Chicken and Italian Sausage

We thought we would have a quiet week after the big distribution after Christmas. Now I realize what a great sense of humor God has. We feel a bit discouraged that we have had no luck so far selling our place and returning to ministries in NW Arkansas. Did we forget that God plans are certainly not ours? We received a phone call that a distributor of ours had just received 35,000# of frozen chicken, Italian sausage, chicken and dumpling soup, turkey gravy, and hoagie buns.  Yep,35,000#, a whole semi load. Would we please come and pick up as much as we could as they did not have room for it all? W called Ida, our contact in the colonias, and she started making phone calls. We then called another ministry, as he has a large, closed in trailer, who volunteered to go pick up a large amount for us as well as himself. We met him later and transferred 1000# for our use, and helped him store the rest in his freezer. By the time we got to Ida’s church, (the only area large enough to work), Ida had a crew rounded up to help package the food, as it was all loose in large boxes. Luckily there were freezers and refrigerators there for us to pack it in. Ida was making more phone calls for folks to come pickup the boxes we prepared and to also pick up some for family and neighbors who had no phones or transportation to get it. What a day – we were exhausted by 4 PM, but what wonderful type of exhaustion! We returned again the next day after picking up another 500# - more phone calls, more help, and all was safely delivered. So now we have an answer our discouragement – God still has work for us to do here in S Texas.

unloading frozen cold food

sausage bagged

yea - more help

chicken noodle soup

Italian sausage

sweet faithful Carmen offering Fred a frozen chicken breast

family size packages - my hands were cold,too

We did get to relax a bit on Saturday, do a bit of long needed shopping, and just put our feet up and maybe got in a short snooze. It was cool outside, so I just snuggled in under a quilt, drank hot coffee, did some catch up reading. But I have learned to make sure I do a lot of energy refueling – God is full of surprises.

A great message again this morning. The title “To Die For” expounds on the greatest exchange of all – to trade something undesirable for something wonderful. This is what God did for us. Jesus exchanged our worst for His best – His life. Truth makes us realize that God can bring us to Him through Salvation which is truth and faith. We were children in disgrace but Jesus brought us back to the family. Redemption is to purchase something worthless and make it valuable – Jesus did that for us. We were worthless in sin – Jesus purchased our forgiveness by His death so we could become valuable before God. He ransomed us with His life. What did God owe Satan for our lives? Satan did not make us sin – we chose to sin. Perhaps not intentionally, but we did. We became slaves to sin, not slaves to Satan. Slaves to the sin we chose to commit. Sin tends to control us. We cannot free ourselves from sin – we need to rely on God. God became our redeemer. How mush is one person worth? If you add all the minerals in our body, you will realize we are only worth a few pennies. Our sins are a debt to God. How can we pay that off? We can’t – Jesus paid it for us. His blood became our bail money, as our worth is almost zero to the world, but priceless in the eyes of God. The cross become our bridge to God - to the most wonderful thing of all. thank God for salvation-as there are only 2 places in the afterlife – Heaven and Hell. Which would you choose?