Hi praying friends!
I landed at the Berlin airport early yesterday morning after a long (LONG!) day of traveling. I know that those who have traveled to Asia will have little sympathy for me, but because I traveled with flight miles (and didn't have enough to be choosy about flights), I was up at 2:45 am for my 3:25 Uber pickup on Tuesday morning (Flight left at 6:55, but since I was traveling internationally, I needed to be there extra early!) I spent a good part of my day at JFK airport waiting for my evening flight, flew overnight (and jumped forward 7 hours), and landed just before 8:00 am. By 10:00 am I was at home, and taking a nap not long after.
Thanks so much for praying for my mom's surgery. The surgery went really well, she spent one night in the hospital and then came home. I spent the week hanging out with her and helping my dad with some garage/shop clean-out and organization. He has been such a great caregiver for my mom through the multiple surgeries she has had in the last couple of years, but that means that getting his shop set up in the garage has taken a bit of a back seat. It was nice to give him a hand with some of those projects.
It was so nice to have some time to spend with mom and dad and several of my siblings, and it is also a reminder of the weirdness of this life. It's just hard to be so far away when so much is happening with family. The pull between feeling responsible for the call God has put on our lives and the desire to also be present with family is one of the hardest (and most constant) challenges we face.
As we have been reaching out to churches to ask them if they can be part of helping us with the funding we need for our gallery space, God has been good. Seveeral churches have responded positively, and God has provided some very generous donations. Over 20% of the money we need has come in! Please pray that God continues to put the project on people's hearts in the next 2 months before our fiscal year closes.
Our resident also got a visa last week! After her application seems to have gotten lost in the system, and we were not getting any response from the immigration office, she found a complaint office, filed a complaint, and finally got the last appointment she needed. What a blessing, thank you for praying for that process!
My still jet-lagged brain is fighting to not ramble today, so let me close with a few prayer requests:
- Caleb has turned in his thesis and is waiting for the people reviewing it to finish grading it and give him a date to come in and defend it. After that, he can start applying to some schools for his Master's. Can you please pray for him in the process?
- Pray for our intern, Amara. Her last day is today, and she flies on Monday.
- Pray for our fundraising!
- Some work is being done in our apartment building to install a new heating system and to fix some of the building's plumbing. That means that they shut off the building's heat a little earlier in the year than normal, and the spring has been colder than normal. We are in no danger of freezing, but we would sure like it to be warmer than it is! There is also a giant water-heater-in-a-trailer parked right outside our bedroom window. This natural gas water heater fires on to provide hot (very hot!) water for the building at regular intervals, and while it is not super loud, it is an additional noise. The plumbing work has meant that we have to pay attention to signs in the hallway that tell us when we will not have water to use, so we have buckets of water in the bathroom for those special times when the water is turned off, but the toilet still needs to be flushed! It seems like a silly prayer request, but can you pray that the work finishes even faster than they anticipated?
Thanks for your prayers, friends! They mean a lot to us.
Blessings,
mike
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