Joy

I've been reading through 1 Thessalonians the last couple of mornings and some verses that have really stuck in my head are:
"... your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." vs 3
What a amazing statement of how we are to live our lives. And another verse that I loved while I read it is vs 6 "... you welcomed the message with the JOY given by the Holy Spirit." What a cool word the word JOY, I LOVE it. God has been so good, while reading these verses and praying about different issues the Lord has shown his faithfulness to me by constantly reminding me of these things. First of all our blog name is The JOY of the Lord is our strength, one of the fist texts that popped in my head when we were thinking of a name, and then I bought a prayer journal right before we left and when we arrived in the DR and I opened it up the first page has Nehemiah 8:10 written right on it "The JOY of the Lord is our strength" Then on Wednesday I attended Leslie's Bible study with her, what a blessing that was! But there again talking about having the joy of the Lord in our hearts and how we are not to lose that joy. It's just so awesome when you are learning something how the Lord keeps putting it on your path. Back to the Bible study though, it was such a blessing to be with a group of ladies studying the word, worshipping with them and being encouraged and inspired by them. My HUGE prayer request is that I may find something like it in Haiti. It came at the perfect time as well, I was just starting to really miss "my girls" and our Bible study, I still do miss it but I am glad for the blessing that the Lord gave me.
The rest of the week has been good. Randy and I finished our Creole lessons yesterday (Friday) our plan is to study on our own next week and ask Guido, a man who works at the ministry center who speaks Creole, to give us a hand with it. We've also been busy with just helping around the house, doing some visiting, celebrating Taylor's birthday with her-it's her birthday tomorrow so she had a sleepover last night and we got to go to the 'Fiesta' today, which is the pool. We've also been keeping busy at nights with our Settlers games, I think we've got Paul and Les hooked on the game.
We saw an electrical fire this morning, this neighbour across the roads electrical box blew so his wires were on fire, it was a bit loud, kinda interesting. The fire truck showed up a little late, maybe about 45 minutes or so after the fire went out.
And one other note, just to make my mom proud. We were at Max and Kina VanTil's house the other night for dinner and a team from Acton came over for coffee and we were introducing ourselves and the lady asked what my maiden name was. So I explained to her that I was a deJonge, her name was pronounced the same but spelled different and then she asked what my mother's maiden name was and I said Scholtens and she says Oh, is that the Scholtens who owned the candy business. It's a small, small world!
Thanks for all of your comments on the blog and for the emails, it's so good to hear from home and to long-distancy connected with all of our loved ones.
Prayer requests:
Thankfulness for the Bartels family, for Taylor who is turning 9 tomorrow and for their amazing hospitality and their love for us. And for their ministry, working with the schools and different organizations and for Les' homeschooling.
Thankfulness that my finger has healed.. WOOHOO! I've got no more electrical tape and popsicle sticks on it anymore and I can bend it!! I think I'm going to have a good scar but it will be a good reminder of our time in the DR.
Thankfulness for each and every one of you who loves us and are praying for us. Thank you SO much!
May the Lord fill your heart with joy!