KEVIN ELWORTH LIVE

This past weekend we did something that everybody should do occasionally, GET RID OF A LOT OF JUNK! We really needed to trim back on a lot of stuff that we had just scattered around, because getting it into Mexico looks like its going to be several sounds and dances, so we decided to have a garage sale and see what we could accomplish. Crystal threw it all together and we sorted and sorted and sorted everything we had. We did pretty well. My parents allowed us to borrow their lawn, and we set up and Crystal sold everything significant that we needed to, the rest we’ll donate and be free of all that junk that was just laying around. With the money that she got from it, she’ll put toward furnishings for our new place in Mexico so she’s excited about that.

It was a good hard weekend though, we’re glad for a relaxing Sunday.

Next Sunday things will change a bit as we are scheduled at an evening service in a church in Central Texas. Begin praying now for these meetings that we have coming up. First pray for the hearts of the people there. Missions needs to be on the hearts of every believer. It seems that in these days of a stressful economy, missions is one of the first lines on the budget to get cut off. Missions is not an option, Missions is a mandate by God Himself and we must do everything in our power to see that it is accomplished as He sees fit!

Secondly, pray for our support needs. You all know them and they are not insignificant or unnecessary. We need this support to effectively present the gospel to the people of central Mexico.

Finally pray for our safety. We’ll be logging about 4000 miles in the next 3 weeks and that’s a lot, especially on a family with a 14 month old (speaking of which Austin is 14 months yesterday!)

We are thankful to each of you for your faithfulness to us in this ministry. Keep it up.

This has been a crazy week for all of us. The Lord gave me the opportunity to help out a friend with some work who is in turn helping me out with some extra cash flow to help us get to Mexico as quickly as possible. It really satisfies several things. First, I love to work with my hands and build things. I crave it always looking for opportunities to cut some wood, use a nail gun, pound some nails and just plain get dirty. So I have that opportunity. At the same time it’s giving me some great use of my Spanish that I have learned over the last year. As it turns out this guy I am working alongside comes from none other than Zacatecas, Mexico! Coincidence? I don’t think so! I’ve been speaking with him daily about life in Zacatecas and what we can expect. I’ve also been trying to witness to him a bit as the Lord leads. I asked him today if he and his wife would like to have dinner with us sometime before we leave, he said they would and we’ll have to get it worked out. Pray for this opportunity. We’re really excited about it and can’t wait to see what God does with this.

We are almost there. Going through all of our stuff has been an ordeal. Crystal has a plan for every day of this week where we will be sorting and getting rid of stuff. Today it was just get things more where they should be and go through our clothes. Man we had a lot of clothes. We probably had 4 Rubbermaid’s full of clothes and got rid of a lot of them. We’re planning on having a garage sale in the next few weeks to get rid of things that we just don’t need, and to give us room to get what we do really need to Mexico.

Tomorrow we’ll go through some more, and get rid of more.

Living outside the country and living a life of constant transition is a good way to not get to attached to things! We had a 5X10 storage here in Wichita for 3 years while on deputation and while in Costa Rica, now we come back and wonder why we stored much of it. It’s really a lesson on materialism. The things of this world will pass away one day, stuff is just stuff. It gets ruined, destroyed, fades, wares out, and just plain doesn’t work anymore. Gives real meaning to the verse that says don’t lay up treasures here where moths eat and gets worn out, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where nothing can touch them!

Crystal and Austin arrived safe and sound today, I missed them a lot, but they missed me too. Austin and I hung out a lot of the day yesterday too. We crawled on the floor, we ate some lunch together, we went to the park in the afternoon. It was a fun day. It’s funny how you don’t realize how much you missed your family until they return and you realize how much you didn’t have that week. I’m glad they had a good week and they are back now so we can be family again.

Cris came home to a nice mess. Yesterday I moved everything we had from our storage to where we are staying for the next few months and it was a total mess. Thankfully Crystal has some mad organizational skills. So amazing that while Austin and I were at the park for only an hour, she had more than half of everything organized and put away. Wow! We had a fun time catching up last night over frozen pizza about all that her and Austin did in Jacksonville.

Last night we were talking about God’s blessing and I told her that I feel so blessed to be able to have this place to stay while in the states. You have to realize, three years ago we packed up our house and put it in storage only leaving out the absolute essentials to take with us traveling on deputation. So for us to be able to get that all out and sort through it getting rid of what we don’t need and see what we actually have, it’s like Christmas in our house today! We actually have dishes in our cabinets! I gave my brother Kenton a lecture on Saturday about the joys of owning a toaster and how you should never take that for granted. Because in Costa Rica we made toast in the oven on a cookie sheet, and it took about 30 minutes just for toast, and now to be blessed with a toaster that gets the job done in two! We are blessed people. It’s the simple things in life right!?

Lots to do today. Thanks for reading, praying and giving. We are more blessed to have all of you.