Последние дни, Бог учит меня из этого стиха: “Помышления прилежного стремятся к изобилию”. На англиском, написано: “Планы прилежного стремятся к изобилию”.

Помышления, планы … Я понимаю, на столько Бог хочет, чтобы я планировала, чтобы я думала на перед…. Поездка, покупка, школа, одежда, еда, домохозяйство … Если я думаю на перед, планирую, как правило, дела идут более гладко. (И если что-то спонтанно или неожиданно, то легче переносить это тоже, потому что все вокруг более-менее хорошо продуманно.)

Насколько же это важно также и с нашими молитвами!

Помышления и планы прилежного о молитве  стремятся к изобилию! 

Около 5-6 лет назад, Бог начал меня побуждать к молитве, и до с тих пор, Он показывает мне, что то что будет в моей жизни, и в жизни моей семьи, моего мужа, моих детей, и в жизни нашей церкви … это будет в резултате молитвы. И Он желает, чтоб я была тот человек который молился за исполнение Его воли.

Он хочет это для каждего из нас! чтобы мы все участвовали в совершенстве Его воли тут на земле.

Я начала использовать “Как организовать свою молитвенную жизнь” (можно скачать) около 4 года назад. За все это время, у меня была уже 3-4 дневника– жизнь меняется, и нужды и сферы меняются также. Вот они:

Со временим, мой дневник стал более гибким. Я пишу молитвы, собираю цитаты, пишу планы и мечты.

Я собирала идеи от разных старших женщин, и я хочу вам показать тоже, чтобы вдохновить вас в молитве, и чтобы мы все стали более привязанными к молитве и к водительсву Духа Святого. Этот дневник для меня хороший инструмент, помогает мне принести много плодов и хороших изминений. И если вы делаете свой молитвенный дневник, он тоже будет уникальным!

Вот, несколько мест из моего молитвенного дневника….

Стихи для заучивания в 2016-м:

На лево, короткий список людей и служений и т.д., для быстрой молитвы. Если в этот день, у меня нет времени глубже молиться, я хочу молиться хотя бы за самое главное. (На право, еженеделный список.)

Файл “Как организовать свою молитвенную жизнь” начинается с:

Потом для себя:

Для мужа, для детей, родителей, и т.д.

Потом, еженеделные молитвы для разных вещей, члены церкви, мамы с детьми … :

Служение “Гармония”

Служение “МаминоСердще”

Церковний лагерь, 2015-ом

Мои идеалы и как больше по ними жить…

Цитаты:

Я с радостью печатала бы этот файл для вас! Время бежит, и нам нужно помышлать и планировать, как мы будем молиться!

I want to write something down somewhere where I can find it later. That means here.

With years of life and experience with God, things just get really interesting.

Someone once told me that God often has patterns of how He leads a particular person. For me, that pattern has been like this: When I have a huge, life-altering decision to make, there are usually 3 factors: 1) longstanding, huge desire, 2) this desire is unfulfilled for quite a while– the suffering purifies somewhat, 3) a moment when I know, from the Holy Spirit, with no doubt (because there are times where I think I know, but there is doubt) that this particular step is God’s will (conviction).

I was reviewing this again in my heart because last night Vitaliy and I (and 4 other couples) shared extensively about how we met, our thoughts towards marriage, steps toward marrying this particular person, God’s leading, etc. (We were talking to the singles group.)

And God talked to me a bit last night. I’ve been going through a few months where I don’t feel emotionally invested in God. I’ve been praying about how to …. “fix” this. Though I realize by this point that it’s not always something I need to fix as much as just grow through and ask God to please do His will in our relationship.

So, that’s the back story to last night.

When I got married, I deleted the third point from my future. I think/thought: oh, now that I am married, I don’t need to expect God to give me a sense of conviction/surety about something– I have a husband now, and certainly God will not personally talk to me nor lead me in this way anymore.

When I started studying midwifery (about 2009), this was a big issue for me because … studying to become a midwife is a life-altering thing. And I didn’t wait on God for that sense of conviction (even though the first 2 factors were there). I just figured God wasn’t going to lead me in that personal way any more.

After 12 years of marriage, last night, God asked me to rethink that assumption.

The thought came to me like this: I gave you a husband who lets you / wants you to hear from Me personally.

So, this might be part of my present … emotional dryness….

For me, fundraising is definitely a journey. I’ve come into this with a lot of baggage. However, I also am thankful for this journey. It has given me rich experiences, especially as a missionary, which have taught me a lot.

Fundraising has been a matter of prayer for years, and I’ve gone through periods of intense questioning and learning. I don’t remember now what brought up this current period. … Oh, yes. Now I remember some of it … and I’m not going to tell you about it.

:)~

Let me just share the current progress.

Vitaliy and I are reading and re-reading Scott Morton’s book, Funding Your Ministry. He answers every question of conscience I’ve ever had, and even some I haven’t had–imagine that.  He has a whole chapter on the subject of conscience, so hey, I am not alone.

Insert thankfulness here: Thankful for Vitaliy and I going through this together. For our shared concerns about fundraising and our shared answers.

We worked through the budget in the back of the book and made up a budget that’s been approved by our mission agency. Our mission agency is also going through a phase of growth about this topic, so we are all growing together, and that’s another good thing. God is matching us up.

Thankfulness insert: We are currently at approximately 32% support…. That’s a good thing ,too!  We’re not starting this cycle from zero.

Vitaliy’s swamped with ministry stuff right now–let me just write that out– you can pray for him! 2 upcoming days of Easter evangelism (May 1-2), a week of counseling classes (May 3-5), homework for that course (ongoing), and getting ready for the church training in May 6-8. But we’re slowly going through Morton’s book and working through incorporating his suggestions.

Thankfulness insert: Our faithful supporters and supporting churches. They are generous and good to us, and we are just amazed by the Lord living in them.

We recently firmed up dates for our next trip to the States, August 2017. And our mission agency wants us to be at full support before we return, so we will be busy planning our time there even now.

This is all terribly exciting.

I was dinking around with the “magic focus” feature on my phone camera, and these photos were interesting:

A spring bud:

Our tea (I think it’s thyme): 

Our mulberry jellly:

My salad (named “Armenia”)

Another spring bud:

I want to remember a couple of words that Andre makes up that mix English and Russian.

Two examples: “Я хочу сидеть на lap-е.” He is saying, “I want to sit on [your] lap. So he says, “I want to sit on” in Russian, then says “lap” in English, and adds the Russian prepositional ending -e (said like yeh).

Yesterday, we were eating blinchiki with babushka’s yummy strawberry varenya/jelly, and he poured on too much, then asked, “Можно от-lick-ать?” He’s asking, “Can I lick it off?” (He likes eating like a dog sometimes.)

от-lick-ать:

от is a Russian verb prefix which has kind of the meaning of taking something away.

lick– English, to lick

ать– the Russian infinitive ending of most verbs.

He does a lot of funny things like this. It’s fun to watch. I don’t remember it so much with Skyla and Vika, but with Andre it’s very noticeable. He’s very verbal and exact generally.

I was texting my SIL in Togo last night (amazing, right?), and we got to chatting about our next trip to the U..S. (2017-ish), and I’ve been having strange apprehensions this time around about what is usually a welcome time. So I wrote out my specific apprehensions, and  I want to list them here and figure out ways to work through them.

beautiful image I caught yesterday– worthy of a calendar!

1. I feel more and more of an outsider when I go back to America. Fourteen to fifteen years of history have been lived without me, and I feel less and less American in my cultural experiences and expectations. … This political season in the U.S. has a certain darkness to it that is …. weird to me. Instead of solidarity or patriotism, it’s feels, from afar, like a long, slow earthquake is creating new fracture lines…. And at the same time, it becomes harder and harder for me to sympathize with certain issues, because … I am just in tears thinking about how glad so many people on earth would be for the chance to live in America. From the outside, from the 2nd- and 3rd-world outside specifically, it’s an amazing place of wealth, freedom, and opportunity … comparatively speaking.
   1. My answer for this, so far, is our home church. They are an amazing place of healing and diverse unity. The oaks of righteousness. The shining stars of my life. They are not perfect, but I think of them, and I am comforted knowing that I am going there. They are so good at loving and making people feel loved.
2. We are considering putting Skyla and Vika into school.This raises of huge level of stress for me.
   1. So I talked to Vitaliy, and we are both OK with not putting them in school. We’ll delay this decision, and home schooling is a fine option, too.
3. Fundraising. Period.
   1. We are reading Scott Morton’s book Funding Your Ministry, and … we may start this process while we’re still here, in our comfort zone. Fundraising takes us out of our comfort zone, so maybe it’s better to ease into it while we’re still here in our comfortable place. …. We’ll see.