Thursday, Jan 28

Sorry my photo upload capability has a bug… Just text today.

A quick update to friends and family.   The past few weeks have brought some chilly temperatures.  A few weeks back we had some issues with our pipes freezing, unfortunately it happened again.  This past weekend our hot water stopped working as the water feeding the system froze up.   We were already running at 75% with the boys rooms on electric heat, but then after some amateur troubleshooting (that would be me), I managed to completely mess up the system for about an hour, exactly enough time for all but 3 radiators in our house (we have about 18 of them) to freeze up.  So, if our house was the USS Enterprise, we’re running on 4%, and we need moh powa!

It’s weeks like this that help me remember that I’ve moved thousands of miles from home.  Our family has been incredibly blessed however to have our dear friends down the street, the Gollans.  Deb and the kids have spent the days up in their warm house, while I try and thaw out sections with electric heat, and keep the minimum temperatures in the house to avoid a full freeze.  We then have secured a few rooms with enough heat to sleep, and bring back two kids with us each night.  The kids are loving it, it’s like kids camp every day, it’s been fun to watch them all enjoy the break from their reality… or is this their new reality?  I’ve felt like the house has been in intensive care at the hospital, pumping blood throughout the circulatory system in hopes that it will one day walk again.  I long to sit down with the family and take a deep breath. 

Tom (missionary from Arizona, married to Lena the incredibly smart, funny, and kind Ukrainian), has been building a brick foundation for my wood stove.. it was supposed to be Deb’s parents wood stove, but I decided I needed it more:).   Yesterday we bought all of the materials for the chimney and installation, and hopefully it will be burning logs by Saturday.   The temperatures aren’t supposed to get above freezing for a while, so whatever we can to do get the house livable, thankfully we still have cold water, and it’s cold, no ice cubes needed!

Prayer has been good, the church has responded by coming Wed/Thurs to prayer.   Been thinking about how prayer is a discipline.  We each have our own concepts of what prayer is.  For many of us, prayer is something different at any given point in the day.  It could be a simple thanks, a request, or a quite moment of reflection.  Whatever form prayer takes, it’s communicating with our great God.  It’s enjoying Him, taking refuge in His sovereignty, trusting.  The key to prayer, is actually praying.  We can talk about it, agree about it’s principles.  We actually have to discipline ourselves though to turn to Him, to move our attention from the thing that bothers us, to the God that alleviates the stress or pain.  Prayer is decisive, it doesn’t happen by accident.  It is the souls acknowledgement of humanity, and His divinity.  We pray because what we know of God, is that He is good.  Whatever outcome He determines, we can accept because of the goodness of God.   Whatever prayer is to you, I pray you do more of it.  I’m not just typing that I pray it, I pray and ask God that He increase your dependence, and your willingness to become more closely attached to Him.

Meeting with the Mayor tomorrow concerning the land we are looking at.  It seems there are some authorities potentially involved, I can’t communicate much more than that by blog.  This country is in desperate need of Christ and everyone it seems abuses authority for their own good when given the chance.  God has given us favor thus far, and we pray tomorrow that more doors would open as we try to get land downtown.  Pray with us!

Thanks for stopping in-

Bruce