struggles to trust

Sometimes I really struggle to know that God is in control. I think that deep in my being I know that he is, but my human nature struggles to grasp it completly. When things are going well, you don't need to think about God's control on your life, it is just assumed. Yet when things go south in your life you really start to question things. There is a good reason that I am bringing this up.

I just got off the phone with one of my deacons who went to Mexico with us this summer. He talked to one of the mexican-american brothers who live in Brownsville (where we did our mission this summer). It turns out that one of the members of that church just lost his wife to a failed pregnancy. She miscarried her baby on Sunday then died after the C-section. This guy whose wife died is an amazing man of God and was a great encouragement to us. I don't think that I ever met his wife but if she is anything like him, we have lost a great sister in the kingdom.

When I first heard the news I thought, "how could this happen in this day and age?" Seriously, I haven't heard of someone dying during birth in a long time. I thought that because of medical advances that this dosn't really happen anymore. When you hear this kind of news it really hurts, especially when it happens to great people. Also news like this makes you struggle with God a bit. It makes you appeciate the fragility of life. Things just happen here on this earth and we have no choice but to participate in them. Times like this make us re-evaluate our faith. Will we be able to stand up to that kind of attack on our faith if it ever happened to us? Is our faith really that strong? Right now I am not so sure. You just don't know until it happens to you.

Well for now put my ramblings aside and pray for Noey and his family. I don't know much about him because I spent a limited ammount of time around him but he is a child of the kingdom just like you and me. Pray that the people in Brownsville will rally behind him.

Pray for strength in these times.

I'm such a techno-geek

Seriously. I was a giddy kid last night. We just installed a new projection system in our youth room. Now, mind you, our youth room isn't that big. It will seat about 20-25 kiddos comfortably. But, we have been wanting some kind of system that we can play slides and movie clips on for class. Well, we had a recent widow donate a sizeable chunk of money to the youth program to buy a new laptop and projector. Very nice, indeed. We have been spending the last month trying to get it installed. Well, last night we got it done. The awesome part is that the only good screen we could find in our church was over 8 feet wide and 8 feet long. Thats pretty huge for a room that isn't made to hold any more that 25 kids. So, we have this huge-honkin' screen that is blasting out an HD quaility video feed for our eager eyes to see. Soon, I am going to gather up some old stereo equipment from the casa and hook up a sound system. I am gonna make so many old people mad at my church. We won't play any AC\DC or anything. We might bust some christian rap or something like that.

I will post some pictures of the system soon. Seriously I was giddy when I saw it. Ask my youth group guys. They were making uber-fun of me.

On another good note, I finished my 15 page grad paper last night. It was due today. I am so glad to see my great study habits from college staying true! It's a paper on the nature of elderships from early Judaism to first century Christianity. I might make some people mad with it. Hopefully it makes sense. I will see from my grade I guess.
I hope you guys all had a great turkey day. Talk to ya soon.