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What a Week!
Last Thursday our friend Kelly took a bunch of us out for his birthday. (He's a firefighter with an abundance of gift cards, bless him!) He turned 47. But, um, his kids told the wait staff he was turning 50, which our waiter proudly announced to the other patrons while the kids (okay, we all) laughed. Hard. Our waiter never did realize how he'd been manipulated!
The next day my friend Crissy arrived from Fort Hood with her kids and stayed overnight so I could go with them to the airport and help get them situated on their flight to Pennsylvania. Her hubby is in Iraq for fifteen months, and she has three kiddos under the age of five. Imagine all these little ones and the stroller and ten bags getting checked and through x-ray. Oy! She did it once alone and swore never again!
The day after they left, my gourmet cook friend Mary had a fab brunch for some of her friends. Imagine screeching to a halt during the insanity of the season and taking time to savor good food and fellowship. Delish!
Later that day, my parents arrived from Oregon. I had seventeen here for the big Christmas feast, a highlight of which was hearing from my student Deepthi and her husband, Immanuel, about how they celebrate Christmas in India. Apparently they have an all-night caroling party during which they visit every single church member. (That'd cut down on the number of churches with 6,000 members, eh?)
Yesterday was my birthday. My sis had us all over for dinner at her place, and my niece made my fave cake: chocolate on chocolate. Yum! Then my bro-in-law dragged out the old slides of us all 25 years ago. Ohmygoodness--it was too funny. I'm not crazy about aging, but if the alternative is to relive the polyester double-knit years... Know what I mean?
This morning at 4:30 my folks left, and tomorrow I take off for four days to meet up with our church's sister church in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. They have established a mission church in an area that has no plumbing or electricity, and every year they ask us to bring a few hundred boxes of gifts for families (toothpaste, toothbrush, washcloths, soap, balls, dolls, stuffed animals). For most of the recipients, it'll be the only Christmas gifts they receive. My friend and neighbor, Reiko, coordinated the box effort this year. When she was a little girl in Japan she was on the receiving end of such gifts and it meant so much to her that she is now giving back. It's a joy to get to be a part of it. Would you please say a prayer for us and our team and our efforts?
Gracias, amigos!
Some Links for You
FYI, Dallas Seminary has posted a profile titled "Hitting the Shelves: Professor Sandra Glahn Talks about Her New Novel" on their web site. You can read it by going here.
Also, here's a link to an article I wrote in Kindred Spirit magazine titled "The Gift God Still Wants" about what's at the top of God's "wish list" this and every Christmas.
I had a blast on Sunday meeting making a surprise visit to a book group in Denton that was discussing Informed Consent. I'll post a photo as soon as they send it.
Joy to the...Wierd?
As I write this, my daughter is downstairs practicing her violin. What a delight to hear "Joy to the World" and "Deck the Halls" live and in tune.
The serenity of her music stands in stark contrast with this week's big news in the world of biotech. Did you hear? Some South Koreans have cloned cats that glow in the dark. As Dave Barry says, "I swear I am not making this up." Apparently these scientists have cloned cats by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene, which they say could help develop treatments for human genetic diseases. And glowing in the dark turned out to be a side effect.
Just think of the ramifications for humans... You go on a Scouting campout and forget your flashlight but remember your protein pills. Voila! Swallow a tablet and you can light up the path on the way to the outhouse. (You can read more and see a really weird photo of glowing kittens here: RedOrbit.)
Creative Soul
Do you know a creative soul (other than yourself)? Tell us about him or her. My Creative Soul Award goes to a former co-worker named Jon. Whenever his little girls didn't want to put their shoes on to go somewhere, instead of yelling at them, he would grab a few pairs, line them up, and pretend to be a shoe salesman. He'd get them to try on what looked best with their outfits, and voila! Ready to go!
Home Again
Wednesday after the class I co-teach, I hopped a plane to Little Rock, Arkansas, so I could speak to a group of women who did my Premium Roast with Ruth study this fall. My hostess asked if I'd like to stay with her or in a hotel, and I opted for her place. Little did I know I was choosing my own suite at the top of a cliff overlooking the river! When I awoke yesterday morning, from my bed I could see the dazzling sunrise over the river. What a gift!
And if that weren't enough, many of the women wrote thank-you notes to me, which meant a lot. I couldn't believe it when they presented me with an entire bag full of them.
I returned home yesterday. After I landed around 4:30, I dashed straight home to get to my daughter's Christmas concert. Way fun.
If you are one of the 248 people waiting on an email reply from me about something, now you know why!
World AIDS Day
Today is World AIDS day. World Vision has a great resource site, where I learned about caring for/feeding an AIDS orphan for $26/month.
I also love what my friend, Heather, is doing in Kenya!
James 1:27 says," Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."
Last Month at Elmbrook
No, it's not a poster for "Women in Black." It's me with two of my fave thinkers, Sarah Sumner (left) and Carolyn Custis James.
If you are a woman in ministry leadership, mark your calendar for the Whitby Forum's Synergy conference in Orlando, April 11-13, 2008. (The Whitby Forum is Carolyn's brain child.) But don't worry--you don't have to wear a black suit to attend!
Thanksgiving
We also met our grand-nephew for the first time.
Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving full of gratitude and family and great food!
Growing Greener
Every time I walk into a Wal-Mart that’s overly air conditioned or see a building lit up at night, I wonder why none of the lists of what we can do to reduce energy consumption include stuff that could seriously reduce business energy. But I can’t control that what those businesses do, so I’ll just do what I can. Here are some new suggestions I discovered tonight while reading an airline magazine:
. Cancel your phone book delivery and use the online directory. About ten percent of dump waste is decomposing phone books.
. Keep your tires inflated. Doing so can improve your mileage up to 3 percent. That’s about 16 gallons per year for the average American.
. Replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. If every American did this with just five of their bulbs, we’d save a trillion pounds of greenhouse gases.
.Give the receipt a pass. Next time you use the ATM, forego the little slip of paper. If everybody in our fair land quit doing this, we’d save a roll big enough to wrap around the earth like an Ace bandage…fifteen times over.
. Wash your clothes in cold water. I’ve been doing this for years, and nobody has ever told me my clothes look dingy. (Or are you all just being polite?) Number of barrels of oil we’d save if we all did this: 100K. Every day.
. Work from home. Ah, the joys of being a freelance writer. If everybody were so lucky, we’d save a billion galls of gas every year. But then, all that competition. Oy!
I saw a new reviewer's opinion out there about Cappuccino with Colossians. Check it out!
Now...today I want to do something a little different. I met Betsy in Memphis last month, and she told me an amazing story. I asked her to share it, so here goes:
My brother and I grew up going to church for most everything offered, so we had a strong sense that ‘church’ was the ‘right’ thing to do. Yet we also saw much hypocrisy, which undermined any sense that religion was valid.
When we went to college each of us began searching for answers that our church experience had failed to address. And we both turned away from God, each in our own way.
After five years going from college to college, I finally ended up at a Catholic school. I had been so impressed by the lives of some nuns that I knew. I felt they were really living out what they believed. God used this to finally bring me to my knees and begin to see that apart from Him, I really could do nothing well.
My brother tried to hold on to the church longer than I did. But after college he began his own wilderness wanderings. Because we lived far apart in those years I knew little of his personal life. Since I had become a Christian I was full of the joy and wonder a new believer has. But when I tried to share it with him, I noticed cynicism about anything relating to God.
I had married by this time, and we had one child. But as we tried to have a second child, we entered into a seven-year period of miscarriages and infertility. All these years I of course continued to pray for my bother to know Christ.
Eventually we started looking into adoption. We were living in Vienna, Austria, as my husband was pastoring an English-speaking church there. It was difficult to find an agency that would allow Americans living abroad to adopt. When we did, we had to return to the States for the home study before the papers could be finalized.
My brother fell ill to a fairly rare illness the same spring we were to return for the home study. Within two weeks almost his entire body had become paralyzed with Guillaume-Barre’. We flew back as quickly as possible to be with him. I will never forget seeing him for the first time, lying so still in his hospital bed. He had lost much weight and truly looked like a concentration camp victim. And yet there seemed a quiet confidence and joy in him I had not seen before.
As he shared with me the ‘visit’ God had made to his room, just days before, I began to see the reason for the deep changes. A mutual friend of ours from high school days, who was himself a deeply committed Christian, had come by on a Sunday morning on his way to church. He was so faithful to visit Al often, and was never reluctant to share the love of Jesus with him. On that particular morning he explained to Al that a person can come to Christ just as he is. You didn’t have to ‘have your act together’, as it were, to come.
The Spirit was moving that morning in that little room. After our friend left, Al told me that something even more amazing happened. He said, ‘A light entered the room after Ronald left. And God spoke to me, and told me that He was going to heal me.’
I was speechless… My brother was the type to make fun of people who said things like that. And yet I could tell he was deadly serious.
Several days later, when my husband joined us in the States, Al told us the direction his life had taken in the past several years. He said, with tears running down his cheeks, (tears he could not wipe himself), that over the last few years he had ‘experimented with an alternative lifestyle’. He said the doctors were beginning to think that he had AIDS. At that time (1985), AIDS was very new on the scene. I had absolutely no idea my brother was a homosexual. And I knew little about this illness. But I did know that Al had asked for God’s forgiveness. And that even in this prison of a body, Al was experiencing more freedom than he had ever known…the true freedom that comes when you know you have been forgiven.
The ‘rest of the story’ is no less amazing. I became pregnant that summer, and we were forced to cancel the adoption. I, of course, feared another miscarriage. And I was certain that Al was going to recover. But God had other plans…
On the morning of March 1, 1986, God gave us Lily Allison. And about seven hours later He took my brother, Al, home to Heaven. After all those years of praying for my brother and for another child, GOD answered…in His time, and His way.
Her birth announcement and his death notice were on the same page.
THE LORD GIVETH, AND THE LORD TAKETH.
BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD.
If you have not yet purchased or won a copy of Informed Consent, you can enter here. Oh, and check out today's blog tour stop at Marla's place. Marla specializes in intercultural marriage. While you're at her site, check out what she has to say.
Think about the Kids
Today, like every day, 6,000 children will lose a parent to AIDS. Researchers in a report recently released by UNICEF, UNAIDS and the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief estimated that 12 million children in sub-Saharan Africa alone have lost one or both parents to AIDS. In four years, that number is expected to climb to 15.7 million. The worldwide number of orphans from all causes is now 132.7 million, says UNICEF. And of that number worldwide, 15.2 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS. That’s one orphan for every active blog in the world. December 1 is World AIDS day. Planning to do anything?
South Bend and Back
I spent much of yesterday and today at O'Hare Airport going and coming to South Bend, Indiana, where I did a talk show promoting Informed Consent. You can view my ten-minute segment here for the next couple of days.
Trish was my hostess for the Tuesday segment of my blog tour. And today you can check out Mary DeMuth's site for my thoughts on a number of topics including the role of women.
Pray for the Persecuted
Today is an important day. Not only is it a day when we remember the sacrifices of veterans. It's also the international day of prayer for the persecuted church. Remember our brothers and sisters...
Also, blog tour hostess Heather Goodman asked me what the average person can do about AIDS. You can find some of my suggestions here. If you do just ONE THING you will do more than most Americans.