Missions

I had the title of this post typed and intended to write on the importance of missions and how I long to be doing international missions, but while looking for a specific quote on missions by John Piper, I found this quote. It speaks for itself.

"One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time."
— John Piper

St. Patricks Day

Patrick grew up with his father and grandfather being deacons of a church. At the age of 16 he was kidnapped and enslaved in Ireland for 6 years where he said his faith grew tremendously. When he escaped to his home in Britain, he began studying to become a priest. Later in life he returned as a missionary to Ireland, and it is writen that "he baptized thousands". Later he became known as the patron saint of Ireland.
The holiday is not exactly celebrated the way it was when it first became an Irish holiday, and our family doesn't celebrate it the way most people do in America...
but we did wear green today.

Africa pictures

Philip and I have talked and emailed several times. Things are going well. He has asked for prayer for the people of Senegal that they are speaking to, for attitudes among the group, and for their female translator that they are not sure if she is a Christian. Now here are pictures that I'm just getting from facebook updates.

Sharing the story of Creation to Christ with children. Leading worship through music at the school where the Lee's children go to school. Most students here don't see their parents but once every 2 or 3 months.Playing softball with the students at the school.
Students from Highlands and from the school.
Sharing Creation to Christ in SCHOOLS!!
Tuesday morning the team went to a ropes course called AcroBoabab.
The course is called AcroBoabab because the trees you see behind Kaitlyn are called Boabab trees, and the course is made from them.
The whole group with translators at AcroBoabab.

Africa again.

Philip left for Africa yesterday morning at around 5 am. There are no funny traveling stories or weird layovers to tell about this time. I woke up and looked at my email, and I received this email from Philip at 3:30 this morning.

Hello All,

It is 10am here in Thies, Senegal. We got to the hotel around 8:15am or so. We landed in Dakar around 5:30am or so and got to the van smoothly, and we only had to wait about 30 minutes for Kyle Chapman and his guys who were on a different flight. Since it was so early in the morning there weren't that many people bombarding us outside the terminal. We are at the hotel now just hanging out in a common room waiting for our rooms to get ready. (Girls already have their room...us boys just have to wait till after lunch...no biggie). We just got back from walking to a local convenient store with Jason Lee to get a few drinks and snacks, and now we are all laying down to get some rest before the evening in the Cheowuh village. We are all great just really tired. Please pray our bodies will adjust quickly as our time here is short and there is much to be done for the Kingdom. Pray that we would experience the extraordinary and supernatural because of God's presence and power!

With love in Christ,Philip

Be in prayer for them this week. They will mainly be working with children because the group is mostly students, which is really different than Philip's last trip. They will be gone until Saturday the 20th, and I'll try to keep the blog updated as I receive updates.

RODEO

Last night some friends invited us to go to the Houston Rodeo with them. They had received free tickets from some people in their church, Kyle's a student minister also, and we gladly accepted free, good seats to the first night of the rodeo. I don't have any western attire so I didn't fit in, but Hallie was looking cute in her overalls. We didn't get there in enough time to eat the good food outside, and I was pretty bummed about not getting any deep fried oreos or a turkey leg! (Both actually don't sound good to me at all, but we did hear on the way to the rodeo that Freebirds was out there this year.) So we got our pizzas from inside the stadium and enjoyed some good bull riding, calf roping, barrell racing, and, of course, mutton bustin'. How country do I sound? The bulls were on their game, too; only 2 bull riders rode for 8 seconds, and we saw two kids hold onto the sheep for the full 8 seconds which I've never seen happen. Hallie fell asleep during the mutton busting, but Isabella enjoyed every minute. She was dancing to the music and mesmerized by the lights and fireworks. She was probably just as much fun to watch as everything else.