Neighborhood & Rodeo Outreach

This past weekend and for the first half of this week, our church is focusing on spreading the gospel here in our town. We had a PRCA-sanctioned rodeo over the weekend which provided the opportunity to host kids' events beforehand and to provide food to the rodeo sponsors as well as the competing cowboys and their families. This week we are setting up a festival-type event at a different school each night in order to bring in kids and their parents/guardians. This is definitely stretching all of us out of our comfort zones as we strike up conversations with people about Christ. Please pray with us that God would do a mighty work through us in order to bring glory to His name and new believers into His kingdom!

Where we've been...

The past month has flown by. This is probably an obvious statement since we haven't posted to our blog at all lately. In the past month, Grace has started crawling, pulling up on everything that is remotely stationary, figured out her pincer grasp so she can feed herself, and started cutting her 3rd tooth! We have had a wonderful time watching Grace explore and test her newfound freedom. As a result, the word "no" has become a regular part of our vocabulary every day. There have also been more tears than normal (on Grace's part). She definitely doesn't like being told that she's not allowed to play with something - usually cords, large appliances and dirty shoes.
We have also seen just how naive and trusting she is. When we are playing on the bed she loves to take off crawling as fast as she can toward the edge. A couple of times we have simply stayed near her rather than pulling her back immediately. She will briefly look over the edge and then plunge right off the side! Don't worry - we don't let her fall to the floor. I'm not sure if she believes that we will catch her or if she just has no concept of depth perception. Either way we see just how much she needs us whether she realizes it or not. In much the same way, Christ sees just how much we need Him whether or not we know it. He sees our hurt - the pain we have from being let down by someone we trusted. He knows that if we simply turn to him, the pain can go away. We can put our full trust in Him and He will never let us down! This is not to say that our lives will be all sunshine and roses, but we will never again be alone in life's trials. It is truly amazing to see just how similar Grace's need for us is like our need for Jesus Christ.