True love
We are well. We’re three weeks out from New Years and five weeks from Christmas. Surely at some stage in life you stop eagerly anticipating Christmas day… but it hasn’t happened to me yet. This year won’t be spent with family, but will be spent with a number of young friends who will come down and stay with us over the Christmas period. It will be nice.
We have a good layer of snow covering the ground and the roads around town are to be navigated with slightly more care than usual. I’m extremely grateful for the car we have now as we certainly haven’t seen the worst that winter has in store for us.
I enjoy seeing the gentleness that the guys at the rehab centre show to the new guys who come. The new guys are nervous and sometimes suffering withdrawal symptoms which can be severe. They sometimes are rude or self-centered. The pattern that is set is that grace is given. And it is something beautiful to see grown men kindly and gently dealing with the weaknesses of the new member. I see in this true love.
The work with the drug addicts and alcoholics is going well. Today, we slightly reluctantly took in a new bloke… and said no to three other requests. The guys are normally a great encouragement to me as I see them seeking God and humbly trying to walk in His ways. It is rare that I go out there and don’t find at least one of them reading the Bible and they always have a question or two. We have hit a wall financially, so if anyone reading this is interested in partnering in this ministry… we’d definitely celebrate an email about your intentions. Last week, I took this photo of Pasha with three of the men – all of them doing well. (Pasha is holding some washing that was forgotten in a bucket overnight – it froze and gave us a good laugh.)
A few nights ago, another man dropped by who was high. People are starting to direct alcoholics or drug addicts to us now that the word has gotten around that we have a rehab center. It was an interesting encounter with “Igor” and I realized afterwards that really, we should expect this ministry to “up” the danger aspect a bit. Igor walked into our home asking for a telephone to call his boss. I led him back downstairs and asked him what was going on, to which he repeated his request. After a bit more probing, I decided to ask for a number to call. His response was to go catatonic for several seconds before lunging at me with total fury and madness in his eyes. I’m confident that He who is in me is a greater power than any demon, let alone a skinny man dressed in camouflage in my home, so I held him off and told him that I wasn’t afraid of him and that he needed help and I believed that Jesus Christ could help him. He immediately went limp and tried to sit down. I refused to let him do that and instead held him up as we talked. We fought and then talked some more and then fought some more, then prayed and he disappeared off into the night. (Writing about this reminds me that I should probably get rid of the drugs he left behind.) I’m thankful for the opportunity we have to minister to the guys at “Armaggedon” and help them get free from the horrible clutches of drugs and alcohol.
I’m enjoying the “man eat” we have every Tuesday night with the young lads. This week, 9 guys came for a good feed and then a Bible study over the leftovers - during which we talked about true faith, faith that will guarantee an eternity with God and enable us to glorify Him on earth. Next week, I’m going to be asking them if they thought about what we had talked about and individually check to see if they had made a decision to accept the authority of Jesus in their life or not. It sure couldn’t hurt if you prayed about this.
Pris is enjoying teaching the ladies on Tuesday nights, as well. Actually, I’m sure some of the ladies wished that the Sunday teaching times were as interesting as Thursday nights! She is teaching on good life priorities for the lady who loves Christ… nice and practical.
I’d better post this. It’s been sitting open for a couple of days waiting for me to get back to it. May God give you peace… and true love.