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I was privileged to hear Rev’d Canon Dr. Vinay Samuel (Executive Director of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies) and his wife Colleen at the Truro Family and Friends Retreat May 21-23.  He is a really good teacher and she has so much of Jesus’s heart that I could sit and listen to her talk all day. It was interesting that so much of what they talked about is what the Holy Spirit has been putting on Tim’s and my hearts recently. Well actually He has been putting it there ever since we got married, but it just keeps getting stronger. The same kind of messages we also heard at Exponential 10 when we were there April 18-22. She told about a dream that she had of the compound walls being breached and a river flowing out from the church’s compound across the road to the fields. And the the river became springs that came up from the ground all over the place. She talked about how when they began to ask “What is God doing and how can we join His work?” that relationships with the poor became primary. Love flowed out through them to the poor. People became saved and churches grew up in homes. Even Hindu’s opened their doors to them and asked them to have services there. Dr. Samuel taught about how the Holy Spirit connects the kingdom of God in the heavenlies to the earth, the yet with the not yet, the above to the below. His talks were about missions, but her talks were about actions.  She had pictures and examples of what the Holy Spirit is doing in India. She put on flesh on his theology.

Early in our marriage Tim and I read a book that changed our perception and therefore our lives. It is called THE UPSIDE DOWN KINGDOM by Donald Kraybill.  We began to see the resources that the Lord had blessed us with as belonging to Him and that we were only stewards of these resources. We didn’t need a better house, a boat, or a new car. We adopted 3 more children instead. Our one rule was that they had to be children that no one else would adopt.  Was it difficult? Yes. But if you aren’t doing the impossible you are doing things in your own strength and not in God’s.  Tim and I have been married almost 28 years.  Why has it taken the church so long to get to the point that it is finally discussing what has been on our hearts for all this time?

Now that children are grown, Tim and I feel the call to begin something new. We don’t know yet what God wants us to do. We just know that He will show us where He is working and we will come along with Him. Will it be in the Richmond area, Northern Virginia, or somewhere else?  Right now, we are praying that He clearly reveals His path for our lives to us. Please join us in prayer as we seek His will.

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