Last night God came through mightily for Sophie, and for me. You see, when Sophie landed at her Christian university in the fall one of the meetings that ignited her was a missions meeting. She could go and share God's love with people in a new, exciting place with a group of fellow students. She was really motivated to go somewhere and work for two weeks doing God's work, and she gently began raising the money to be able to go. Her fundraising efforts were blessed by some of the people at our church, generously, but she by today she was far, far short of the amount needed to reach the January 20th deadline of half the full amount needed. She called me this afternoon and was sad but accepting at the thought that she might have to return what she had earned so far and drop out of the mission trip, due to lack of funds. She has been praying for the Lord's will and His provision in this, wanting it to be completely a walk of faith. I have been praying that with her, and she has asked others for their prayers as well.
This afternoon, knowing that it looked, from a human perspective, like she would never raise nearly two thousand dollars in three days, I prayed that the Lord would speak to my heart and tell me if He wanted her to go. After praying I really thought the answer was "yes" and I had a sense of peace that He would handle it, one way or another. Then, tonight at the church business meeting our pastor brought up before the church members the question of whether or not the church could give Sophie money for her mission trip. Immediately many, many of the church family spoke up, saying "yes, definitely" and suggesting ways for it to happen. I was so amazed by everyone's generosity, and obvious love for Sophie and our family. So, they voted, and found a way to give her even a little more than she needs for this first deadline. Sophie and I both see this as God's amazing hand of love, and of His confirmation that He does indeed want her to go on this trip. We both know that human efforts were not enough here, and He, through the love of the brethren, was showing His power and His blessings on Sophie's behalf, and on behalf of the furtherance of the gospel. It was so wonderful. A lack of a night's sleep is a very small price to pay for this prayer adventure and its amazing outcome.
In other business, I was wrong about the crack in the church ceiling last year. (See blog note of February 8, 2011). I really thought that with my husband on the job it would have been fixed by this year's meeting, but no, last night we again sat beneath the room-long crack and laughingly gave the task of seeing it fixed once again to the House Committee. This year Jerri is on the House Committee, so the odds of it being fixed by next year's meeting are at least fair, I'd say.
Unfortunately I was right about the church nursery being without speakers another year, mainly because the nursery did get moved to other rooms and: no speakers there! However, Paul and Nathan have volunteered to wire the new nursery rooms. Paul is very motivated since he spends a lot of time in that nursery with his son, so hopefully by next year there will be functioning speakers present, so anyone in the nursery can still hear the message being given upstairs. My hope is pretty strong that this will come to pass.
A lot of other things were discussed tonight, also, and the House Committee has quite a long list of items to handle. If they do them all successfully I predict that next year's meeting will have a great deal fewer things to discuss! If they do not do them all successfully I predict that at next year's meeting we will have some good laughs at ourselves just like we did at this year's meeting. : )
God is so good!
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