God provides

Hope your week was a good one! God is full of blessings and grace for us all to enjoy!

We visited our friends who live outside Saturday. Hard to imagine living in surroundings where you never cool off or never stop swatting the mosquitos. The ice water is a welcome addition to their gathering of items. It helps defer some of the tough conditions of living outside. Joey put out a plea in chapel for help with our bread wrapping activities and one of our community members came. It is a start, a welcomed addition to our group. Momma T and Tim were busy early in the morning in the garden trying to beat the heat. Then Momma T moved inside and worked with the girls making t shirts, a fun morning. Lunch for the basketball team was being prepared as we were leaving the center. Lots going on Saturdays, won't you come and join in.

During the week, in the afternoons, you will find Dawn, Joey and Alan working in and around the center. The center needs lots of attention, so they have begun helping out all around the building. You should notice a nice change in it's appearance, let them know what a great job they are doing. If something needs to be dropped off, you can just about find someone there from 1 - 5, Monday through Thursday.

Tuesday evening, Noel led the community Men's Bible fellowship. Always a good evening of laughter, surprises and conversation on how God is working in the lives of our men.

Thursday activities got started off by Willie and Wes sharing their gifts of song and word. It is great to see Willie walk over to Wes and say, the Holy Spirit wants me to sing this song instead of what we have prepared. Wes, says ok, Willie goes to singing and Wes goes to playing. Always magical in seeing the Holy Spirit working in these men. We had a couple of new churches provide us with our meal. The Market was busy as usual. An added bonus this week, was the giving out of back packs to our children. Great to see them walking around the center with their brand new backpacks on their backs, big smiles were everywhere! It was a great evening.

Prayers for Lisa and her mom. Her mom fell and surgery will be needed, happening this morning. Prayers for those who are traveling. Prayers for my sister's family in California. My sister has been battling cancer for two years and late Wednesday evening, she lost the battle. She was the leader of her family and her children will be struggling for awhile to cope with loosing their mom. Prayers for Ginellen's mom, she fell and hit her head, ending up with 19 stitches across her forehead. Prayers for Willie as he in going in this morning to have a stint placed in his arm for possible dialysis in the near future. Prayers for our community. Prayers for the direction God is leading us.

God provides. How many times have we said that expression? God provides.

We go through life trying to make ends meet and in the end, God provides. Just when you think there is nothing left, all hope is lost, God provides. How many times, does it look like there is no light at the end of the tunnel, God provides. We are faced with all sorts of storms, so many obstacles we wonder if we will ever survive, but we do because God provides.

Several stories this week, I have been blessed to see and hear, reminds me of God providing for us. Momma T takes her granddaughter to a new school. Lots of emotion and anxieties going to meet the granddaughter's teacher. She walks in and sees Terry Strain in the same classroom? Momma T's first thought, does Terry have a granddaughter attending the same class. Then she realizes, her granddaughter's teacher is Terry's daughter Hanna. Momma T was a big part of Hanna's life growing up at Grace. Now Hanna will be a big part of Momma T's life as she takes care of her granddaughter! God provides!

Several of us have been receiving calls from other organizations about school supplies and backpacks. We have been blessed in the past of Grace supplying us with back packs and supplies. This year we were blessed to receive some backpacks but very little supplies. Lisa was wanting around 90 backpacks to meet our needs for the community children. The numbers of back packs we received we not nearly enough to meet our obligation of giving away the backpacks this past Thursday, our anxieties began to increase. Then Lisa started getting phone calls from people, saying I have back packs, do you want them? Lisa goes back to Grace Wednesday afternoon and finds a bunch of backpacks that were in a different place adding to our total. Folks we had not heard from in awhile, calls and says, I have school supplies can I bring them by. We were able to pack the bags with pencils, pens, notebook paper, folders, glue and more! After we gave away the bags to all the children Thursday, we still had a few bags left! God provides!

We had air conditioning problems a couple of weeks ago at the center. We were able to get the units running before Thursday, God providing again. But this Thursday, one of our main units in the dining hall was not performing up to it's capacity. It gets hot in the room when you have 125 people in there! Ardis comes to me beside herself with frustration of the room not getting any cooler. I say to her, I guess we need to call our electrician to see if he can come by to see what the problem is. I walk into the dining hall and guess who was sitting down at the table visiting with the community?! John and our new Jim had just walked in. They finished their meal and immediately went to find our problem. They did and are working on getting our unit working back at full strength! God provides!

These are just the stories from this week. Stories like this happen everyday to everybody. We need to share our stories with others to let them know there is a God who lvoes us, cares for us and watches out over us. The world is full of negativity, hurt and confusion. Willie shared in chapel, people of faith need to share our stories of lvoe, compassion and faith with others. As Willie pointed out in Philippians 2 verse 2, Paul says, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. As Christians, we don't need to let the world bring us down. We need to have joy in our hearts knowing there is a God providing for our every needs! Amen.

Wonder what God providing stories will happen this week for you? Be able to share with others, share it with us. Have a great week. God will provide because God is good!