Blessed

I was just thinking tonight how completely blessed I am. I am so quick to complain and gripe, but truly I have no reason nor need to complain- I am BLESSED!

- The Lord has allowed for me and my family to live in a beautiful country, serve amazing people, and share His abundant life with other awesome believers here...
-all my life I desired to be able to travel- and the Lord has answered that dream of mine, as we still have to travel outside of the country every three months...I'm gonna have to get more pages for my passport soon because they are almost used up :) God is so good!
-Since the moment we began feeling the call to missions, I began really trying to put into practice the whole "Love Your Neighbor"thing...for real, not just give it lip service...and since we moved here, I have the opportunity every single day. Tonight, I was blessed to see that reciprocated in my life as I arrived home to a freshly raked, cleaned, and neat and tidy yard...and the yard had been a mess of dead leaves, fallen mangos and one sad, tired and dying palm tree that I just hadn't had time to tend to...and out of the kindess of their hearts (or out of the growing desire to see our yard cleaned up) my sweet friends Elvita and Ana came over while we were gone for PFK and cleaned, raked and tidied up our yard and pulled out the dead tree...

"and they'll know we are Christians by our love..."
- we've had a dripping faucet in the kitchen for quite some time now and Matt has tried to fix it before but to no avail. Today he finally realized what he could do and fixed it! After the kids and I got home (Matt stayed at church for Bible Study) they got showers and I washed up the dishes from the day that I had not yet gotten to. The kids asked to watch a Little House video and got it ready and started while I cleaned up the kitchen and then shortly after, sat down to watch with them. After we were done watching the video, Ethan took something to the sink and he came across a rather large puddle and asked what all the water was...Well, long story short- the metal bolt on the tube from the sink to the water pipe had somehow cracked today and all day long it had been emitting a small light spray, which eventually filled the flat storage pan I have the trash bags, sponges, rags, etc. in under the sink and then eventually ran out onto the shelves and onto to the floor and then began seeping out. In about 40 minutes there was a good size puddle...The point of all of this is that our three kids jumped in and started cleaning up and helping and it was fantastic joy that filled my heart at seeing them pitch in and work together to clean up what could have been a disatrous mess had we not caught it when we did. Praise God for such proud parenting moments...and for a husband who knows a little bit about everything and fixed it enough to hold and stop leaking  until the real fix can be made tomorrow :)
-also- a friend whom we'd loaned money to several months ago (without ever expecting to get it back- we gave it not so much as a loan, but as a gift...) paid us back a portion tonight...such a hard thing it must have been for her to give $20...but such a testament to her faith in the Lord's provision...
-the blessing is real to me tonight as I see God's hand in my life with who He chooses to weave into my life...a new younger friend, being able to share with me her past chains in order to be able to see clearer to help an even younger friend here who is bonded in what may be the same chains...God is so good!

Thank You Jesus, for Your many. many blessings!