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Wednesday, August 27, 2008

That´s What Friends Are For

For those of you who remember that old song from the 80s that´s what I´m thinking of today "In good times, in bad times I´ll be on your side forevermore.....that´s what friends are for". The reason I´m thinking of this song is because of all the awesome friends I have. After my last whiney blog I´ve had several friends check up on me and one sweetie even brought me and Joe by this special American treat......

A & W Rootbeer and ice cream to make a rootbeer float. For those of you who don´t know root beer isn´t always an easy thing to get in Cochabamba. Thanks, Angie! She settled on root
beer floats after scouring the city for Frapacchinos like she doesn´t have anything else to do....she´s a missionary with tons of ministries not to mention the mother of 4. What a great friend! I´m very blessed. A great big hug and thank you to all of you who´ve cared for me, who´ve prayed for me, who´ve brought me meals (thanks, Glenda....they were delicious), who´ve given me baby showers, who´ve sent me encouraging comments and emails and who´ve just been my friends. I truly appreciate each of you. You all enrich my life. Thank you for being my friend! I am blessed.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

It´s Been the Worst of Times; It´s Been the Best of Times

That´s what these last few weeks have seemed like. We´ve had lots of good things happen....like all the conferences we´ve been able to participate in, the move to our new house, closing in on the birth of Mercy, our 24th wedding anniversary, etc. But along with the good times have come plenty of hard times as well. In many ways I told Joe this has been the best and the worst month we´ve had since we moved to Bolivia over a year ago now. We have lots of ´yucky´ stuff going on with our house in Virginia. In addition, we need to pretty quickly answer the question of what we should do with the house there....do we sell at the bottom (?) of the market or do we try to hang on to it, rent it and ride it out for a while longer? We´ve also had lots of friends and supporters who´ve had to cut their financial support due to the economy in the States. We´ve had lots of sickness here including a virus that ran through our entire household beginning the week we were moving. I´ve had additional yuckies that go along with the end of pregnancy in an old woman. I´ve spent much of the last two weeks in bed. There are some health issues going on with family back in the States as well. Here we´ve had lots of political uncertainty (nothing new, but still disconcerting at times). I´ve had to temporarily drop out of language school and am feeling even more frustrated about my rate of learning Spanish. All of these things add up to a couple of weeks of real discouragement I suppose. I´m sure fluctuating hormones don´t help any of this. Mind you, I´m not whining just trying to be up front and share from my heart.

I guess the point of all this dumping is to ask you to keep us upheld in prayer. We are truly grateful for the love, encouragement, and support shown to us from our family and friends. You don´t know how it keeps us going during these hard times to know that you are ´on our team´ and lifting us up to the One who can in turn lift us up.

In spite of my grumblings, I truly am grateful to have been called to Cochabamba to serve our Lord in His harvest here. Thank you for allowing me to cyber-dump on you so that I can get it out and realize how truly blessed I am.