Time for another post. Work really has been going fairly well. I probably shouldn't say this.... but..... we seem to be getting caught up. Sales have been up and down, mostly down. We had a couple of good days the last two.
BOH had a meeting Thursday night to line up 2008. As near as we can tell we are going to have 18 local projects in addition to what we will be doing in Nappanee. We also will have two trips out of state, one to St Benards Parish in New Orleans, and one some where else, maybe Kansas. I am really excited about what God has planned for us. Hopefully I will be meeting with Joe soon to set my support so that I can start raising it.
Well not much else to talk about, gonna run. Bye!

So many things are going on! Two weeks ago one of our associates that had been battling cancer since January died. Cindy died Oct 8th, one week before her 49th birthday. The cancer had progressed really fast. In the middle of December 06 she had a severe backache and went to the emergency room for it. They took some xrays, gave her some pain pills, told her there was some spots on her lungs, scheduled her for a petscan in Feb. By the time she got to the petscan, a tumor on her neck had broken her c3 vertabra. They gave her chemo and radiation. It seemed like as soon as they got it controlled in one spot it would popup somewhere else. Finally in September they decided there was no more they could do. This was the second associate we had die this year. Needless to say we are all reeling.
Builders of Hope is moving foward. We sponsered a workday at a Habitat house Saturday the 20th. Then yesterday we went down to Nappanee to help with cleanup after the tornado that went through Thursday night. It was a F3 that caused quite a bit of damage across three counties. aparently everyone heeded the warnings because it struck at 10:30 pm, and there was no deaths, and only a handful of minor injuries.
We are partnering with Kevin Cox of Hope Crisis Responce Network. He has experience with disaster recovery. He belives that there will be 8-10 homes that will need our help.

Ever get that feeling that God is trying to tell you something? In Thursday morning bible study we got to talking about titheing. We bantered some things around, and I asked isn't the tithe actually more than 10%? Well.... last night Rick was preaching out of Dueteronomy, and one of the things he brought up was the tithe. There was the normal 10% tithe. Then there was the year of sabbath every seventh year, where they allowed the land to remain fallow, which amounts to 14%. Then there is the year of Jubilee every 50th year, where they partied all year and didn't plant anything, which is 2%. Then there was the gleaning laws, which basically said that they where to be sloppy when harvesting, in order to leave something behind for the aliens, orphans, and widows to glean, which is estimated to be 4% (maybe to make the total a nice round number). That is a total of 30%! For those of us that thought 10% was a stretch, ouch!. Actually we do a little more than 10% to the church, but God has kind of been tapping me on the shoulder there and saying "Is that enough?". It seems that the paycheck barely stretches as it is. To give more?
Maybe God is trying to ask me, once again, how much do you trust me? Do I not say that I will meet all your needs? I was struggling with this same thing this spring when debating whether to take my sabatical or not. Once I made the decision to do it, we were so richly blessed! So why am I hanging on so tightly now? Am I like the Israelites and forgeting what God has done for us?
I do not know!