Tomorrow begins the 3rd quarter of my school year at Maranatha. What a journey it's been so far :-) And the first thing I get to do when I get to school tomorrow morning? Give the 7th-11th graders a short talk on why it is honorable to wait to get involved physically with someone before marriage, oh boy! I'm partially nervous, partially excited because I know that these kids really need to hear (more than once) some of the things I am gonna say. My prayer is that there will be at least one or two in the crowd that need to hear it.
Taking a step back. Last week was exam week and all in all it went well, except for the 20 or so students that failed my classes and the irritated eye I had on Thursday from scratching my cornea while taking out my contacts. The eye is all better, but the students are still going to fail. Then on Friday, Emily, Mama Brewster, and I went to Tegucigalpa for a 24 hour women's retreat. It was especially a retreat for English-speaking, women missionaries serving in Honduras. I NEVER realized what a huge need there was for a ministry like that one. Yes I was blessed by it, but there were many more missionary women there that have been on the field for a long time without any sort of support like what this weekend was. Being a missionary is HARD. And it never occurred to me how much harder it would be without any sort of place to occasionally retreat to and receive love and encouragement from like-minded women. It was amazing to see how desperately some of them needed, even for just 24 hours, to sit quietly and pray or talk about their struggles or just nap guilt free. I almost felt ashamed to be there knowing I only have four and a half months left, compared to some of these women who have been in Honduras for years.
Anyhow, if anyone is interested in starting a ministry for missionary women, let me tell you there is plenty of need for it.
God revealed several things to me while I was there. My favorite of which was just a simple reminder that I need to delight myself in him. Through the difficulty of the past several months I have been in survival mode, always asking for strength, guidance, and perseverance. I'd forgotten how to simply delight in my Lord. To sit in quiet and let him tell me how much he loves me. During worship Saturday, I saw these women singing to their God and delighting themselves in him and without realizing it I had been thinking to myself that such delight was not for me. It was meant for me and it wasn't mine. But in that moment I realized that just because I was in the midst of difficult circumstances, didn't mean that delight in the Lord couldn't be mine. Delight with my Lord was mine as long as I chose it, took time for it, and allowed it to come. In dark places it can be difficult, but it isn't impossible unless you haven't been sitting still long enough to seek it. This weekend I got to sit still. And it was wonderful to be renewed and reassured. The Lord is indeed delighting.
And now it's off to pizza hut to enjoy the second half of the superbowl, go Packers!
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