Pomp and circumstance

Vancouver's Trout Lake Park
It's been a wild week here at the Women of Hope house. We've gone from prayer to laughter to tears to anger to peace to fear to joy...and on it goes. Please keep us in your prayers, especially Connie and Lisa who are having some difficulties adjusting to life here and to living life together under the same roof. The enemy would love to convince them to leave or to relapse.

I'm so happy to be here that I thank God every night when I go to bed. Even though there are difficulties and challenges that come with living in community, and even though I am busy from morning through till late at night most days, I am excited. I know that God is going to grow me in ways I probably can't even imagine. The plan is for me to take over more and more of the responsiblity of managing the house and discipling the women. I'd be very grateful for your prayers; I am a person who does not have a strong administrative gift and so there are many challenges as I try to organize my time and to remember the weekly house routines and the duties I am expected to perform.

I am becoming niew aware of just how self-centered I still am and how little time I spend thinking of the needs of others. Lord, help me to learn to put others' needs before my own. Thank God for Elsie, our director, and her patience. She's an incredible woman of God and to be honest I can't even aspire to be like her. She accomplishes so much in one day it seems humanly impossible - and she does it all with an attitude of love and grace. She always has time for those who come needing a hug or a chat, and she deals with every emergency that comes up (and there's one every day here) without getting into a flap about it or feeling frustrated and resentful that her sermon preparation time is being stolen - yet again.

I read somewhere recently about the incredible power of two made one. It was a passage about how when we have Christ with us and in us, we can accomplish things that would normally be impossible. I guess there's a lot more of me that needs to be killed - crucified with Christ. William Booth, the founder of Salvation Army said that a person's usefulness to God was equivalent to the measure of his/her surrender. Lord, I surrender all that I am and ever will be to You. Help me to be more like Jesus in every way. I ask this in Jesus' Name.