This after many months of persevering prayers and fruitless searches.. .. ..and there they were, those long-lost and crucial-to-job-application documents. Bookmarking a section in my gifted education research notes (hehe, a dash of irony).
Such little prayers on such a small, personal issue - and it’s so nice that God showed His care by answering it so specifically in accordance with what I hoped!
* Work at my old Jewish school
(lots of little half-day gigs, but the casual rate of pay accrues VERY nicely)
* Babysitting gigs
(I love extra time with my Sunday School kids! Even if they’re so excited that they don’t sleep at the time they’re supposed to..!)
* Family, mid-week Chinese Bible study (in English), and ballet classes
* The love & approval of God by the blood of Jesus Christ who died for me (and everyone else too); the only love and approval that will matter in the end - that is most important - that will alone last forever and will alone count for anything in the eternity to come.
* The temporal, finite nature of so many “seen” things that hurt (thank God that one day all these painful things will be OVER!!)
* The surest hope of citizenship in heaven; NO more cause for any death, mourning, crying or pain.
* The concern of God for the lost & His patience with my many unsaved students!
*the passing of time - I fly away to Paris in less than 14 days!!
(^mentally running around in circles & screaming^)
*great fellowship with Christians from my evening church at a recent weekend away - I haven’t laughed so much in over a year, I think!
*my little Jewish kids - esp. this year’s Year 1s (ie. 1st-graders). I’ve had a great few weeks playing the piano for them to rehearse & perform Jewish religious songs - & aiding them in literacy & numeracy during their own class learning time, too!
May He whom they honour with their lips (but whose hearts as a community are so far from Him) show them much-needed mercy!
*encouraging conversations with older Christian sisters in the last 3 weeks
*His miraculous & gracious work in me as I’ve taught Sunday School this term - it’s overwhelming sometimes to look back & see how He just took over each lesson & made it His own..!
Two international students I know have also decided to follow Jesus very recently! It’s very exciting!
I also am thanking God for his help in letting me concentrate this weekend and today as I wrote a major essay. I finished it in time and I’m actually fairly happy with it too. I’d been finding it really hard to focus and concentrate last week, so it was good to be able to work well for hours today. And by this time tomorrow I will have finished my exam and uni for another semester! :)
Yes Tia - what a great opportunity for you. May God bless you in your travels. We’ll be watching the “Tour de France” in a few weeks time. Maybe we’ll see you holding up a “Sydney Anglicans Rock” sign among the Parisian crowd during the final leg of the 3 week race ;)
No greater joy than working with kids hey Tia? My only opportunity with little ones is taking my two grandkids to tuesday arvo play group. I get into it more than the kids .......sand pits still my favourite ;)
Hope you have a wonderful trip and stay Tia. aside…...of course this is the bloke who reckons a crumby fishing boat constitutes wealth .......as he jets off to parts unknown!! hehehehheeeeeee
Just kiddin’ Tia ;)
Do hope you have a great trip and find france an exciting place to be.
kind regards, mike
ps….no flashbulbs in the Looov ....our son nearly got the family arrested ...actually the language problem was where the trouble started ....don’t assume french cops speak english (especially when they do!heheehee)
I’m giving thanks this week for the recovery of my sweetheart. My husband, Robert, had a knee replacement on the 10th June, went to rehab on the 15th, then came home last Wednesday, the 24th. He has to go back to rehab as a day patient twice a week for the next four weeks.
His recovery has been, and continues to be, remarkable
Well, I’m thanking God for meeting my need
A month or so ago I was sent off to Alice Springs for a week at a big meeting gig. Then I was on a week holiday. The old centre manager left & the new one started. I arrived back & the new manager seemed OK. I had applied for a job with Centacare (Been in this job for yonks now) and they interviewed me on return. 3 hours later I was offered a job. Thought about it & spoke to new manager & decided to stay put.
A few weeks later we get an email pulling all “non-essential” meetings. This included my involvement with the federal & State peaks. now I can understand this, but the peak involvement was a passion & it was taken away without discussion.. But I had knocked back the other job. The grapevine said all positions full, so did the Job network dudes.
I contacted the job network folks and asked to remain on the list (new services usually lose staff in the first 6 months).
Call back the next ay asking for me to contact Centacare. Job not filled and they sweetened the deal.
I resigned and will start at Centacare end of July.
Now that’s what I call cool. God’s blessing can be surprising. That job shouldn’t have been available.
Wow there is a lot of blessings from God going around.
Tomorrow (parallel #29), my best friends are getting baptised in my church! I actually feel more excited, joyful and pumped about this than all past secular achievements ... can’t wait!
Thanks fellow fora friends for your messages. The mission part of Paris is formally finished for me. I’m now doing the tourist thing before flying to the UK on 9th July.
I hope to post condensed thanksgiving points from our outreach week on this thread soon. But no idea how soon.
Thank God for His mighty & compassionate work during mission week in Paris!
Praise Him for:
~ establishing sufficient unity within the team - made of up 16 people from 10 different nations
~ graciously enabling us to make contact with unbelieving students
~ empowering us by His Spirit to speak His good news to those we met who’d never heard it
~ glorifying His Name & loving people such that He opened doors for us to share with them about His Son Jesus
~ working through our weaknesses & weak prayers that people would know more about Him
~ His miraculous use of little, weak, sinful, utterly unworthy me!!
~ a great discussion He allowed me to have with an atheist student for over an hour - all in French!
~ His concern & His patience - that He doesn’t want to see people perishing & that He wants them to come to repentance & knowledge of the truth in Jesus immeasurably more than we do..!
There’s more to say, but it’s been said already on my blog (not publicly available here, but if interested, send PM).
Thank God for:
~ His Word, which is faithful & true - even when things look so awful
~ His grace to us because of Jesus, who is the only reason we’re acceptable to Him
~ His gifts of friendship - I’ve had a couple of great days with sisters in Christ (plus a mad roadtrip from Leonay to Sydney with one friend and her three kids aged 8, 6 and 4)
~ His provision - an adequate trickle of work is materialising for Term 4
~ His always being there for us - if only we will take the time to seek Him!
I am thankful for a really encouraging Christmas
- being one of those people whom God has graciously given the gift of a close extended family, of which a significant number are Christian & most of whom get along quite well.
In my household, I can thank God especially for 3 conversations:
~ an encouraging catch-up with one of my cousins, a Christian brother who’s now a Byron Bay local;
~ an opportunity to share aspects of my faith, & my interest in overseas cross-cultural mission in Paris, with a younger cousin who is a non-Christian (please pray that God will work through her as she thinks about answers I gave to her questions, even though these seemed rather weak/feeble to me);
~ an opportunity to sit down, debrief & discuss with the younger of my two step-brothers (Christian) about his short-term mission experience in Thailand, & how things are progressing at our own evening church.
It was a blessed day - a rare gift, I know, considering that families with Christian members and/or peaceable relationships are not that common!
1. This week got news that another former student of mine, fresh out of Sydney Boys HS, has been a Christian since around 2007.
I began praying for the salvation of him & his 28 classmates way back in 2003 - they were the first class I taught in my paid professional career.
Oh the mercy of God!!
All the angels in heaven could not rejoice as greatly as myself over this 1 repentant soul!!
________________
2. Had a good evangelistic conversation with a GAP student at a school where I did casual teaching last week. God graciously enabled me to point this “gappie” back to what the Bible teaches rather than blindly accepting media portrayals or summaries of the Christian faith.
Hallowed be the name of our Father in heaven, indeed!
Thank You, God, for Your kind use of Your weak servant!!
After 4 1/2 months of unemployment, I was able to secure a great risk management role with one of Australia’s large banks! Starting two weeks after Easter.
Hallelujah to God and thank you to everyone who has encouraged and prayed for me through this tough time!
Ouch.. I feel for your pain. However, when one door closes… another one is opened ( by God ) - so now we will pray with renewed vigour for you and your employment prospects. Cheers.
[null]London 2012 Olympics: 'Snow bird' Skelton finds fabulous form in FloridaTelegraph.co.uk (blog)[{}]... owns most of the top rides of 2004 Olympic champion Rodrigo Pessoa); Tom Tisbo, CEO of Suncast, one of America's largest producer of domestic durables; and Kimberley Boyer, grand-daughter of the billionaire evangelical financier Robert Van Kampen.
[null]Mitt's Muffled SoulNew York Times[{}]Christ or Christianity came up repeatedly. Four years later, he still avoids the word, trumpeting his faithfulness without specifying the faith. What's surprising is that no one around him — not reporters, not rivals — talks about it all that much, ...
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