Peace

I've been having bad dreams/nightmares over the past couple of weeks. Not every night but often enough. Mostly they have been somewhat comical, but last night was just plain disturbing and I woke up feeling the weight of it hanging over me. Then Julie and I sat down to do our reading (we're half way through the New Testament now, yipee!) and we were in Romans. It's a heavy book even when you are fully alert and not feeling disturbed already, but today it was even harder to focus than normal. On the other hand, listening to Julie read her chapters gave me a new insight into Paul's letters. I've always thought of them as books, but they are more like speeches. We ended in chapter eight. It talks about the evilness of sin that is in the world, but then it ends with those famous verses which just cleanse my soul of horror of my dreams:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or
persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ... No, in all these
things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced
that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor
the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ
Jesus our Lord.

Those verses just speak peace. God's love conquers all. And it is always there no matter what we are going through.

Pretty and Fun

We celebrated my birthday this weekend. One of my gifts was a new camera which several of my family got together to give me! :) So, I've been trying to put it to good use and hopefully will have more opportunities to do so over the next week.
Here are just a few pictures to start. I'm still learning all the ins and outs of my new fancy schmanzzy camera, so please bear with me.

First up we have a couple of coconut cakes that I made for my office and ladies prayer group for my birthday/Easter. And down below are the roses that my dad gave me for my birthday! :)

Consumed

My mind is all consumed with my brother's wedding recently. I think I am coming alive again after my winter hibernation and realizing that there are only two months left and I have two flower girl dresses to make and a wedding cake!
This last weekend I did manage to pretty much finish my dress. Still a little hand sewing that needs to be done, but pretty well done. Now on to smaller and better things. I am sewing the dresses for my nieces to wear. So looking forward to seeing them in this wedding! They are three and five and are the same size and a lot of people mistake them for each other in pictures. I think they'll be adorable little girls in their cream-colored princess dresses.
The material is laying out all over my sewing machine at the moment, just waiting to be cut. I just wish that I could make a dress for each of my nieces for this wedding. It is so much fun to make them feel like little princesses! And of course, those are fun clothes to sew too. ;)

Course Work

I'm working on the doctrine course right now. Still, I should say. It is hard to be so close to the end of our major projects and have this one lag on forever.
We have begun to make some progress on it. A lot of it is two steps forward three steps back at this point as everything has to be checked and re-checked for accuracy. The main progress that has been made is that I have recruited some help from my mom and Andre, a Ukrainian acquaintance, who just happens to teach in Bible colleges on some of these topics.
Please pray that Andre will be able to help us in a significant way with this course. I am too physically and mentally exhausted at this point to do any real work on it and mum has plenty of other work that she needs to be doing. After he works on the lessons, I will still have to review them and edit them, write the exams and the course guide; so, there is still plenty of work for me, even with delegating some of it.
Pray that Andre is able to come here to Rivne tomorrow to meet up and discuss this project. I am really not up to going to Kyiv. Spring has been delayed here and it seems that affects my health a lot and my ability to pull out of this chronic fatigue down cycle. Consequently, I am struggling to even get out of my own apartment, let alone to Kyiv. Unfortunately, Andre has some back problems, so he needs prayer for healing too!
It is an answer to prayer that God brought Andre to mind and that he is willing and interested to help with this project.

Pray for India

I thought I'd pass on this disturbing prayer request from my friends in India:

This morning I attended a pastors' prayer meeting. Some of the pastors shared that they just recently became aware that as part of Kali Puja, humans are being sacrificed here in Siliguri. They also said that sometimes before commencing large construction projects, humans (mostly children) are being sacrificed. They're pretty sure that these things are taking place in the Kali Temple in the market in the center of town. Please join with us in praying that this murderous idolatry will stop and that those involved will repent.

Blogging

Is it odd that I can tell if a blog or article has been written by a man or woman, without knowing in advance? I've been researching some different recipes and found that I just knew instinctively. Began to check up, and sure enough, I haven't been wrong so far!
I know, that is highly important to your life and you are so glad you came here with your morning coffee.
I'll definitely never be one of those bloggers that people go to every day with their morning coffee to read for a laugh or to just enjoy the good writing. But then, I've never aspired to that.
For me, blogging is sometimes therapy, but mostly a way to communicate with many people at the same time while being able to hide behind my computer screen. You can stay updated on my life (which I know is vastly important to you), ministry and prayer requests; I feel not so isolated by being able to share urgent needs or praises or just little stories.
But really, my blog is about my adventures in faith. Hence all the prayer requests. It is about the journey of faith and recording just a little of what God does so that we can all see how He is at work today both in the world at large, but particularly in my life and in the lives of those who surround me. It's an interesting journey. God is never boring.

Fun and Games

Well, mostly just games, not of the fun kind.
Tonight my parents' neighbor came by asking about our visas. He's a local pastor and apparently "the government" has been asking questions about anyone on a religious visa. Like, what exactly are they doing? Not a good sign for all of us in ministry.
It'll be interesting to see how this develops and what it does to the visa situation in the future. Mine expires at the end of summer. They've already been cracking down on where you can get them renewed from. Interesting times ahead, that's for sure.

Little Prayer Request

I pinched a nerve in my back again today. Don't know how or what happened. Was going along fine and then all of a sudden in so much pain I could barely move! Thankfully, my roommate got me some ibuprofen (although even after five of those I can still only move gingerly--whine, whine, whine) and I was able to get in to our "doctor"/masseuse (think pain and agony massage, not rest and relaxation) this afternoon. Hopefully, it will let go and dissipate over the next couple of days. Please pray for that.
On the good side, I have two maids/roommates right now to wait on me hand and foot, so I should probably take advantage of that while I can. (Julie, Myriam, that could be the ibuprofen speaking.)