January
26th, 2008
Dear
friends,
Sorry so
slow with this update.... especially when I see that I didn't get
December's emailed on time and thus no one got it in December... My
deepest apologies. My bad.
Updates,
then musings
1. Todd,
our board member working in Afghanistan, is in a hospital in
Germany recovering from a massive infection in his right leg. He'd
been fighting flu-like symptoms for awhile, and suddenly at the start of this
week, whatever it was centralized in his leg, causing pretty horrible
swelling and pain. The emergency room there admitted him immediately, started
IV antibiotics, then medivaced him to Germany. Truly we live in a
battle, and what we are trying to do here is creating backlash from the
darkness. You see, this happened just as I needed to talk to him about some
serious ranch matters, and suddenly Todd was incognito, and we had no way
to contact him for a number of days, so we just had to pray for him and wait (a
friend of his alerted us that he was in the hospital). Pray for him. The
swelling is going down, but he's still out of commission for several weeks
prolly. I talked to him awhile this morning on the phone, and it was good to
hear the full story, and then discuss what we needed to discuss. He is also
feeling much better and more alert. All of this was an answer to
prayer. But keep praying...
We SOOOOO
desperately need the official prayer covering of a church that is willing to
stand behind us.... We get tired of getting hammered all the time by stuff that
is bizarre like this, and always at the worst possible moment... You
just can't tell me we aren't fighting a spiritual war here....
2. The
ranch owners flat out rejected our offer. They didn't even counter offer on
paper. And then they raised the price to $650,000 (instead of the $500,000
that we had been quoted multiple times over the past 4 years). That was
pretty crushing to us emotionally. Pray for us for wisdom on how to respond to
this. I believe that we need to be fair with the owners and give them an
answer asap, and move forward, either here or someplace else...
3. A friend
of mine that had no way of knowing we were about out of firewood, came up here
unexpectedly two weeks ago and cut down, then cut up, several dead trees for us
for firewood, saving me the time (something I am desperately short on). This
was a fingerprint of God for me, and just a tap on my shoulder from Him (God),
that He hadn't forgotten us and still had out needs covered. He sent my friend,
whom I actually hadn't talked to in several months, at just the right moment.
So he grabbed another friend, and the two of them together got us three pickup
loads of wood that day. I need to split it this afternoon, but it's good, dead,
burnable wood, it's stacked on our front porch, and we've already been
burning the smaller pieces.
4. A friend
of Karen's also offered to share some of their firewood with us as well after
hearing where we lived. So we picked up a pickup load there already too. God IS
taking care of us. But believe me, I don't think I will hear any whining or
complaining from the family this next year when it comes time for firewood
gathering. The house has gotten pretty cold a time or two, and no one likes it,
and they completely understand that we dropped the ball about not gathering
wood when we should have been doing so last summer. I'm glad God is patient
with us and helps us learn painful lessons, but then also comes through for us
when we fail and honestly repent and ask His forgiveness.
5. Another
old friend has given us not just one, but two wood pellet stoves, both of which
need repaired, but which are repairs I know how to make. One of them is going
into Karen's new office, and the other is going to our foster family good friends
(who have also been getting hammered with bizarre stuff - obviously also
spiritual battle in origin). Pray for Ed and April when you pray.
6. An
African pastor named George from River Of Revival Ministries in Kenya personally wrote me last week after
seeing our website, and asked for prayer covering for his church congregation.
They are caught in the crossfire of rioting going on over there. He said
there were over 500 refugee families camped out in his church right now, with
thousands more crossing their path, and they are in desperate need of supplies
to take care of them all. God can supply where our
family can't, and we CAN pray supernatural protection and relief for
them. So I'm requesting this for him and his flock, and our other brothers and
sisters in Christ currently suffering in Africa.
7. My
Innocence of God manuscript is going to an editor friend of mine this weekend
(assuming I can finish scripture reference editing it asap). It is my plan
at the moment to turn down the three tentative offers I've had to publish it,
and instead immediately release it for free on the net, at least for awhile,
because it is something I believe people need to understand about God, and
I don't want contracts, red tape, profit margins, and the like, interfere with
getting the truth out about God and His love for us. It is also my way of
putting Him first in my life in a practical way, and likewise throwing myself
upon His watchcare and mercy. I figure that if I put Him, His kingdom, and
His feelings first, then He'll take care of me - He even promises this in
Matthew chapter 6 of the Bible.
8. Family
stability is still intact... Karen and I are really struggling learning to
communicate constructively with each other, but we ARE making progress.
Likewise with the kids. It so often seems like while I'm making steps forward
with one child, I'll be losing ground with another one, but overall, when
compared to where we were as a family unit one year ago, we have definitely
made a lot progress forward. There's still a huge issue with one of our kids in
particular attempting to turn their back on God right now because of
all their internal pain and anger that has been bottled up for years and
not constructively dealt with, so we're praying lots for this heartbreaking
situation.
9. Karen is
loving her lifestyle coaching classes, and is gearing up to open an
office, specializing in helping people and families dealing with ADHD and ADD
issues. Pray for her in this. We both really want to see her succeed with this
new personal ministry that God is opening up for her.
10. We have
had over 4 feet of snow so far this year (over 2 feet on the ground right
now), and it makes the landscape here beautiful. With that much snow on the
ground, it's actually protecting the ground from freezing hard like last year,
so the hydro-electric system is still going strong, the community water supply
hasn't frozen up, and our own pipes haven't frozen (except for the one
break/leak in the laundry room), so we aren't dealing with some of the
bitter cold problems that we faced last winter. Even so, it was still
minus 12 in Idaho City one morning last week *BRRRRR*. It was a balmy 4 degrees
at the house that morning, much warmer than Idaho City itself (only 12 miles
away) :-)
11. I received
a phone call from a cousin-in-law of mine yesterday, telling me that his wife,
a cousin of mine that had been sick awhile, had passed away. He found my number
while going through some of her papers left behind, and found printouts of our
past newsletters, our website, and whatnot. I have not talked with this cousin
in several years, and didn't even realize that she was still keeping track of
us, and praying for us. I have never even met her husband Ed, who I talked with
yesterday. But it was interesting in that he was able to share some of his
grief, and ironically enough, some of his joy in knowing that his wife was with
The Father now, and not in pain anymore. We exchanged prayer requests and
promises to pray for each other, and then hung up. But 2 things struck me. One,
we never know how far our influence in life reaches, and who we might be
touching when we simply do what's right, try to live right, and tell people
what God means to each of us. And Two, here was a distant family member that I
didn't even know I had, and because we both know the Father, we had an
immediate kinship on a deeper spiritual level, where it was ok to be honest
together in his grief, and mine too. Pray for him if you think of
it.
12. Karen
and I attended a sexual purity conference in Boise over the weekend, and
learned lots from it. Given that our family has been touched and affected by
this issue so strongly through Karen's ex's crimes, it made sense for us to go.
I learned things, Karen learned things, and we made some awesome connections to
people. But it was really cool just seeing that many people coming together to
find out more about the issue, how to combat the problems of sexual impurity in
their own lives and families, and just in general how to get involved and make
a difference in their own worlds.
13. In
spite of everything that would indicate to the contrary (unhappy
negotiations with the ranch landlords, etc), I almost get the feeling that
Yahweh God is preparing my family to accept more members into its arms. It's
been heavy on my heart for about two months, and I think Karen has felt it too.
When I bounce the idea off the kids, I get mixed reactions. But some logistical
things are starting to happen now too that lead me to think that our family
will indeed be growing soon. Not sure how, when, where, or why, but something
is afoot... I just wish I knew where we were supposed to be living...
Which leads
me to my main musing for the day.
Last week
in church, the speaker told an interesting little parable that hit home with me
in several ways.
This man
had a house for sale for let's say, $2000. A neighbor of his wanted to buy it,
for $1000. After weeks of "negotiation", the owner agreed to sell for
$1000, on one condition. He would retain ownership of ONE nail by the front
door. The neighbor saw no harm in that and agreed. The transaction completed,
the new owner moved in, and the old owner moved away.
After a
couple years, the old owner came back into town and decided he really wanted
his old place back. But the new owner had fixed it up tons, was happy there,
and didn't want to sell. After fighting about it, the old owner simply went and
found the rotting carcass of a dead dog and hung it on that one nail by the
front door that he still owned. The new owner fought it legally, but the
contract was binding. The dog had to stay put. After several weeks of this, the
new owner caved in and sold it back to the original owner.
The moral
of the story was that if you live a perfect life, but just have one nail or bad
habit that Satan still owns, sooner or later, he will use it to
screw your life completely up. Sooner or later, he just will. It's his
nature, and the way things work.
So it gave
me pause to reflect on my own life and do a little housecleaning, some of it
painful but necessary. Progress is progress, I say.
But it also
made me think about the way we were trying to buy the ranch, by letting
the owners carry a note for us. And it just seemed to me that we would be
compromising what we want to do here by letting the landowners own a nail over
our front door (by carrying the mortgage themselves), when they have already
demonstrated that they do not necessarily deeply believe in what we want
to do here.
Which means
that we are now asking God to provide the full purchase price, right
up front, within the next 6-8 weeks, so that we are free to build the dream
here of a camp for prayer, for healing, and for youth, with no nails over
our front door owned by anyone else. And it would need to be
soon.
We are
working on several options for this, my royalty checks start next month
from my writing, and some of my other internet irons-in-the-fire are
slowly starting to pay off, but for this purchase to happen, it needs to happen
by God's hand, and soon. I thought that with my writing I might be able to
swing a downpayment myself in the next several months, but I was not
expecting to try for the whole price immediately. But the more we think
and pray about it, the more we think this is the way it needs to be, the
ranch paid in full right up front. We serve a big God, afterall,
right? So that's our prayer. We already are completely convinced that God wants
to do something here, something big, but obviously our timeframe is not always
His timeframe, and He has simply been walking with us all along, asking us to
trust Him in faith, and blindly move forward, completely trusting him.
Sometimes it's fun, and sometimes it's whiteknuckles. Sometimes it's just plain
exhausting. But God IS good, and we trust that.
So we are
throwing ourselves on God now, praying, fasting, and seeking options. He gave
us this dream. I believe He has a plan for us, though I do not know yet what it
will be completely. But sometimes when He's all you have left, that's when He
most enjoys working. So that's my prayer, "God, lead us forward, down
paths that glorify you, in ways such that people can see and accept
your reality."
Ain't life
grand? :-)
Thoughts?
questions? Feedback? Prayer requests? We'd love to hear from you.
In Him,
Sincerely,
-Tim
208-392-6723
timbenedict@peoplepc.com
http://www.bighouseministries.com
21 Yellowpine Lane, Boise, ID 83716