friends and family,

Joel has been very diligent at keeping our blog updated and you informed...and I have not. I often find myself at the computer attempting to 'blog' and find myself with nothing to say. But how can there be nothing to say? I often feel this pressure to write something profound that we leave you with a better understanding of our life here while opening doors for reflection in your own life. So today, I just want to put some quotes down that in some way or another have brought comfort, peace, or a better understanding of either our situation here or of my faith. I'll let someone else be profound today...I'll just be the conduit from which you receive :)

"There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control, and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control over its development, and to make it available in large quantities. Success brings many rewards and often fame. Fruits, however, come from weakness and vulnerability and fruits are unique. A child is the fruit conceived in vulnerability. Community is the fruit born through shared brokeness, and intimacy is the fruit that grows through touching one another's wounds. Let's remind one another that what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness."
Henri Nouwen

"Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that. Hatred paralyses life, love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life, love illumines it."
Martin Luther King Jr.

"God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning. 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening 'Do it again,' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy seperately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."
GK Chesterton

"You are blessed to be a blessing."
Unknown (but heard Gideon say it)

"With the help of the thorn in my foot, I spring higher than anyone with sound feet."
Soren Kierkegaard