Answered Prayers

Good news today. I have been praying quite a bit about everything going on in San Diego and God has finally answered those prayers. My grandmother is go ahead with the sale of her house and will be seaking a nursing facility in San Diego for long term care. Although this breaks her heart and mine, it is the right thing to do at this time in her life.

The only unkfortunate thing about all of this is the path of destruction that has been left behind. The enemy has driven a stake into my heart and fractured the already delicate relationship that existed with my family. I'm afraid certain thoughts and perceptions that Satan has placed in the minds of my kin will take a long time to repair. For this I can only pray.

I will not allow this turn of events to wound me though - I have become stronger in my faith and stronger in my walk with God. The enemy may have won this battle with regard to my realtionship with my family, but the war continues.

With Jesus Christ by my side, I will fear nothing...........

Daily time with God

I can not begin to describe how important this has become in my life. Prayer is more powerful and meaningful as I speak with God. Feeling his loving touch is one part of it that is truly amazing. I have always expected (or been trained) to feel really good when God speaks to me, to feel really loved and at peace. As I prayed this morning about everything going on in my life and with my family and with my job, God again spoke to me. It was a little bit of a different feeling this time though. Without direct quoting exactly what he said, I will say this - he was a little loud.

Satan is ALIVE and WELL and is going to be on the attack. Gary, you need to open your eyes and engage in the war. You can't blame anybody around you for the experiences you are having. The enemy will attack you were it cuts the deepest - your family today and something else tomorrow. Know that there are angels walking beside you always and that they are ready to enter battle at a moments notice. You do not walk alone.

The feeling of being spoken to by my Father in very loud and firm tone was very strong as I spent time there, but in the end I understand exactly what he saying. There is some sense of peace when my eyes are opened to the fact that I do not walk alone in the battle. I simply need to pull my sword out of its scabbord and engage.

Things Change

The short story is that my grandmother is not moving up here to live with us.

The long story is that Tammy and I are now made out to be the bad guys because our house is already torn apart and we need to have my grandmother pay to put it back together. The decision to stay in San Diego was based on the fact that my family down there told my grandmother they would take care of it and get her in home care and she would rather stay in her own house.

If they could have told me just a few days earlier, I would still have my house. It seems there are some trust issues between my family in San Diego and me. For some reason they do not trust anything that I am doing to prepare a place for my grandmother. So, I have sent all the evidence (proof) that was telling truth about everything that I was doing with the money that grandma sent me. I think in large part, the anger boils down to money. My family will need every penny they get back to help my grandmother. If I had the money to pay for all of this without going in to debt, I would gladly pay for it and walk away. But, since I am not working right now and do not want to go in to debt at all, I just can't do it. God bless them for taking care of grandmother, I pray that you help them see my intentions are good.

I attended a christian retreat this past weekend which was awesome and timed perfectly. While I was there, I did not pray about this at all - I was really there to strengthen my personal relationship with Jesus and to work on finding my heart.

Today, as we worked through a couple of other things down in San Diego with regard to the sale of grandmothers house (which was in escrow), I was feeling really stressed out. I also received an email from a company I was talking to about a job and found out that the position had been filled. So my wife sent me this verse from Hebrews 13:

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."So we say with confidence, "The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?"

She is such a blessing to me. I love her so much! I can not tell you how lucky I am to be on this journey with her by my side.

What Courage

Wow! I just picked this up and thought I would add this to my blog. What courage it must take to spread God's word in this kind of environment.

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Motorbike gunmen killed a foreign aid worker in Kabul Monday, the Afghan Interior Ministry has said.

Aid worker Gayle Williams was one of 23 expatriates who worked for SERVE Afghanistan.

In a separate incident, two German soldiers and five Afghan children were killed when a suicide bomber struck an Afghan-German military convoy in northern Afghanistan, the provincial governor in Kunduz said.
Gayle Williams, 34, had dual British and South African nationality and worked for SERVE Afghanistan (Serving Emergency Relief and Vocational Enterprise), an inter-denominational Christian charity that helps the disabled, the organization's chairman said in a statement.
Williams was shot in the western part of the city, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said, while walking to work. She died shortly after the attack, SERVE Afghanistan chairman Mike Lyth said.
"She was a person who always loved the Afghans and was dedicated to serving those who are disabled," Lyth said. "Needless to say, we are all in shock." Williams was one of 23 expatriates who worked for SERVE Afghanistan, which also employs 450 Afghans in the country.
A statement on SERVE Afghanistan's Web site -- attributed only to "C and E" -- described Williams as "one of the inspiring people of the world who truly put others before herself."
"She was killed violently while caring for the most forgotten people in the world; the poor and the disabled," the statement said. "She herself would not regret taking the risk of working in Afghanistan. She was where she wanted to be -- holding out a helping hand to those in need."
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned her killing as well as the recent killings of two U.N. aid workers in Somalia.

"The secretary-general deplores these acts of deliberate violence against those who are making every effort to alleviate the dire suffering of Somali and Afghan citizens," Ban's spokeswoman Michele Montas said at Monday's daily briefing in New York.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the death, saying on its Web site that it killed the "foreign woman" for preaching Christianity in the country and adding that it had been following the woman for some time.

Thinking

Sometimes I think that I think too much. Thats what happens when you have too much time on your hands and you dont use that time wisely. God is definitely present in my life and was definitely there in Church today!

Our Church Home

I have been struggling with the question..... Is this the right Church for my family? The question has led me to think about a number of questions. I suppose it comes down to - are we getting everything we need from the Church? Do my children understand salvation? Are we able to serve in a spiritually fulfilling way? When in prayer does God tell us that this is the right place for us to be at this time in our lives? Balancing physical health, emotional health, and spiritual health is tricky.

I have also been thinking about the Church itself. Are they being completely transparent with regard to how they are stewarding the tithes that people make? Are they willing to let "outsiders" (like me) help out with the business challenges of running a Church this size? Is the Church doing everything it can to not only reach people in other places of the world, but reach the people in the community that we live in?

Tough questions running through my mind today. It adds a different level of complexity to what it means to provide for your family and thier spiritual well being.

ESL II

Its important to note that there are no dairy products used in the smoothies where my works.

ESL

So my son got his first job at age 17. He went to his first day of work today and the person training him was from a foreign country and told my son that if he messed up some of his English throughout the night, that my son should correct him.

A lady came in to the establishment and asked "do the smoothies have any dairy in them?". The "trainer" promptly answered "No, no dairy in the smoothies". The lady then purchased a smoothie and left.

After the lady had gone, the "trainer" asked my son, "what does dairy mean?".

Missing the Children

I was surfing through a few blogs tonight (or early this morning) and came across a story of a father that had been traveling quite a bit in the recent past and was excited to be going home because he missed his kids so much. He talked about hugging them and loving them and simply letting them know that he was there for them.

I then began thinking about how I use to feel the exact same way when I was on travel and out of the country about 85% of the time between 2006 and 2008. I would call every day (well, most days) and speak to my wife and kids just to say I love you and to see how the day went - this was sometimes very difficult depending on my geographical location (Australia and Japan were real challenges). I remember being homesick a lot, especially on the weekends. Thank God for the "Slingbox" and "Skype".

I then began to think about what it would feel like if nobody picked up the phone when I called or if I could only look at my children and love them without being able to lay a hand on them because they did not know I was there. I thought about what it would feel like to love your children enough to give your life for them, yet the children are unaware of that fact. What a tragedy....

I then began to think about how it would feel to help all of those children turn and see that their Father is there, that he has always been there and that it is their turn to come home and experience His love first hand. That feels pretty darn good....

Serving God

As I mention in a previous post, my wife and I serve at our Church. I was there yesterday setting up all of the supplies for Sunday School. As I was wrapping stuff up a friend of mine, Aurora, that works at the Church came in and we got to chatting about her "life group" (a smaller group of folks that do life together, worship, bible study, etc.) and how they were volunteering at a men's shelter in Seattle. I was aware of this because she sent out an email asking for donations (I donated to the cause :) - those men could definitely use the cloths more than me). As we talked, she asked me if my wife and I could serve in a different area of the Church as well, to help her out. This was not the first time we had talked about this. We spoke about it some time ago and she asked me to talk to Tammy (my wife) and pray about it. I told Aurora that I had prayed about it and that God was leading me to focus on getting my grandmother moved to Seattle (in a previous post, I explained we are moving my grandmother up here to live with us)and that with 4 children our plates were pretty full. I went on to say that as things settle down in the future, perhaps God will lead us to make a change and serve in a different capacity. She totally understood and simply smiled and said "I'll be waiting". It struck me in the conversation that I was standing in the middle of a very large Church with some 1500 members and the staff always seems to be struggling for people to step up and help. It made me think of all those people that may be missing out on an opportunity to serve God. My wife and I do not serve in the Church to "help the Church", we serve because God has commanded us to serve - helping the Church out is simply a nice perk. I can only hope and pray that those people that are not serving at the Church they call home are either serving in some other capacity somewhere in the world or will soon understand that it's not about making time to help out once in a while...... it's about understanding that God has commanded us to do so and we must to do it.