God Stories

One final story to share with you this week. Just before I got to my haircut the other day, I ran into another ESL student, Claudia. She approached me apologizing for not having been at the graduation party the previous evening.

"Teacher, I'm so sorry I couldn't be there, I knew I was supposed to bring something, but we have had some hard times this week. My brother's wife was pregnant with twins and she had them on Monday. They took them both out by c-section and they are fine. They're big! But the mother got preeclampsia and her blood pressure dropped. they gave her transfusions of blood and gave her a shot to raise her pressure, but she lost so much blood. She died. Now the babies will grow up without a mother."

Ugh. I couldn't believe it. I told her how our friend passed away a few years ago now during the birth of their first son. Such heartache at the loss of a life with the simultaneous joy of new life is hard to stomach. Click Here To Continue »

"Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong." - 2 Cor. 12:8-10

These verses have been circling in my head this week. I'm understanding them anew. I just returned from telling the landlords of the space we hoped to launch our coffeehouse in that we don't have the money by our given deadline. And I feel weak. I don't mean that this is the end of our plans; we still are confident that God has lead us thus far in our plans. He has truly helped us much. I don't even mean that there is no hope for us getting this location, which we consider nearly ideal. I also don't mean that we will not be able to continue with the Fine Arts Studio. So, what do I mean? Click Here To Continue »

Last night was our second ESL class since we re-started last week.  I guess I should begin there.  Last Tuesday we opened our ESL classes.  I handed out 50 flyers on Monday, and 25 on Tuesday.  Tuesday night Pastor Pedro stood outside the church and passed out flyers as the class was starting, and even posted a sign on the door of the church.  By the time class was over that night, we had 11 people all crammed into our tiny classroom! 

We have enough computers to handle 10 students, so we were over our limit at the first class.  I didn't do anymore advertising, but Pedro left the sign on the church door.  For the next week, the phone rang off the hook with people calling about the class.  I was a bit afraid about class number two.  We've never had this problem before.  Judging by past experience, handing out 75 flyers should result in .75 people; not even a whole person!  The first showed up 15 minutes early, and then the rest began to arrive.  We were so surprised and busy trying to keep up that we didn't actually count how many there were.   Click Here To Continue »