Updates and Praises

It's been a little while since I've posted a personal update on my blog. So it's about time I told you all what's been happening!

I had three good meetings this month in northern Illinois and Indiana. At one church, I happened to comment over the dinner table that my car was showing some lights on the dashboard indicating that it needed some attention from a mechanic, and it was also due for an oil change. Usually when this happens while I'm traveling, I just have to pick a mechanic more or less at random and pray that they are honest and capable. But this time, my hosts that Sunday night were a mechanic and his wife! So before I left on Monday morning, they changed the oil and checked out the dashboard lights, and sent me home with the pronouncement that I have a healthy car! Praise the Lord for working that out for me!

I also praise the Lord that I've gained more support this month, bringing my support level up to 35%. I now have 3 supporting churches in southern Illinois! God's timing was actually really neat. I have realized recently that I really need to set up a landline in my unit at Shepherd's Bethel. Cell phone reception is not very good from here, and I often have to go outside in order to get a good enough signal to have a coherent conversation - which is okay at the moment since it is nice outside, but won't be very practical once winter sets in! A landline would make it much more feasible to keep up with my deputation phone calls as the weather gets colder. So I started praying that the Lord would provide more support soon so that I would be able to afford the extra expense. And I'd only been praying about that for a short time - no more than a week or two - when I learned of this new support, which is enough to cover the extra expense! So I've made arrangements and am now just waiting for the phone company to turn it on. Soon I'll be able to make my deputation phone calls even in bad weather!

If you've been following my blog for a while, you may remember that as soon as my school loans from Faith were paid off, I started planning my finances for a series of linguistics courses (about a semester's worth of classes) that I need to take next summer at Bob Jones University in South Carolina. After a discussion with some of the consultants at BI, it has been determined that there is one class that I don't need to take, which cuts the tuition amount that I need down to about $4,600. That does help at bit, but please keep praying that God will provide for this need.