Resurrection

I was thinking and praying this morning, and realized that I have been on autopilot. Not only have I been on autopilot, I chose a boring, dirt road to wander down. What do I mean by this? Well, I've chosen laying under the covers way too long every morning over the warmth and refreshment that talking to God can bring. I've not really prayed much, because I've allowed myself to think that when I bring the same thing up to God over and over again, He gets tired of me. Deep down inside I know this is not true, but I think I can confidently say that those thoughts happen to myself and others quite often. I've not allowed myself to dream about what will happen when we are in Australia. This is a big deal, because when we stop thinking about and praying for the moms, brothers, and wives that we'll meet in Australia this whole mission becomes about us pushing through to a goal that we've stubbornly set for ourselves, instead of faithfully taking a path that God has cleared for us. Whenever I find myself in this funk I like to think about the words that Paul said back in the day, "And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you". This morning as I was thinking about those words, God took my thoughts to another place that I'd like to share.
Let's think about the resurrection in reverse order. Jesus was raised from the dead, and that same power of God that brought a dead man to life is living in me. Pretty awesome. But to be resurrected, you must be dead, and before that you must have died. That might seem redundant, but there really is a huge difference between dying and being dead. I personally think the former has the potential to be much worse. This is where God took me today, in order to accept the joy of being given new life we have to accept that sometimes we are going to have to experience death. This could actually be the death of a loved one or close friend, but it really goes much further than that. Let's face it, really bad things happen all the time in our relationships, around us, because of us, etc. Stick with me, the connection is coming. We can't expect to fully appreciate the fact that we are living a resurrected life until we've been brought out of something that just about killed us. This is where autopilot comes in. In order to not feel the burden of death in my life, I often just avoid it all. I don't experience the good, life changing, life bringing opportunities in my own and others' lives because I don't want to experience the bad. However, what I end up with is a life traveled on an ugly, dirt road with no joy, memories, or life.

Fundraising and TeamQuest

Last Friday Matt and I held our fundraising dinner. I blogged about it in my last post...remember the breakdown? Well, no extra people came. We ended up having it in one of the smaller rooms of the church building, and it was great! We think that God really wanted the specific attendees together for this specific dinner. We ended up having five families represented and two individuals, totaling about eighteen people. We were really blessed to have Matt's mom help me get the food ready and the room set up. Help me is really an understatement, she's wonderful! The Green's blessed us by serving the dinner. Dwight W. who I've mentioned before came to support us. He and his wife shared the good news of Jesus in Adelaide for many years. Two of our very sweet and supportive female friends came to learn more about what we're doing. They really blew us away with wanting to spend the evening encouraging and praying with us. Perhaps the most surprising couple of the evening though was one that Matt first met when they lived in Searcy, Arkansas. They are family friends, and David works at ACU with Matt's stepdad. Their coming was so refreshing! After everyone ate that night, Matt and I gave our usual presentation. It was pretty apparent that this couple was soaking it up. After the presentation we opened the floor up to questions, and they had many good ones. When it was all said and done they said that they were really encouraged by our excitement in going to Australia. It was pretty amazing, because we encouraged them by showing excitement in being on this journey, and they encouraged us by coming out of the blue to support us and spend the evening hearing what we have to say. What we've found is that people don't even give Australia a chance when they think of countries/continents where not many people know the love of Jesus. However, once they hear more about it they are blown away. We don't ask people to be as excited as us about going...but we can't help but think that if they heard our story they might be!

This past Thursday our team was again part of TeamQuest. TeamQuest is an evening that ACU hosts where students can go and learn about how to be involved in God's mission through doing internships around the world and joining mission teams. Each team that is currently training makes food from their country to serve. We also talk to the students about the different internships we've done, our teams, where we're going, etc. This year I told students about how I did an internship in New Zealand in 2004. I would make the joke as I talked about how many of them were in high school when I did that internship. I had one student say, "I think I was in middle school". Yep, I'm old. Anyway, I love TeamQuest because I love to tell our story. God has done such crazy things in our lives that I can't help tell about them. It's cool to talk to students and see their eyes light up as they're thinking, "Hey, I can do that!" For those of you who just go places for the food, this year we served curried sausages (probably more of an Indian dish,
but still really popular in Australia), ANZAC biscuits, hot tea, and of course the usual Vegemite on crackers. We serve the Vegemite primarily for the shock factor. :) Don't worry, that flag is not touching the ground. I don't know if that's a big deal in Australia, but we try to show respect to the Australian flag just like we do the US flag.

This morning Matt is enjoying a Nascar race with some of the men in his family. It was kind of amusing, his stepdad called during the week and said, "Tish did not want to go right? Because if she did, we did not get her a ticket". I can't think of many more places I'd rather not be, but I really appreciated him thinking of me! I'm getting quite a few team things done; I've updated our "partner tally sheet" as I like to call it. I also sent out an email to those who have given us their email address in the past for updates. I contacted two new possible supporters, or at least people who might know people who might be supporters...you know what I mean. I'm about to send out some thank you cards. Then Bane and I are going to go out and enjoy this amazing day, he deserves to run around outside and sniff some light poles.