Jesus is. . .

Before I begin, I need to address my absenteeism from this blog and keeping it up-to-date. Yes, I have been absent! Alright. . .now that that's out of the way, on to the next post.

Aaron and I host house church in our house each Sunday evening. We have between 25-30 people each week. A couple of weeks ago, Aaron and I were having a discussion about what we should study in this Bible study time. We decided to look at who Jesus is, his life, and what that means for us. So, this last week, we had our 3rd lesson along those lines. It was a powerful time of discussion for me, and with a little encouragement from my sister, Karen, who was here for that lesson, I decided to share some of our discussion with you, my blog-reader.

We were looking at the text in Luke 4:31 - 37 in which Jesus drives an evil spirit out of a man as well as Luke 4:38 - 44 in which Jesus goes on and heals many others. We read these stories separately and then finished the sentence, "Based on this passage, Jesus is ____. . ." We had a lot of interaction with lots of responses.

The second thing we did was to think about what that meant for us. For example, if Jesus is compassionate, what does that mean for us. We, too, in an effort to be like Jesus, need to be compassionate. We let people individualize statements about what that meant for them. And, again, we had good interaction and honest reflection.

To wrap up the evening's thoughts and discussion, Aaron read through the list of qualities, characteristics, and titles that we had mentioned about Jesus from the evening. As I listened to this list, tears came to my eyes. That is the God we serve. . . and He is so much more than that! His description cannot be put into words!

I am going to share with you what our church came up with on Sunday night. Maybe you'd like to read through that scripture and share some of your own thoughts about it. And even if you don't share your own, maybe you, too, can be moved as you remember, realize again, or learn for the first time how great God is!

Jesus is. . .
The Authority
Powerful
Son of God
To be obeyed
Incomparable
Miracle Man
Compassionate
Healer
Personal and approachable
Purposeful and has a plan
A Teacher
Loyal
Almighty
Savior
Light of the World

Ok, so I might be a pioneer woman!

Well, we have started 2011 off with a bang here in Panama. New Year's Eve is quite the event here. We had been warned that there were a lot of fireworks. However, it was more than we expected. We began hearing them around 8:00 pm or so. Then at midnight. . . WOW! Aivlyn was awakened because the "fireworkers" scared her so I got to hold her on my lap for 30 minutes or so. Because we live in a crater of an extinct volcano, the massive amount of fireworks seemed even more massive with their continuous ECHO, ECHo, ECho, Echo, echo. . . well, you get the picture. The fireworks continued until 2:00 am, but slightly less than at midnight.

We also rang in the new year without a working fridge. If you recall (or maybe you hadn't even heard), this is already a replacement fridge for the one that burned from the inside of the freezer out. The second one wasn't brand new, but it worked well for a month. Anyway, we came home from taking the Encalades back to the airport to find a mildly cool fridge. Slowly, over the next couple of days, it got warmer and warmer. Not good when you're talking about a fridge.

Because of the holiday, we weren't able to get an electrician out here until early this week. Due to all of his work, we had to have our electricity off for 2 days. Let me just say, "It gets VERY dark here at night." When the sun goes down, you can't see your own hand. And without electricity to run our hot water heater, the showers were VERY cold. Invigorating!!! Normally, we would have skipped showers, but we had been to the beach that day. No way we could skip showers. So, we all endured icy showers!

We have now lived for 9 days without a working fridge. My pantry is completely empty and I'm getting tired of "being creative" for every meal. We typically don't buy meat in El Valle (due to the lack of freshness), but we have bought chicken a couple of times now. And we haven't gotten salmonella poisoning. . . yet. We've also eaten out more than usual due to the extreme circumstances. Yummy, but starting to get tired of it as well. I think I'm ready to be able to cook my own meaty meals from my fridge or freezer.

I am told that "manana" the electrician will have the copper pipes and other materials to repair the fridge. I'm hoping that turns out to be true and that our fridge will be back in commission by tomorrow evening. Then, just a trip down the mountain to restock it. . . again!