Tarsus

Its been a week I think, since I've been able to write.

Work is going well. I'm constantly surprised - even after a year - at how much I enjoy the men on the team. I like helping them with their crises and hearing about their victories. Its neat seeing them grow up. Additionally, I'm blessed to have relationship with a number of women (students) on the campus.

Last Sunday night I spoke at Leah's RC meeting. It was fun to get together with her leaders and talk to them about repentance and forgiveness offered through Jesus. How to pray with the authority that we are given through Him. And how to walk in the freedom that those things bring. It was a great time for ME to be sharpened, and I hope they were challenged a little.

In BSF we are studying the Acts of the Apostles (starting with the book of Acts, and then moving on to study a bunch of the letters/epistles). A couple weeks ago we were learning about Paul (Saul) and how the Lord said to him "I will send you" but then he wasn't sent right away. He went for a time to Arabia to learn to hear the Lord's voice, and be discipled; he spent a short amount of time in Jerusalem.. and then we went back home to Tarsus for 7 years... where he waited upon the sending of the Lord.

While he was in Tarsus he worked, we can only presume - both at his trade and at evangelism. But that wasn't his calling. His calling was as the "Apostle to the Gentiles" and the Lord hadn't sent him to it yet. At the time, his "job" for Jesus was to stay and wait. It had to be enough for Paul that the Lord had said "I WILL send you."

I realized as I was studying that section, and over the week or so since.... Greenville is like my Tarsus. I have work to do here (both "tentmaking" and evangelistic in nature) and I am here waiting to be sent. Thats not to say that the Lord didn't send me here, because I think he did. But at some level, I think I'm here to learn and to teach and to wait. And the Lord needed me to wait outside of my comfort zone - - because in Seattle it was all too easy.

Here, easy isn't the word that I would use to describe my experience. Fun, memory-making, hard, sad, but not easy.

And I'm grateful most days that its not easy. And that the Lord chose and appointed me for this work. And other days I wish my waiting period were over because its hard to be here for various reasons.

But I trust that God has always taken care of me in the past. Numerous life changing and life saving occasions. And because of that I know I can trust him for each moment of my future. After all... every one of my days was written in his book before I was even born; and he takes care of the sparrows' every need... and says to me "are you not worth much more?"

Time for work. Signing off from Tarsus. :)
Love, Tiffani