Thank you for all your prayers for us, and specifically for your prayers that I would make myself available to the "new thing" I believe God has for me here. This week I started the 10-week Beth Moore Bible study Living Beyond Yourself. You can pay $25 or so online and then you have a daily homework assignment to download (the same as the ones in the paperback workbooks you can buy in the US) and a weekly video teaching to watch on the web.The study is about the Holy Spirit, His role and power in our lives. So far it has been a real gift in my day. First of all I just feel glad to have a structure to guide me daily in studying the Bible. Second I am happy to be learning new things. I feel deeply grateful for the resource right now- a place for me to dive into the Bible and into my our heart. Depth in a life space where I am mostly finding superficiality (due both to my language abilities and to the fact that I don't really know anyone well). So far what I am getting most out of the study (after 3 days) is the motivation to spend time in prayer and in worship. I am so glad that we have our instruments here and that music is something that we can take wherever we go.
The second response to my (and I think your) prayers is harder to explain, hard enough that I won't really try to much here. Let it suffice that on His initiative and not mine, I had a sweet time of prayer this afternoon laying my heart bare before God and asking Him to meet the deep desires of my heart. There is so much that I want out of life, so much that the world can't give me- not Christian service, not a godly husband, not the dearest friends. Are my desires too big? Too big for this world for sure. I am praying that God, who made time and earth and me, will meet me here in my thirst.
