Yes, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything. Life has been a bit busy. I spent one week in November working with my teammates in Iowa. It was a good and productive week. The following week I went to North Dakota in an effort to make arrangements for my mother to move into an assisted living facility. However, I was not successful in that endeavor.

I spent Thanksgiving weekend at the Springhill Suites Medical Center in San Antonio. I like getting free nights! I got lots of sleep, but I still finished the second draft of my Colossians study guide and ordered a proof. The proof came Friday, so now I need to check it for errors. I’m hoping to get that done this week.

This past Tuesday marked 5 years until my target retirement date of 12/1/2014. I have since realized I could leave up to one year earlier by selling my mobile home and lot. I was planning on doing that anyway. I just hadn’t calculated the potential effect on my moving date. So, I plan to put the house and lot up for sale in December of 2013. Once it sells, I will have the finances to leave. This is all subject to God’s plan and His timing. My job is to make preparations and let Him adjust the timing as He chooses.

Thursday, I found out a friend died of bone cancer. Her funeral is this Tuesday. Linzel was a kind, gracious, and loving Christian. I will miss her, but I know she is in heaven, and all her pain has ended. All her questions have been answered. One day, I will see her again.

Friday afternoon, my brother called to tell me that our mother was having hip surgery that evening. It was to be either a partial or total hip replacement. This was her third hip surgery in 3.5 months. Not good for an 81-year-old woman, but she came through fine. I talked to her today. She’s doing fine, but she said her throat is very sore from the breathing tube they inserted during surgery. Tomorrow, I will try to reach the charge nurse and get the details on the surgery, when Mom will be released, and whether her rehab will be at the hospital or back in the nursing home. I would greatly appreciate your prayers for her quick recovery, a cooperative attitude with the staff, and agreement to move to an assisted living facility.

I’m very busy at work, but everything’s going well. I’m planning to spend Christmas week writing devotionals and working on my Spanish. I have a lot to learn!

Have a blessed week! Thanks for your prayers.

After spending some time this afternoon writing a long letter and email, I thought I’d better change clothes and eat some dinner so I’d be ready to leave for the movie Samaritan’s Purse is showing at Calvary Chapel San Antonio tonight. The CDs that had been playing all day in the living room were still going. I’ve heard these CDs many times, so the songs are all familiar. As I walked over to the work table where I had been packing boxes of things to give away, one of those familiar songs was playing. I love God’s sense of humor. The song was “If You Say Go,” and it goes like this:

If You say go, we will go
If You say wait, we will wait
If You say step out on the water
And they say it can’t be done
We’ll fix our eyes on You and we will come

Your ways are higher than our ways
And the plans that You have laid
Are good and true
If You call us to the fire
You will not withdraw Your hand
We’ll gaze into the flames and look for You

I don’t know who the author is. It might be a Vineyard song. The interesting thing, though, is that as that song was playing, I picked up the book The Divine Diet by Carole Lewis. I thought, “Oh, yeah, I wanted to read this.” I would guess it was not more than 10 or 15 seconds after hearing “Your ways are higher than our ways” that I opened the book, just to glance through it, and started reading a lady’s testimonial. What did she say? She quoted Isaiah 55:8, “My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts are higher than your thoughts.”

Yes, Lord. I do know that’s true! Given last weekend’s post, you would be absolutely correct in guessing that the words of this song strongly resonate within me.

Have a blessed week!

It is 12;30 a.m. as I write this. It is long past my bedtime, but I must write this. Tonight, I watched, once again, portions of a recording from the 2006 North American Christian Convention. Rick Atchley was the featured speaker for the final session of the convention. As I skipped ahead to get to Rick’s message, I saw the words, “Here am I. Send me. - Isaiah” on screen. I pressed the reverse button and went back to the beginning of that segment. I had seen these quotations several times before, but tonight they hit me—hard. Projected over satellite images of various parts of the earth were quotes like these:

I have but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather burn it out in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light. -John Falconer

In the vast plain to the north I have sometimes seen, in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary has ever been. -Robert Moffat

The command has been to “go,” but we have stayed—in body, gifts, prayer and influence. He has asked us to be witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth. -Robert Savage

We talk of the Second Coming; half the world has never heard of the first. -Oswald J. Smith

This is the one that hit me the hardest:

“‘Not called!” did you say? “Not heard the call,” I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters, and servants and masters not to come there. And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world. -William Booth

Through my tears, I copied down the words. Then, Rick Atchley’s message came on, and I heard again the words I’ve heard many times now. Tonight, the impact was far greater.

“One day in particular, I preached for several hours under three mango trees to 400 people. Twenty-five percent of my audience was dying of HIV. Everywhere I looked, there were orphans. Everywhere I looked, there were people praying for their next meal. And it hit me. I don’t care if you want to call me a pastor or a preacher. I don’t care what your view of the Millenium is, and I don’t care if you want to sing with or without a guitar. Just come stand under that tree, and help me tell those people about Jesus.”

This all came on the heels of my hearing the song “Here Am I” by Stephen Snider for the first time yesterday.

Here Am I

Verse 1:
So many lost and dying in this world today
Have you heard their crying
Or do you turn away
The harvest now is plenteous
But the laborers are few.
God needs some willing vessels to be used.

Chorus:
Here am I
I will go
I will reach the lost untold
I will give the Lord control
I will tell them of the crimson flow.

Verse 2:
Is it too late for caring
Does Jesus really save
Are we truly praying
For the blind to find their way
Little children are falling into
A burning Hell
Will anyone heed the calling to go and tell?

Chorus.

Bridge:
For my Saviour died
On that old rugged cross
He thought of me when
He counted the cost
How can I say that I love Him
If I don’t reply?

Chorus.

O Lord, I do love you, and I do reply. Here am I. Send me! God, wherever you want me to go, I will go. I have heard your call. You know how much I love the people of Honduras, but if you want me to go somewhere else, I will. If you want to change my Honduras plans, change them. If Honduras is where you want me, help me to stay the course. Direct my path, O God. Show me the way you want me to go.

Lord, help me to not waste the rest of my life. I can’t change the past, but, God, with your help I can keep from wasting the rest of my life. Help me, please to follow Jesus, to obey his commands. Father, Jesus said to “go into all the world.” Jesus said his disciples would be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. In Jesus’ most holy and precious name, I beg you, Father. Send me. Amen.