Mexico Missions Trip

My Family 2009

Julia--a lady I've come to love for her infectious faith, joyful smile and perseverance in trials--with me in the store that our church, Cornerstone, helped her & her husband Fernando to start a couple of years ago.

Kels--sharing the love of Christ
in Mexico and loving it!

~Jerry preparing to preach for the first time
using an interpreter~

Little children just suddenly appear in Mexico! We
shared the gospel with these sweeties & others like
them and also gave them a few small gifts. This was
at the church building that we worked at for a few days.








Well, we're home from going as a family on mission trip #3 to Mexico.
God's been doing so much in my life and heart, I decided to start a blog. :) Maybe no one will read it, but I hope that some of you out there will think it's worthwhile.
This week I listened to a message by Elisabeth Elliot entitled "Make me a Servant" and in it she read a prayer written by Betty Scott Stam, martyred missionary to China:
"Lord, I give up all my own plans and purposes
all my own desires and hopes
and accept Thy will for my life.
I give myself, my life, my all
utterly to Thee, to be Thine forever.
Fill me and seal me with Thy Holy Spirit
Use me as Thou wilt
Send me where Thou wilt
And work out Thy whole will in my life
--At Any Cost--now and forever."
I don't think anyone could truly pray that prayer if they knew what it meant in their life, what it was going to mean in their life, but I pray it with my eyes firmly fixed on Jesus Christ, meeting His gaze, seeing only the love in His eyes and nothing else.

In this message, Elisabeth Elliot went on to say that if God is going to make us a servant...A servant has no agenda of his own. He's at the disposal of his master. My famous last words are, "I thought I knew!" Sometimes I think I know what's going to happen. And then I'm taken by surprise--why? because I stopped keeping my eyes on the Master to see where He was going to send me next, what service He would bid me do, what direction He was going. I made my own plans, I didn't submit all my hopes and dreams and purposes to Him and lay them on His altar! And sometimes the rug is pulled out from under me. There are times when God seems to take great joy in reaching down and giving a little pull on the rug of my life! But I'm thankful for these times, because really He's calling my attention back to Him. Do you have small children? When you are training them, have you ever taken hold of their face and turned it to look at your face, so that you have their full attention? Sometimes things in my life that shake me up remind me of that. I can see God holding my face in His loving hands and saying, "Look at Me, pay attention!"

I named this blog "Faith's Firm Foundation" because when everything is shaken in life, you have to know what your faith is founded on--what you are standing on. Are your feet firmly planted upon the Rock, Jesus Christ? Do you know Who He is? When you are shaken, when "everything that's shakeable gets shaken," you'd better know. It's then that you must stand still on that Rock that never moves. Is your Rock the True One as described in the Word of God? Some pebble that you've made up of your own making won't do. It won't hold you when everything in your world turns upside down. Only rehearsing the true and faithful character qualities of the Lord Jesus Christ, of God Himself, as put forth in the Holy Scriptures, and standing on His promises will do, then. He is faithful. He is True. And a Firm Foundation is laid down in His Word--the Good News of Jesus Christ's suffering, substitutionary death for you and me, and resurrection! I pray that each one who reads these words has that faith in Jesus Christ, and is not only hearing His Words, but doing them, and so is standing on the Rock that never moves. Then you will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock, and when the winds blow and the rains come, your house will stand.

Matthew 7:24-27--"Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not shalt be likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sand; And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house;

and it fell: and great was the fall of it."

Deuteronomy 32:3-4--"...I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he."