After all this time it does not seem real, maybe because I have made the trip so many times it doesn't "feel" different than any other "short-term" trip.
I am writing this on March 31st and we are on our way to Peru...to live and to love.
The last 3 months are very hard to remember. They seem to have gone slower than the last 3 years, but there has been so much sweetness in them...gifts from the Father.
Christ has continued to show Himself real--sovereign and personal. Today I feel desperate to capture the testimony.
It reminds me of how I felt when I returned home from Peru in June of 2008.
I had spent almost the whole month there and was trying to remember all of the evidences of God....his fingerprints.
He spoke to my heart, "Do not look for my finger "prints", see my finger-painting. I am continually at work in three colors: the world, the church, and your life. Step back and see Me, know Me. Know that the color that I paint with you is a color totally unique to you and beautiful to Me. But your color doesn't exist outside of My whole work."
I wish I could "paint" with words the beautiful picture we have seen over the last three years and even just the last three months. I wish I could describe the color of each church that we visited and each individual.
Of course, the most amazing color of all belongs to our new grandson!!
The LORD did give us an incredible snapshot of His painting the day before we left in an unexpected and certainly providential moment. The friends that we have been living with are selling their home and having it painted. We were stopped by their real estate agent, who also is the painter. He asked us when we were leaving. We shared less than three minutes of testimony with him and he asked us if he could pray over us, inviting his partner in painting, who had not been in the conversation, to join in the prayer.
By the Spirit, in the prayer of each man, almost every word of direction and priority the LORD has given us over the last three years was re-affirmed.
We are called to serve together as one; we are to remember that relationship is the foundation of all we do. The relationships that He has already given us in Peru are purposeful, knowing Him is more important than serving Him.
We both said we wished so much that we had had a recorder on! Oh brother!! And I am just now realizing that these guys were PAINTERS!! How funny :-).
Right now we both feel an odd rested weariness, that's about all. A kind of feeling of being caught between two places.
And again I remember, neither place is really our home. He would have us all continue to remember we are only sojourners and aliens here.
All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that [country] from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better [country], that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city. Hebrews 11:13-15