Coming `Home'

We're about 12 hours away from picking up Taylor and Ethan at the Portland airport from a two-week Brazilian missions trip with a team of fellow Calvary Corvallis missionaries. We haven't heard much from them in the two weeks they've been gone; just two short Facebook e-mails from Ethan. But Ethan sent good reports and we're excited to hear how the Lord has used them and the 25 or so other members of the team. What an experience for the young lads. It's so different in the house without them and I'm not saying that in a good way. We miss them so much. Particularly tonight when I was lugging three suitcases into Grandma & Grandpa Young's house in Canby. We spent the week "housesitting" for friends in Albany who were on the Brazil trip and it would have been the first time in six months that our whole family was together as a lone family unit since we had left Virginia -- if Taylor and Ethan had been here.

We're looking forward to Team Sabo family time and believe me we'll cherish it much more when that time finally arrives. Meantime, I'm happy to report that I can recite the first six verses of the Sermon on the Mount -- without looking at my Bible. Julie, bless her heart, is helping me learn two verses a day. What a woman. What a wife. Little did I know when I met her 20 years ago this month how valuable she would be to help a knucklehead like me push through a year of Cornerstone School of Ministry. I confess, there's been many times these past months in the face of trials of finances, relationships, weariness and discouragement that I've said let's just go home. As in home to Virginia. But Julie doesn't have quit in her (Perhaps this explains the whole 12 kids thing?) and has always been an encourager. The female Barnabas, if you will. God bless her for that. We're going to make it. Just as the Lord miraculously provided the finances for Taylor and Ethan to make it to Brazil, so He provides for us in so many ways. Thanks for your prayers and keep them coming.