What is in your hand?

I've had a thought running through my head since last night as I've reflected on the latest of God's blessings.  That thought comes from a sermon given by our friend, Dr. Roy Lauter.  In examining the story of the call of Moses, we all remember Moses' list of excuses for not qualifying as the chosen deliverer of the children of Israel.  In reply God asks him (Exodus 4), "What is in your hand?"  It was Moses' shepherd's staff, a staff that was turned into a serpent, was used to part the Red Sea, and draw water from a rock.  It was a rather simple tool but it was used mightily to show God's power.  Dr. Lauter's message challenge was to examine what was in your hand.  What did I have that God could use for his purposes?  

This weekend  we were blessed by someone who offered to use what was in his hand (a truck) to help us move our belongings out of the student center to storage on the farm in central Illinois.  And it wasn't just any truck, no, we basically could have moved all our worldly goods had we so desired.  Traveling down from Roanoke (IL), my parents' friend, Joe (now our friend too!), his driver David, and my dad (also) David came down Sunday evening and with the help of some amazingly selfless friends, loaded up the contents of our apartment.  What would have taken us much, much longer to do alone, friends were able to accomplish in just a few hours.

navigating our small parking lot to find a good parking place.

Pictured:  Peter, Thad, Bryce, and Ben M (not pictured:  Isaac, Siobhan, Jonny, Sarah, Ruth, Dr. C, and Ben S)

This super truck had a nifty hydrolic lift that provided us our Ellie quote of the weekend while she rode it up:  "I'm going up to heaven!" she exclaimed!

Reni kept a close eye on things.  We could tell he wasn't quite sure what to think of all this packing. 

We took a short break for Ale 8s and ice cream bars.  Loved how Reni joined in with the guys.

 I don't know if you can tell, but the sky was looking threatening pretty much the entire evening.  A few drops fell as we loaded the last of the items and then 10 minutes after going inside, the heavens opened (for only the third time since the beginning of May -- oh how we needed that rain)!

The kids were quite excited to check out the cab of the truck.

This morning after breakfast we got a quick pic by the truck.  You would have thought that the kids had helped with carrying boxes for sleeping in until past 8AM (VERY unusual).   Forgive the bedhead and mis-matched jammies -- we were pretty pleased that they had appropriate clothes at all given the state of our house.  Ellie begged to ride in the truck, so she got to take a brief trip while David negotiated his way out of the parking lot.  When we went to get her out, we couldn't figure out was was taking so long.  Turns out she had kicked off her shoes and crawled into one of the bunk beds in the cab and crawled under a blanket!  I think she's going to like RV-ing!

We received word that everything has been unloaded in Illinois this evening!  We are thankful for my parents, Joe, David, and a group of Stephen's friends who unpacked the truck on the other end.

Of course our empty apartment will not remain empty for long.  We are settling into new digs in the student center's lower level guestroom this evening.  Tomorrow we should finish moving out our few remaining belongings (mostly groceries) so Jonathan and Faith can begin painting and bringing in their own things to make it their new home.  So far the kids seem to be doing well with the change (aside from Reni being a bit more clingy than normal).  They are excited about the prospect of sharing a bed (we'll see if that even lasts one night) and they are finding new ways of entertaining themselves. The challenge remains explaining what the next days and weeks will look like!  For now, though, it feels good to have the move behind us!