Team Coming!

The last couple of days we have been getting ready for the team coming from Longview and Kilgore to have a "Sister Cities" seminar with business people here in Rzhishchiv. Exciting! It will be fun having six visitors. The three ladies will stay with Masha and I. It's so nice that we have a house so close by with plenty of extra room. God gave us such a good place...for free.

Yesterday I stayed home from the Crowes and scrubbed and vacuumed and did dishes and spent a lot of time packing my stuff. Even though I still have a week or so here, I wanted to pack the things I don't need so that there would be room for our guests. Plus, I will be a lot more relaxed knowing that I don't need to pack in those few days remaining after the team leaves. I can just enjoy time with my "family."

This is so weird, guys! I'm leaving and starting a new life. And it's like Masha said, "But I just got used to you!" It's both sad and exciting at the same time. I think I will just with the flow. I was listening to a sermon today on Luke, I think chapter 12, a passage that warns us to be ready when Jesus comes and not to cling to things. I'm glad that everything that really matters will be restored to us one day when Jesus comes. Until then we live as if waiting for a "heavenly city, one that is to come."

This afternoon it has been raining deliciously. I love rain, and it doesn't seem to rain in Rzhishchiv very much. There was distant thunder, but the rain was soft and gray, and between dishes and housework I snatched a moment to curl up on the Crowes' wide windowsill. I sat there, feeling the breeze in the window and just drinking in the smell of the rain and dust meeting, and hearing the gentle pattering, and watching the drops form pools and rivulets in the leaves of the grape vines beside the house. Mmm. My very soul was refreshed :)

God is such a good father, such a good friend. It's been so long since I really felt "in love" with Him, and I miss that. We have been on good terms, and I know I am growing in Him, but I miss those foolish, happy feelings of "wasting" time in His presence and liking it. But for a few brief moments, in the windowsill, my heart remembered what only my head could recall before, and I could feel Him as a blind person feels the face of an old friend and finds familar, beloved lines.

I want more of this.

Our visitors will be here any minute now, so I will go...