Almost finished

We are happy to report that we will be finished with orientation in one week! Next Wednesday 4/2 to be exact. Our time here has been a blessing for sure. However, a man's stomach can only handle so much cafeteria food and then it goes on a hunger strike. My limit is drawing very near.

If you had our Vonage ph.# and tried to use it, you quickly realized that we disconnected it. The internet out here is so slow we couldn't even use an internet phone. We are trying to decide what service to use when we go to Costa Rica & Peru. We are leaning toward using Skype. That is basically a computer to computer call over the internet. We will even be able to make video calls using our webcam. It is pretty sad when you have to move out of the country to get high-speed internet.

As far as the family goes, the boys are having a great time here. We have seen God working in both of their lives over the past few weeks. Trevor read all 507 pages of his Beginner's Bible in less than one week. His teacher said that he would lay under the table and read it during playtime. He also surprised us one day when he just started quoting all of these long Bible verses from memory. We were like, "What in the world?" I have been praying that God would give Trevor a hunger and passion for His Word and the Lord keeps answering, "YES, YES, YES!"

My prayer for Jordan has been that God would make him a bold witness for the Lord Jesus Christ and that God would use him to witness to his new friends overseas. Already, Jordan has been learning how to share his faith with people. His favorite method is using Chronological Bible Storying. He asked me one day if he could share the story of Jesus' baptism with our small group which consist of 19 people. He did a great job! He also told me the other day that he wanted to get a Beginner's Bible in Spanish so he could tell the stories to the children in Peru. God answers prayers!!!

Thanks for all of your prayers.

Lessons from the Wood Shop

We continue to be blessed and challenged daily. We just had the privilege of sitting under the teaching of Dr. Tom Elliff for the past several days. We learned so much as he shared with the group. He is one of those guys who knows the Lord so intimately and knows the Bible like the back of his hand. Usually, those are the kind of guys that are really annoying and can't relate at all to the common man/woman. This guy is awesome though. His teaching style is to break everything down to most simple form instead of talking over everyone's head. He also had a ton of really cool stories that he used to reinforce his points.

He told a story about a time he and his granddad were in the wood shop building a piece of furniture together. His granddad was holding two pieces of wood together and asked Tom to hand him a certain tool. Tom wasn't sure what tool he was referring to, so he guessed and began to reach for the wrong one. His granddad said, "No, the one right up there." Tom took another shot at it but still guessed wrong. Again, his granddad tried to point him in the right direction. On the third try Tom got it right. When he went to hand the tool over, his grandad said "Never mind, I already used this screwdriver to do the job. It wasn't the best tool for the job, but it was the one closest to my hand." His grandad stopped and told him "God doesn't always use the best suited tool for the job but the tool closest to his hand." He explained how so many people in this world seem more gifted/qualified for certain tasks but they will never be used because they are far from God.

God has really used that story to issue a challenge to my heart. My prayer is that I will be close to the Lord's hand, that I will make myself available to Him.