This past week we had many things thrown at us; our typical work load at school, social activities, a couple stressful events, our usual jail ministries, a trip to Kansas that begun Seth’s volunteer youth director position at our church where he taught, engaging with several kids from the community, Seth teaching Sunday school, Nicole had her monthly jewelry class with the ladies from church, all the while we both battled with illness and Seth literally lost his voice! But before the busyness came, God brought a little duck into our lives. He was cast out from his family because he had a severely twisted neck, so Nicole with her large and compassionate heart, desired to nurture this little duck to a healthy life (read the story on the next blog!).
School: This week we are still in grammar class and with each new class the study gets larger and larger with more and more parts thrown into the mixture. It is like trying to solve a massive puzzle and each day we get new pieces that look different from the previous pieces, yet they fit into the large puzzle somewhere, and don’t worry more pieces that look even more different with be thrown into the mix later! Expect it! Oh and by the way, you will never have ALL the pieces out there. That’s our job!
Jail: This past week went great! On the men’ side Dave (Seth’s teammate) taught through the first 9 plagues of Egypt. Then Seth taught on how God used each plague to directly attack the Egyptians worldview in every way in order to show that He is God and yet Pharaoh hardened his heart because he saw whom God IS! Seth continued by focusing on the Passover and showed that even during crazy situations you can have fellowship with God, and your freedom will come from the Lamb, but you can only receive that Freedom if you pass through the blood stained door (Jesus-John 10:9).
On the ladies side Nicole and Jinny are teaching through the life of Abraham and Isaac. They focused on the substitutionary death of the ram in the place of Isaac when God told Abraham to sacrifice his one and only son to Him. Abraham trusted God so much that he did as he was asked and God provided the ram to take Isaac’s place once He saw that Abraham’s faith was purified like gold. This is a foreshadow of the substitutionary death of Jesus’ death on the cross in place for us as the penalty for sin. The ladies are really seeing this connection!
Stoking The Fires 