his taking the time to do that, and over the next few weeks I enjoyed seeing him every Sunday and getting to know him better.

Please pray for Grace Bible Church as we grieve the loss of our pastor and try to figure out where to go from here.  Josh's death came as a huge shock and I think we're all still reeling, but we know God has a greater plan and purpose than we can ever know here on earth.

Death is swallowed up in victory.

O Death, where is your victory?  O Death, where is your sting?

thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:54-55, 57

just a random post...

I have been a horrible blogger lately.  Oh well.  I just really didn't feel like posting, and I didn't have anything to post about.  But now I do!

First off, I wanted to ask you all to pray for the family of Bob Jennings, a pastor in Missouri who died this past week.  Bob had been ill for quite some time; I believe he had cancer, but I'm not positive.  I've really enjoyed reading Bob's posts over the past months updating on his deteriorating health and how he was basically preparing to die.  You can find two of his posts that I found most encouraging here and here.  Please keep his family and friends in your prayers.

Look at this baby praying mantis!  I found him about a week ago on our counter and almost swept him onto the floor before I even saw he was there.  It was just incredible to see God's handiwork in such a tiny creature as this!

This past weekend I went to Juarez, Mexico with Rachel, my dad, and some people from our church and Church of the Redeemer.  Rachel and I spent the whole time at Rivers of Mercy Children's Home.  We helped out with laundry, made breakfast, and just spent a lot of time loving on the kids.  I had such a fantastic time; I could have spent days with those kids!  I speak about a thimblefull of Spanish, but I actually got along pretty well.  Sadly, I only took four pictures the entire time. :)

 This little cutie pie was Rubi. :)

Rubi and Rachel

Visiting the orphanage helped confirm for me that that's what I want to do with my life--minister to children, specifically orphans; through teaching, but also through just caring for them.  It was awesome!

Give Them Parking Space But Let Them Starve to Death

Another moral threshold was crossed when a tiny baby boy, at the specific request of his parents and with the sanction of the Supreme Court of Indiana, was starved to death in a hospital. “Infant Doe” (he was not allowed the usual recognition of being human by being named), born with Down’s syndrome and a malfunctioning esophagus (the latter could have been corrected with surgery), died, as the Washington Post (April 18) stated, “not because he couldn’t sustain life without a million dollars worth of medical machinery, but because no one fed him.” For six days the nurses in that Bloomington hospital went about their usual routines of bathing and changing and feeding all the newborns except one. They bathed and changed Baby Doe but they never gave him a bottle. Over his crib was a notice, DO NOT FEED. Several couples came forward, begging to be allowed to adopt him. They were turned down.

What went on in that little box during those six terrible days and nights? We turn our imagination away. It’s unthinkable. But if I were to think about it, and put down on paper what my mind saw, I would be accused of playing on people’s feelings, and of making infanticide (yes, infanticide—call it what it is) an “emotional issue.” Let me suppose at least that the baby cried—quite loudly (at first). One report says that he was placed in a room alone, lest his crying disturb others (others, perhaps, who were capable of helping him).

Joseph Sobran, in his column in the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, suggested that “opposition to infanticide will soon be deplored as the dogma of a few religious sects who want to impose their views on everyone else.” The language sounds sickeningly familiar.

There has been a conspicuous silence from those who usually raise shrill protest when other human rights are violated—the rights of smokers, homosexuals, and criminals are often as loudly insisted upon as those of children, women, and the handicapped.

The handicapped? What on earth is happening when a society is so careful to provide premium parking spaces to make things easier for them, but sees no smallest inconsistency when one of them who happens to be too young to scream, “For God’s sake, feed me!” is quietly murdered? It is in the name of humanity, humaneness, compassion, and freedom that these things occur, but never is it acknowledged that the real reasons are comfort and convenience, that is, simple selfishness. “Abortion not only prefers comfort, convenience, or advantage of the pregnant woman to the very life of her unborn child, a fundamentally good thing, but seeks to deny that the life ever existed. In this sense it is a radical denial not only of the worth of a specific life but of the essential goodness of life itself and the Providential ordering of its procreation” (R. V. Young, “Taking Choice Seriously,” The Human Life Review, Vol. VIII, no. 3.)

But weren’t we talking about infanticide and haven’t we now switched to abortion? The premises on which abortion is justified are fundamentally the same on which infanticide is seen as civilized and acceptable. What Hitler used to call eugenics is now called “quality of life,” never mind whether the life in question happens to be the mother’s or the child’s. death, according to three doctors who put the issue out into the open in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1973, is now considered an option in the “treatment” of infants; in other words, a mortuary may now replace the nursery. One cannot help thinking of the antiseptic “shower rooms” of the Third Reich, where the unwanted were “treated” to death. Nor can one forget the words of Jesus, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me” (Matthew 25:40, KJV).

Can any Christian argue that the smallest and most defenseless are, by virtue merely of being too small and too defenseless, not His brethren?

* excerpt taken from "Keep A Quiet Heart" by Elisabeth Elliot, pages 202-204

Let the Children Come

Decades later I was speaking to a group when I challenged parents to “Bring your little one to the Lord Jesus. He has said, ‘Let the children come to me; the kingdom of God is theirs.’” (See Matthew 19:14.)

Then I told how I had made a decision for Jesus when I was five years old.

After that talk I left the platform, and went into a small room in the building where I found a father with two little boys, all on their knees. The father had an arm around both of those boys, and I moved back quietly while the man told the boys tenderly that they were not too young to ask Jesus to come into their hearts.

What a wonderful heritage those boys have, to know that their father cared enough about them to lead them to a knowledge of their heavenly Father!

Later I received a letter from a lady who told me the results in her life of that evening.

I went home after that meeting and went directly to my little girl, Mary, who was in bed. She knew about the Lord because she had been to a Sunday school, but that night, in her bed, she gave her heart to Jesus.

The next morning she said, “Oh, Mommy, I’m so happy that Jesus is now in my heart. He made me a child of God.”

Mary was singing the whole time before she went to school, and I was amazed that she sang many songs about heaven.

My husband went to school to pick her up that day, and as he approached the schoolhouse, he noticed that a great many people were standing around, and there obviously must have been an accident. Then he saw what had happened.

Mary was on the street, her little body crumpled like a rag doll. She was dead.

As I read that letter my eyes were so filled with tears that the words blurred.

Mary had passed behind a big transport truck and had not seen another car, which was coming toward her from the other direction. She was killed immediately.

My husband brought her little body home. He was in deep despair, but then he remembered the songs Mary had sung that morning. I told him what had happened the evening before, and right then, my husband, who had never made a decision for the Lord Jesus, accepted Him as his Savior.

On Mary’s burial day many children of her class came to the Lord.

I sat for a long time with that letter on my lap, realizing that I must have a new sense of urgency to talk to parents about the joy of leading their children to the Lord. What a wonderful assurance Mary’s parents had to know that someday they would be with her again.

During some of my talks I have often repeated this little poem:

SAFE?
Said a precious little laddie,
To his father one bright day,
“May I give myself to Jesus,
Let Him wash my sins away?”

O, my son, but you’re so little,
Wait until you older grow,
Bigger folks ‘tis true, do need Him,
But little folk are safe, you know.

Said the father to his laddie,
As a storm was coming on,
“Are the sheep all safely sheltered,
Safe within the fold, my son?”

“All the big ones are, my father,
But the lambs, I let them go,
For I didn’t think it matter,
Little ones are safe, you know.”
AUTHOR UNKNOWN

-- Corrie ten Boom

* Excerpt taken from "In My Father's House" by Corrie ten Boom