Month: August 2019

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Week 6: Plumbline

Plumbline: noun. “A plumb line is a weight suspended from a string used as a vertical reference line to ensure a structure is centered” (definition from Commentary: Biblical Plumbline Still a Relevant Biblical Allegory, in The Daily Pilot, by Lauren Keane)

Amos 7:7-8

7 Then he showed me another vision. I saw the Lord standing beside a wall that had been built using a plumb line. He was using a plumb line to see if it was still straight. 8 And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?”

I answered, “A plumb line.”

And the Lord replied, “I will test my people with this plumb line. I will no longer ignore all their sins.”

A friend of mine described this week as “heart surgery” — I cannot come up with a better description. I knew heading into this week the topic was “plumbline”, but it didn’t really mean anything to me; I had no idea what was in store! And it was good — so good — but oh-so-hard. One of the things we repeatedly tell our kids is how valuable it is to “do hard things.” And as parents, we do hard things all the time… But I have to say, there was a depth to the hard things last week…

One of our exercises last week was to write a letter to God our Father — that was our simple assignment (ha!). The Lord took me back to a season of my life where I needed to make some things right with Him and a couple of other close people in my life. There’s that old saying “let bygones be bygones”, but I don’t think the Lord likes things left undone in our lives. He wants to redeem our mistakes and brokenness. But if we just tuck those things away, and never set things right, we bind up His ability to use our story — really the story of His redemption. Redemption is for broken people. And I’m going to tell you now, I’m broken. I have made some big mistakes; there’s literally a season of my life that I’d like a redo, please. But that is not how it works. No redos. Just honesty and confession and repentance, and healing!

And there was a second half of the assignment… that was to let the Lord speak into what was written to Him, and write a letter back to ourselves. I do want to share with you what the Lord spoke to me.

“Dear Amy, I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. Nothing changes that. And I see you. I’ve always seen. You are forgiven. You are free. You’re not wierd. I’ve been gracious and compassionate. And I continue to be. Always ask me first what my thoughts are about…everything.

Keep talking to me… and listening to me. I have things I want to show you. And I want you to be reminded often of my great love for you, no matter what you may feel from others. I love you.” {Insert sobbing emoji}

Y’all. God loves you so much. I’m totally undone by that truth…

A note on outreach — in my excitement to announce our foreign outreach, I failed to mention another aspect. After we return from Brazil, we will be spending another two weeks on a stateside outreach — likely Houston, but not set in stone….yet. After those two weeks, we have a week of debriefing here on base, and then we graduate (11/16)!

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Week 5 and OUTREACH location!!!

I’ll go out of order from my post title… let’s talk about Outreach first…

We’re going to BRAZIL!! We will be in Canapi, in the Alagoas region. We leave somewhere around September 20, and will be there for right around a month. Let the Porteguese language training begin! We’re working weekly on outreach prep, which at this point is learning skits that we will be performing HUNDREDS of times in those 4 weeks! There’s more to outreach prep, that we will find out as the weeks go on… Just as when we came here (we didn’t know too many details ahead of time) we take outreach prep one step at a time.

I need to stop here for a moment and reveal something so awesome I have learned about my husband in the last couple of weeks….

Many of you are familiar with my kids interest in drama. Nolan, Savana & Landon have all participated in the Assemblies of God Fine Arts Competition through our church; Savana, Landon, Lucie and Tessa have been involved in our community theater. Until very recently I believed that their talent was a kind of out-of-the-blue gift… I’m not really into to drama, and neither is Neil…. wait a minute…

It turns out that Neil has quite a gift for drama — he’s volunteered to act in some of the skits we’re learning, and I’m dying! He’s AMAZING!

Last week our topic was Spiritual Warfare. Neil and my week was a little more experiential… After doing a good bit of explaining about the Trinity and the role of the 3 persons of the Trinity — especially the Holy Spirit, whom we have with us — he led us through two powerful sessions of prayer. I felt like we experienced spiritual warfare as much as we learned about it. The kids tackled the same topic in their class, but they focused more on the Armor of God and doing spiritual warfare in the “opposite spirit” (which is basically repaying evil with good — see I Peter 3:9).

Also significant this week, we looked together as a family at the Five Love Languages (Acts of Service, Quality Time, Gifts, Words of Affirmation, Physical Touch) and identified each member of our family’s top two love languages. THEN, we brainstormed ideas of how we could show love to each other in the other’s love languages. This is not a brand new idea to me, but I have never followed through with the exercise of actually identifying the languages in my kids. We then took it to the next level by identifying practical ways to show love to each other. It was such a life-giving exercise for our family.

Our week ended with a visit from my sister Stacie, her husband Mike, and their girls. Stacie and I are loving living ONLY 4 hours apart… Weekend visits have been impossible for the last 20 years with out involving an airplane…. until now 🙂

*As of today, week 6 is in the books! I’m trying to stay on top of my updates, but time ALWAYS FLIES! Hopefully you’ll see another post about this week very soon… We’ll see 🙂

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A Day in Our Life… YWAM Tyler

Absolutely cannot believe we’ve been here 3, check that, 4 weeks! Here’s a glimpse into our schedule & life here… Each week has a theme/lesson plan for the week. The kids class (Family Sync) is learning the same lessons that Neil & I are learning in our class. Mornings begin with prayer, worship, and/or intercession. Eli & Titus get dropped off right around 8:45, and the older 5 head to the Family Sync classroom. We’re all in class until 12:15. We collect our kids and have lunch at 12:30. Classes resume around 1:25. We finish at 3:15, get to work (the kids get a snack & play; the older kids usually help with Titus & Eli too); dinner is at 5:15. We usually hit the pool as a family once or twice during the week, in the evening. Thursdays are laundromat days — we alternate the boys/girls going, and it has evolved to include ice cream 🙂 We are HAPPY to do laundry! (And also, I don’t think I’ve ever given laundromat laundry a fair shot — it is a legitimately awesome alternative! We get four washers going at once, followed by 4 dryers, and all of our laundry is done for the week, in the span of about 2 hours.)

Week one: Orientation; we learned more about the history of YWAMTyler — which is completely fascinating (check out the book “Is that Really You, God?” to read about the history of this movement called YWAM, written by the founder, Loren Cunningham)! The founder of this Tyler base is Loren Cunningham’s cousin. He and his wife spent a couple of mornings in our classroom, sharing amazing GOD stories from over the years. We learned about work duty. We’re each responsible for a work duty M-F — Neil works in the kitchen on dinner prep, and I, along with a couple of dorm-mates ,do housekeeping in our dorm each day. Kids over 13 also have work duty, so Nolan and Savana help tidy up the cafeteria space each day after lunch. Kids under 13 have work duty keeping their classroom (Family Sync room) clean. We talked about critters & creatures to watch out for in East Texas, like fire ants, chiggers, scorpions, and copperhead snakes (mercifully not poisenous…)… We spent some time breaking the ice & getting to know fellow classmates (there are 12 families in our DTS). We learned about the do’s & don’t’s of life in Dorm 3….

Week two: “Knowing God” Our speakers came from YWAM Kona and shared so much wisdom — We dug into the Creation story, and together started gaining a better understanding of just how lovingly our Father created us… I think for me, one of the biggest lessons was understanding that we get to know God best when we experience Him; do the things He does, and we’ll know Him better. I was also humbled this week — I have spent time in the Word — I even took Old and New Testament classes in college, but when I was reading, what was I actually doing???! There is so much depth in this Book, y’all! And I’ve been challenged this week to read a little more slowly and ask a lot more questions, so I can understand more fully what it’s saying.

Week three: “Hearing the Voice of God” Okay, so this week was st-ret-ch-ing, to say the least. My church background had the voice of God pretty limited to the Bible. And while in the last several years I have come to embrace the Holy Spirit and His role in my life (I’ve even been blessed by words & pictures given to others in our church), I have kind of sidelined myself, saying something like “God doesn’t speak to ME in that way.” WRONG. I have a listening problem. Our speakers gave us such practical wisdom, such as slowing down and looking for God in the ordinary; they encouraged us to pay attention to, and listen to that ‘still small voice’ — and act on it. Be ready with a preemptive ‘yes’ when asking God to move in your life, and move through you. He’s probably not going to reveal much to one who is set on a predetermined ‘no’ to His ideas. Each week includes time with our kids in Family Sync. We play games together — this week focusing on the art of listening & teamwork — we have intercessory prayer together, and at the end of each week, we process what we’ve learned throughout the week. I think it was game playing with the kids that stretched me most. There was a particular game that REALLY stretched me… but I think I’ll save that story for another post…

Week four: The Cross. Y’all. I felt like I was in college all over again, but this aging, mom of 7 brain was a little overwhelmed! The work of the cross is flat-out amazing. At the basic level, and in a word, the cross means salvation for anyone who believes. But really, it’s more complex — the Cross means pardon (looking to my past; the cross offers forgiveness), purity (looking within; only God can break the power of cancelled sin), peace (looking up; no God, no peace – know God, know peace), power (looking around; the message of the Cross is powerful!), and promise (looking forward; “Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?” Romans 8:32 NLT). Do you know Jesus & the cross? We’re happy to share more… just reach out to us!

Before I go, I just want to share a little more on our weekly schedule… Every Tuesday afternoon is Intercession with the kids in Family Sync; Wednesday is Outreach prep time with the kids; Thursdays, the 5 older kids go with their class on either an outreach or a field trip for the day. Also, for us adults on Thursdays, we have our weekly small group gatherings in the morning (Iron Groups), and the afternoon is time for one of three things: date, large group discussion, parenting class (seriously, I never get enough parenting tips!). Fridays, we have family connect in the afternoon. We are so thankful for our leaders’ attention to all of the details. They’ve been intentional, helping us connect as a class, connect as a family, connect as a married couple, and most importantly, helping us connect with God.

One final note — writing letters and cards is something we do weekly… We’d love to hear from you too! You can send mail to PO Box 3000, Garden Valley, TX 75771

I promise at least one of us will write back! 🙂