We come to you asking you to pray very
specifically once again. Without going into too much detail, a little
over one week ago, after consulting with our mission, our family had
to vacate the apartment we were in due to a “touchy situation”.
So we spent a week visiting some TEAM colleagues a day's drive
away—this was much needed and an enjoyable and restful time for our
family. We returned to Campinas Saturday (the 10th) with
the plans of (1) house-sitting temporarily for some friends on
vacation, (2) moving our belongings out of our apartment, and (3)
moving into our new residence, all by the 15th.
However, the owner of the house we are
moving into suddenly has had to do major sewer line repairs, and now
it depends on the local city government to finish the job. This means
that we may or may not be able to move in by the 15th,
this Thursday. You can imagine how stressful this is for all of us,
the kids included. Becky and Caleb both had to miss their last two
weeks of school, we weren't able to connect with a church small group
we had been so looking forward to, and we lack the stability of our
own place (again)! So, please pray for us this week in this way:
- Repairs on the house finished quickly, early this week.
- Packing our things to move them out of the apartment in time.
- For the boys—they are stressed too!
- Energy, especially for Becky—she's 7.5 months pregnant!
As we process all these developments,
Becky and I said to each other today at lunch: “This is hard...our
life has been hard... Can you even remember a time that is wasn't
like this?” We remembered a couple of times in which there was calm
in between the storms...but we sense that this is another spiritual
attack on our family. We have been through so much in the past 10
years or so, but we know that when we are in the center of God's will
for our lives, trials will come. James 1:2-4 tells us to “Consider
it pure joy...whenever you face trials of many kinds...”
Friends, we cannot say that we are full
of joy right now, but we CAN tell you that we are persevering through
the trials. God wants us to grow in perseverance (with joy in
trials—that's still sometimes HARD to do), so that we can be mature
and complete... We don't know about you, but we want to be complete
in Christ, and mature in Him! So, we CAN have joy that the Lord
counts us worthy...and this we DO ask and pray for.
So, lastly, please pray for JOY for us
in these trials...it is not the first one, and we know it will not be
the last one, because we are committed to persevering in our faith,
just like you are called to do too! We look forward to sending you a
belated Christmas update from our “new” home come January.
Persevering through trials...
Ben, Becky & the boys.
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