No big insights this month – we’re just hunkering down for the rainy season, dreaming of sunshine. A special surprise awaited me (Adam) yesterday as I reluctantly was cleaning out our chicken’s coop (actually a doghouse) – 6 eggs! After 4 1/2 months of waiting, we finally have protein. I was about ready to give up hope, so this has been a lesson in patience for me.
A few prayer requests, and finally some prayer resources:
*As I write, we are making last-minute preparations for our Servant Team, who will arrive the morning of Feb. 16. God is sending us a group of four young women from the U.S. & Canada who will participate in our ministry at the Casa, volunteer at a Missionaries of Charity home for the developmentally disabled, and explore several important books, articles, and lifestyle celebrations formative to who we are as Word Made Flesh. Please pray for these women and their host families, who will living together in El Alto until early June.
*Our WMF community in Lima, Peru serves among vulnerable children on the streets. They were robbed during the night in February. Thankfully, everyone was safe, but they lost thousands and thousands of dollars of supplies and equipment. I copied a summary of the event on my blog (http://bit.ly/WMF_Peru_robbery). They could use your prayers at this time, and any extra donations will help them resupply the center and enable them to better serve the children of Lima.
*As you know, Becky and I are expecting our first child, and she has been suffering from a lot of nausea, making it hard to keep food and water down. We have been staying the night occasionally at our friends’ house down in La Paz, and the 2,300 ft elevation drop has proven to be just enough extra oxygen to make her feel significantly better. She has started taking oxygen daily and this has helped her a bit as well. There is always the option of moving down out of the altitude, but it means a very long commute and being far away from most of our staff and the women we are here to serve. Please pray that we could have wisdom to make the best decision for Becky during this time. We also need to discern whether to have the baby here or return to the U.S. for maternity leave.
*During the last couple years, I have found guided, written prayer to be very relaxing, healing, and meaningful to me. One resource I use (and not faithfully enough) is the Missio Dei Breviary, four weeks of morning and evening prayers put together by an intentional Christian community in the Twin Cities. It can be read online at http://bit.ly/MD_Breviary, or purchased in paperback at Amazon.com.
Another prayerbook recently released is “Common Prayer: Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals,” put together by Shane Claiborne, Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro. It has a reading for each day of the year and taps into the spiritual resources and practices of many Christian traditions. Each day’s reading can be found at http://commonprayer.net/, and a hard copy can be found at Amazon.com.
May the Peace of the Lord be with you,
Adam (and Becky) Thada