"Dad, why do you think God had you be unemployed right now?"  My oldest son asked this question the other day.  Good question.  I told him I didn't know.  After a brief pause he suggested, "I think it's so that we see that we have a lot more than the people in Zambia even when you're unemployed."  Well... I think my son may be proved right.  My heart swells with pleasure, even now as I'm writing, at the wisdom that God is building into my kids' hearts.

It's been an emotional roller coaster these past couple of months.  We've watched God generously provide support for our Zambia trip, we're moving closer to the goal all the time and the end is in sight. As for my employment status... that's changed a bit too.  I have taken a temporary position with a home improvement contractor that attends our church.  It's a blessing.  It pays significantly more than unemployment.  My emotions are struggling to agree wholeheartedly with those thoughts though.  The main emotional obstacle is that I had my own business in the past, and my customers paid me for my skills.  As one would expect, I make less as an employee than I did while being self employed.  Nevertheless, it absolutely is a blessing.  It's my sin that makes it difficult to agree.

I wish character was built through comfort...  It's a humbling thing to watch God provide support for our family to go to Zambia.  It's humbling to see that support come sacrificially from the hands of some who we wish would keep it for their own needs.  It's a humbling thing to not be able to provide for my family without seeing our savings diminish like the sands of an hourglass.  Sometimes I'm afraid, and sometimes I'm ashamed.

It's adversity that tests our beliefs that God is sovereign, God is good, God is present with us, God is loving, and God is gracious.  I want to be the kind of man who will praise God when any in my family (and anyone else) believe these things more from any of these experiences.

What's been going on?

It has been a little while since I've had time to post...  Life continues to go on, and we have to still attend to things other than our Zambia trip :)  School just finished for our kids this week on Tuesday.  I have no idea why we went so late, but we are on summer vacation now and it feels good!

I've had a couple of things I wanted to write about recently but of course can't take the time today for both.  But I did want to share that we are hosting a rummage sale today and tomorrow to benefit our Zambia team.  Our church family is awesome!  We have had so many people donate items and we are so thankful.  It has been so encouraging for the past two weeks to interact with people from our church.   They have been willing to bring things to our house and pray for us and it is so humbling.  God is so big and cares so much.  Will you join us in asking him to bring many people to our rummage sale?  We are asking that we will not only be benefitted but the people buying our items will feel blessed as well.

Happy Summer!  I will try to keep updating often.  I'm pretty sure we are going to have to start a countdown paper chain to keep track of how close our Zambia trip is coming :)  We are getting really excited!

Blessings ~ Erin