Saturday, June 21, 2014

Caretakers of Grace

Hello All,
This has been a crazy week, but I guess most of them are!  It started last Saturday with a final walk-through of the Upendo Village project.  It is wonderful to see that building practically finished and it was on time and on budget!  How does that happen?  Hence we hired him to work on the RVA project!


Front of the building with Sister Florence looking on

First meeting in the new board room!

Handing over the keys

Opening the doors!

We will miss working with the sisters!

The Art Center at RVA is moving along again.  They are just about ready to pour the concrete for the third floor.  They are also working on walls on the lower level.  This project should have been done last February.  Now with the new contract, looks like it will be about November of this year.  We are anxious to get it done but looks like it will move at its own pace as everything here does!

Ever work most of the day on your computer and find out later that all the work you've done is gone?  That happened to me this week!  How frustrating!  There is so little time left to do everything that needs to be done and then to find out you've lost a 1/2 days worth of material.  I tried to rewrite the next day and got about 60% there, but it will take some more doing.

We have so much going on between the kids doing their things and the projects we are involved with, that we often walk right by the hospital and forget what is going on inside those walls.  When I run into my doctor friends or read their blogs, it reminds me that there are struggles going on everyday that make my problems, like losing a document to the ether-land, pale in comparison. Here is what a friend wrote on her blog quoting one of her colleagues,
"We don't need to be another private hospital for Kenyans with jobs, he said.  Those people can afford the upscale institutions in the city.  Kijabe should be known instead as a place where any person, no matter how poor, can come for care.  Yes, we will talk to you and work around constraints on your resources and ours.  But, no one will be turned away.  That is the way Jesus would work in our world, and this is how our world now sees Jesus."
I love this and to be reminded that is the whole point of why we do what we do.  You can read her whole blog at http://www.paradoxuganda.blogspot.com/  Thank you Jennifer!

Last week the pastor spoke about having a helper.  We need help in this life, just like you need a tool to remove a screw, we need a helper to do the work of Christ.  We know this for sure as we are so drained at times and just have to call on Him to help us through.  1 Peter 4:10 "Just as each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of the varied grace of God."  We are caretakers of the grace of God!  God sent the Holy Spirit to help us.  We are each blessed with gifts that we can use to glorify God and building up others.  Here is a link to a great article by John Piper:  http://www.desiringgod.org/sermons/spiritual-gifts
At the end, he says the following:

"And there is nothing more thrilling, more joyful, more meaningful, more satisfying than to find our niche in the eternal unfolding of God's glory.  Our gift may look small, but as a part of the revelation of God's infinite glory it takes on stupendous proportions."

This is the point in life where you really are content, serving others, including your family and the world around you.  It is our goal to get to this point, being the caretakers of God's grace and giving that to others all around us!

We are down to 4.5 weeks before we leave.  We are a bit overwhelmed with the details of it all.  Today will be spent going through items and sorting for each of the kids.  The weather is turning cold now and we have had a fire in the fireplace the last few days.  It feels like fall in Michigan.  I am afraid we will get home at the end of July and it will feel like 2 seconds before the fall in Michigan really does arrive and we will have to face a winter there!  I need to buy hats!

In His Hands,
Jullie T

No comments:

Post a Comment