Rain, rain, rain

It rained a lot this week. On Wednesday it did not stop raining ALL DAY. The rain is an amazing blessing in a lot of places, especially Texas. However, when you have a big German Shepherd and a backyard that is missing quite a bit of grass you tend to accentuate the negative instead of the positive. We've done it all: used a towel to try and dig the mud from between his toes and his legs, filled a bowl with water and dunked and scrubbed his paws, Matt actually managed to pick Bane up and get him into the bathroom for a bath on Friday (which I'm sure was disgusting). Needless to say, Bane was not allowed to go out and run around the backyard much this week. This led to extreme boredom and many sad eyes...but what are we supposed to do?
It was freezing and raining most mornings, but I gave in and took Bane for a walk Thursday morning. I quickly walked him down to the mailbox as my car sat in the road heating up. When I got into the house and looked through the mail, it was like I had opened the golden ticket for the chocolate factory. We had two pledge cards in the mail! We have not received many pledge cards, so to get one is quite good and to get two at a time seems like a miracle. God was not only raining down the wet stuff, but he was raining down some financial blessing and provision on Matt and me in preparation for Australia. As if that was not enough, he decided to rain down blessings all day long. Thursday Matt was formulating an email to send to the church we attend to discuss more with them the next step in the process of them giving us a one time donation to help with our moving fund. I won't lie, this was a big chunk of change and it was making me a little nervous to not just have the check sent to our supporting church. Anything could happen, minds could change, we could fall off the radar, you name it. However, as Matt was preparing to write the email the recipient of the not yet written email called Matt! No joke, it was pretty awesome. He said, "We're ready to cut this check, are you ready for us to send it?" All I can say is that I'm grateful for times like this when God decides to rain down a lot of blessing all in one day.
On Saturday Matt and I held a come and go open house for people to have the opportunity to come by and learn more about our financial need and what it means to be a financial partner. We had a few people come with interest, and a few people come to encourage. Overall it was a good day. We had a dear friend come by who lived in Australia for many years, it is always good to see his face and hear his stories. I'm fairly glad that the week is over because it was exhausting for many reasons, but I am very glad for the rain.