Update on Tuesday nights

Here is another list someone from our group on Tuesday night put together for the last month or two.
It truly is amazing how the Lord continues to move and it takes an hour to share all the testimonies.
This list doesn't even take into account what has happened in the last two weeks and how individuals are experiencing God in fresh new ways.

If you are ever in town on a Tuesday night stop on in.

A families “awful bill”-$ arrived to pay
Sarah’s “dry bones” dream and her “let(ing) go”
Kristal bringing the presence of God in to client’s homes
Scott prays for Paul S’s knee and it is healed
Carrie S suitor “moves on” in answer to prayer
A ladies deliverance from the spirit of approval (intense)
Beth’s healing miraculously started
Lorie’s salvation, but still waiting on healing
Sarah’s dream about Debbie and Stephanie, the next day Debbie calls! Haven’t talked for a couple years.
Kelly’s dream about Diane J, sister, acupuncture
Susan’s Mom’s liver cancer healed (“the doctor can’t find the tumor”)
Shawna’s brother Anthony miraculously healed (2 knife wounds, one cut artery, “death” sentence, “certain brain injury” sentence, nurses confession of “miracle”, complete healing started, BSSM students “show up” to pray with Shawna as she prays for help)
Prophetic word about Anthony being a light and testimony to all his family
Shawna’s mother (pre-saved) thanks group for praying for Anthony!
Financial release for family that also blessed someone else
Resurrection of Christina and Adam’s baby (in womb) after Emie prays
Scott prays for a stabbed hand at The River (Church) and it is healed
Beginning of Casey/Christina’s reconciliation after night of warfare prayer
Kyle /Lesley’s “peace” answer to prayer regarding their future
Baby Benjamin’s miraculous continual healing & prophesies over his life.

How to make $6k in a month!

Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm is Greek for en theos, God in Us!

How can Atheist appreciate music?

Got fired? Good!

Nathaniel Hawthorne went home to tell his wife that he had just been fired from his job. "Good," she said. "Now you can write your book." "What do we live on meanwhile?" Hawthorne asked. His wife opened a drawer filled with money. "I have always known that you are a man of genius," she said. "So I have saved a little each week, and now I have enough to last for a year." Hawthorne used the time to write The Scarlet Letter, one of the greatest masterpieces of American literature.

Hello Dear Team Africa!!

I think I'm ready to come out of hiding . . . for a few minutes anyway!
I can't believe it has been an entire year since we landed back on the soil of good ol' US of A. And it has taken that entire year to recover! As I have been reflecting on our time in Africa and the few months following our return to the States, I am in complete awe and unexplainable thankfulness for how the Lord used you, our incredible team, to support, love, pray for, and bring us to a place of rest and refreshing again. YOU ARE INCREDIBLE!! And I'm not just saying that!

We have met many, many missionaries in our journeys over the years. Many of their stories of their support systems are very sad. Often missionaries get sent out with a big fan fare, rarely to hear from their supporters or "team" during their difficult days on the field and ESPECIALLY upon their return FROM the field. Many feel they cannot be real with their supporters for fear of losing necessary funding. Because of our anonymous giving, we felt total freedom to give you our yuck! And we did! And you responded in such love and grace, we just can't imagine it being any other way! Thank you for helping to make our experiences very different from those who feel so isolated in their service in foreign lands.

As we left for Africa two years ago, we were sent out miraculously as God used you to provide the necessary finances to get on the plane with our 17 bags and 3 kids! Once in Africa, we never once felt abandoned. You were faithful to email just at the right time (Praise God for technology. . . 25 years ago, that would've been impossible!!). You would email things God was asking you to pray for and it was SPOT ON! Many of you, I was able to build wonderful relationships with as email prayer pals! We were truly surrounded in prayer. And we always had what we needed monetarily. There were weeks it would look slim, but then God would prompt someone to give and we'd have exactly what we needed . . . over and over again. And as Heath has updated once before, we "made" more money as missionaries than he is making at a "real" job! That is miraculous and such a testimony to your faithfulness to care for us and respond to God in giving when He prompted. THANK YOU!

Mozambique was an incredibly rich experience for all of us, while South Africa proved to be much more trying. The uncertainly of what we were doing there, how long we were to be there and what was next, ON TOP OF having our 4th baby, made the stress of missionary life very difficult. Yet once again, we never felt abandoned by God or by you, HIS Body! Over and over your prayer confirmation was direction for us as the Holy Spirit would tell you things only He and we knew!

The love and care that we were given from Kent and Shay at the Ehmke house (the one we lived at in South Africa) and the friendship and fellowship from Richard and Sheila and others in Nelspruit was invaluable. Thanks so much for loving us and enduring with us through our difficult days! I was a basket case to be sure!

God's provision through YOU to get us back to the US was another amazing miracle. And everything preceding our landing in Portland, Oregon was the love of God manifested tangibly through you! Two weeks prior to leaving South Africa, we had no where to live upon returning home. Then God shows up through Mike Thaler and offers us a beautiful place to stay for 3 months! We got "home" and the house was set up and livable, complete with towels, sheets, beds, crib, soap, shampoo, dishes, warm clothes and a month and a half supply of food! For all of you who were part of that, we will never forget it. You blessed us beyond what we could've thought or asked for at that point. You provided a place for us to come home to and we felt anything BUT abandoned by our friends and team!

Those three months were so difficult in the reverse culture shock and wondering what the heck we were supposed to do next! Yet again, we had you to cry with, sob our guts out with, tell our jaded, processing thoughts to and to pray with! You know who you are! Thank you for letting us be so real. It made our restoration process so much quicker than it could've been. From toilet paper and diapers to friends GIVING US their mini-van, we couldn't recount all the ways that YOU, our friends and teammates have given to and been there for us.

Thank you to all of you who housed us, loved us, supported us financially through those awkward months. The Truaxs, Stagers, Bocseris, Kinds, and then the Georges whom we told we'd be there for 2 weeks and left 3 months later!!!!! I'm telling you, our friends are full of hospitality. We have so many crazy, unbelievable stories of true hospitality and the family of God working and providing for other parts of the body, it's bizarre!!

We truly have not taken any of your love, gifts, prayers, hospitality, financial support, and most of all friendship for granted. And I know in my attempt to give honor to you, our friends and supporters, I will miss mentioning some really big things, moments, or gifts. But they are not forgotten in our hearts and minds. My journals tell it all!

And as we could never repay you for such acts of love and kindness and sometimes sheer obedience, we continually pray that the Lord will bless you beyond what you could imagine for the sacrifices of friendship and love and gifts given to us for the Kingdom of Heaven.

It has been a wonderful 5 months of living in our own little house, with our own little space and our own little family. The Lord told me this would be a greenhouse time for our family where he was tenderly caring for and growing us in order to send us out again. It has truly been this. I am coming alive again and loving life again! YEAH GOD! Hiding has been the best thing in the world for me and the kids . . . a little rough on Heath but he's enduring for our sake!! Ministry, though on a much smaller scale, continues to be amazing as we meet on Tuesday nights to pray. The Presence of God and power of the Holy Spirit is just amazing.

And the biggest miracle of all is that I am LOVING and fully embracing the role of motherhood like never before in my 10 years of marriage. God had to take me through the last 3 years to bring me to a place of fully surrendering my heart and this time in my life to Him by giving it to my family wholeheartedly.

So thank you. Thank you, thank you, and thank you. Forgive my hiding! I will return (it may be 17 years from now but I will return!!). Jesus is ministering to us and continuing to minister through us. Someone asked me if I'm enjoying living in California. I said, "I would've enjoyed living on the moon at that point! I just needed somewhere to LAND for a longish period of time!" So yes, I'm enjoying Cali, but most of all, I'm enjoying routine, stability and hiding! This is the first time in 10 years of marriage where all I have to think about is my family! I think I'm considering this my sabbatical!

Ok, that's enough for one "outing!" Love and blessings and abundant LIFE to you all! We LOVE YOU!

Emie for the Locke Family

Abraham Lincoln on Finances

Dear Johnston:--

Your request for eighty dollars, I do not think it best to comply with now. At the various times when I have helped you a little, you have said to me, "We can get along very well now," but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again. Now this can only happen by some defect in your conduct. What that defect is, I think I know. You are not _lazy_, and still you _are_ an _idler_. I doubt whether since I saw you, you have done a good whole day's work, in any one day. You do not very much dislike to work, and still you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it. This habit of uselessly wasting time, is the whole difficulty; and it is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children, that you should break this habit. It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it easier than they can get out after they are in.

You are now in need of some ready money; and what I propose is, that you shall go to work, "tooth and nail," for somebody who will give you money for it. Let father and your boys take charge of things at home--prepare for a crop, and make the crop; and you go to work for the best money wages, or in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get. And to secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you that for every dollar you will, between this and the first of next May, get for your own labor either in money or in your own indebtedness, I will then give you one other dollar. By this, if you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your work. In this, I do not mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead mines, or the gold mines, in California, but I mean for you to go at it for the best wages you can get close to home, in Coles County. Now if you will do this, you will soon be out of debt, and what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again. But if I should now clear you out, next year you will be just as deep in as ever.
You say you would almost give your place in Heaven for $70 or $80. Then you value your place in Heaven very cheaply, for I am sure you can with the offer I make you get the seventy or ighty dollars for four or five months' work. You say if I furnish you the money you will deed me the land, and if you don't pay the money back, you will deliver possession-- Nonsense! If you can't now live _with_ the land, how will you then live without it? You have always been kind to me, and I do not now mean to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you will but follow my advice, you will find it worth more than eight times eighty dollars to you.

Affectionately your brother,

A. LINCOLN.