We're having an excellent time in Glorieta! We've been here for about a week now. Last Tuesday afternoon we showed up for some family time. We spent the next few days till Thursday evening as a family just hanging out in Santa Fe, taking long naps, and going to the playground. It was some much needed downtime that we purposely scheduled into our furlough. In fact, we think it's the only time that we'll be alone for the next 3 months. On Thursday evening and Friday afternoon, some dear friends of ours who are church planting in Hawaii and Thailand came. We had a blast reconnecting and letting our kiddos play together. None of these people had met our children before even though they are such close friends. It was a joyous reunion.
Then on Saturday, the entourage of people arrived for the SLNI Retreat. This is a retreat that our organization does for us every 2-3 years with the purpose of encouragement and rejuvenating the church planters for continued work in their respective places. They're amazing! Seriously, the pour out love, gifts, finances, fun, laughing, revelation, counseling, strategy...anything and everything they can give us, they do. We feel so privileged because most church planters don't have this type of support. Our kids have been super loved as well. They set up these awesome rooms for them and now Lizzie and Bekah run into that room (knowing good and well that we will not stay with them) and they feel100% safe and they have a blast! We're so thankful for that.
We've been talking about beauty and how God is the author of all beauty...in fact, He is beauty. From Him, we see what true beauty is. As His Kingdom comes and when He restores all things to the way they ought to be, we will finally see beauty as it was meant to be. Right now, in these days, we see glimpses of beauty. One simple way that I saw beauty this week (although there have been many) was when my good friend and I, Brent Pennington (whom I had not seem for 3 years), went on a mountain bike ride up a trail here in the mountains outside Santa Fe. As we started up the hill, it started raining a bit. We needed to stop and head back but before we did, we sat on a couple of logs (resting our old bones) and talked about what God is up to around us. The rain continued to fall and the sound was seriously beautiful in the quiet forest. Then we headed down the mountain the rain began to really fall. It was serious fun...and it was serious beauty. Our hearts all long for things that are beautiful...and this I believe is a call in our hearts for our God...who is beauty.
We'll hopefully be able to post some pictures soon. Talk to you all soon!
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