Our Weekend

We went on a regional staff retreat this past weekend. The theme was (I helped make the logo!) Ryan and I have been a part of World Impact just over a year now and we are still amazed so often at the true Christian community we are able to experience with the staff here. We really do Life Together. We all live within a mile of each other. We go to church together. We play together. We work together. We babysit for each other. We share our lives together. As we were at this retreat, we saw so many staff from other cities that have been missionaries for so much longer than we. They have persevered through the hard times of ministry and continue to love the poor and give of themselves to the call God has placed on their lives. We were so humbled and blessed to be a part of the legacy of World Impact. Our speaker likened our individual role in God's grand plan as bugs on a banana leaf paddling down the Amazon River. What a word picture. We are so insignificant, but yet somehow we play into God's overall plan for his people. He has called us to love the poor. It was a great reminder. It is so easy to get prideful and feel like we are actually important. But, it is really just God working through us that sometimes makes us look good.

Thank you to all of you who read this and pray for us, for our ministry, our family and our marriage. We need your support to keep paddling down the Amazon on our banana leaf.

Ryan and I were in charge of registration. It was quite easy to get everyone to come by the table because Ben was looking so good. He was the main attraction of the weekend.

I also helped with each meal, so Ben was passed from person to person, some he had never met before and he was happy to meet each new person. He actually started to get excited when we would approach the dining hall and he could hear the hum of the crowd of people. That was such a relief to me. He generally will go to anyone, but doesn't like crowds. He is so adaptable.

The retreat was at Morning Star Ranch, just an hour from us. There are two very friendly dogs that live there and Ben was enamored. Hopefully, one day we can get a dog like this! I know he isn't looking at the dog in the picture, but he did try to reach out and pet (grab) the dog and his head turned like he was watching a table tennis match while the dogs ran and played in front of him. We were out chilling on the blanket watching Daddy do a high ropes course when I took this picture.

This is a not-so-great shot of our regional staff from Dallas, St. Louis, Wichita, Deer Creek Christian Camp (Colorado) and Morning Star Ranch (Florence, KS).

During meetings like this, Ben would either play on a blanket at the back of the room or be napping. We were so blessed to stay in the basement of a couple's home, so Ben had peace and quite to take his naps. And, I was free to leave him napping or sleeping at night and go and be a part of the activities because everything is so close and all on World Impact's property. He didn't even seem to notice we weren't at home. He kept to his routine as usual.