There’s an old familiar hymn I used to sing growing up: ‘Count your many blessings every doubt will fly,’ and the familiar chorus rings out, ‘Count your blessings, count them one by one / And it will surprise you what the Lord has done’.

I have felt spiritually discouraged lately. Feeling like what I’m doing has no Kingdom value, like I’m just taking up space and writing words and none of it is going to make a difference. I know these thoughts come from the evil one who wants to take us down, defeat us and claim victory in this battle. But knowing in my head these thoughts are not from my King and keeping it from affecting my heart are two different things.

So I spent some time this morning just reflecting on the blessings in the Pockets of Change project these last few months. It is not by our strength or smarts this project will be accomplished or be of Kingdom value. It is through Christ alone. When people ask how we’re doing this, I want to always point them to my King. Because He blesses His people and enables them to do His calling. We’re just thankful He chose us to be a part of it.

We’ve been on the road three of the last six months, between our Canada and abroad travels. We’ve enjoyed the travels and have enjoyed the time in Chilliwack as well. It’s been a good experience thus far and we’re now looking to prepare for our final leg of travel.

Going way back to June, we arrived back from our South America travels at the beginning of the month. After in-depth debriefing and catching up on sleep, we spent a couple weeks sorting through interviews and photos and preparing ourselves for the Mexico trip in July. We also spent a fun-filled week in Cranbrook to attend my 10 year grad reunion and catch up with old friends.

The first two weeks of July were spent in Mexico with a team from Coquitlam Alliance Church. That was an extraordinary trip; we saw great need and great compassion. I sometimes still fall asleep at night thinking about the Tarahamarans and what the missionaries there are doing to help, and feel blessed we got to see and be a part of that ministry if only for a few short days.

Friends of a friend of ours heard we were looking for a place to stay for the two months we were back in Chilliwack between Mexico and our Fall travels. The couple offered to let us stay in their rental apartment for almost no cost at all to us for the time we were back in Canada. This has been a huge answer to prayer for us! From March to mid-July we had been living with other people and we found that four and a half months was a long stretch to not just be together in our own home.

When we arrived back from Mexico, this generous Christian couple had the keys waiting for us. And when we got to the apartment, Corrina (our close working partner at HFL for Pockets of Change) had given us everything needed to settle in: pots and pans, towels and a mattress, dish soap and even some KD – our favourite meal! It was an amazing blessing for us and we have been grateful to stay in this wonderful apartment for the last month and a half.

We also had another Godsend in the form of a brand new storage facility to put all our worldly belongings. We had originally stored them in an old dairy barn. We were grateful for the space and prayed over protection for our stuff as we couldn’t get storage insurance. But the family that opened their storage space to us built a brand new barn complete with locking bay doors and an alarm system and invited us to move everything over. Wow, what a blessing that was!

After settling into our apartment, we spent a week on the island with my family and came back to Chilliwack refreshed and ready to jump in. For the last month and a half I have been sorting through interviews and writing recaps as well as getting into story writing for the actual book.  It’s been a good exercise in discipline for me as I work through the more than 100 interviews conducted so far in this project.

Meanwhile, Justin has jumped off the deep end of the publishing pool, trying to assess what the best route will be for getting the book printed. We have again been blessed in this area. The HFL office is located in the same office building as the Blessings Christian Marketplace head office. One of their employees took a publishing program and has helped us greatly in getting started down this route. She has provided invaluable tips and pointed us in the possible directions we can go.

Outside of the Pockets of Change project, we have been able to do some hiking, spend time with our near and dear friends and were very blessed to be in the country for the birth of our friend’s second child – a moment we would not have wanted to miss!

And now, unbelievably, we need to start preparing for the next leg of our journey. The time has gone by in a blink of an eye and I have to look at my computer clock about two times a day to remind myself it is indeed the end of August. We leave for the Ukraine the third week of September and from there head to Uganda, Kenya and lastly Sri Lanka.

I felt remiss in not sharing all that God has done for us as we do this Pockets of Change project. We have trusted Him to provide for us as we live on no steady income and yet I guess I never pictured what that would look like. To have every need met above and beyond has been faith building for us. And to count our blessings truly does encourage me spiritually. I am struggling still and ask for prayer as we spiritually prepare for our next travel leg. But at the same time as we struggle, we praise God for all He has done to take care of us through this phase of our lives. As another old familiar hymn puts it so aptly: ‘Praise God, from whom ALL blessings flow’!

Tags: Lessons, Prayer

This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 3:23 pm and is filed under Canada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.