Winter Mornings

In my last post, I mentioned that Jeremy and I had planned to walk to school. We did that for a couple of times but the weather has not been very accommodating. It had either been raining or it was just too cold.

Anyway, last Monday I decided that we needed to resume our walk to school. Jeremy protested and said that it was still too cold. He really did not like the exercise and had gotten used to the ride to school or so I thought.

I asked Anthony what the temperature was and was told that it was in the low 30s. So I told Jeremy that if we bundled up, we could make the walk to school and added that we would get warm once we started walking. After some fussing from him, we were out of the door. We walked to the front of the house when Jeremy said that he wanted his scarf so we went back into the house. With the scarf round his neck and mouth, we set off again. It was cold and Jeremy was complaining, but I was determined to walk. He fussed a little but went along with my decision. This time we walked to the first intersection (3 houses down the road) and crossed it. By then, I had to admit that with the wind blowing, it was getting just too cold. We were sniffing and there were “tears” in our eyes. I looked at Jeremy and told him that he was right and I was wrong and that t was just too cold to walk. He smiled and we laughingly returned to the house. I got the car keys and we drove happily to school. When I came back, Anthony said that the wind chill was about 12 degree!

That incident started me thinking about what a privilege it is to be accepted and be able to admit that I am wrong. I make mistakes in my judgments. I am not perfect and never will be till my Lord changes me. But it is OK. I can change and move on to do what is right. My son accepted me and loved me anyway. I praise and thank God for accepting us as we are and for being so patient with us even in our stubborn ways. May we continue to learn and change to become the “Image of His Son”. Have a GREAT WEEK!

 

 

Staying on Track

One day, last week, I went walking with Jeremy and Jonathan just to become familiar with the route to Jeremy’s school. Our first few weeks in Albany, Jeremy took the school bus to school, but since we need the exercise we decided that we would walk to school in the morning and he will only take the school bus back after school.

There are a few roads that lead to his school and they are pretty close to one another. The road we live on is one of them.  It’s a pretty straight shot to his school though the road curves a bit. It’s about 0.8 miles with quite a lot of intersections. We started off that day, but at the 2^nd intersection, I decided to take a left turn and go on the next road thinking that it would be a shorter way to his school since we would avoid the curves in the road. We walked and walked and thought that we should be near the school but it was still not in sight. Jonathan suggested that we might be lost. I was pretty sure that we would soon see the school so continued walking. Somehow, as we crossed the various intersections, instead of staying on the one road, we had walked to another road without realizing it. I must admit that I was a little unfamiliar with where we were though I know that we would not be too far off. (Albany is a small town). Since we had made a left turn along the way, I realized that we had to turn and veered right when we came to the next intersection. Anyway, we finally saw the school. We were a couple of streets off where I thought we were supposed to be! It took us 45 minutes to walk to the school instead of the 20 minutes that it would have if we had gone on that “straight” road.

The experience reminded me of our Christian life. Jesus is the Way and if we live our lives guided by Him, we will reach our destination, our eternal abode with God. But if we decide to wander off and look for our own ways, we may get “lost” and not find our way.  I am so glad that we have a choice to change our ways when we realize our mistake. Praise God for His patience with us.

A Sister of Great Faith

It is hard to imagine being persecuted and blamed for the death of your own daughter whom you love and whose death is not your fault. But this is situation of our dear sister, Ablavino, in Tabligbo, Togo.  We received the sad news that Ablavi, Ablavino’s daughter, died and she was persecuted and blamed by her husband and family for her daughter’s death. The reason is because Ablavino is the only Christian in her family of voodoo worshippers.

I plead with you to mourn with Ablivino and pray for her that God’s Spirit be with her and that He will bless her with His strength to go through this time of bereavement. This sister has gone through a lot for her faith and she is being tested yet again. It was reported that when some Christians went to visit, pray and encourage her, she responded with tears in her eyes, "I will receive everything that God gives with thanksgiving."  Praise God for her faith.  What a great encouragement! May God give us the faith and strength to walk with Him through this life whatever life brings our way!

 

new beginnings

I thought I would have started back to writing after my arrival in the States last June but…….. Each time I wanted to share what was going with my life, there just seemed to be so many things I wanted to say. I felt that I had to start from the beginning of my life in the States and I was intimidated by the task. Week after week passed and the stories I wanted to share seem to be old news and so my blogs never were written.

Well, the New Year has arrived, so I am determined to leave last year behind and start anew. Before I do, I just want to ask you to praise and thank the Lord with me for guiding, protecting and leading us and finally, bringing us here to Albany, Texas. I believe Anthony has kept you all up to date about our travels and our time in Alabama. I praise God for the wonderful people (His people) that He has sent to bless our lives along the way. Thank you!

Well, here goes my first blog in 2007! I made some curry puffs (kind of a meat and potato patties with a curry flavor) for the church New Year’s Eve get together. I was using a pastry cutter to cut round shapes out of the pastry dough thinking that I would have uniform curry puffs! But I was mistaken. Though the dough was cut evenly, by the time I put the fillings in and shaped them, every one was different. Some were “prettier” than others and some were not so nice looking, but they were all basically the same – same pastry and filling. They will taste the same and I was not going to discard them just because they were not so pretty. As I looked at them, it reminded me that we are all similar to those pieces of pastry. God made each of us in his own image and yet we are different. Some are pretty and others are plain. Some are born with a silver spoon in their mouth and for others, life is just hard. Some are good and faithful and others, they just seem to mess up all the time. Nevertheless, God still loves every one of us the same, despite our differences and He will never consider anyone worthy of being discarded. I praise and thank Him for accepting us as we are.

By the way, Jonathan and Jeremy were very excited that I made those curry puffs as they really enjoy them, especially Jonathan, and they reminded him of our time in Togo when I made them often.

Happy New Year and May God bless you richly and your walk with Him be ever more intimate.