My dream is coming true! (Email Update)

October 1, 2005

Hello Friends and Family! :)

Short Version:
1) My dream is coming true!
2) Your Prayers are Important!

1) I’ve recently realized that my dream has/is coming true. Living with an Indian family for the past few weeks has been a blessing, and also an adjustment. No running water. No hot water, eating rice and daal (a soup-like mixture of beans and 'subzee' random vegetables) for every meal except once in a while we eat what I would consider grass (we have the thick blade type and the thin), electricity once in a while, stinking from not bathing daily or not bathing like I am used to (figuring out the best way to wash using a bucket and a cup-- and again-- with cold water), washing my clothes on the porch with a bar of soap and a brush, walking an hour up and down a mountain to the bazaar, communication obstacles, learning to ‘co-exist’ with LARGE spiders, etc, etc. None of these things I mean in a negative way- it's just how life is done here, and I love being here, thus I embrace these things too! (still working on the spiders part!)
(Picture: Left to right: Aunty, me, Uncle, Robin. Getting beans out of the pods for dinner!)

2) Your Prayers are IMPORTANT!!!
This week, I read about an “M” in a book called “Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God” by Noel Piper. I read this:

“…She [Lilias Trotter] realized that prayer is not necessarily strengthened by being physically present in the place one is praying about. On the contrary, perhaps one prays more intently far away.” Lilias herself wrote: “The powerless to go gives an intensity to the joy of it. One can stand in spirit among the [South Asian people] and pray for them perhaps more effectively than if one were bodily there. One can shut the door, as it were, and stand alone with God as one cannot on the spot, with the thronging outward distractions of the visible.”

This is just one reminder to me that all of you are there- most on the other side of the world yet close to me and the South Asian people through prayer! I am so thankful that we can pray for each other even though far apart! Once again, thank you for your prayers and support! You are a blessing to me!

Praying for you and the least-reached,

~ Elizabeth
“But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him.” (Exodus 3:19) [I’m glad that that same mighty hand is watching over us!]