Girls' Choices Make a Difference!

Many girls in Ukraine are choosing to stay in Ukraine with their fathers, husbands, and brothers and learn how to operate machine guns and molotov cocktails, and we read that Ukrainian restaurants have quit serving drinks in glass bottles because they are saving those bottles for a different kind of "cocktails."

While all that is going on, Christian girls in America choose to work with their fathers and brothers, too, in a different sort of war. That war is not won with guns or molotov cocktails. Neither is it won by merely teaching Sunday School and praying and hoping God will rescue sinners from being lost.

It is won by a lot of hard work that isn't always very fun.

Carrie, Hannah, and cousin Candace spent many hours staining hundreds of feet of trim boards for the St. Francis sanctuary. They hadn't known that would be one of the jobs and hadn't brought paint clothes, so they turned their nice skirts inside out to try to protect them from getting stained! Girls' ingenuity!

They didn't let the lack of proper paint clothes keep them from doing a needed job! I helped with that job a little, too, as well as coming up with a menu which all the girls helped cook, especially on the day that I spent working at the SIM office.

While our hearts pray and watch over our beloved friends in Ukraine, we kept working last week in South Dakota.

 Mrs. Patton had a scrap piece of fabric to use to measure and sew a practice valance for the church windows. 

Then she purchased burlap, and Candace especially sewed most of the six valances for the church windows. And whenever Candace had extra time, she helped me fix a skirt and sewed a whole new denim skirt for Hannah. Thanks, Candace! You were a blessing!

Wednesday evening as we tried to finish work at the sanctuary, I ended up on the phone with Stephen Archibald, taking notes for an article for the Indian Vision paper.  

I didn't have the skills or strength for what the men were doing, but I did what I could.

 

Sunday night with her husband gone around ten days, Tasbah Lavery was left in charge of evening service.  Leading a service is simply not her thing, but she did what she could as around 38 lively people crowded in.

Jonathan had been asked to lead the Bible study after the children were taken to their evening Sunday School classes. He led a study about what safety really means, in the wake of what is happening in Ukraine. 

What does it mean when women and children are having to flee a country by the millions?

Yes, in the middle of my heart going out to my sisters in Ukraine, I know that I must also focus on doing my duty here as a mother, a wife, and now a missionary again.

Girls can make a difference! 

Not with guns or molotovs, but with hard work, willingness, ingenuity, and faithfulness.