Wanna Wrestle With Us?

(started Thursday) We are in Ohio!  Nathan's parents gifted us with two nights of childcare and we've been living it up in Columbus -- shopping aimlessly, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper at 10:30 in the morning, caught a couple of movies with an un-redeemed movie theater gift card from Christmas, watching fun shows on the Travel channel and food network. Yeah, stuff we don't normally get to do.  And because I didn't have my computer, I couldn't do "work". It's been heavenly.

Tomorrow we hit the road "for real."  My apologies to those of you who receive our prayer updates.  Yes, we did have car issues about an hour after leaving home on Tuesday.  After having some transmission work done during the respite between travels, it appears that a hose wasn't returned to its proper position and got cut.  The result?  An explosion of anti-freeze, voluminous amounts of steam coming from under the hood, and a free tow trip to a mechanics shop in Champaign courtesy of AAA.

View from the tow truck side mirror

As usual, the Lord was gracious to get us as far as the edges of a large city, less than five miles from a repair place before the eruption. Given our experiences, you can understand why I hold my breath when we get on the highway. ;-)  It seems with Winnie whenever one problem is repaired, there is a good possibility that another issue gets triggered.  I was telling my father-in-law that I've gotten pretty good at throwing together an emergency bag for incidents like these including snacks (in case there's no place to eat near the service station), drinks, toys, school books, iPad, laptop, mifi, and purse.

While emergencies like getting stranded on a roadside warrant prayer, there are also myriad other ways in which we need prayer.  We are fully aware that we are entering a fray -- actually, a battle.  The Enemy want to slow us down, discourage, and antagonize us.  During last month's trip to Albania, we encountered some difficulties BUT do you know that on the two most difficult days I received e-mails from four different individuals letting me know they had prayed for our family on those specific days?  On one day, our family was on WGM's prayer calendar.  The following day we were on a supporting church's Lenten prayer calendar.

While we have been working on assembling a team of financial supporters (an easy "matrix" to measure),  we haven't formally asked for a committed prayer team (other than to voluntarily sign up for our special prayer e-mails, sent 2-3 times per month). If you would like to commit to pray for our family, could you let us know?  We are assembling a prayer calendar that has the ability to send you an e-mail reminder of your day to pray the night before.  You can sign up for a day of the week or a day of the month.  If you prefer to pray a specific day, let us know which one, otherwise we'll give you a day that isn't yet covered.  Send me an e-mail at cydilwaggoner@gmail.com and I'll get it squared away!

Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you,that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured. -- Colossians 4:12