May 2, 2010

Spiritual Prep

I wonder at times if I started with Training Prep, would more people read the blog?   I am not even sure who is reading the blog except someone tells me or I get a comment.  Pretty cool that some of the comments come from other countries.  I wonder if I focused more on the issues in Haiti if it would send more people to the page to pledge more pennies.  I wonder if we had done things better would more money have been raised for the medical needs of the northwest region of Haiti, the poorest of the country.  Then I refocus and consider our Lord and his purpose and power.  Then anything we do – if not  in his will is futile.  Also, whatever we do if for the right or wrong reasons, he will bring to his glory.  The scirptures are full of right and wrong leading to the fulfillness of his plan.  I don’t think about what I do and how it might work out for him.  No I think of how he wants things to be and what we do, might just be a small and good part of the result.  God is in control of all and I give all horor and praise to his ways and plans of which I am sure we know very little.  What I do know is the magnitude of love, grace, forgiveness and wisdom.  Can you just ponder for a minute the wisdom of our God giving himself as a perfect sacrifice, the only perfect sacrifice available, for us as a replacement for the punishment of our wrong doing.  A sacrifice that needs to be never given again, complete and for all.  The love that would drive him to suffer the kind of punishment and death he endured?  The grace to allow us to falter and still continue to come back for forgivness time after time?  The forgiveness that is everlasting and for all, the close to perfect and the far away from perfect—–for all of us!  Stops me from thinking and I move to worshiping him with all my being, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Stories from Haiti

Haiti’s farmland is some of the least productive in the world. Widespread deforestation and poor environmental controls have stripped most of Haiti’s hillsides bare, the best topsoil washed downstream long ago.  And demonstrated as recently as 2008, alternating spells of drought and tropical storms can wreak havoc on the country’s large number of small-scale subsistence farmers.  Agricultural development programs are one of the most practical types of ministry in Haiti. If feeding programs are essential for short-term and life-saving relief in Haiti, then agriculture projects are essential for long-term improvement. Without them, there will never be lasting “relief.”  Northwest Haiti Christian Mission is working to develop agriculture initiatives ranging from reforestation, to food production, to fish farming, to clean water projects.