Harvest Time

Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers' arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessèd peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!

All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given;
The Son and Him Who reigns with Them in highest Heaven;
The one eternal God, whom earth and Heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.
-Martin Rinkart

Rescue the Perishing, Care for the Dying

Rural Asian Countryside

We love taking walks around the place where we live. It is such a blessing to live out in the country away from the noise, heavy traffic and pollution of the large city in this country. Here is Melody and myself walking back home after going to our gardener's home for a meal during Eid time. The road is quite dusty at this time of year and the fields are dry and yellow, with a beauty of their own. Behind us is a very green patch where people have rice plant seedlings growing. A few days or week later they will transplant them and spread them out evenly all over the fields. The fields will then be immersed with water pumped up with a diesel water pump. During the wet seasons when there is rain there is of course, no need for pumps which saves the farmer a lot of money. We really enjoy observing how people do agriculture work here. It will be interesting to see the changes to more advance technology in the future. Already more and more tractors are being used, versus the simple plows pulled by white cows or water buffaloes. I think I will miss seeing some of the old ways go, even though it was such hard work for the farmer to plow a little plot of land. Hopefully, though, newer farmer knowledge can help provide more food and better ways to use the land! It is amazing to me to think of how God has created men and women with all these various ideas and ways of working the land.

My Beloved

This is one of my favorite pictures of my Beloved, a self portrait :-)
, taken on Melody's first birthday. Sadly, Melody was sick on her
birthday, as you may be able to tell. She did enjoy her birthday party
that day in spite of not feeling well. The poor little lamb!

One of My Favorite Pictures of Our Melody Joy

A great book

I am enjoying reading this book by Oswald Chambers, which was given to us by my mother and father-in-law. (Thank you, Dad and Mom Jore!) It is called, "So Send I You/Workmen of God" - that is, it is 2 books in one volume. It is a real gem of a book! I find it very interesting that sometimes I "discover" a book at just the right time when I may be thinking about the very issues the book addresses. To me, that is a sign of my Heavenly Father providing resources for encouragement and food for the soul at the right time.

Recently as I have contemplated our first term of service so far, it has brought me back to thinking about our call to come here. A whole host of questions have welled up inside of me as I thought back to 2 1/2 years ago, and looked ahead to the end of our 1st term in 17 months. Wow, what does it mean to be "successful" in God's eyes? Has our time here been successful to the Lord? How can we make the most of each moment with our time left here?

Here's a quote from Chambers' book:
"The greatest need of the missionary is to be ready to face Jesus Christ at any and every turn, and it is not easy to be ready to do that, whatever our experience of sanctification may be. The great battle all along is not so much against sin as against being so absorbed in work that we are not ready to face Jesus Christ. The one great need is not to face our beliefs and our creeds, or the question of whether we are of any use or not, but to face our Lord. This attitude of being ready to face Him means more and more disentanglement from so-called religious work, and more and more intense spiritual reality in so-called secular work. The whole meaning of the Christian life from our Lord's standpoint is to be ready for Him."

God Answers Prayer!

A new year...2008...a blank book...what will fill these pages of our lives? Josh and I had started last year with a "Bible verse for the year" (something we learned from Marge, a dear friend of ours). Our verse for 2007 was Proverbs 29:25. God continued to press that verse upon us in many different situations as we learned that ,"the fear of man brings a snare, but he who trusts in the Lord will be exalted."
This year it seems that the well familiar verses of Proverbs 3:5-6 is something for both of us to ponder, hang onto and practice in our daily lives:
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight."

It is rather cold here, but we seem to be over part of the colder time - we had cold, chilling rain recently and our house can stay pretty chilly out in our kitchen, living room area and the open screened-in veranda. Thankfully our rooms are warm if we shut the doors. Boy, I sure think of the many poor and poorest people who live out in the villages near us, with few clothes and chilly homes. The rain has been bone-chilling for us - what must it be like for someone who is so poor? One night when it was dripping with rain outside, I just prayed and asked the Lord to mercifully stop the rain and send warmer weather for these people. And the next morning it stopped!!! Praise the Lord for His mercies to us! How I wish that many people here would truly come to know their merciful and loving Lord!