NTM

Tropical Storm Fay is bearing down on us, due here tomorrow. They are saying it will probably strengthen into our first hurricane.

Our family Disaster Readiness Kit so far has one item, but it is pretty nifty–a flashlight/radio with a solar panel and hand crank that can also charge your cell phone!! Oh yes, and 6 gallons of drinking water. (You’re supposed to have a gallon per person per day for two weeks. That would be, um, 70 gallons.) This morning I plan to fill the van with gas and get some cash from the ATM . . . we have enough food for about a week . . . so we’ll see how it goes.

Our NTM main building was built in 1925, so as our pastor’s son said yesterday, if it was going to come down in a hurricane, it would have by now. We are about as far inland as you can be in Florida, which helps too.

Jack is wishing he weren’t on security duty this week. Fay could cause that to be more "interesting" than usual!
We know God is in control, and are thankful to be safe in His hand. Thank you for praying for us, and for the work of NTM to reach EVERY tribe with the good news!!

Danielle is now a Young Marine!  She has been talking about it all summer, since we saw them marching in the Memorial Day parade.  We visited the unit meeting on Saturday and took the plunge to sign her up.

She is excited about learning physical fitness, color guard, wilderness survival, First Aid, and lots of other neat things. She has to exercise regularly, eat right, keep her room clean (woo hoo!!), and practice saying "Yes sir" and "Yes Ma’am", so it will be a habit when she is with her unit, the Orlando Devil Dogs. Our only concern is potential time conflicts with other activities. Basic Training is every Saturday from Sept. 6 to Oct. 11, then unit meetings will be two Saturdays a month.

I spent the day Saturday visiting with other parents and helping the adult leaders make lunch, clean up etc. Since most of our time is spent with other Christians, It is neat to have the opportunity to build friendships with people who may not be, and share Christ with them. The leaders are a great group of vets and their spouses who are volunteering their time with the kids. They emphasize safety also, which is comforting. 

Please pray that our family will be a good testimony in this new venture, and that God will use it to help Danielle in the areas of self-discipline and respect.

Lake Monroe Christian Academy, our children’s school, started this morning!!

All three have been counting down the days, especially Regan who started kindergarten. (Look out!!) He will go in the mornings only, and have Fridays off.

Evan’s class, grades 1-2, has a new teacher, Miss Drake. She came to our apt. for dinner last week and we really enjoyed getting to know her. She has decorated her classroom to be really appealing, and added a turtle tank!  Danielle’s class still has their corn snake, Checkers, so the LMCA reptile population is growing and diversifying.

Danielle is thrilled to have Mrs. Woody again, who is also terrific.  She is making extra effort to challenge Danielle; instead of standard spelling words, Danielle will be working on Spelling Bee word lists, even though she won’t be old enough to compete officially until next year.

Also beginning is the Art class I’m teaching for grades 3-4 (Danielle’s class). It is a privilege to be involved in the school, and one hour a week is just right for me.

We are so grateful to the Lord and to NTM for making a quality education available to our children, and we pray His richest blessing on all the missionary teachers for their willingness to serve Him in this way.

This week we have been blessed with two amazing gifts.  The first was a generous financial gift from a dear missionary friend in France.  With the dollar so weak against the Euro, she certainly doesn’t have spare cash as the world would calculate finances.  But she wanted to be a blessing to us, specifically requesting that we use the money for a special family outing that the children will remember.  So we pray the Lord will bless her over and above her sacrifice for us.

The second gift was the offer of Taco, a beautiful Andalusian horse, from a dear friend at our church.  She knows how I have loved horses since childhood and that it would be a dream come true for me to own one.

This offer has created a flood of thoughts and feelings in my heart.  The greatest is joy, that my friend would entrust to me a valuable animal that she loves.  Then there is wondering if God would choose to make possible such a seemingly impractical situation, for a poor missionary lady to have such an expensive pet.

Caring for a horse takes time as well as money, and the Lord knows that I would not want to enter a situation that would distract from family or ministry.  But perhaps Taco could add to family and ministry opportunities.  God knows my heart much better than I, and I am confident He will work all things for the best.

One of the first things we did at Palmetto Ave. Baptist Church last summer was help at a work day. No one knew us then, but we made a splash:  Evan fell in the baptistry.

And now a whole year has gone by, and another work day rolled around. This time we knew a lot more people, and Evan didn’t fall in the baptistry. The kids had a great time playing with their friends, and actually helped some. 

They asked me to clean the baptistry. While the janitor was locating rubber gloves, our preacher asked me to put some silk flowers in a closet. But the closet was FULL.

Meanwhile someone else did the baptistry, so I 
helped to clean out the closet!  This closet’s notable feature was boxes of Space Camp jumpsuits, floor to ceiling.  They were donated to be taken on mission trips; NASA stipulated they could not be distributed in the US.  But most places where PABC goes on mission trips are hot, and so the jumpsuits have stayed. And, alas, they will probably end up in a dumpster. 

Jack painted five or six picnic tables electric blue.  He didn’t get a cushy air-conditioned job like me.

We brought home a few treasures from the closet: school supplies, Bible teaching materials, and leftover Christmas candy that we put out for everyone here at the mission to help themselves.

This week’s Sunday evening service was a blessing. Our teens just returned from their mission trip to the "other side" of the Bahamas, the ghettos that most tourists never see. They did street evangelism during the days, and park ministry in the evenings.
They were touched by the poverty they witnessed, and were so excited that about 40 people accepted Christ. Several teens, and adults too, testified of their renewed burden to share Christ with lost people here in the States.  We all need that!!