guac and bbq

have you ever had guacamole and barbeque sauce with some cheep meat grilled over a borrowed bbq grill. through in a side of potato mustard olive oil salad and you are almost french.

it was the best french almost like a souther feast barbeque i've had in the past 17 months. so much laughing.

bearfoot ultimate frisbee.

around the world super conpetitve ping pong.

such a postive morning.

it's been a good week. hard like normal. frustrating like life. but a good preperation day makes so much of a difference. it's so weird.

marie elise is proud to be a mormon. and lets her friends know. that's already a good thing. joel is giving itallian cds left and right. a little bucelli never hurt anybody. it made for a great saturday night pizza picnic. the general conference is such a healing gift of the lord. quiet in the dark letting the words of the prophets of god wash over my soul and respond to the questions of my heart. its just so good. a baptism on satuday right after a marriage. that's such a postivie thing. i'm excited. wish i had the right and the means to actually look attractive at the wedding but well only 6 more weeks of ugly shoes and then...well...payless here i come.

there is payless in tennessee right? if not i'm driving to edmond at 33rd and broadway and having a hayday. it's all good.

i talked to president last week. we had a little interview. he asked me what my game plan was for the next few weeks. if i've learned what the lord has sent me here for. why did he send me on a mission? i'm still not quite sure but i think it'd be nice to find out.

and my complaint of the moment is that i've givin everything i have. there is nothing left inside me. i'm empty. vide. hollow. and he responded with a story from a book. he emailed me the last page. and i want to share it with you. it's called the hiding place. by corrie ten boom.
i'm exited to read it. i think that the message is really appropriate for me. and i'm pretty sure for you. this is my experiment for the next 7 weeks. can the lord make up for what is not there. if i give my all can the lord take my meager offering and magnify it to carry me through these last few weeks. not just carry me but help me fly. i have the faith that it could work. after all he's been holding me up for a while. thorugh your prayers.

i love you.

shai

oh it's about a girl who was christian that with her family sacrificed saftey to rescue and hid persecuted jews during world war two. eventually she was discovered and sent to suffer the fate alongside so many others. she lived and became a speaker on the miracle of faith and chrisitianity. she ends her book with this page. after finishing a discours at a church she comes face to face with a man from her past. face to face with all the hate and anger and suffereing of her childhood. and some how the atonement worked even in this moment. the power is over not just sin but heart ache and suffereing and sickness and hurt and impatience and every feeling of lonelyness discouragement fear. all of it.

powerful. huh?

On His Love Hinges the Goodness of the World

“It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message, Faulein.” He said. “to think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!”

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.
I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

Corrie Ten Boom “The Hiding Place” p 238