Going someplace warmer

“But how can they call on Him they have not believed in?  And how can they believe without hearing about Him?”  Romans 10:14

Jed and I will be leaving this Saturday, January 22 with a team from our church to travel to West Africa for a mission trip.  We will be telling stories to the “B” group and helping them with their daily routine.  One day we will travel to a nearby village and story with them as well.  In the evenings we will have church and story with everyone as a group.  Words will be the way we tell these people about Jesus, some who have never even heard the name before.  This is an incredible opportunity and we are honored to get to be a part of this mission.  We will be gone from January 22-January 30.  Please pray for our team as we travel, tell the stories, pray for good health, and pray for those who will hear for the first time as well as those who are striving to grow in their faith.  Also pray for our two kids and our gracious babysitters who will be watching them for us while we are gone.  We look forward to sharing with y’all the great stories from the trip!  Thank you all in advance for your prayers.

15 Minutes per day in 2011

I was sitting in our study the other night staring at all the books lining the shelves of the bookcases and I was very bothered by the fact that I have read only a mere handful of the hundreds that we own.  My goal this year is to become more of a book reader and less of a blog reader.  John Piper has this encouraging word on reading (He is referencing D.A. Carson’s book A Call to Spiritual Reformation, which is 230 pages long), “If you read 15 minutes a day for one year (just 15 minutes, say just before supper, or just before bed), you will read 5,475 minutes in the year. Multiply that by 200 words a minute and you get 1,095,000 words that you would read in a year. Now the average book has about 360 words per page (that’s what Carson’s book has). So you would have read 360 words into 1,095,000, or 3,041 pages in one year. That’s 13 books the size of Carson’s book, or reading his in 21 days. All that in 15 minutes a day.”

Here is my current wish list for the year; however, I hope to add to it as I complete some reading.

Treasuring God in Our Traditions by Noel Piper (I started this on last year, so I just need to finish it.)

Redeeming the Time by Leland Ryken

Radical by David Platt

Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

Feminine Appeal by Carolyn Mahaney (This is one I want to read again.)

The Mission of Motherhood by Sally Clarkson

The Duties of Parents by J. C. Ryle

I’ll keep you posted on my reading.  If anyone has any good books they’ve read, please pass them along.  Hope y’all can find time each day to spend reading as well.  Best wishes for 2011!

 

Josiah and Susannah  wanted to say Hi to everyone: