Life group: Issac & Rebekha

I'm excited about starting a blog!

Life group last night was on one of my favorite stories in Genesis: Isaac & Rebekha. How cool that the servant's prayer was answered even before he finished praying! And really, even answered before he asked since she was on her way to the well before he started praying!

I shared an experience I had in July 2005, where the week before my second Brazil mission trip, my grandmother died unexpectantly, on her 87th birthday, July 14th. This completely broke my heart. I took her death harder than I expected and wasn't eating well in those next days, and really struggled with grief & depression. I felt all my excitement over going to Brazil vanish and that made me mad. Her death felt like it came at the wrong time. At her funeral, we sang "Onward Christian Soliders", which is a song I never really paid much attention to, but is very comforting at funerals. My dad and aunt chose it because they also sang it at my grandfather's funeral, back in 1984.

That next Thursday, a week after she died, I got on a plane to go to Brazil. I struggled with my attitude, since I did not want to think about other people and their needs at the time. I just wanted to stay in my own grief and not give it to God. I knew he was with my in this, but my feelings overwhelmed me still.

In Brazil, we stayed in a school and when I walked into the classroom, at the right hand corner, there was a poster that had a "people" carrying a cross on their shoulders saying: "Soldadmhols de Jesus" (obviously, Portugeuse for Soliders of Jesus.)

Obviously, this got my attention. What I find interesting is to think that that poster had probably been put up months before my grandmother died. And I also wonder if I would have even noticed it if we had not sang that song at my grandmother's funeral.

That poster was the beginning of giving my grief to God that week. I realized later that I could choose to be miserable and have an awful trip; or I could ask God for help and let Him heal me. I decided my grandmother, who loved the Lord, would not want me to use her death as an excuse to have a bad attitude during my mission trip. Thankfully, I chose to give my feelings to God and such amazing things happened that trip! God is so good!