Leveraging Your Past

I hope you know how much I treasure the prayer, encouragement and financial support that I receive from so many of you. I am humbled to serve on your behalf. I recently saw a talk given by a Wess Stafford from Compassion International. He endured a horrific experience for years as he was spiritually, emotionally, physically and sexually abused as a child in a school for missionary kids in Africa. He is able to leverage his past to fuel his compassionate serving for children through Compassion International. After watching this and the recent Graham Cooke dvd, I am reminded that what Satan intends to use to destroy us, God uses for His glory. We can stand on God’s promises and we to be excited when we have a problem or difficulty because we know God will not allow us to suffer without using our pain to do great and mighty things through us. I encourage you to be in prayer and search for ways to use your past pain to fuel ways for you to serve. Combined with your gifts, talents, resources and influence, you can use that pain to do mighty things in partnership with God.

Peace be with you during this Lent season. My family and I will be serving Easter dinner to the 30 men in the Congregations for the Homeless shelter at Westminster. Please email or call me if you’d like to join us or provide some Easter basket goodies. We’d love to add more chairs to the table for you!

You are precious in His sight.

Smiles abound while building community

The mobile dental van brightened some more smiles last Friday thanks to Denise, Molly and Dr. Cho. They are busting at the seams in their excitement to serve and the patients really pick up on this. They know how much we all care for them. We are in search of a dental hygienist to volunteer for the van one day per month. We are currently without a hygienist and there is a great need. Will you please ask the hygienist at your dentist’s office if they would consider volunteering for one or more times for our mobile dental van? I’d be happy to talk with them. Medical Teams International also has a dvd explaining their program that I could send to you to watch with your hygienist. The dental van will be in the parking lot at Westminster Chapel on Sunday, March 21 and holding an open house for folks to step in and see what it’s like. Please make time to check it out. It’s really cool!

I see relationships building between myself and the Latino women. I feel bad that we’ve had to cancel the last two hygienist appointment days. The care is so much needed and they are so patient in waiting. They are so gracious in letting me try to speak my tiny bit of Spanish with them. They are so encouraging. I realized at the clinic on Friday that I actually caught the gist of what they were talking about. That was exciting! Their language is so beautiful and I just love these women.