I promise...

I promise I am not dropping out of the blogging world!  I miss recording my days and my life...it can be so therapeutic!  As my overflowing life settles down in the next few weeks (I hope!), I plan to back track and catch up all of the exciting things that have gone on and are going on in our household.

Tonight, though, I am so FULL...and I just had to share.

Some of you may know that I picked up a teaching job this year at our homeschool co-op.  I have been teaching American Literature to 22 high students.  While there have been trials and LOTS of time spent with this endeavor, I have been SO blessed by these kids.  I'm learning, the more I teach, that a teacher may or may not feel he/she has impacted any one else...but I am always amazed that I, as the teacher, am the one who ends up being blessed or touched by my students.  Teaching is a humbling experience, for sure.

This year has been amazing and my faith has been restored in the young people of today.  There ARE young men and women out there who are seeking God's face.  There ARE young adults who are wanting to reach this world for Christ.  And I'm so thankful to have my children around these types of kids!

This year, we have read quite a few "pillars" in the secular literary world.  The last two books, however, were Christian in nature - The Shadow of the Almighty (the Jim Elliot story) and Same Kind of Different as Me.  If you have never read these books, you should!  My students wrote their last essays last week on how these books impacted their lives, and I wanted to share a couple of excerpts with you (two different students).  These are such inspiring thoughts...from high schoolers!

Both of these excerpts are written about Same Kind of Different as Me:
"It is my prayer that one day, maybe years from now, when I wake up and look in the mirror, I will no longer see my face in the reflection.  It is my prayer that I will only see Jesus and the work that He has done in my life.  It is my prayer that I will, in a sense, never look into another mirror.  It is my prayer that instead of looking at my reflection, I would be a reflection of Christ.  It is my prayer that just as the moon reflects the sun, so I would also reflect the light of my Lord...It is my prayer that I will no longer trust in my own strength, but rather that I will know with confidence and assurance that there is nothing good in me apart from the work my Lord has done...And it is my prayer that when people ask who I am, I will be able to respond, 'I'm a nobody that's tryin to tell everybody 'bout Somebody that can save anybody.""

"This book...radically impacted me because I was able to clearly see the way in which God redeems broken people and uses them for His great plans and purposes.  It was humbling for me because I often find myself unintentionally looking down on people who are in the hood.  I do not see them as low-life, but I also find I don't have faith that God can use them to change the world.  When He does use them, it brings me to tears because of my lack of faith and because of the beauty of the Gospel displayed in the individual He is using...When someone like Denver becomes transformed by the work of the Gospel, we ought to praise God and thank Him, remembering that we too were once in such a state of depravity and were rescued from the pit.  Bought with a price, we are now new, redeemed creatures, and we ought to live as such creations."

Truly inspiring to me.
Cindy and crew