Halloween

Here is my thoughts on the irony of the “harvest festival” substitute.  In an effort to provide a substitute for Halloween trick-or-treating, many churches provide a harvest-festival-party-thing – but its not on Halloween, and lots of churches do it or something similar, and on different nights so you might find yourself “festival-hopping” (kind of like VBS- hopping), and then you get to do the whole trick or treat thing as well.  SO, instead of a one-night dress-up candy-fest… its like a two week costumed candy fest.  How ironic.

Yes, my kids dress-up …  all year long… and usually Halloween (or some substitute…)  we go greet our neighbors with the customary greeting, they ooh and ah over my cute children, they eat candy, go to bed, then we eat candy 🙂  I figure, the Christians should take back Halloween… its the only holiday with Christian origins!!

I recently read a great article by John Macarthur… very informative… with a don’t celebrate if you feel God has asked you not to, and there is no harm if God hasn’t asked you not to.  But it was a lot longer and more involved than that!

SO all that to say, nothing, pretty  much.

Redirection for our worship team

SO – the other night at rehearsal, when I had only one of my 5 members there, we spend some time praying for direction. (They didn’t all just “ditch” but there was a couple of those)

Firstly, I repented of my attitude of frustration and hopelessnes and unforgiveness and … you know – the general attitude of REACTION!

Then I poured out my heart to God, and as I did, He poured His into mine.  I LOVE it when He does that!!  What clearer way to get direction then to feel your heart beating in time with His?

SOON – to be determined after some more prayer and discussion with MJ – pastor – we are going to disband the worship team.  We will continue worshiping at our corporate gatherings, but with just me on the piano and our conga player.   It is a bit of a natural progressions, really, since our piano player is getting married and taking a few months off to adjust to married life, and soon, my one guitar player – soul sister – is leaving to be on staff at YWAM in Florida, and the other three are not confident in my leadership, hardly ever there anyway, and that leaves me with the conga player.

We have been working on rebuilding and repairing relationships with a couple of them.  Gee, its slow going when you hardly ever see them!  But it is happening.

ANYWAY – the vision is to continue meeting on Thursdays / our rehearsal night, but instead of rehearsing for Sunday, we will just be praying / pray singing / singing Scripture / singing songs if they are needed as prayers to God / seeking His face.  Then at the God appointed time – when He tells us – we will “cast the vision” of a worship team for our Sunday gatherings… and I am envisioning that those interested will be meeting Thursdays praying already with us.  If not, they will join and we will just continue what we are already doing… throwing in a little practice now and then at the end for specific songs if needed… don’t know for sure about that one yet.  Details… what I am not so good at!

I am excited.  Nervous.  Not sure how it will go over with the pastor or the worship team members that don’t… like isn’t the right word, but… don’t like me.  BUT it was definitely from God… I will continue to seek Him so I don’t run with it and forget to ask Him about the important details that would make it work!

Dunamis – my experience

Dunamis:

It was a great time of seeing God work. It was a very different perspective, since I was leading worship. It was definitely more me pouring out and then getting poured into. Or I guess a better way to put it, God pouring through me. Just in case I had any doubt before, I saw God move amazingly through the worship when I had NOTHING left, felt nothing, sensed nothing, and just obeyed from song to song. It was really cool – to have it so blatantly obviously NOT ME!! And all God…

Bryan assumed he would just be taking care of Shand – which he did during the worship. But she often napped after the singing, and he got “roped” into intercession, which was knew for him… on the job training. He really enjoyed that and experienced God working through him like that, so that was neat.  And he waved banners … TWICE! 🙂  It was neat to see the two guys on one side experimenting / experiencing a new outlet of worship… and the wild dancing banner girls exuding God’s joy all over the place on the other.  It made me smile!!

There were some cool healings… (ok, all healings are cool J ) There seemed to be a shoulder theme, which was interesting. It was fun to watch these two women in particular praising Jesus, with arms raised from the second evening on… what they couldn’t do before. One had a shoulder injury from 35 years ago, and her shoulders were uneven… but they aren’t now!! J

And there was a major deliverance too which was AMAZING to be a part of… we worshiped as intercessors the whole evening while it was going on… this lady now glows… and to praise Jesus through it was very cool.

God blows me away. I like that. J He is so much bigger than we will ever fathom or experience… but to see a glimpse now and then just brings you to your knees, you know?

It was awesome to have some in our little church praying for others and seeing the effects of God working through them.  We are all so ordinary.  That is the point, isn’t it? J

Nursing… the end

Shand: is growing and much happier since she finally decided it was worth it to try the bottle. I am so sad, SO SO sad that nursing has come to an end… I think last night was the last L. But it is definitely worth it to see her more content and not being concerned anymore about her not growing, etc. We haven’t had her weighed again, but I can SEE the chubs growing!!  But have I said how sad I am?

She is rolling over, and giving hugs… I THINK she was patting my back tonight… but not sure if she was just waving her hands… she is a little bit like Jane of “Tarzan and Jane” – always beating her chest!!

She was an absolute gem at the retreat. It worked out perfectly that she decided to take the bottle, as she was much less fussy and feeding wasn’t so hit and miss, depending on my let downs and her willingness to persist enough to get one. She still would only eat from me, but at least I knew she would get milk! Everyone loved on her. She slept so SO well most of the time. She got prayed over and blessed so much, and even anointed with oil the day we arrived. J

The wisdom of a child

 

1. Today at bed time… Thaddeus:

“When you are in the bathtub, the “sticks” come out of the bandaid, and then the “not-sticks” go in. and that’s why the band aid comes off.”

2. We read the story of Nebuchadnezzar today… their play time was then filled with “Because you are so proud, you will have to be a carnivore and eat meat for 7 years… and then you’ll have to grass because of your pride” etc etc… thus saith the Lord… you can imagine how humorous it was… but it was topped of by THIS conversation

TH: I did not say that

K: yes you did

TH: no I didn’t

K: yes, because God saw those words in your heart!

So there you go… if you are can’t convince, throw THAT line in there!! J

The little creek

I grew up in a remote tribal area in Papua New Guinea with the Owininga people.  There was a little creek  that ran by our house, we could hear especially at night, accompanied by crickets and cicadas (sp?)… having screen windows, but oh how we loved that creek!  On especially hot days we would take books down there to read and give our calloused bare feet a little spa treatment.  We often shaved our legs down there too 🙂  My sister and I got chased by hornets when we disturbed their nest hanging under a fallen log.  And I was baptized in the “big” pool along with brand new tribal believers.  Ah the memories… thanks for taking me back, Tonia!

off we go

to the Dunamis retreat.  this “tract” (# 4 of 6) is on “healing”.  I am very excited and God-dependent – I am leading the worship this time around.  Its late, and I am catching up on laundry and cleaning bathrooms and getting stuff ready so we can leave after Bryan has had a short 4 hours of sleep in the morning 🙂

I’ll be back with so much to share, and probably no time to get my thoughts into understandable form…  so we’ll see how much you actually get to hear about it! 🙂

randomness and pictures

There is so much I’d LIKE to chat about… but no time, energy or clarity of thought! 🙂

Here are some random pics of the last month:

first, here is us at the baby dedication… I don’t know what happened to the other pictures.  They were nicer, but… here we are.

Then there is Shand and her eating adventures.  She loves LOVES pear in the little mesh bag thingy.  She is also loving the rice cereal, though the pictures may make you think otherwise! 🙂  I wasn’t planning on feeding her solids yet.  BUT it seems like she is still hungry.  She won’t take a bottle, of my milk, fresh pumped even!  found that out while I was gone for 6 hours the other night!   She doesn’t nurse recreationally, so to speak, so isn’t really encouraging my “muscles” (ask Thaddeus) to make more.  If she isn’t getting a mouth FULL, per suck, she really sees no need to continue!  🙂 yup – a regular little princess!  I am taking all the recommended herbs, fish oil for some added calories and fat in the milk (don’t know if that actually does anything – figured it wouldn’t hurt me) and lots of tea.  It may come down to starve or take the bottle.  I imagine she’d give in at that point! I hope anyway!! Anyway – here she is:

 

 

So these are all kinds of sizes… I apologize, it offends your senses – otherwise – enjoy the cute baby!!

Just an interesting visual captured… I wandered into the boy’s room, and found this at my feet.  no – we dont’ watch violent movies – but apparently that isn’t actually necessary for some good violent staging with the animals.  I don’t think this beats the stuffed animal sacrifice I cleaned up a few months ago though.

And our Uzbek meal – notice we are all eating out of the one pot with spoons.  It’s palov , and for desert we had sugared almonds

And there is a bit of life from us.  I want to share all this stuff God challenged me about at the Worship Conference… and I’d love to share all the things God is doing in our worship team… and how excited and scared I am about leading worship at the Dunamis retreat coming up in a couple weeks, and how excited BRYAN is over buying a motorbike… 🙂 And how excited I was to go to the symphony and experience Carmina Burana with the Anchorage Concert Chorus… AMAZING – leave enough time for some hubby time afterwards though! 😉

BUT I must go do dishes and prep for life tomorrow…  I miss hanging with you all.  Hope life slows a little soon.