Increases and Tough Decisions

Gillian, here. We've just updated our totals on our website (www.brickeys.net) to 45.7% received in our monthly budget and 59.7% of the outbound. We are just plain amazed at what God can do through His people. THANK YOU! We shouldn't be amazed, of course, because God has been working miracles literally forever. We even met a man on Sunday that had been healed from paralysis. Our own children were healed of asthma and reflux...these are huge things! And yet we still stand in awe of how God is bringing people into this ministry and making things move. I hope that God's miracles NEVER STOP AMAZING ME!

This Sunday we enjoyed worshipping with Bethesda Bible Church in South Congaree. They're a small church with a big heart, and we were blessed by their worship service. After worship, we fellowshipped with the pastor and his family, and our boys made quick friends with their 2 year-old grandson. Thank you, Bethesda, for making us yours! After lunch, we went home and rested, and then went back to evening church service at our home church (Ebenezer PH Church of West Columbia). We spoke with our pastor and secretary who updated us on the progress of getting endorsed by the denomination and about the new pledge amounts from our congregation. Let me just say it was an awesome day of increases, capped off with a timely sermon on worshipping in the Spirit every day. Thank you, church!

After we got home from our day of church, we put the boys to bed, settled the house for the night, and then I returned a call home. There are big and exciting things happening back at my childhood home in Minnesota. You may not know this, but just over five years ago, my mom took her own life. After that, it was a long time before getting out of the bed in the morning was something enjoyable for me, and you could not have told me then that God would bring me through so quickly and lovingly. It's amazing to see what God has done in that short amount of time. Here I stand, 5.5 years of marriage and two children later, about to become a missionary. And now my sister is getting married, my brother is moving out on his own, and my dad has found new love. I am now faced with a familiar difficulty of living far from home...I'm missing out on a lot. The toughest part is that we can't afford to jump 1200 miles very often. Now that we're moving to Peru, our ability to be home (both South Carolina and Minnesota) for big events will be even more difficult...and sometimes impossible. We are extremely thankful for families that are loving us through this, and who are also making sacrifices in this new life God has put before us.

I stand in a great place today...a place of deepening faith and growth. Justin and I feel the challenges of relying on God to supply the means to get to the field, but held in perspective to the path we have already walked and the healing that He is working in our family, we see that we are richly blessed. Only God knows when we will set foot in Peru at last, but it will be soon...very soon. And I can be patient because I can now see that God has blessed the process.

In <><,
Gillian