A NEW ZEAL FOR LIFE!

we already have our shuttle tickets to take us to the airport in the morning. it is picking us up at 4:15 am!!!! we have our bags that we had mailed to auckland earlier too. we pray that we can get through all of our connections smoothly, safely, and with no hassles with our luggage. please join us in that prayer. thank you so much for every kind word of encouragement you have said or prayer you have lifted up. We have felt them and God has worked out all of our adventures here. this was by far better than the amazing race!
i sure hope to come back here one day again and i really hope you can come see this too!

tonight, i held my glass up to Julie and said, "TO A NEW ZEAL FOR LIFE."

THAT'S WHAT THIS TRIP IS ALL ABOUT AND I'M SO EXCITED TO HAVE THAT ZEAL! in case some of you were wondering why i called this "A New Zeal for Rice." i have an answer that it took me a while to completely realize myself. i knew that was supposed to be the name and i waited for God to help me with the analogy. obviously, it is a combined pun on New Zealand and Thailand (all the rice there). however, the spiritual analogy is so much more. I have a new zeal for rice (not the food), but the harvest. i saw how the harvest is ripe, but the workers are few. God gave me a zeal to be a worker in that harvest of all of those unreached people that need the Lord in Thailand and other countries. it's my passion and i pray i can continue to incorporate it in my everyday life. i'll always have the imagery of those rice fields i was surrounded by in Chiang Klang and how it represents that spiritual harvest of all of those precious people who need the Lord yet who don't know how to quite yet. God can use any of us.

The second part of my trip in New Zealand, should have been called "a new zeal for sheep." did you know there are more sheep in this country than people? what an amazing image that reminds us of how we are God's sheep and He is our Shepherd! so many of us are wandering aimlessly around and with the wool pulled over our eyes in life just in need of guidance. the future is unknown, and i've been in a place of making a lot of decisions regarding the future lately. i've been that sheep in need of the Shepherd. my zeal is also renewed for the other "sheep" out there in need of that same Shepherd.
praise God, He's there.

I LOVE EVERY ONE OF YOU!
I'M COMING HOME!
~not to worry, i'll keep blogging...