He loves us

I am sitting here completely overwhelmed by a new and deeper revelation of God.

I remember when I was dating Doug and just meeting his parents we went to Red Robin and they talked of God and faith all of the time. I was a Christian at the time but in my head were thoughts of, "why is this family so "spiritual" always talking about God and faith, etc. all of the time!!" Well as life has gone on and God has matured me in who he is and who I am in him, I get it!
There is a song by Jesus Culture called "How He Loves",(I challenge you to look it up and really listen to the words). Talks about how he is jealous for us, how he loves us, how beautiful He is and great His affections are for me, if grace is an ocean we are all sinking, I don't have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way...he loves us. This is another one of the may worship songs that just "messes me up", in a good way. I am recognizing that if I am not changed what is the point?
My man, Doug preached at our home church here (and did an amazing job). He dug into understanding our covenant with God, and how we really don't get its fullness. He dug into Galatians 3:15-29, and wow! Coming to a new revelation of God and how much he loves us is so amazing to me! The law is our own efforts trying to make ourselves right with God. God gave the law to point out the flaws in us, we use law to prove ourselves holy. The law is not bad, Romans 7:7 “I would not have known sin if it were not for the law”. The purpose of the law is to point us back to Jesus.
My prayer this year 2010 was to truly say “I am in love with Jesus and mean it, not just words but a heart changed and truly in love with my Jesus”. I think that I am beginning to only touch the tip of the ice berg. I see his word for a true genuine love letter to us.

I'll be home for Christmas

We are coming home for Christmas!!!
This all started before we came to Africa, the first time in 2004. We were in the process and recognizing that we were going to be raising our kids half way around the world (literally) away from family, our home culture and friends. We began chatting with other current missionaries about what they did to stay connected and help to keep their kiddos connected. One family in particular, said that they purposed to come home for a vacation half way through each 4 year term. So we did that our first term with help from the parents :), but Christmas 2005 tickets were cheaper and we were one less on the "Myers Team".
We have continued with that desire to come home for Christmas, this time Christmas 2010! Doug's parents will also be celebrating a pretty big anniversary so their hope was for all of us Myers to go on a cruise while home for Christmas! So they started putting money away for us, if we got home they would help to cover the cruise!
As we have gotten closer and closer we got serious and started looking at ticket for all 5 of us to get home ... Well, $7000 later. Yeah, and that was only the tickets home. We also wanted to get to Cali. to go on the 4 day Mexican cruise with the family and to Leavenworth with my family, the Sollie side. We tucked that one away and thought on it. In May on our 12th anniv. Doug and I got away for 2 nights and on the way had this talk of how that is a rediculous amount of money to spend on a few weeks of just being home. We felt 1. Not real good stewards of our money, 2. That in no way leaves room for God to do a miracle 3. Who has $9500 sitting around for fun! (I know there are some people out there, but not us). Doug and I began discussing that it is not a bad thing for us to go home, but why not trust God to provide it for us, a faith builder for us and for our kids to experience and walk out with us. So we set this amount of $ that we had from previous blessings and money we felt like we would spend from our savings, and then began to pray, daily, for the rest of it, with the kids.
June hit and we were doing our taxes and got a good return. Our tax guy informed us that there was another refund, but because we live out of the states we were probably not eligable for it. Doug, went to the living room and prayed with the kids that if God would provide this money we would use it for our trip home and that it would be part of our testimony .... you guessed it $3000 later we were getting closer to our trip home. A couple months went by and we began thinking where is the rest going to come from.
We just had a team leave us from Montana. The last night of them being here they prayed over us and told us how their pastor told them to over budget for a trip here, they cut out on meals, eating pbj with the kids at the soccer camps and trimmed down on some dinners and informed us the $3500 we still needed to go home was DONE!
We were Completely overwhelmed and honored, by this team, who was lead by Pastor Jason & Heather Bishop, who were one of Doug's interns when we were youth pastors! God is faithful. Though we give up things, he blesses us more than we could imagine!
I was reminded of Ephesians 3:17-21
"So that Christ may dwell in you hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have the power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work with in us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!"
Actually the night the team told us this I skyped my mom and had itunes opened to the song "I'll be home for Christmas". When she answered I did not say anything, but played the song and she began to cry, and after telling her the great news, she cried even harder! (I think she is excited for us to come home or something!)