Cafe

Some days, I feel as though I can never drink enough coffee. Today is one of those days.

Raised to Walk in Newness of Life

About a month ago, I was baptized, which was something I had been eager and excited about for a long time. It was such a wonderful day, and I am so thankful and feel so blessed that I was able to share in it with those that I love and that have invested in my life for the glory of God. Thank you all so much; it meant so much to me that you were there! My church posted the videos from the baptisms on their website, so I thought that I would share it here. It's really encouraging and wonderful to see the work that the Lord is doing in his people and his church. My video is on there, but I would encourage you to watch all of the testimonies because it's wonderful to see the different ways that Jesus works in people's lives!

http://fourpointschurch.tv/media/

Romans 6:4
"We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life."

Psalm 121

"I lift up my eyes to the hills.

From where does my help come?

My help comes from the LORD,

who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved;

he who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, he who keeps Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.

The LORD is your keeper;

the LORD is your shade on your right hand.

The sun shall not strike you by day,

nor the moon by night.

The LORD will keep you from all evil;

he will keep your life.

The LORD will keep

your going out and your coming in

from this time forth and forevermore."

Longing for Fall

It took me 20 minutes this morning to convince myself that it was wise to move from my comfortable seat to get the coffee that I usually begin my day with. I am convinced that had I used the french press, my struggle would have been exceedingly less difficult.

This morning, I am drawn to the Psalms. I have so much to learn from the life of David. Well, I have much to learn in general, but today I'm just going to focus on what I need to learn from David. Every time I read in Psalms, I am overwhelmed by the way in which David boldly draws near to the throne of grace. It's so encouraging, and it helps me to know how to pray when I sometimes don't have the words. He cries out to the Lord; he remembers what the Lord has done for him and his people; he remembers who he is in light of God; he openly and honestly tells God how he is feeling; he cries for help; he speaks of what God will do; he praises God for who He is. As I often struggle with pride, it's sometimes difficult for me to be completely vulnerable before the Lord, and it is an encouragement to see the vulnerability and humility in the life of David. Hopefully, by grace I can let these truths sink in, and learn to approach God with much humility, for He is holy. I am so thankful that his Word is living and active, constantly teaching his people more and more about who He is.

Today is rainy in Georgia. It makes me long for Fall and the beauty of creation during that season. I cannot wait to step on crunchy leaves and make apple crisp.

I might be OCD

I had the oddest dream last night. Actually, now that I think about it, it's not that odd for me, but from the outside looking in it's a tad awkward. In my dream I was in Peru and a friend and I (faceless friend) were keeping an eye on these two men's little "stores." I put "stores" in quotation marks because they were really more like one of those booths that you see at the fair that have all of the stuffed animals/prizes on them. Oh and the only thing that the "stores" sold was candy . . . original. So my unknown friend and I are taking care of the "stores" and I all of a sudden get really frazzled because my "store" is just in shambles. Nothing was lined up correctly and candy was strewn every which way. Can you imagine?? So I proceeded, before I could sell anything, to tidy up my "store" so that everything had it's place and was nice and orderly. Then the "store" owner came back. Confused as to why I had changed everything he asked, "Do you like the labels to face forward or something." Yes, yes I do.

Also, my kitten has made a sport out of knocking the Christmas ornaments off of the tree. So I've made a game too . . . she gets a treat for every ornament she knocks off. I wonder if she'll start to notice the positive reinforcement.

Just As I Am

Currently I've been listening to a sermon series by Mark Driscoll on Philippians (The Rebel's Guide to Joy). The most recent that's really been a blessing to me is the section of scripture Philippians 1:12-18. Paul, pretty much rotting in prison, is moved to joy because his position of suffering for the gospel has given him great opportunity to spread the truth of Christ to the Imperial guard and others imprisoned with him. It is just such a beautiful picture to me. It's not so much that I'm suffering in any way even remotely equivalent to what Paul endured, but more so that my heart for the persecuted church has grown so much in the past few months that this joy that Paul continually proclaims throughout his letters moves me to joy that I have never experienced. "What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice." Glory to God!

I can only hope that when suffering befalls me that I respond in the way that Paul did. Also looking upon the biography of Charlotte Elliott (I encourage you to read about it!), I desire for my reaction to be somewhat comparable to hers, that Christ be known and glorified in my suffering. She penned this wonderful hymn, rejoicing overall that just as we are, we are received by grace through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. I really just have meditated and loved this hymn in the past week and hope that it is beneficial and a blessing to others as well.

Just As I Am - by Charlotte Elliott

Just as I am, without one plea,

but that thy blood was shed for me,

and that thou bidst me come to thee,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, and waiting not

to rid my soul of one dark blot,

to thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, though tossed about

with many a conflict, many a doubt,

fightings and fears within, without,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;

sight, riches, healing of the mind,

yea, all I need in thee to find,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, thou wilt receive,

wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;

because thy promise I believe,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Welcome to the jungle!

Surprisingly, we made it out of the jungle with only a few scratches! We arrived in the very warm Iquitos Monday afternoon. We were really surprised by how different the jungle is than the rest of Perú. Peru has a very conservative culture, so it was weird to see women in tank tops and very short skirts and shorts. It was quite an adjustment! That night we had a tasty dinner of alligator nuggets and manioc/yucca and fell asleep pretty early. The next morning we met our guide, Magali, after breakfast and headed to Llanchama, the village in the jungle where we would be staying. After a combi ride and a 40 minute walk we arrived in Llanchama which was so beautiful and right on the river! They even have a discotech in their small town which we thought was hilarious. Then we arrived to our house which was so picturesque...flowers surrounding the gate and an open aired house with a thatched roof. We were so excited! We met the three "house moms" who are all so sweet and they immediately set up hammocks for us to rest from our walk. It was perfect! After a few hours we had a big lunch of fish with peppers and rice which was so flavorful and yummy. After another long rest we took a short walk around the jungle so that Señora María could show us all of the great plants that they use and their gardens. Not even half-way into the walk Emily got pretty sick and started throwing up...we're pretty sure that the heat made it worse, because she was sick the rest of the day :(. But the ladies took such great care of her! Señora María kept giving me the tour while Emily rested and I got to see so many great plants that they use for medicine and food. I even got to pick a pineapple! That night we fell asleep to all of the wonderful jungle sounds and were excited for the next day.

On Wednesday we woke up early in the morning and headed out onto the river in a canoe to go catch some fish with our rods made out of wood! Emily and I are both horrible fishers, so we didn't expect much, but the river is so beautiful in the morning. There was fog everywhere, so you couldn't see 10 feet in front of you, and the stillness/quietness was just awesome. We kept going to random coves because we weren't really catching anything, but I think it's because the fish are a lot smarter than the ones back home...they're sneaky and eat the bait off of the hook without getting caught...it's amazing. Finally we found a cove where we caught some really ugly looking fish that are apparently bait fish. Needless to say, we weren't proud of our first fishing experience. Then we had breakfast with my tasty pineapple from the day before and took long naps in our hammocks. After lunch, we headed back out onto the river to have hopefully more success than our previous attempt. We were out on the river for a while before any fish even started biting, but we got to see a pink dolphin which was awesome! We only caught one fish on our second attempt, but apparently it was the biggest fish in the amazon! Only the one I caught was a baby haha. So we headed back for dinner and planned to take a nightly stroll to find tarantulas! We usually go to bed around 7 or 8, so we stayed up way past our bedtime that night. We were walking for about 45 minutes and hadn't found and tarantulas, so Señora María decided to look for snakes instead. We were both thinking "Oh even better!" But after an hour and a half we hadn't found anything, so headed back to go to bed.

Yesterday we were hoping for a relaxed day because we would only be there until lunch, but our relaxed day quickly turned into one of the longest days ever. After breakfast, Magali asked if we wanted to go for a walk. Thinking it would be around an hour to an hour and a half, we said yes...Señora María had other plans. We started climbing through the jungle about 45 minutes in and the mosquitos didn't make it easy. Then we came to a small lake that was too deep to walk across, so Señora María started fixing a small balsa raft which basically looked like 4 twigs roped together. I was pretty set on not getting wet because I knew we had a flight later and I had no other shoes and I didn't want my camera to get wet, so I said a big no to the sinking raft. So we started walking to find another way which led us to another balsa raft with huge logs that still managed to be submerged in the water when someone was on it. We decided to take that one and hope for the best. Emily went first and quickly found that the center was not really the best place to be...she got soaked on one side up to her thigh but strategically made it across without falling off. I was a little more fortunate, because only my shoes got soaked. After our lake rafting we traipsed through the jungle some more and stumbled upon some squirrel monkies high in the trees. Apparently when they saw us they were planning an attack, so we left pretty quickly. By the time we started going back to the house we were about 2 hours into our hike and exhausted from the heat and no water. We just kept stumbling everywhere and hoped to get back to the house in one piece. I was almost certain that a snake was going to attack my ankles at some point along our journey, but we made it back to the house just in time for lunch, unscathed less a couple of scratches.

We left our sweet house moms after lunch with a sad good-bye and headed to the airport where we were certainly the smelliest people on the plane. We felt really bad for anyone sitting near us. So we REALLY enjoyed our warm showers this morning :). We're back in Lima and sad that our journey is almost over. Today we're going to visit the market in Lima and spend some time with our family here that we love. I guess since this will most likely be the last post of our trip, we'd like to say thank all of you who have been reading along and praying for us. We've had such a wonderful experience here and can't wait to return one day. We love the peruvian people and culture and are so blessed to have had the time and experience that we've had. So our last prayer request is that you would pray for the Peruvian people and nation as a whole, that God would move mightily here and that the nation would rise to glorify Jesus. We love you and we'll see you soon!

P.S. We're trying to change our flight on Sunday from Miami to Atlanta to 9:10 AM so that we'll get home earlier, and if that one is full we'll be getting on the 11:25 AM flight.

love! Lauren