Growing Up

Sonja and I have really been enjoying our new house immensely. And its provided some incredible opportunities for fellowship and reaching out. We've both been thinking a lot about our need to be speaking about Jesus and the gospel with people around us, both to believers in fellowship and to lost people in love. God is good, and he's been answering our prayers.

Sunday night after church, we had to make a quick run by the grocery store for some essentials, and two Mormon elders approached us about coming to talk with us about the new "prophet", Joseph Smith, and his teachings. Sonja and I kinda smiled at each other, and quickly set up a time (Tuesday at 6:30) for them to come and talk with us about their prophet.

Since then, we've been excitedly (but a little nervously) awaiting the opportunity to sit down and discuss with them the teachings of their prophet and the teachings of our prophet, Jesus. God, however, had other plans.

Monday, Sonja and I had set up a burn pile in the back yard (who knew owning a house came with added benefits like an endless supply of leaves?), which we thoroughly enjoyed feeding our endless supply of leaves. Tuesday, at lunch, I came home to reignite the leafpile so Sonja could free our barren backyard from its enslavement to decaying, grass-killing leaves. After reigniting the leaves, the job of feeding the pile was quickly taken over by our neighbor and co-churchmember, Travis Simpson (otherwise known as "the verizon guy"). Travis and Jennifer Simpson, who live 4 doors down from us, are awesome, and have reached out to us and served us in many ways. Travis tended to the leaf pile for the rest of the afternoon while I was working and Sonja and I were running errands.

When we returned, we found a well stoked fire, as well as Travis and a random guy named Derek, warming themselves by the fire, discussing life, Scripture, and the difference between those who just think and those who act.

Travis had to go back home, but he introduced us to Derek, who he had just met, and Sonja and I jumped into fire tending and conversation and soon got to know Derek, who "randomly" happened to be going through our neighborhood selling magazine subscriptions. When he saw our fire, he was cold (yes, with wind, it is quite cold here), so he decided to warm up by the fire.

In God's providence, we got to hang out with Derek all evening, pray for him, play Halo 3 with him, feed him dinner, and ask him all kinds of questions about his soul. We got to talk about the fact that despite his half-hearted plea's of agnosticism, he truly does have an undeniable sense of God's existence and claim on him (yeah for Calvin's Institutes and all the people in the Institutes' discussion group- God used you to prep us for hanging with Derek), as well as about his life and his story (yeah Ryan Donnell, you prepped me for this with the Men's breakfast discussion). Though we said goodbye to Derek last night, we were able offer him real friendship backed up with tangeable love in the form of a solid meal, concerns about his future in this world and the next, and give him a bible and our contact information. The Mormons never showed up, (surprisingly), but God instead reserved our evening to have great conversation with Derek and to grow us in learning to talk with people about his Son and his plan to reconcile the world to himself.

God is good, and as you think of it, thank God for his sovereignty in random leaf piles, fires, neighbors, and magazine sales, and pray for Derek, that God would use his word and our conversation to bring transformation and resurrection to this man whom God loves. Pray also for us, that we would grow in boldness and pursuation. We are both weak here, but we desperatly need to grow.

Closer to Finally

Well, Sonja and I got news this past Tuesday that the arbitrator decided the lawsuit in our favor! So, what that means for us is that we don't have to buy a second house (which we would have had trouble paying for), that we get our $1000 deposit from the house back (yahoo!), and that we finally get a bill for our lawyer fees (doh!).

All in all, its very good news, and once again we are learning to trust God for his future provision.