"God is Good!"

This is Sophia 1 (there are 2 Sophia's in her class so she's Sophia 1). Her mother and sister are also my students (stop the insanity) and they all three took me out for the day two weeks ago after church on Sunday. I took this picture after much pleading with Sophia and as you can see she was not very happy about it. I like her a lot and I think she's warming up to me too. I have other pics of my students in class that I will post soon.

It's Sunday night and I've been planning lessons for the week but wanted to share this with you.

We had a great day at worship today. One of those days when you’re absolutely certain it’s not about you, and God shows up powerfully. I’m so thankful for this, since as I said last week, many on the team are from the youth group and they are young in their faith. (They like to play the songs that they can personally sound good on.) We are all still learning that worship isn’t about us and the younger we are the more shocking that discovery is it seems. This morning, we were late getting started, and yet it was still really early so everyone was tired and low-energy (we’re at rehearsal at 7:30 on Sunday mornings). We rehearsed and every song sounded flat and out of tune and frankly sort of embarrassing. I started to worry a little. God gave me the strength to power through the line up of five songs and when it was time to turn the stage over to the worship team from the Chinese church, we went to a back room to continue rehearsing “unplugged”. Today was the last day for two of the youth, one of whom has contributed a lot to the worship team in the last five years. (He’s a little genius child heading to Northwestern University this week to study some ridiculously complicated major). He plays about five instruments and does them all well. So, needless to say, he will be missed by all. But in God’s sovereignty, we have just added two very good musicians to the band, so we’re not going to be hurting too badly. Well, all this to say, we rehearsed as long as we could and none of us felt very certain about the songs when it was time to go out and start. However, we gathered together and prayed. We asked God to be honored in our worship and to not let us take lightly the privilege and responsibility to lead people into God’s presence in their time of corporate worship each week. Well, when worship began a miracle happened (at least one!) The opening song that had been giving me fits in rehearsal was “Trading My Sorrows” (shout out to my Nicaragua team “Si Senor, si si Senor…”) and right on the front row two guys stood up and were clapping right away. I know God sent them because the team got encouragement from that and the presence of God was among us throughout the rest of worship. It was great to be able to say to the team later, that although we knew we were not as prepared as we should have been this morning, God knew our hearts desire was to worship and lead others into worship and He made that possible. I’m thankful tonight for the mercy of God, for all of the team, especially for Kenneth who will be heading to school this week and for Mari, a teacher from South Africa that helps me a lot with the worship team. And I’m thankful for you, for your prayers, and your emails of encouragement.

More later. Love to all. Larissa