Das Bloggerstein: A Great Weekend

Brad and Debbie are back home, and I had a wonderful week running the house on my own. Regarding house meals, I pretty much did things exactly as I have seen Debbie do them and was amazed to sit back and watch how smoothly everything fell into place. It's a pretty awesome feeling when your house is clean and your casserole, salad, rolls, and drinks are all ready at the same time. Success! On Wednesday had a great discussion about manliness and explored ideas about what defines a man, where boys learn to become men, etc. Two new soldiers joined our group, Abby and Tom. Some stayed late to walk Sam and watch a movie. It was a great time. On Friday we started a new Bible study series and discussed being open to allowing God to change us into the people He wants us to be. Over the next several weeks we're going to be looking in depth at some spiritual disciplines (prayer and bible study are the most common examples of spiritual disciplines) we can practice that are not ends in and of themselves, but are ways that we can make ourselves accessible to God, ways that we can give God space and opportunity to speak and work in us. I was reminded that I cannot make myself righteous, even by taking an inventory of and limiting my sins nor by checking off my daily spiritual disciplines. No matter what I do or don't do, I can't earn God's good pleasure or appease him by my performance. He just loves me (and you too, by the way) and lavishes his grace upon us just because. We only need to take it in. I forget this constantly, that I don't need to do a song and tap dance. Oh my I can't wrap my head around this stuff enough.

Brad and a team of 13 other Christians from around Europe will leave Thursday for a 10 day trip to Burundi, Africa. This is Brad's third visit to Burundi. He is constantly reading and learning about Burundi, and sharing his facts and thoughts with us, which I enjoy. Burundi is a totally desperate place that has experienced mass genocide, killings, tortures, and other unbelievable atrocities as recent as seven years ago; it is still a very dangerous place to be. We have been talking a lot about Burundi around here and how well over 500,000 people were murdered there, and yet, have you heard anything about it? Yeah, neither had we. Why didn't Burundi's genocide make the U.S. news? Why doesn't anyone remember Burundi's pain? Brad and his team will be doing various things there. The specific reason for this visit is that the US ambassador of Burundi has invited our team to meet with the Burundi army and government leaders to discuss ethics and reconciliation amongst its people. Brad will be preaching and teaching about forgiveness and healing with a people that has seen unbelievable devastation. Literally everybody in this community has had members of their immediate family tortured and killed or they have been directly involved with the torturing and killing of their own community. I mean, whoa. Heavy stuff right. Debbie and I will keep the house open and running while Brad and the team are away. Please join us in praying for the people of Burundi and for our team as they go in Jesus's name to love the people there.

I am having a really wonderful time here, but today was an especially fun day for me. This wasn't anything like work for me, it was so easy. We went to chapel this morning, ate a delicious (fried chicken, mashed potatoes, a biscuits) lunch afterwards, went shopping at the department store on post for clothing for the children in Burundi, came back to the house with four great soldiers where we proceeded to organize, take inventory of, and pack all of the clothing - both purchased and donated - for the people of Burundi, enjoyed another delicious meal together (two of the soldiers went deep sea fishing last night and caught a bunch of mackerel), and then, as if this day wasn't wonderful enough, we watched Braveheart. Pretty great day, right? I'm off to bed now, but I wanted to leave you with some photos from the weekend. Enjoy!

Still really grateful for you guys. Love ya.