We have lodging!

Friends

We have lodging! I phoned Ewan Clydesdale at Glasgow City Mission yesterday and he said that his boss, Andrew, had spoken with the Salvation Army there and has obtained lodging for us a few blocks from City Mission! God is amazing! Thank you so much for your prayers, support and help! So many of you jumped right to it, emailing friends and family about our situation. I don't know if I've ever felt more loved. Thank you so much.

So. We leave at 10:45am on THIS Sunday. I tried to find the exact place we'll be staying (Ewan didn't give me an address & there's about 20 hits when you type 'Salvation Army' into maps google for Glasgow, Scotlan :) and as I looked over the streetnames, I got so excited thinking that I'll soon be seeing them again. Ah! God is so good!

Sunday night at Scum, Josh Cook gave a comissioning prayer for the 3 of us leaving. Janny, Kate & I went up on stage and Josh asked anyone who had a connection to any of us to join us on stage for the prayer. By the time the dust settled, at least half the congregation was on stage with us. And the weird thing was that they were never clumped around us, they were behind us. I'm starting to cry just thinking about it...

God and I have been having some pretty intense conversations lately and He shows me things in weird ways and this was no exception. I do believe it: Scum of the Earth Church (and all of you) are behind us. Yes, physically, we're taking 3 people to Glasgow. But because God's God, we're also taking every single one of the people on that stage... plus all of you.

There's a scene in the new Caspian movie (go see it if you haven't: amazing!) where Lucy mounts a bridge to stand against a retreating army of Telemarines. She calmly draws her dagger and continues to step forward slowly & with confidence. You _know_ that Aslan is beside her, but you don't see him. The movie uses it as a kind of joke 'cause they have it look like the Telemarine soldiers are running from a little girl. Me? I was freaking out, "Come on! Where's Aslan? I know He's there!" I think that's what I've been doing this whole preparation procress: instead of being like Lucy knowing that Aslan's right beside her, I've doubted. At least on the inside.

Faith was easy when this trip was far away, but when it came down to a few weeks ago and we still didn't know where we'd be staying, I started freaking out.

It speaks of more of God's goodness and faithfulness than my spiritual maturity that most of what I did was run to Him. We had some knockdown drag-out wrestling matches over these last few months and I've the scars to prove it. And even in my failings, even in my doubts, God showed His love for me. He showed me, one more time, His faithfulness.

And so, I get to go to Scotland again. And I get to take Kate and Janny with me. And I get to see some of the people He dearly loves and love on them.

Thank you for being a part of this...

...ben