well we're in southern Cal visiting partners, friends, family.
One of the things we were hoping to do while down here is to go to Disneyland.
First off, fellow missionaries reading this... here's another money tip:
check out priceline.com
you can pretty much tell hotels how much you're willing to pay for a room, if you're flexible regarding where you stay... and let's be honest... since we're out of the country our standards have lowered plus we don't know the area as well as we once did so... we're flexible! Discount hotel stays!
Anyway, we wanted to surprise the kids with Disneyland, and so we prayed about it and yes some money did come in for it, but we kept it a surprise.
I decided to turn it into a learning opportunity for the kids. We had been talking about God and how the kids felt He wanted us to be happy all the time. After much Biblical debate, the kids agreed God doesn't promise us to have fun all day every day.
This was a shock to their theologies for sure. But they finally agreed that life may be hard on God's path, but maybe from time to time we get a special treat from him.
So they decided to pray for Disneyland. What they didn't know was that I had already gotten the tickets. But I decided to let them pray and experience what fervent prayer and patience can do, as we have seen over the last several years.
So they prayed.
And waited.
And prayed again.
I held out for 3 days... waited until they were in the LA area.. even drove passed 6 flags, thinking about it, talking about it.. praying.
And to myself I'm thinking 'what's the harm in letting the kids think we may not go? Just for a few days.'
Well today we told them God answered their prayers and we were going.
But what we didn't expect was that tonight some friends gave each of the kids an envelope and inside it had money for 'something you want that's special'.
The kids as I put them to sleep tonight said,
'Dad, God answered our prayers about Disneyland, but also, He threw in a bonus and gave us enough money to each get a souvenir.'
Isn't that how God works? He continually chooses to bless us with a little bit more than we were expecting for ourselves. We absolutely love this because then we know it wasn't of our doing but it was God's.
Thank you to those who had an active role in letting our kids experience personally what we've seen for many years now through you.
In talking about it tonight with friends, I boiled it down like this:
-Sometimes we worry even though we know God provides
-When we worry we remind ourselves to bend our knees and pray... trusting God, surrendering our will.
-God shows up in some incredible way and does something really cool and beyond what we expected.
I absolutely love being surprised by God and I am so addicted to it, that I will gladly submit my will knowing His will has something better.
