Emily

I can't believe we are old enough to have a child who is 17! We celebrated Emily's 17th birthday on Sunday. As we look back over the last 17 years, we have watched our baby grow into a beautiful, passionate woman of God. Emily is on fire for Jesus and has a depth that only the Lord can give. It is hard to think about the day she won't be in our home on a daily basis, but we can't wait to see what the Lord has in store for this beautiful young woman.

"She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom, and failthful instruction is on her tongue." Prov 31:27&28

Crazy Love

Emily and I are reading a Fantastic Book called "Crazy Love". Something struck a chord in me when we were reading the first chapter. The author, Francis Chan talks about the All Powerful God and how we live as if He was created for us, instead of us being created for Him. Francis writes about some of the questions people pose like, "Why are there so many people dying of starvation? Why is my family so messed up? Why don't You make Yourself more obvious to the people who need You?"
"The answer to each of these questions is simply this: because He's God. He has more of a right to ask us why so many people are starving. As much as we want God to explain himself to us, His creation, we are in no place to demand that He give an account to us."
God has given us the resources, time and talent to make a difference in this world. Now I am thinking about how He might be asking the church, especially the church in the West, "Why aren't you making a difference with what I have given you." the Bible says "To whom much is given much is required." We have been given so much and God is waiting for us to hold up our end of the bargain.
Thank you, Jesus, for giving us the opportunity to be a part of Your healing on this earth.
Jen

Show me your faith

This morning as I spent time with God, several verses came to mind. The first was James 2:18 where James challenges us and says "show me your faith without any works, and I will show you my faith by my works". The second verse was from I John 3:18 where John say "let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth". I guess what hit me is the idea that God wants us to walk out our faith in a practical and real way. It's not just believing, believing in His calling for your life, but in our walking with him, walking in faith, taking those steps. Trusting, moving, acting on what he wants, His plans. That is where I am at. God desires obedience over sacrifice (although sometimes He asks for both). As he calls us into His bigger story, we need to take action steps of faith, to meet God where he is at. We truly want to be about what God is doing. This is where the action is, where one can find the abundant life that God promises.

Tom

Just be like a sheep and follow!

Today I read John 10.
These verses stuck out to me.
". . . He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, He goes ahead of them."
We are Jesus' sheep, and he calls our family out by name. But he doesn't just say "Okay Katie, now that I have called your family out to Africa, you are on your own to wherever it leads". No, the bible says he leads us out. Meaning that he doesn't just tell us to go. We just have to follow. It continues on to say that "He goes ahead of them". Meaning that not only does he go with us, he will protect us, and lead us to where we are suppose to go.
Later on in the chapter it says
"I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of my Father's hand."
It says that He will protect us, and will let no one snatch them out of his hands. I can't describe the feeling that God himself will make sure that I (we are) am protected and won't let anyone snatch me (us) out of his hand.

Come, Follow Me - Jesus

I am feeling heavy today as I contemplate leaving family and loved ones when we depart for Uganda, but I trust Jesus, I trust his goodness and his plan for us. He loves my family and my friends more than I could, and I trust them to him. This will be the hard part of this journey, but we must walk with Jesus because we want to walk in obedience to his call on our lives.

In Matt 10:37 Jesus said, "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

This is hard teaching. Jesus wants everything and He isn't afraid to ask. The thing I love about Jesus is he lets us choose. He loves us so much and he wants us to love him with everything, but he leaves it all up to us. The cost is high when following the Creator, but walking in step with him is worth laying down our lives. Picking up our cross doesn't seem so heavy when you have the Savior bearing most of the weight. He just wants us to decide to pick it up, then he does the hard part.

Jen

He Is Our Hope

When trying to find a name for our blog we went back and forth. Tom kept coming up with ideas and we kept shooting him down. Then last weekend, on the way home from church, we had the song "You are My Hope" by Skillet on and Tom said, "I know what we can call our blog!" The song says, "You are my hope, You are my strength, You're everything I need, You are my hope, You are my life..." It fits.
Jesus is our hope, our only hope, and as we take this HUGE step toward the unknown we don't take it alone. I "feel" Him smiling at us right now. He must feel like parents do, when they get to give their children something they really will love.
I know Jesus has so many good things in store for the Webers and I know He will be with us and He will "etch out His eternity" in us.
Jesus said to us, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"
And the Webers said, "Here we are. Send us!"
Jen

"But Why God?"

The whole fact that we are moving to Uganda hit last night. I was scared. I cried. I remember going up to mom and dad's room, and mom prayed for me, and told me that God wants us to follow Him, and the devil doesn't, and will whisper lies into our ears.
I went back into my room, but the feeling didn't go way. I cried into my pillow and started to pray. "Why God? We were finally back on track. We were finally comfortable. I have friends that I don't want to leave. Friends that I have a good relationship with, that I can call them sisters.  I will have to leave our house, my dog, my comforts, everything."
Then peace washed over me. It was like God told me, "You were on track with your own plans, not mine, you were comfortable, but I didn't call you to be comfortable, you have good friends, but you get to keep those, and have new closer ones. You still have your sisters."
I remembered Job, how everything was taken away from him, but God gave him back everything way better. I have to remember that God knows what he is doing and that He loves me too much to put my life into my own hands.

"God, you're messing with my plans again!"

This last weekend, with the possibility of moving to Uganda in mind, I prayed ever so selfishly, "God, I thought we had a good thing going here! I mean, I don't mind if you change my plans, but to make it so that I can't plan for the next couple years of my life . . . c'mon, that's pretty unreasonable, especially at the stage of life I'm in!"
I'm so glad that I'm not God; if I were, I would have struck the "human me" dead by now. Thankfully, our Father is so loving and patient that he hasn't yet. Instead, he challenged me with these words Sunday evening: "Emily, you have mistakenly been thinking that I'm part of your plans, when in reality, you're part of my Plan."
That's when I realized that no matter how difficult or different something appears, when God calls you to it, who are we, as His creation, to challenge the Most High God? Who are we to disobey by staying in a state of inaction? Who are we to complain?
I don't have to know what I'm doing in the next couple years of my life. The Omnipotent God is also the Sovereign One. He knows what He's doing with me. And I can rest in the assurance that so long as I continue to press closer into Him and into His love, I'm going to end up where I'm supposed to be.
For now, my prayer is this:

Take my heart, I lay it down
At the feet of You who's crowned
And take my life, I'm letting go
I lift it up to you who's throned
Take my fret, take my fear
All I have I'm leaving here
Be all my hopes, be all my dreams
Be all my delights, be my everything
And I will worship You Lord, Only You Lord
And I will bow down before you, Only You Lord
It's just you and me here now,
Only you and me here now . . .

- Only You, David Crowder

The Journey Begins

This morning we received confirmation and acceptance to be missionaries for New Hope Uganda. WOW.  Jen and I are not sure where to begin, but we do know that God is in control and that "He IS our Hope"  We also know that "you all" are our hope as well.  We ask that you pray for wisdom for our family as we begin this Journey into what God has for us.

This morning, when I awoke (before I read my email) I had the Steve Curtis Chapman song "Dive" in my head.

"I hear a voice that's telling me it's time to take a lap of faith so here I go

I'm diving in, I'm going deep, in over my head, I want to be

caught in the rush, lost in the flow, in over my head I want to GO

the rivers deep, the rivers wide, the rivers water is alive,

so sink or swim I'm diving in..."

So here we go - diving into what God has called us up into.  We are not sure of what is in the water, but when God say's jump, we JUMP.