Beyond Borders

This is from my brother-in-laws blog.  It is my constant prayer to never be content where I am, yet it is my human nature to what to be.

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,

When our dreams have come true

Because we have dreamed too little,

When we arrived safely

Because we sailed too close to the shore.Disturb us, Lord, when

With the abundance of things we possess

We have lost our thirst

For the waters of life;

Having fallen in love with life,

We have ceased to dream of eternity

And in our efforts to build a new earth,

We have allowed our vision

Of the new Heaven to dim.Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,

To venture on wider seas

Where storms will show your mastery;

Where losing sight of land,

We shall find the stars. We ask You to push back

The horizons of our hopes;

And to push into the future

In strength, courage, hope, and love.

attributed – sir francis drake -1577

You can read about the McDaniel's journey to find a dear African orphan in Zambia at http://www.mcdanielbeyondborders.com/.  Get you tissue ready before you read.  Our whole family was ready to embrace Memory, now know how to help her with our prayers.

Happy Thanksgiving all.  We had a great day with dear friends and family. 

All Pumped Up

We enjoyed our time in El Paso. We had several churches to present at, so we were in one spot for two weeks. The weather was nice and we were out at the Bearing Precious Seed Compound, so the children got to enjoy the desert and the nice weather. Lots of sand gets in, but I didn’t mind. Last Friday we had the opportunity to cross the border into Mexico and be a part of another missionaries community outreach. They set up a screen and showed a movie in a neighborhood park. The movie is salvation based and then a short sermon was given. About an hour or two before dark, church members breakup into teams and knock on doors in the neighborhood to tell people about the film and hand out tracts and John and Romans. Also, a van goes around with loud speakers announcing that a film will start at dark in the park. We all giggled every time it went by us.

We got to go with Maria. I was really pumped up by her zeal. Many people have gates and bars on their homes for security, but this did not discourage Maria. She chose a good size rock, banged loudly on the gate, while her and her two daughters loudly called, “Buenos Tardes”. No timid little knock and I guess they aren’t home for her. Come on now, you know you’ve done it.

The only thing that slowed her down was dogs, but she would still yell from the street and bang with her rock. At one point she was able to spend several minutes presenting the plan of salvation to a man, whom couldn’t come see the film because he was on his way to work. She called it “giving the call”.

Imagine my surprise when I found out she only got saved in July at a neighborhood film showing like the one we were doing! God blessed our effort and seven people were saved.

Home for the Holidays

Today is a travel day. A long travel day, but everyone has had a good attitude about it. We are driving from El Paso, TX to Rogers, AR. I think that is roughly 16 hours. We tried to fill our schedule, but it just worked out that we would be back in Arkansas with family over the holidays. This maybe the last holiday season we are with family for a while, so it is probably best. We had breakfast of fresh veggie and fruit juice before starting out this morning, snacked on fruit and nuts and had hummus and veggies for lunch. For dinner we pulled into the back side of a Home Depot and Sam busted out the grill and whipped up some BLTs, too funny. We dropped some frozen corn on the grill. It came out tasty and it cooled the grill down. Sam packed it up and put it away before anyone realized we were grilling in the parking lot.  I think we will do the tag team driving some tonight. I drive until I’m tired while Sam sleeps, them Sam gets up and drives until he’s tired and them we pull over and sleep until morning. This way we drive while the kiddos are sleeping and it’s easier on them. It makes the travel day shorter tomorrow.

Making Tracks!

We had a little time last week to enjoy the journey, not just hurry to the destination.  Only not having a schedule to fill in the free time makes me edgy.  I am way too driven sometimes.  I know that, that's my deal, but that is a whole other post.  Anyway, back to enjoying the journey. We were able to stop at Dinosaur Valley State Park and Creation Evidence Museum.  The park has places where you can see numerous huge dino prints both sauropods and tauropods.  It's very impressive to think of these large animals.  The kids really enjoyed the field trip.

Activities: Dinosaur Valley State Park contains some of the best preserved dinosaur tracks in the world. The dinosaur tracks are located in the riverbed, so please call ahead to check on river conditions. There are two fiberglass models; a 70-foot Apatosaurus and a 45-foot Tyrannosaurus Rex. They were built, under commission of the Sinclair Oil Company, New York World's Fair Dinosaur Exhibit of 1964 - 1965.

The girls put there hand in and discover the imprint of a sharp claw!

Foot prints that look suspiously like human foot prints are discredited.

We had to wade across a stream to see the prints.

A little discovery

We spent the next day at the nearby Creation Evidence Musuem.  The children are standing in front of an Allosaurus.  We have the video documentary of when this fossil was exavated, so it was very cool seeing it.

We are now in El Paso, TX.  We were able to park our RV on the Bearing Precious Seeds Compound.  We have been here a whole week and will be here a week more.  Two weeks in one place!  WOOHOO!  It has been such a blessing too, because it is slightly outside of the city and they have tons a land for the kids to roam and another missionary family that works with BPS lives here with their kids.  The only problem is it has been hard to get the kids to focus on school with the nice weather and great outdoors calling, not a terrible problem to have.

Old Friends, New Friends

Deputation suits us better than I thought it would. We have been nomads for many a year, because of Sam’s military career. Deputation has been more of the same. New places, new faces, and new friends with the added blessings of getting to see some friends we have not seen in years.

This past week we attended two missions conferences we have been looking forward to for a long time; Talking Rock Road Baptist Church in Branson, MO and Bible Baptist Church in Lawton, OK. TRRBC is the sending church for the Benedict, whom we are joining in Mexico, so they welcomed us in like family. We are not complete strangers to them. We were at their conference last year, but just to meet the Benedicts to help plan our first trip to Mexico.  Bro. Bob Larson spoke at the conference. We met him a while back at another conference and he’s the boy’s hero. They think he’s the best preacher ever. TTRBC was kind enough to give us a CD of his sermons. It was such a blessing to be part of their mission week. They also put Bibles together for Bearing Precious Seed. The kids love participating in that.

Then Friday morning we packed up the RV, jumped in the truck and headed for Lawton, OK for PM services. After a wrong turn, getting stuck in the mud and almost getting our home plowed through by a dump truck we arrived just in time for dinner and services. BBC was our church whn we lived in Lawton, so it was once again like going home. It was so good to see all the old friends and lots of new faces too. They planned their fall festival in the middle of the missions conference, which was great fun for the whole family. Haden’s favorite thing was the hay ride, so that’s where I spent a good deal of time…I didn’t mind. Our friends the Anderson’s from Duncan, OK came to join in the fun. Haden ate his hotdog, then made a potato chip sandwich….too funny.

On Monday we had lunch at the Heinz’s house. Bro. Heinz is the director of the Serviceman’s Center. He and Sam and Will Hader spent lots of Saturday mornings knocking on soldier’s doors on post, inviting them to church and sharing Christ. It was so good to spend the afternoon with them.

After a week of services and visiting, we spent some family time out at the Wildlife Refuge. It was fun to watch Haden discover the rocks and paths so familiar to the rest of us.

And of course, you can’t go to Lawton without visiting Meers. 