No Compromise

I finished reading No Compromise this week. I started it over a month ago but have had so little time to read that its taken a while to get through it. If you've never read it, GO GET IT NOW. It was that good.
It also came at a really perfect time. This week we were studying the Gospel of Mark, and God was definitely speaking through both. Even the message at Community Meeting on Thursday (which is pretty much like you'd expect any mid-week church service to be like) held a similar message. The base leader from the Taiwan base was speaking (he was also our speaker for Mark) about making decisions and trusting God to lead you AS you move, not so much BEFORE you move. Not saying that we shouldn't pray before we do things, but that often we stand still forever wondering when God will tell us what our next step is, but he simply wants us to just GET GOING, using the gifts and passions he's given us. He's a good God. When we need to know something, HE'LL TELL US. We often need to be willing to just step out and do something, knowing that if we're going in the wrong direction, he'll start closing doors and opening new ones.
Anyway, this is definitely a lesson I thought I'd learned before, but came as an incredibly well-timed reminder. During DTS Equip over the summer I felt some definite stress about what our long-term plans are. I could stand still and worry myself silly over it, or we can start dreaming and planning what our next step will be after SBS. This week, between lectures, studying, that teaching, and reading about Keith Green, God planted in us more dreams for the future--AND most importantly, the confidence that he will be in those plans, guiding us even when we feel like we don't have a clue what we're doing.
And if you haven't read the book of Mark lately, I suggest you do. Jesus is AMAZING!

Still Here!

It's been a little while since we updated-- we've studied three more books!

This week was our first week on "real" SBS scheduling-- class for three hours a day, only three days a week. The rest of our time is spent studying. Up until this point we were still in "seminar", which had twice as many people crammed into the classroom to learn the method and get the hang of studying on our own. We had class between four and six hours a day, five days a week. It's been a total relief to get used to the new schedule :)

Learning Acts this week we got some fun visuals-- like this awesome map of Paul's journeys that covered the white board when we arrived in class yesterday:

We've also been busy with work duties. Jesse collects the trash on the base a couple days a week, and Amy is the morning baker, baking all the bread that the cafeteria serves, along with granola for breakfast and croutons for the salad bar.