The Mormance Mix: August 2012

Monday, August 27, 2012

Daddy will you dance with me?

It's been a busy summer.
Matt has been gone a lot with camps.
Earlier today he was in the middle of a project and I overheard Eliana ask,

"Daddy, will you dance with me?" (She had put on her ballerina skirt and waited patiently, expectantly for his reply.)

I could see him hesitate, busy with the project at hand.

"You know," I said, "There is coming a day when you would give anything to have an opportunity like this again."

"You're right," he said . . .

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Trust Fall at Kriz

(I just wrote this for our email update. . . . but I've included more photos here on the blog.)

During Kriz (the two week training time in Bible and theology), Matt led the students in a trust fall. I just spent some time looking through the photos from Kriz - but it was the photos he took of the trust fall that struck me the most. He took a photo of about half the students before they fell and another one mid-fall. I began to notice a pattern:

As each person

prepared to fall,

their faces were filled

with a mixture of

nervousness

excitement

anxiousness

& fear;

But . . .

once they made the decision

to fall . . .

and they took a

step of faith

past the point of no return

their countenance

completely changed

every time!

Their faces changed to reflect

assurance,

confidence,

but mostly

peace!

Here in the blog I can share more before and during photos:

As I sat and reflected on what I saw in the photos I felt the Lord was asking,

"Isn't it the same with you?"

And I had to admit it was true.

How often do I let myself stand "on the top of the wall," my heart filled with fear and anxiousness, wondering if God really will come through for me.

But once I step out in faith, trusting God's power, His goodness and His love, the fear melts away and is replaced with his peace!

Oh that I will trust Him more quickly each time!

Group hug after the trust fall was done.

Having my parents here to help with our kids during Kriz was . . . incredible . . . at so many different levels.

* It freed me up to really be able to enter in to my times of teaching at mentoring at Kriz.

* It was the first time they have been able to visit us during our 4 years of living in Europe (2 years here and 2 years in Lithuania)

* It was the first time they got to meet their grandson, Alex.

* It gave me many great moments of "downtime" with them. So often when we visit them in the States we only have 4 or 5 days to spend with them at a time, and we work hard to squeeze a whole lot of special times in. (They live in Washington, about 2 1/2 hours from where we used to live in Portland.)

Oh, my list could go on, but I think instead I will let these photos tell some of the story of their visit here: