June 2018: Halfway Through 2018
Here it is: the first half of 2018 gone! Time sure moves like a river, always flowing: sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but always moving on. We have had a busy first half of the year. Our lease was up in the middle of March, and we had been praying day and night about where God wanted us and what He wanted us to do. So we heard from God to go to New Life Church in February and encourage them and spur them on. Their pastor left them last year, and they had been praying that God would send them another. God has been sending them a temporary pastor every week, and it looks like they will have a permanent pastor come September. God hears prayer and rewards those who faithfully wait upon Him, for His timing is always perfect.
We had a great time celebrating the Passover Seder with the people of New Life Church, and we also had the privilege of celebrating Pentecost with them fifty days later. We had an eight-week thought-provoking Bible study on the “Elementary Principles of Messiah,” our newest Bible study. All of this sure made the spring-time go by so quickly. But that was just what God had spoken to us in January.
We still needed to know where He wanted us to move. We looked and looked for a place, but every place God closed the door, until one day in the beginning of March, two weeks before we had to be out of our place, He said to go to Grafton. Well, we had all of our things packed and on the truck, just like when we left our home up north, and we headed to Grafton. In fact, we stayed at the same hotel. It was like deja vu—at that earlier time, we had also went to New Life Church and it was there after three weeks that God had opened the door for us to rent a home. So we thought, “Is He going to do the same thing here again?” But God usually doesn’t do the same thing twice. So we sat at the hotel for six weeks. We were doing the work God told us to do, but we needed a permanent place to live. The church we were at needed a permanent pastor and we needed a permanent home to live. We were encouraging them, and they were encouraging us.
God is faithful and He did open a door for us, but it was not what we would have thought. The door He opened was to a very nice apartment complex. It was a larger apartment with all the things we had hoped for. The day we went to look at it was the first day it was available to rent. God’s timing is always perfect. But what was even more incredible was that it was two blocks away from where we just came from. So I had to ask God, “What just happened to us?” He gave me the scripture that talks about the city of refuge. In thinking about it, I guess that is just what it was. We needed a place to stay until this apartment opened up, but when it did it was May 1st. Very ironic—it was May 1st when we moved up north ten years ago and left behind our family for over seven years. It was May 1st that we left to do our travels in 2016. And now it was May 1st again—all of these were times of new beginnings.
This brings us to the beginning of summer, and it seems like everything stops in summer… or does it? We will find out, and so will you. Have a great summer and stay safe, and take God with you wherever you go!
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