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God is GOOD! ...or, How He got us through a crazy weekend.

I trust that everyone had a fantastic weekend.

Many amazing things happened this weekend...

A dear friend and childhood mentor passed away yesterday morning. Clyde Elliott is now dancing and worshiping God in Heaven after a long struggle with cancer. Throughout the last few years, Clyde's strong faith has been an encouragement to all who have had the opportunity to interact with him. Despite the fact that cancer was absolutely ravaging his body, his faith and focus on God promise did not waver. I am honored to say that he was one of my mentors, and his mentorship will be missed; but more importantly, he was my friend. RIP Clyde, aka "CLOIDE ELITE"...

Rebecca and I headed down to Orange County on Friday to help my dad as he welcomed a group of 8 seminary students from St. Louis for a mutli-cultural urban experience. We picked them up at LAX on Saturday morning, and after a short introduction to the area and program, we headed down to Little Saigon in Westminster to walk around the community and enjoy a Pho lunch. Afterwards, we headed back to my parents house where Rebecca was helping my mom prepare a Venezuelan meal for the seminary students to enjoy...we headed over to Rebecca's parents' house to crash for the night and prepare for speaking at St. Paul's in the morning.

On Sunday,  we spent the morning at St. Paul's (the church I grew up in) with many opportunities to share God's calling in our lives and also, we were blessed to be around these people when hearing the news about Clyde's passing. It was great to be with all these people and share memories of Clyde and to be a comfort, and be comforted by so many people who loved Clyde so much.

Soooo...an update on our call: we started the weekend in need of $400 for our flight to Iowa. Our prayer on Friday was that the money for these tickets would be provided by the end of the weekend. A colleague offered some support on Friday, and on Sunday we received an email from a friend of my mom's telling us that she would like to give us the remaining amount! Praise God for his faithfulness and provision!

This leaves us with the deficit amount pledged, but, since the money from the school will be given to us in the form of a reimbursement, cash flow (it is the end of the month, after all) still is an issue. We are praying that God will resolve the cash flow. If it is God's will, we will travel to Des Moines on Friday.

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