Ask and you shall receive!

The Passer house has been alive with activity this month!  If you are following our newsletter you probably read that we are getting our house ready to put on the market at the end of January.  We had an amazing young lady come in and donate her house staging services by giving us ideas for paint colors, light fixture changes, furniture rearrangement and a mini bathroom makeover.  The Lord provided the finances for the changes in the form of a nice tax rebate and we were all set to go!  

With Jackie directing traffic in the background (most unsuccessfully I might add), Rob began the task of changing out light fixtures and tearing down wallpaper.  I'll let you ask him which of these he enjoyed more!  A request was put out in our last newsletter for help for Rob in painting the rooms that needed to be done and low and behold the painters arrived!  The front entry hall, upstairs hall, master bedroom, and both bathrooms upstairs were prepped and ready to paint and the crew got to work!  In a matter of a few days all of the areas that were prepared were painted with two coats and rooms were reassembled so quickly it looked like a version of Extreme Makeover-weekend Edition!  Hat's off to Jen, Will, Shari and Katie for the time they took out of their lives and their painting skills to accomplish the task at hand.  Our friends are absolutely amazing and we don't know what we would do without them!

Below are a few action shots of some of the crew working!  We praise God for such humble servants!

We'd also like to give a BIG shout out to all of those that visited the hospital, our home, fed us and prayed for us over the last month.  Jackie is going back to work on tomorrow, 11/1 and is healing up quite nicely!  Your prayers and support are so much appreciated.

We also want to welcome everyone that has joined our Ministry Partnership Team and thank them for their support!  We are currently at 23% of our monthly support committed and 48% of our start up costs already given!  

If you have been thinking about joining our team but would like to hear more about our call and what we are doing, shoot us an email at rob.passer@efca.org and we can set up a time sit down and share our hearts with you.  Maybe God is tugging on your heart to just join the team!  You can just hit the TouchGlobal logo under the "Donate online" button on the right and you can give online or go to 

http://www.efca.org/give-serve/ways-give for other giving options.  Be sure to include 1670-Passer on any donations made.

Please keep all of those affected by Hurricane Sandy in your prayers.  There is so much clean up and rebuilding to do and TouchGlobal will be among those helping.  Pray that the light of Christ can show through every worker that God calls to this field and that the people can see that their only hope is in Jesus.

Moses said, “This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Take an omer of manna and keep it for the generations to come, so they can see the bread I gave you to eat in the wilderness when I brought you out of Egypt.’”

Exodus 16:32

When I look in the bible I see so many verses on food.  Whether they are regarding sustaining a population, breaking bread with others, or celebrations with food.  God fed the Israelites while they were in the dessert,  Jesus fed the multitudes with a few fishes and loaves of bread.  The apostles broke bread with Jesus the night before he was arrest.  God performed many miracle with food.  He has taught us many a lesson through these miracles and today He has taught me a lesson about food and the meaning of eating versus using food as an idol or even crutch.

In the last few years I have gained quite a bit of weight.  It started out because I discovered I loved to bake pastry, breads, cookies and cupcakes.  Ahhh the cupcake.  Cupcake wars had become the go to show on Sunday nights and finding a cupcake shop that had been on Cupcake Wars was put on my "bucket list."   And yes, that has been checked off the list!  

But as I sit here in the hospital for my 6th night after having abdominal surgery to remove a large colon polyp I really began to think and pray and ask God what I was doing wrong.  Why was I not able to eat yet?  The only thing holding me back from going home was food!   One of the things that I truly love the most in the world.  Anyone who knows me knows this.  And here I sit blogging from my hospital bed because of food.  I have to be able to "tolerate" eating 2 meals in a row to be able to go home.  It became quite clear to me today after a walk around the hospital floor what was going on.  God was giving me another clear message and it has taken me a few days to figure it out.  I needed to take food off of that list that some days was above God in my daily life.   Food had become an idol and it clearly needed to be put back in it's place.  It's place is for sustenance. Food is one of the things that our body takes to live on this earth.  BUT not an overload of it or overindulgence of it.

Tonight as my carefully chosen dinner was put in front of me I prayed.  I prayed to God for my body to be able to tolerated what I was going to feed it.  I prayed in thanksgiving for again teaching me what was coming between my relationship with Him.  And I prayed to be able to go home tomorrow to the family that I love and want to see so badly.

Thank you Jesus for being my Savior and ALL that I need on a daily  basis. Thank you for the rememberance of the manna put in a jar for generations to remind us that God can and WILL give us all we need.

Blessings,

Jackie