Urgent Prayer Request - Update & Thanks

Thank you so much to all who prayed for me (and for Mrs. H) about me giving her the Bible, like I asked you to. I was so nervous! I waited until after class, and all the other kids had left, to give it to her. She seemed so pleased that we would give her something for Christmas, but kept saying, "You didn't have to get me anything!" as she was unwrapping it :) . I hardly knew what I said as we chatted while she took the paper off, I was SO nervous! I just didn't want her to take it the wrong way; I wanted her to see the love in it. And I think she did :) . She seemed SO pleased! Dad, Mom, Trissy, and I had all signed the inside, and that seemed to really touch her. Mom had also had them put Mrs. H's name on the front in gold letters at the store, and that also seemed to mean alot to her.

So thank you to all who prayed! Please keep praying that she will read it and that the Lord would keep working in her life (He already has in so many ways!) to draw her closer and closer to Him.

Many times after class, she will stay and chat with me after all the other kids are gone (I stay after class alot to use the faster internet to blog and do homework). She loves animals and the outdoors and recycling, and all that. Almost a 'hippie' type person, but not really too, if you know what I mean - she's very educated and classy also, and doesn't consider herself a 'hippie' at all, though she says her parents were.
She loves the fact that I live in the country and enjoy some of those same things she does. She's always bringing me some little plant or other (always in a recycled container :) ), and has loaned us her incubator to hatch chicks. I save our recyclable stuff throughout the week, and bring it to school and she takes it home and puts it with her stuff (we don't have a recycle pick-up where we live, but she does). Several times I've mentioned that I shouldn't do that, as it makes more work for her to take it home; but whenever I say something like that she goes, "Oh no! I want you to! It makes me feel good to help.", or something like that :) , so I've stopped mentioning it since it really seems to distress her if I talk about stopping. But anyway, I was saying all that to say this: Sometimes in our long chats (about literally almost everything under the sun!) she will talk about things that have been happening in her life, or did happen in her life, and I just sit and listen; and I can see such an obvious picture in the story she tells - so many things, little things some of them, others bigger, that are so obviously "God things" that He is using to work in her life. I can see a change in her even in just the little-over-a-year I've known her. So obvious how He is gently leading her down this path, and she doesn't even see it. Leading her invisibly.

I think she really likes me for the combined facts that 1. I study hard, do the work, and really try to learn when so many of the others just don't seem to care, 2. I enjoy so many of the same things she does, 3. I don't mind talking (or listening, really) to her for ages at a time, and 4. That I don't think she's crazy for doing some of the rather 'eccentric' things she does.
But isn't that what the world needs?! People who will love them for who they are, and meet them where they are, and just be their friends?! Not judgmental, high-and-mighty "Christians" who really aren't! Not goody-two-shoes who've got to 'fix' everything that's wrong with them before they'll even give them the time of day! Christians - REAL Christians - who will listen when they want to talk, laugh when they are glad, sympathize when they cry, and go through life with them always directing them Higher. How many opportunities we miss. How many I miss.

This is the Bible we gave her. Sorry about the poor quality photo. I was in a hurry when I took it (trying to get the Bible wrapped so I could take it with me to school), and then didn't really get to do much Photoshop on it, just took her name off the cover.



Thanks again to all who prayed - and to those who keep praying!