He's working!!

Hi friends! I wanted to give you a quick update on what is happening. Last week we were gone on a week long meeting with our company and it was a great time of fun and encouragement to our family. Now that we are back it is work, work, work!

We arrived home at around 5 and Greg took about 15 minutes to get his stuff together and then he headed to our other village for their meeting. The kids and I stayed home to unpack and get ready for our team that is coming on Monday.

Greg said it was a really good meeting.  You see each year they have a big festival in each village to celebrate a saint. Well in our old village it is time for them to have their big festival. The festival costs a lot of money and the only way to pay for it; is for the leaders of the village to go around asking each family for their "contribution" to the festival.  (which is usually a lot of money for them, last year it was $70 per family) They tell you how much you have to pay and this year they are actually threatening jail time if you don't pay. Now many Christians don't pay this fee. They simply take a stand and say they won't pay. We have always paid it and seen it as a tax. We never go to the festival b/c it is really just a time for people to get drunk and nothing good can come from it. Everyone knows this and now our little church is trying to figure out what to do about paying this fee.

So last night they asked Greg what he thought and Greg told them what I just told you about how we saw it as paying our taxes. However, he did say he would never put anyone down for taking a stand against paying this fee, but for us we saw it opening doors with the non-believers as opposed to closing them. This is where it got good. Greg said one of the leaders in our group, who a few years ago didn't know the difference between the Old and New Testament quoted a scripture from Romans. Then another leader told the story about when Jesus told the Pharisees to pay to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.  They also talked about how sometimes when paying taxes the people who make decisions on how to use that money make decisions that they sometimes don't agree with and this is just like that. They don't have to agree with the festival, but as part of the community, it is part of their responsibility to pay what is asked of them. Greg said he was proud to just sit back and listen to them as they spoke in their own language about what they felt the Bible said about this issue. Love it!! I will keep you all posted on all we do this week as we will be busy, busy, busy, with our team from Indiana. Love to you all! Missy