News From Buffalo

Well here we are in Buffalo and well.....it's very cold right now!! We have just found out some very exciting news, we are expecting another baby!! God has blessed us again, this last week was a tough one as I think that I caught a stomach bug along with morning sickness and well I thought I was dying but here I am alive and kicking.
Other than babies there are new and exciting things happening all the time here, God is bringing new people here and building stonger relationships in the people we already know. I have met a few friends with children and it has been a blessing. I feel like God has been giving us a love for the city but still sometimes it doesn't quite feel like home, however I know that it is.
Today I was thanking God that I am able to live in a place where I can constantly feel the brokenness and lack of hope in peoples lives, there are daily happenings in which I realize this is why God has sent us here and i often feel myself brokenhearted for the shape of some lives. People here are not all pretty, and looking like they have it together. I can definately step out of my door and run into people whose lives are falling apart, who aren't pretty or nice, whose lives are vividly in need of hope and restoration. So I am thankful for this daily reminder of why I moved across the country to this city, but also there are times when it is hard not to see the world as too empty or hopeless or broken. Or that there are too many people this way and there will never be enough time to meet them all, love them all and hopefully show them the path to hope. Some one said (I don't know who) that Jesus saw the world as a good place and I am always challenged by this. There are times when I see it as good but often I see all that is not right and long for it to be. So I think that is what may keep me an idealist, is that if Jesus saw the world as a good place then that means all that is not right has the possiblity of being made right or restored. I love the words restored and redeemed to me they paint such a picture of a transformation of something into that which nobody thought it could ever be, that is the place that hope is born. If I can believe in words like redeemed and restored and really know that they describe that which can take place in people, cities and nations.....then there in lies my hope ....Jesus does this. I have yet to see a city or a nation redeemed and restored personally but I have heard of such things, however in my own personal life I have seen him do this in people. He did it in me, even in our home that we live now he has done that. It was a crack house before we moved in, it was a brothel sometime before that and now people live in it and gather together here in it to worship God and sing praises to him. Our hope is that this house will be a beacon of love to the wolrd around it. So I will give my life to God as an offering in hopes that he will allow me the great privledge of participating in the restoration of the city of Buffalo and the world. I will dream a big dream because I love and serve a big God...