Roller Coaster

"Ministry", whatever that means, certainly has its ups and downs. One day everything seems to be going great and people seem to be catching fire and then the next day you discover something about someone that brings you back to reality...or no one shows up for one of the youth nights that normally draws the largest crowds. What a reminder of how dependent we are on God. While I always want to do my best, in the end it doesn't matter how hip the program is, how good the movies are, how well I speak, or anything else that I can do. The most important thing (which is driven home over and over again) is how dependent we are on the Holy Spirit and the moving of God in peoples' hearts. I have also come to realize (has it really taken this long?) that Satan will immediately follow "success" with "failure". Yet another reason why it is so important not to depend on feelings but on the promises and reality of God.

In other news, we had a miracle today... a real honest to goodness miracle. We were able to obtain both a land line and a cell line for the skate park. To put this in perspective, only residents, citizens or members of a legal association can obtain telephone lines. To top it off, there are usually only about 40,000 new lines available each year. We have tried for almost three years to get a line and today it happened in the space of about three hours. I have spent days trying to accomplish this in the past only to be turned away after spending money on powers of attorney, copies, etc... Today, God answered our prayers and did the equivalent of parting the Caribbean... He got ICE (the government monopoly telecommunications company) to actually accept our documents and to approve everything and give us both a land line and a cell line. We are ecstatic. One good thing happened today. Thank God.