January Prayer Requests
January 1st, 2006by Gavin & TaraJanuary Prayer Requests: The Pace is Pickin’ up!
First of all thank God with us for His Kindness and Grace towards us in this time. Eden is sleeping 11 hours in the night and is a happy, healthy, thriving little girl. Thank you to all of you who are keeping us in your prayers! We couldn’t do this without your support.
This month we would especially appreciate your prayer in the following areas:
ATHENS: Leave Sunday the 8th and return Saturday the 16th. We travel to Athens for a weeks retreat with many of our fellow interns and a rep from the college. We would like to be refreshed and be a source of refreshment to our friends there. Pray for safety, good humour, and the leading of the Holy Spirit.
CHILDREN’S MINISTRY: The privilege of designing and implementing curriculum for the first 4 months of 2006 has been given to Tara. The theme of Christian values was put on her heart to share with the children (one class of 8-12 kids ages 4-10). Using Los Frutos del Espíritu (The Fruits of the Spirit) as a guide she is designing, preparing, co-ordinating, and co-leading all classes….IN SPANISH! Pray for humility, grace, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and for ETERNAL IMPACT in the children.
YOUTH MINISTRY: When we return from Athens Gavin will be actively moving forward with organizing and leading youth get-togethers in our apartment. Pray for grace for him and for the Holy Spirit to draw the youth to a living relationship with God.
PERSONAL: Please pray for joy and intimacy in our relationship with God, one another and with our families. Also, continued grace with language and culture learning.
This verse is very dear to me (Tara) right now…thank you for saying ‘YES!’ to God about who He Is and what He Will Do!
On that day they will say to Jerusalem,
“Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands hang limp.
The LORD your God is with you,
He is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
He will quiet you with his love,
He will rejoice over you with singing.”
~ Zepheniah 3:16-17
In the 9 months that Eden has been a blessed part of our lives we’ve all gone through alot of transitions. She’s a super-flexible kid and has coped with most of the upheavals, irregular (or complete lack of) schedule, new people in her face, etc really quite well. She sure lets our a resounding squack when she’s had ENOUGH! This summer at BCOM we suspected there were some issues with her overall schedule, but being new parents with 2 other moves on the near horizon, we just decided to wait until we got settled in Spain. Well here we are settling into Spain now, it’s been 2 months and our suspicions have been confirmed. Eden is NOT getting NEARLY enough sleep in the 24 hour period, she’s utterly dependent on nursing to fall asleep (any time of day), doesn’t know how to settle herself back to sleep if she wakes up, and all this is adding up to a overwrought baby girl, a tearful new mom who’s being assailed by self-doubt and accusation (Look what YOU did to yourself Tara!!! If you hadn’t…blah blah blah…).Resting in my CORE (simply being HIS) and balancing my primary callings (to be me, to be wife, to be mother) with the season of life God has me in right now (new mom, internship, far from friends and family, linguistically challenged and emotionally isolated)…it’s all kinda happening at once. So if I could ask for any prayer, I don’t know exactly what it would be for. I’ll trust the Holy Spirit who KNOWS (Praise God someone does because I’m don’t!) to lead and guide the dear ones who care for this family into the prayer on His Heart. We want to minister well to Eden in this tender season of her life…to help her learn the skills she needs (to fall asleep on her own, to sleep longer and better, to get enough calories in the day so she sleeps well at night) so she will be healthy, well rested and thriving in every way. And we will be a family who is secure in Christ’s Sufficiency, drawing all we NEED from His lavish abundance.
