Ministry

Today this quote was in my devotions:

"Spend your time and energy with heaven's perspective.  Resist the urge to fritter away your valuable time and strength.  Invest it today in the only thing that will last through eternity:  people.  Your children, co-workers, neighbors and husband are worth all the time and energy you have to invest, for now and for eternity."

That is so where I'm at these days.  My neighbor is Egyptian.  She is Muslim and in her 60's.  I have begun walking with her every morning.  She grabs my hand when she sees a dog.  She's afraid of them and Islamic people have a "thing" about dog saliva.  They don't want it near them at all.  We walk so early we see skunks moving about our neighborhood and we are both afraid of being sprayed.  We talk about life and faith.  She loves God.  She prays 5 times a day.  I've heard the call to prayer app on her phone go off.  She ordered us a bidet attachment in thank you for Ben doing all sorts of handyman work over there.  This morning I was walking with her under a full lunar eclipse.  It just can't get any more unusual and wonderful than that!  She tells me stories from the Quran about Jesus talking as a baby.  I tell her stories from the Bible about Jesus.  It is interesting.

Antioch Woods is an apartment complex just 5 minutes from my house.  My house in a cozy neighborhood is butting up against an apartment complex in which people open their doors and they don't have a stick of furniture.  We have committed to going to these apartments once a week (Ben and I) and meeting people and praying with people and hopefully starting a small group Bible study there.  We are meeting and going along with a guy that has been going there for months.  He has the gift of evangelism.  Ben and I are gatherers.  We are relationship people.  It is a good match.  We are using this as a date night.  Meeting/praying with people and then going to dinner together.  We are going there Halloween night as a family.

Following Christ is an adventure... you never know what you are going to encounter.  I'm ready to go a little deeper and trust him more.  I'm ready to not be noticed and go to the people that feel forgotten.