Power in weakness, played out

"My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness" (2 Cor 12:9) was the theme Rob, our worship leader, recommended for our retreat. We looked hard at a lot of weakness over this week. It was great to meet the TEN3 board members whose names I've heard many times but had never contacted personally. They said this year was probably the best board meeting they've ever had. Yet they were hit hard, as in the space of the weekend four of our board members received grievous news from home, each about the death or serious condition of a loved one.

Thursday I met with my department, and we realized the way we've been going about building the next block of curriculum is failing. We ruminated on wasn't working in us in individuals and the organization. In that process I "lost" one member of my curriculum team, as it was decided Ray is more needed in consulting. But that will actually help curriculum advance, because he'll be helping get our Computer Training Outreach in in (we hope) 100 schools, and a number of churches, by this time next year. That, in combination with grantwriting, I think is opening a way by which God can provide for a few writers to do intensive focus to get the BHLM curriculum block written. Also, the church-education model we're exploring is opening demand for more computer courses we've had on the "back burner," so I'm hopeful we can get those developed and used sooner than expected. (Christie actually asked me, jokingly, if she could have that material tomorrow!) We are so ready to see this education, centered on the transformation that knowing Christ brings to every area of life, reaching generations of students.

That's just a sampling of the ways in which God brought strength through weakness in us this weekend. Thank you to all who prayed for us during the retreat. The Lord's presence was evident, sweet and wonderful to us even amid the frustrating points in which we were collapsing under our own weakness - because in our weakness we fall on Christ who is sufficient.

So excited! :D

In just a few minutes I'll be leaving for the airport. I'm so looking forward to seeing my colleagues in Charlotte, NC for staff meetings and a weekend retreat. We've got Ray coming from CA, Ken from MN, Anthony from NY, Christie from Nigeria and other volunteers of TEN3 I've never met in person before. From what I'm seeing in preparations already, we'll probably be turning our priorities on their heads a few times over as we strategize!

Please be in prayer for us as we make plans for 2013, that the Lord guide us and we all be attentive to Him. Pray that we enjoy good fellowship and leave in one accord with an idea how to serve the Church here and in Africa.

Back in the saddle

Yes, I'm sorry, I so meant to post at least once this past month. Thank you for not giving up on me. For those of you who don't know, about twice a year I work at the South Plains College Bookstore (thanks to my dad who's the text manager there). It's 4-6 weeks of full time (or more) work, and after spending all day on my feet, unpacking, stacking, and counting books, or walking dozens of people around the store finding their books and filling internet orders, and some draining issues my family is working through, it was a fight to stay awake long enough to answer my TEN3 e-mails in the evenings. I'm really thankful, though, for the chance to earn some money without having to put my ministry on hold for more than a few weeks at a time. God takes care of me very well :)

Don't worry, I haven't been totally idle with TEN3, though! I got an upgrade to my Puppy Linux distro, which hopefully will solve some of the problems I've run into in the Spreadsheet Essentials conversion. If I have time, it would be good to test some of the word processing features I could never get to work (like bibliography entries) and see if we can bring those elements back with this upgrade. I also had an interesting Skype meeting with some partners in Nigeria, which I'll share about later.

I'd also had my Relationship Development Ministry (newsletters, this blog, meetings and other letters inviting people to pray and give to my ministry) more or less on hold, but as you can see I'm jumping on that again! Missed you all! I'll have some more news to share soon, but for now I thank you all for your faithfulness to remember and pray for me.