Dogs, Footloose and Serving as Senders

Have you ever seen a dog during the first snowfall?  It's a pretty wonderful thing.  They run around in a frenzy, sniffing and snorting, so incredibly excited for the cold white stuff.  Noses are intermittently buried beneath the white powder in search of toys, and when they resurface, their faces are smattered with snow. 

I was recently over at my sister's place, and we spent some time outside playing with her dog Cody.  Cody is a year and a half old Chocolate Lab, who is a bundle of energy.  He loves playing outside, but he especially loves mittens!  He finds them a lot more interesting than his toys, and will constantly be biting at your hands in an effort to steal their source of warmth.  While we were playfighting in the snow, he got a good hold on my mitten and managed to pull it off my hand.  My sister and I spent the next while trying to corner and tackle him, to no avail.  We offered him various toys, but he would not budge.  He ran around the yard with the prized mitten hanging from his mouth, while my hand's temperature dropped.  Finally, we gave in.  My sister went inside to grab a treat, and this was enough to get the mitten back.  Ahh, my hand began to thaw again.  By the way, that's Cody in the picture below :)  Isn't he cute?



Cody

In mid November, I also had the opportunity to see my youth in the musical Footloose (see picture below).  It was an amazing show, and I was so proud of my youth!  There were quite a few of them in various parts in the musical, and they ALL did an excellent job!



Footloose

In this picture, the main character (Ren) and the rest of the teenagers are at a town council meeting, fighting to be allowed to have a dance.  Dances were outlawed a number of years earlier when some teenagers died in a car accident when coming back from a dance.

Well, those are a few highlights of the past while.  Another was the Games Night the youth had with the older adults in our church.  Both Jr & Sr Youth got together with the older adults (50+) for a night of testimonies (from youth & adults), singing (hymns & contemporary), games (all kinds!), food (mmmm!), and fellowship.  I think there were over 100 people there, and from what I could see, everyone had a great time!  It was so awesome for me to see the various generations mixing - a true picture of the body of Christ.  One senior asked afterward, "Are we doing this every month?"  Perhaps not, but we did have another suggestion of doing it twice a year.  So maybe we can arrange another one for later in spring.

Can you believe it's only 257 days until England?  Wow!  Well, it's not exactly that, but I have that figure from some date in later August 2011.  It's coming up fast, and there's still a lot to do.  Have you thought & prayed about joining my support team?  It's a great ministry opportunity, and an essential part of building God's kingdom.  I think sometimes people believe that praying for & otherwise supporting missionaries isn't that important, but that's simply not true!  It is incredibly important!  Neal Pirolo calls it, "Serving as Senders" (he wrote a book by the same name).  Not all of us can 'go,' but all of us can be senders of others.  Missionaries aren't soloists - they are one part of a choir.  Think and pray about what your involvement needs to be.

That's all I have for now.  Many thanks to those who read these blogs, pray, and/or have been supportive in some other way.  I appreciate you far more than you know.

Tami