We made it! (and I miss you...)

Hi everyone!  I'm sitting here with mixed feelings...  excitement, sadness, exhaustion, disorientation, hope, expectation, gratefulness...  We made it out of Fresno and it was nothing short of an act of God and the Body of Christ at work through our family and friends that ushered us out with grace and peace and joy.

But...  that's part of the problem!  During our last couple of weeks in town, (and here's where my throat starts to tighten and I'll have to start blinking hard) so, SO many surrounded us and helped us.  When we got down to our last hours at our house, we were able to finish everything just on time because of every single person that helped.  I wonder how many I can remember that helped in some way or another...  There was Paula, Renae, Chris, Brandon, Gerald, Matt, Bruce, Ted, Robert, Rick, Bryan, Monica, Carol, Sadie, Jamie, Melissa, Coleen, Hillary, Brad, Angel, Darrell, Sue, Helen, Harold, Lorraine, Tom, Carmen, Carol, Todd, Sandra, Kirk, Karen, Edd, Brandon, Bill, Sharon, Steve, Steve, Denise, Jenni, Ryan, Dave and Dave...  and I KNOW I'm forgetting some more. (And that doesn't even start to count the people that have spoken words of encouragement to us or have been so faithfully praying for us!!!)  But do you see my point?  Every one of you wrapped your hearts around us in so many ways, that I got used to you being around and now I'm really starting to miss you!

I know I'll be fine and the kids will be fine.  Tomorrow we will see some people we know who have traveled even further to come here for training and on Tuesday we will see many more that we already know and love.  I can hardly wait.  Because I need the Body of Christ.  I love the Body of Christ.  I will miss my home church  while we are gone, but I can't wait to worship with other Believers tomorrow.  I know, I know...  what am I going to do when we're on another continent???  Well, I know there will probably already at least be some other Believers there as well.  But anyway, God knows - and for now, I'm looking forward to connecting with His Body here...  even though I'm missing you.  : )

Love,
Melissa

Below is the official thank you...  (Thank you!)

Dear Family & Friends,

As I write this we are driving through Oregon on our way to Abbotsford. We are amazed, humbled and so grateful for the love and support you all have shown us in the last weeks.  The burden of getting everything done so we could leave Fresno was too big for us to bear alone and we knew it.  We asked God to help us and He told us nothing was impossible with Him.  He literally sent His Body through every one of you that scrubbed our floors, worked in our yard, moved our things,  repaired, painted, and fixed our house, babysat our kids and prayed for us (just to name a few of the many ways you helped.)  Your words of encouragement and prayers were life to us when we were weary and worn out.  We know so clearly that we are not going out as missionaries on our own.  We have been sent into this season of training with your support and love and we are so excited to share this journey and call with you.  Please continue to pray for us as we have so much to learn.  But we know God is with us and for us so we look forward to learning from Him and others who have gone before us.  He has promised to provide everything we need and we expect Him to continue to do that in every way.  And did you hear?  Last Sunday in church we shared that we were still waiting for a last minute miracle – a renter for our condo.  Through a series of divinely orchestrated events, we signed a lease with someone about 4 hours before we left Fresno on Wednesday.  J  How’s that for God’s perfect timing???

We love you all so much.

Eternally Grateful,

Lowell, Melissa, Mikaela, Toby and Timothy

GLORY!!!

I am SO tired and promise that I will give you a better report soon (hopefully by next weekend!) but I wanted to tell any of you who were praying for our retreat this weekend... It was amazing! God absolutely blew us away. It was 7 weeks ago today that we had our first planning meeting for this retreat. That's not very much time!!! But it was very obvious that God had been organizing things and planning and preparing for much longer than that. I'm gonna end for now with a modified (by me) version of Ephesians 3:20-21 because it covers it all... "Now to him who DID immeasurably more than all we askED or imagineD, according to his power that is at work within us, TO HIM BE GLORY in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." I can hardly wait to tell you more... Until then... Y, Melissa

I'm Back!

Well, a lot has happened since I last wrote...

THEY'RE ALL SMILES! Toby got his teeth cleaned for the first time (he was very excited) and after a long, suspense and stress filled time of wiggling, Mikaela's first top tooth came out! I'm serious, people, it was stressing her out! She was worried about it and it was hurting for DAYS and as soon as it was finally out, she was a different kid... a much happier, smiling, silly kid. What a relief. If I'd only known it would make such a difference in her mood, I'd have yanked it a couple days earlier. (Because she had actually asked me to and I didn't pull hard enough because I wasn't sure it was ready, not just because I'm mean and selfish!) Aren't they cute???

BUTLER CHURCH 50th ANNIVERSARY! Yesterday we got to go to our former church's 50th anniversary celebration. It was so very sweet to see so many people who we had worshipped and served with during the many years we were there. Most of the former pastors were there and we got to hear the Spanish choir and see the SE Asian dancers and hear the kids choir sing "Sing alleluia to the Lord" in 3 languages... I miss that so much! But it was also a clear reminder that we are where we are now b/c it is where God wants us to be. As much as I still love Butler, my heart is most definitely at the Grove.

CLEANING/PARTY! Well, in spite of the fact that I was (really, I'm not exagerrating here) mopping my kitchen floor 10 minutes before the first people arrived last night for our Game Night, we had a lot of fun. God brought just the right amount of people and we had a great time and the kids all had a lot of fun. Lowell isn't sure he's going to ever let me do this again (I did leave WAY too much to get done after we got home from the Butler lunch/celebration) but I'm glad we did it and now my house is cleaner than it has been since the social worker came for our home study.

BLOGGING IN MY HEAD. On Saturday I was scrubbing 40 years worth of nasty grime off my kitchen cabinets, pondering the spiritual significance of what I was doing. (Because what else do you expect me to think about when I'm scrubbing cabinets???) I started to write all of my thoughts out here, but it's going to be way too long, so I'm saving it for later. Just in case you have something else to do today. : ) And to leave you in some sort of suspense as to what great spiritual truth I learned. If you'd like to guess or tell me what scrubbing kitchen cabinets might mean to you and your spiritual journey, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments!

Y, Melissa

I love Sundays!

This started out to be a really long post, but I'm cutting some stuff out and will add it in another post tomorrow. What I mostly wanted to tell you was... Church this morning was a joy! Before the service started, I was talking to a great guy who (with his wife) is getting ready to start/lead a Celebrate Recovery group at our church. Earlier in the morning I had felt led/free to tell him that if he would ever like me to come and do any music for them at any of their meetings, that I would love to. He broke into a laugh and said they usually start with some worship and that he and his wife had been praying for God to put it on somebody's heart to help in that area. : ) Is that sweet or what? Especially since I had been choosing to TRUST GOD to lead me to opportunities to share and sing. And even though I won't be doing it every week, I am totally excited about the opportunity to be a part of what God is going to do through this new ministry at our church. Yay! And to top it all off, I learned something new this morning! : ) What was especially cool about that (because yes, I learn stuff at church all the time) was that it was from a passage I am so very familiar with. Our associate/resident/almost-planting-his-own-church-pastor Gary was preaching about God giving us unlimited mulligans in life (unlike what you get in golf!) He talked about Peter denying Christ and read the passage where Christ restored Peter. (Where Jesus asks Peter 3 times "Do you love me?") You know what I noticed for the first time ever? That Jesus didn't just restore Peter to a right relationship with Him. He restored him to MINISTRY. Perhaps because of what God has taught me this year, that seems huge to me. When Peter responded to Jesus' questions saying "Yes, I love you" and "You know I love you!" Jesus said, "Feed my lambs" and "Take care of my sheep." He was telling Peter that he wasn't only forgiven, HE WAS STILL THE ROCK ON WHOM CHRIST'S CHURCH WOULD BE BUILT. God still chose to trust Peter with the enormous task of leading The Church. And the result? Peter wasn't just restored, he was transformed. If that's not miraculous, amazing mercy and forgiveness and grace, I don't know what is. How could I not love & follow & sing about that Jesus?????