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

Crisis or Christ?

"He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have supremacy." Colossians 1:17-18

Our church is doing a sermon series on Colossians right now.  The above verses are so fitting for what is happening with our church and how the church is allowing Christ to take over and not the crises that keep cropping up on us.

A little over a year ago it was announced that by mid-2013 or Sr. Pastor of 20+ years would be leaving our church to follow God's call into a Marriage and Family Care Ministry.  A search committee would be formed to look for a new Sr. Pastor and in the mean time Pr. Russ would still be around until a new Sr. Pastor was found.  Those of us that have been around a while were not shocked at God's call on Pr. Russ' life but were sad to even think about another Pastor leading our church.  And we still had Pr. Dan, Pr. Paul, and Pr. Phil plus the rest of the staff that would be consistent and staying on.  So we took it all in, prayed about God's direction and trusted God to get us through this.

Last December I sat with my good friend who was also my direct ministry report in missions, Pr. Dan as he explained that what they had thought was Parksinson's Disease was actually ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease.  He indicated that he would be around for over a year and hoped to transition out of ministry by the end of 2012.  But that is not the way it happened. Pr. Dan's disease has progressed much faster than he and his wife, Heidi had thought and he retired in March, 2012.  We have kept up with his Caringbridge site and have seen Dan and Heidi's total dependence on Jesus during this time of crisis and I personally have been so humbled by their walk with the Lord through all of this. This has been so difficult for all of us at MGEFC but we follow Dan and Heidi's lead and are completely dependent on the Lord to get us through this too.

In the last few weeks we have received email after email from the prayer chain about people from our church going through major health problems.  The father in law of an elder with a serious illness, a long time member of the church going through bypass surgery and subsequently acquired a rare and serious infection that will keep him hospitalized for maybe a total of a month, the daughter of our youth Pastor with a serious throat infection that has caused her to be hospitalized twice and who is looking at surgery on Tuesday, and finally our Sr. Pastor again, who fell off of a ladder doing home repairs and has shattered his ankle and heal and is also having surgery on Tuesday.  And the list goes on...  All of this going on in so short a period of time could have crippled our church.  But again we were completely dependent on Christ and did not give into the crisis.

One might think...boy that church is under attack!  Those people better watch out!  I wonder what's next?  But...just think of this...if the evil one is trying so hard to attack us, what is he so afraid of?  We must be doing something right for him to be working so hard at trying to discourage us.  What are we doing right?  Well we believe this...

1.  Jesus is God  Col. 1:15
2.  Jesus is the creator of all things and holds it all together Col. 1:17
3.  Jesus began the church! Col. 1:18
(these 3 things taken from my sermon notes from this morning)

So if Jesus is God, is the creator of all things (that includes us!), He holds everything He created together AND He began the church, why would it surprise anyone that Jesus is protecting us from the evil one right now.  We could be down and out.  The leadership could feel as if they can't take another crisis or illness.  But what is happening?  Services go off seemingly without a hitch.  God has begun the healing process in the elder's father in law and the elder's wife's face showed true joy today as she told me about answered prayer.   The long time member's family is hanging in there and is trusting on God to bring him through all of this. The youth Pastor's daughter will finally get some relief from the pain she has been in from this infection and Pr. Russ will be up and around in no time.  Who says God doesn't perform miracles anymore?  Not me because I know JESUS IS GOD and He IS holding it all together because He began this church!

Watching and waiting...

I remember 7 years ago tonight.  I say in front of the TV watching and waiting and praying.  Praying that Hurricane Katrina would slow down, change course or just plain fizzle out.  Instead it hit the Gulf Coast with a fury and shortly after that the storm surge hit New Orleans and 80% of the city was flooded.  Rob was in Colorado hunting and I sat with the boys just staring at the pictures on TV.  The rescues, the water, the Super Dome and the Civic Center. I watched as the National Guard and Coast Guard rescued people in baskets from helicopters from their roofs.  I watched and I cried.

Hurricane Katrina, 2005

 Tonight I sit in front of the TV watching and waiting and praying.  But my prayer tonight is one more of praise to my Heavenly Father for the storm not going higher than a category 1.  Praise for an amazing team of TouchGlobal friends that are sheltering in place in New Orleans and the surrounding area so that they can be first responders to a wind blown and rain soaked city in a few days.  Praise that Our God heard our prayers and for the most part spared our friends in Haiti from this storm.  And praise that I know for sure that God can and will use every event for His glory,  even hurricanes and earthquakes.

Will I cry over the next few days as I watch the damage reports or possible hear about lost lives?  Absolutely!  But compassion and mercy are part of who God made me to be.  That's OK.  I look forward to the time when we are in the field and I can be a part of that first responder team going in to see if everyone is OK.  When I can go in and pray with someone and tell that about the life giving blood of Jesus Christ.  Our Lord and Savior can and will help us through any storm.

My friend and teammate Katie had this verse on her blog and I wanted to share it with you.

"Lord, you are my God;
I will exalt you and praise your name,
for in perfect faithfulness
you have done wonderful things,
things planned long ago.
2 You have made the city a heap of rubble,
the fortified town a ruin,
the foreigners' stronghold a city no more;
it will never be rebuilt.
3 Therefore strong peoples will honor you;
cities of ruthless nations will revere you.
4 You have been a refuge for the poor,
a refuge for the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the storm
and a shade from the heat."
Isaiah 25:1-4 

This is a different storm than Katrina was 7 years ago.  That storm caught me at a time in my life where I was looking for a place to serve.  Looking for what I was going to do when I "grew up" so to speak.  Today I know what God has for me.  I have grown into a daughter of the King.  A daughter that just wants to love and serve her King and expand His Kingdom.  Hurricane Isaac has opened my eyes a little more to what God has in store for us.  And I have to tell you all....I am so joyful that He has chosen us for this work and so joyful that He is a shelter from the storm.

Jackie

My Brother Jeff

Tonight as I reflect on the last few weeks one thing keeps coming to mind.  My brother Jeff.  Jeff is 14 months younger than I am.  Did you ever have a sibling that whenever your mom and dad would ask any one of the kids in your family "who did that" you would answer "so and so did it!"  Well in our house it was always "Jeff did it!"  While sometimes it was Jeff who did it, he was usually our scapegoat and after a while I think our parents knew that the answer they were going to get is "Jeff did it!".  Did they know that the first person to say "Jeff did it!" usually was the culprit?  I'm not too sure but I can place dollars to donuts that they did.  We weren't pulling the wool over their eyes at all!

To say that Jeff had a rough life is an understatement.  He soon fell into a life of drugs and alcohol that would continue until just a few years ago.  At that time Jeff had met some people at work that invited him to church.  They loved him for who he was, embraced him for who he was and led him to a spirit filled life with Jesus Christ.  The change in Jeff has been like watching a caterpillar morph into a butterfly.  The love and light of Jesus shines through him.

So many people hear about Jackie and Rob's travels and Jackie and Rob's road to the mission field.  I learned recently that many people even from our family don't know that Jeff has made a huge move in his life also!  On Memorial Weekend Jeff came over for dinner and told us all that he had applied for a medical missions training program in the Philippines and if accepted he would be selling everything he owned, giving his dog to friends and moving to the Philippines for training this July.  Imagine our surprise!  But also our overwhelming sense of God's goodness and mercy.

Well, Jeff was accepted into the training program and on July 6 he left for the Philippines.  He is working each morning doing some building, gardening and other things to help build character and then in the afternoons they are doing training for a medical mission.  Jeff is the embodiment of a missions minded servant of God.  He has sold everything he owned and moved to the other side of the world to do the work that God called him to do. 

I love my brother Jeff so deeply.  I admire him and what he is doing.  And I give all the glory to God for Jeff and the miracle he is.  Amen to that!

Home...It's relative thing

Home...where is home?

Home is where the heart is.  Home is where you hang your hat.  Home Sweet Home.  Welcome Home!  Carrie Underwood says in a song "This is my temporary home, it's not where I belong, windows and rooms, that I'm passing through. This is just a stop, on the way to where I'm going. I'm not afraid because I know, this is my temporary home."

We stayed in lots of "homes" along the way this summer and then we got "home" and we were there for 5 days and left again for training.  All this moving around gave us the feeling of, wow, this is what it's going to be like when we go into ministry with TouchGlobal full time.  Away from our "stuff", friends, family and what we know as normal.   But then we got home and it didn't feel right.  It really made the word home feel a whole lot different than I had ever felt before.  Temporary, fleeting, just a stop along the way....

This is just our temporary home here on earth.  Some day we will all live eternity somewhere.  My home will be in heaven singing praises daily to my sweet Jesus.  I won't have to worry about my stuff.  Won't miss my friends or family and normal will be far greater than anything we could ever imagine here in our temporary home on earth.  It makes me wonder why I missed my house so much when it isn't really my permanent home.

Soon we will be moving to Louisiana and we will have a different house.  Same stuff, different house.  We will be in and out of that house too.  Where ever God calls us we will go.  Hurricanes on the gulf coast or Pacific ocean, earthquakes in Turkey, Japan, Haiti or another unknown location, flooding in Brazil or North Dakota or fires, tornados or drought.  God will call us to those locations and again we will leave our temporary home to live in another temporary home.  People ask...aren't you afraid?  You will have no idea where you are going...how will you prepare?  We say...no we're not afraid and God will prepare us.  He has been preparing us for such a time as this since the day we were born.  We will be ready.  God will provide the Ministry Partners in His time and that time will be when He feels we are totally ready to serve Him and not a minute or a day sooner.

So as we prepare for a new home and a new life over the next several months we will keep in mind that this home too will only be temporary.  A temporary home here on earth that is preparing us for our permanent home in heaven, serving Him and singing praises to Jesus.

"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."  2 Corinthians 4:18

Our Country's Monuments

As we have traveled throughout the country we have seen several monuments along the way.  The monuments were erected in memorial or in remembrance of so many different people or groups of people. We soon learned that we could not take pictures of every monument or we would be stopping every few miles.  Every country has their monuments and the USA is no different.  But as we have traveled across the country and talked to people we have learned that monuments are built for man and that we must build our monuments in our hearts to glorify God.

Below are just a few of the monuments we have come across.  The last one is a monument that hit us hard though.  It is the monument talked about in the documentary movie "Monumental".  Look at the pictures of this monument and read the captions below.  As you read them think about where you have built your monuments?

Monument at the gate of Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona

 Memorial at the Hoover Dam

The Statue of Liberty

Monument to the Founding Fathers

  It starts with faith that we can only get from God that is why she is pointing up and there is a star on her forehead which represents the wisdom God gives us.

  It takes morality which we get from the 10 commandments, she has no eyes so she cannot be distracted.

 

 The law is kept by the justice system whether you our rich or poor we are all treated the same.

Education is holding the Bible and this is where we are to get our education.

Liberty has the chain broken from where we have come but a sword in his hand to remind us we must fight to keep it.  Liberty can only come with the rest of these.  It cannot happen without the rest of these or Liberty would be on top.

As we serve God in our ministry we are reminded that we all have erected monuments to those we have loved and served on this earth.  The Monument to the Founding Fathers left us thinking...if our country has been built on Morality, Law, Education and Liberty, that comes together because of our Faith...are our monuments built on faith in what God can do or are our monuments built on what man can do?  We will be serving in disasters all over the world, I pray that as we go out and serve that we can continue to build our monument in heaven on our faith in what God can do.

For more information on the above monument please watch the movie "Monumental"

Family, Friends and places along the way...

We have been on the road now for 22 days.  Our travels have taken us from Minnesota through the fields of Nebraska, the mountains of Colorado, the deserts of Utah, California, Arizona and New Mexico, to the beautiful Grand Canyon and the powerful Hoover Dam.  We have seen the roaring waves of the Pacific and the oil wells of Texas.  And then the beautiful rolling hills of Arkansas and Tennessee.  We have rolled through Mississippi and then spent a few days in Alabama.

But the most important part of this trip has been the people.  From the high school classmates, in St. George, Utah and Santa Rosa, California to the siblings in Visalia, California and Memphis, Tennessee we have been welcomed with open arms.  In those 22 days we have spent only 4 nights in hotels!  We have been blessed with comfortable beds, yummy meals, laundry facilities and even an oil change.  We have been prayed over by friends that we haven't seen in years and loved on by aunts, uncles and cousins.  Below are the pictures of some of those that have blessed us along the way.  May the Lord bless them as they have been a blessing.

 

We stayed at Jane Rohr Peterson's house in St. George, UT our second night on the road.  Jane and I sat down and started to talk like we had seen each other the day before.  It was such a blessing to see Jane and meet her husband, Pete.

Two of my sister in law Cheryl's three dogs.  We stayed with Todd (Jackie's brother) and Cheryl for 5 days before we dropped Brad off at Stanford.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We then moved on to Jackie's friend Ann's house in Santa Rosa, California.  We had a great time with Ann catching up.

We spent a family day in San Francisco before we dropped Brad off.  This is fun on the Cable Cars!

On to the Los Angeles area for breakfast with Jackie's Aunt Sheila and brother, Todd.  What a blessing to see Sheila again.

And believe it or not we had dinner the same night in Phoenix with my Aunt Diane.  I am amazed at the number of people we have been able to see on this trip.

From Phoenix we moved on to Tuscon for an afternoon and evening with Rob's cousin, Gary and his wife, Patrica.  They hadn't seen each other in over 25 years. They spent ours catching up.

Then a couple of nights in New Braunfels, TX with a friend of ours that Rob met several years ago.  He made smoked ribs and pork loin.  Yum Yum!

 

Please pray for everyone that has blessed us so much! We would not be able to do this trip without them.  We are being constantly surprised by God each day.  Again, just like our ministry with TouchGlobal it is about the relationships not the tasks. We praise God for these relationships.

 Yesterday, on the 4th of July we went through some of the tornado torn parts of Harvest, Alabama.  It was a reminder of why we are on this trip and why God has called us to work in Crisis Response.  We feel more fortunate than ever that God chose us!