Phew! I feel like I've been running for the past few days. And it's only the beginning! But I'm finding that I really enjoy being busy. Getting things done has a strange satisfaction to it. And the Lord has given me so much joy and strength.

Today at the Christmas party, a little girl I'd never met came up to me, took my arm and touched my skin as if it where the weirdest thing she'd ever seen. Then she looked up at me and said, "Why is your skin this color? What color is it any ways?" Then she called her sister over and they continued to marvel at my skin color, holding their arms up next to mine to show the obvious difference. Then the discovered my hair!

As the adolescents were doing an interpretive dance to "My Jesus, my savior". I was hit by something. How many of these people would still be hopeless without having discovered the hope of Jesus Christ? I thought about all the stories, all the places these people came from and I was so in awe. In awe of how the Lord can change people and in awe of the fact that he cares enough to do so. I looked around at all the people and I was so grateful. Then I started thinking about my own life, about those I know.. I wondered, where would we be if he had not taken us out of the miry clay and set our feet on solid rock. If we had been left to build our lives on sand instead of the solid rock of Jesus Christ... My life would have been washed away by the rains long ago. Yet now, now those rains have made me stronger, and only because I am standing on the shoulders of one whose strength can withstand anything. Thank you Lord!