Please pray for the teen girls (Jessica, Brooke and Julia) as they journey quietly through Communist Laos on a prayer walk with their school.  Thanks!

Chuck and i love to do pre-marital counseling. We feel the Lord has taught us a lot about what to do and what NOT to do in order to build a great marriage. We want to invest into those lives that the Lord has put in our paths. We believe the Lord has put you in our lives for a purpose. Our marriage is the greatest and most important/significant earthly relationship we have! We must build it INTENTIONALLY……daily! Thank you for allowing us to pass on to you some of these nuggets of wealth the Lord has taught us over the years….

Number 1 of four marriage builders is….ENCOURAGE

We must be each others minister of encouragement……lets start our discussion by sharing some of the things we do to encourage our partner on a daily basis……

one of the things chuck and i do is….we call it…..our first encounter….. everytime we see each other for the first time after being apart we make sure it is a postive encounter. Whether it is when we first wake up in the am, whether we have parted just to drop the kids to school and back in 5 minutes or whether we have been apart for an 8 hour or more day, we make sure when we greet each other that it is a positive greeting. We may ourself have had an awful day…someone may have seen us when we dropped the kids off and gave us some really bad news or “jumped all over us” for something, we may have had a dream that our partner cheated on us(ever do that? :O) ….regardless of what has happened bad to us in that time we were apart we intentionally prepare ourself to greet our partner positively….then when the moment is “right” unload…but becareful not to make your partner the blame of why you are feeling so bad.

what is something you do to encourage your partner on a daily basis….. Sherry 

I wanted to video it but we were new to them and i didn’t want that to be the first impression they had of us. Only a video could do justice to the setting, though.  A small church building on top of a mountain that was a field of opium poppies just twenty years ago.  Now the opium has given way to tea plantations as the Akha have given way to Jesus as Lord.  The building was packed, and I mean packed. The men had the rugged clothing of mountain farmers and their skin was like leather from the sun and the wind.  The women were resplendent in their carefully embroidered clothing, red, yellow and green needlework on black clothing, leggings, belts, vests and most importantly their amazing headdresses (think Sioux chief with eagle feather head dresses, only theirs is made of silver and beads).  Everyone had bare feet, nobby feet from using them as tools.  About 1/4 of the women had a baby bundled in a sling on their back.  Women sat on the left side of the building unless there wasn’t room. In that case they sat on the men’s side too. It was a community, a tribe at worship.  Not much organization to it. Children were everywhere and everyone was talking while someone was trying to lead a song or read a scripture.  But there were men equal to the women (something i have seldom seen in churches) and they had tons of youth.  They let them lead some songs before church and they, of course, used electric “fuzzed out” guitars and a drum.  In the main service the elderly church planter’s wife played hymns which didn’t go over that well but there were a dozen people involved on the stage doing something in one hour of service.  After the two hour service they eat together. The body of Christ is so beautiful! From where I sat I could see my three little cherubs sitting in the midst of a middle aged woman decked in silver work, a young mother and a grandmother figure correcting the mom for over-disciplining her son. All the women wore traditional Akha clothing.  All of them are one in Christ because of the piano player and her soldier husband who got born again and began preaching the Akha villages in the mountains.  Six churches met throughout this valley today because of 30 years of faithfulness from these lay preachers.  Akha who had never heard the name of Jesus and who lived in bondage to mountain spirits and superstitions are now a thriving community within the Kingdom of God.

This has really been an amazing day for me regarding the web side of our life.  The new site allows us to see you and to get reconnected with your current happenings.  So many have written and many have also joined the site so they can add comments and photos and the like.  It feels like a community forming and we are so happy with that.  We know you individually, but most of you don’t know each other and that will also be amazing.  Our friendship circle contains some of the best people we have ever met in the world, really, I’m not just buttering you up.  Basically, we are “good people” scouts.  Sherry and I have spent our entire adult lives scanning the people we meet to spot the amazing ones with the great hearts.  When we see one of these jewels we pursue friendship with them and add them to our collection of meaningful relationships.  It has largely been our private treasure up till now, but now you have a chance to get to know each other as well as us so what a bonus.  We love you all and are very happy that the site redesign has allowed us to become reconnected with some that we haven’t heard from in a while.  Thanks for taking the time to write, post or join! 

One of my favorite ceremonies as a shepherd has always been at Christmas when the body gathers and we turn out all the lights in the large building.  Total blackness for a few minutes.  Then, the hiss of a match and one candle is lit.  It is amazing the powerful light of even one birthday-sized candle in a really dark room.  Then that candle lights another and within two minutes the whole place is bathed in warm, orange light.  I am deeply grateful for the work I have been called to do.  For the past 25 years or so, Sherry and I have had the privilege of being candle lighters.  We get to go light candles in dark places.  In rice fields, in cities, in hidden homes and on large stages we have been called to bring the light that we received and pass it on to others. However large the group and in whatever unique setting, the essential work is still the same–pass on the light that we have received to those who live in darkness.  No long classes.  Just light the candle.    In the darkness you can have things explained over and over with no comprehension, but once you get to “see” things you just get it.