New Laptop!!!

Remember how I've been trying to raise money for a new laptop for the past four months or so? Well, I have finally arrived! I have a brand new Dell Inspiron, equipped just how I wanted it. Wow, what an improvement over my previous Dell. It's amazing the difference five years makes in the computer industry.

I have the computer, but I still need about $200 for Microsoft Office software. For now, the free 60-day trial version will suffice.

Thanks to everyone who contributed over the months, and a big thank you to a God who enjoys providing for His children!

Mission Adventures Single Mom Outreach

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Matthew 6:26

I went out to visit Amanda* to see what we could do to help. She is a neighbor of some friends of mine. They call her "one of Ozark's forgotten." A single mother, she works two difficult jobs just to make ends meet. When we met, she was stone-faced and unemotional, and a little bit shy. She told me, "I can't pay people to help me." The following week, I brought about 15 high school students to help her clear trees and brush off her land where she wanted a horse pasture. We worked there for 2 days, for free! Imagine her shock. Her neighbor told me later that she never smiled, but he visited her after we had worked for her, and she was all smiles and even gave him a big hug...something she had never done before! At the end of the week, she was a totally different person, full of joy.

Amanda was one of the nine single moms from the community that we served last week. We hosted a group of 50 high school students, and we gave them opportunities to serve. Typically, the circumstances single moms face are very difficult, sometimes even desperate. Through this group of students, we wanted to represent the Father's compassion to them, and by our actions tell them that God had not forgotten them.

We closed the week with a BBQ at a park, and invited all the moms we had served. Most of them showed up. I had the opportunity to share with them the verse I have written at the top of this blog, telling them that our message to them, through the projects completed and the free BBQ, was that they were in fact more valuable to the Father than the birds, and that He would care for them. As I spoke those words to them, I could see the eyes of each single mother welling with tears.

Preparing and planning everything for the Single Moms Outreach required a lot of difficult work, and a lot of prayer, but it was well worth it in the end, to see God work through us to show His compassion to those single moms.

*Names were changed for the sake of privacy.