MISSION UPDATE: Freshly stretched

Sometimes God gives me just enough quiet to dust off the pages of this journal and write without interruption.

Other times He nudges me to write while the chaos swirls around me.

We are emerging from a storm that has raged for 18 long months and many things fell to the wayside during that time.

The sponsorship program letters ceased to be sent.

Videos failed to be filmed. Or sometimes they got filmed but never edited.

Newletters came to an abrupt halt. In fact, I lost all my mailing lists (which had been built up over the course of 15 years) due to the service I was using permanently deleting all my files.

Hannah's website went offline, along with the full archive of her posts, as well as those of our past volunteers.

Trying to scoop up the fragments of what we'd once balanced so carefully feels discouraging and impossible. But what I'm realizing is that God brought us through the fire and now He's not wanting us standing ash-covered to start off where we were.

He's wiping us clean and starting us fresh. Not where we were, but where we are now.

A few weeks ago the powerfully strong conviction to kick our refined sugar habit came over several of us at the same time. I mentioned to Hannah that I sensed God asking me to discontinue the use of refined sugar, but that He also wanted us to break all our Thai children of this addictive cycle. She sort of blinked slowly and then said, "I have been thinking the same thing!" Sugar in Thailand is like sugar in America ... it's everywhere and in everything.

We talked to the children and told them we'd continue to see to it that they had treats, we'd just learn to make them healthy. And much to our surprise, there was little to no resistance. And we've quickly learned to replace birthday donuts with homemade cake and desserts that promote health rather than destroying it. Special event ice cream has been introduced in its healthiest, non-refined form using fruits that still hit that creamy, sweet spot.

We've noticed a somewhat radical difference in demeanor. Calm isn't a word you'd generally use to describe the kids here, and while it still might be a stretch, they're definitely much calmer. The spats between them have reduced and the ability and willingness to focus during worship has increased.

In completely unrelated news, I started my fifth month of Thai language study today and I praise God that I can now read simple passages and I can finally understand a bit of what's happening around me. It's been 5 years of hearing sounds but not knowing what they meant for the most part, so in some ways it's almost like someone who has been deaf getting a hearing device that opens the world of sound to them. For a solid week after I realized I could understand a significant amount of what was being said around me, I'd find myself almost startled when someone would speak to me in Thai and I understood the words. Once I even jumped in alarm and said, "Hey! I know what you just asked me!" rather than answering them. I am so, so grateful that God has provided the ability for me to take the classes because they're expensive in both time and money.

Speaking of money, there is so much to praise God about there, as well. Because for much of this year, the funding that has come in at the beginning of the month hasn't been enough to cover the expenses of the month, even without the fees associated with my Thai class. We never know from one month to the next what we'll have and that makes budgeting quite a challenge. We see the amount we have to work with as the calendar flips a page and often wonder what God has planned to make it stretch. Because we always know He'll stretch it.

Several times we've gotten to the day where the staff needs paid and the groceries need to be purchased and there's nowhere near enough. We look at each other and wonder, and we pray for the provision of our daily bread. And just like the widow of Zarephath, our "barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail,"

We may not always like living that way but I'm honestly not convinced there's a better way to live than to be in this kind of constant awareness of our absolute dependence on God.

Right now, I need to wrap this up and get all these little squirrels in my house tucked onto their mats for the night. Morning will bring its blur of activity and we all need rest to meet it.