We are so thankful for the many things happening on Grace Mountain!
We are so thankful for Grand Bay Ministries! Pastor Jamie and Tracy Passman and Al and Cindy Stokes worked hard to prepare and promote a cake auction in order to benefit the children of Colegio JET. A bunch of country folk raised thousands of dollars to help with the ministry needs at the school. We are thankful! Now we need them to come see the sweet children.
We are thankful to be busy! We are thankful to have old teams returning. We are thankful for new teams. We are thankful to be observing and interviewing a lot of prospective teachers. We are thankful to be counting down the days of the school year, only to begin planning for our November camps and our December activities. We do not complain about being busy as long as we are productive.
We are thankful for the “special food bags”. In July, we bought 50 food bags filled with $25 worth of food. We stored them in an extra classroom. We had no idea how much these food bags would be needed. Last week, we had 2 mothers come to the office for various reasons. In conversation, the office was able to notice some needs in the families. The met the needs by simply walking across the hall and giving them food to help their families. This is a result of Friendship Baptist’s cake auction!
We are thankful to have the funds to meet immediate needs. A couple of weeks ago, we discovered some of our students had been without food in their house for 3 weeks! Their need was immediately met. Our teachers took them to buy food and the money was provided through Friendship Baptist’s cake auction!
We are thankful to be able to provide medical care for some of our students. Two weeks ago, we had meetings with the parents about attendance, bus fees, uniforms, curriculum, etc. As our teachers talked with a little girl’s parents about the number of missed days, the parents raised her shirt to show the blisters all over her back. They explained the pain and fever she had from the blisters. Her back had scars from the blisters. The blisters were in her mouth which made it difficult to eat. (I am really sugarcoating the description). I was able to help give her medicines to assist with the fever, but the pain was not subsiding. The following day, some teachers took the mother and little girl to a private doctor. The doctor diagnosed the problem and gave a prescription for medicine. After taking the medicine and resting for a week, the little girl was happy to return to school. She is so much better.
We are thankful for earning the trust of our families. Today, I was handling some business at a house when I saw a man wave and smile at me. I thought I recognized the man, but I begin to doubt myself. For the past five years this man has never smiled at me. He is a hard man. I even asked a friend to confirm that it was this man. After years of loving his children, providing education for his children, meeting his family needs privately, he finally smiled at me! One word came to mind “Consistency”. Consistently showing the love of Christ even when it is not received. Our prayer is that he will eventually accept our invitation to bring his family to church.
As I started typing all of the reasons that I am thankful, my blog entry became entirely too long. This blog will be continued…
Shining Light Abroad Ministries 