Our friends the Wrights will leave in 4 days.  There have been a lot of “goodbyes” over the past couple months.  The Washburns, then the Morigeaus, then the Stephen Wrights, then the Nolan Wright family.  We were laughing last night as we said good by to the N. Wright family, that by the time we leave we will have to show ourselves the door because there will be no Americans left to say goodbye.  I have been reading Hebrews, and when I came to chapter 12 I started thinking about what God will do in the lives of our friends who are going back to the States.  Of course it feels to us like they are going from somewhere “hard” to somewhere “easy”.  But that is not the truth, because the struggles in our Christian walk are equally challenging back home.  However, we are used to them culturally, so we recognize them less easily and accept them more readily.  But I do believe that God will use this special time of challenge to prepare all of these families for some work back home.  Because the truth is that God is using whatever is going on in each of our lives for some work in the future.  Ephesians 2:10 says that we are God’s workmanship, and that he has prepared good works in advance for us to do.  It is a promise that God is forming us to use us for his purposes.  Hebrews 12:7  says “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treatting you as sons.”  Hebrews 12:11 “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.  Later on, however it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”  God is disciplining us through our hardships for the work he has prepared for us, and it will produce a harvest of righteousness and peace.  God has prepared these families for something in the future by using their time here in Peru.  He is preparing our family in the same way, and that gives me great hope that all is not in vain, but it for his glory and purpose.  And he is preparing you too, by whatever is going on now for something in the future.  I hope that gives you hope!

Hebrews 12:1-3 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross . . . consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”