Breaking bread together

Beginning today it would appear that I'm going to have lots of opportunities to "break bread" with my sisters and brothers in Christ. This evening I was invited by Gene and Carol Yeazell to join them in celebrating one of their "adopted" granddaughters 8th birthday. The birthday celebration was at a local Mexican restaurant owned/operated by another of Gene and Carol's "special families," Arturo and Elaina Torres. I was able to meet Elaina and her three children but Arturo was working at another restaurant they own. The birthday celebration was for Daniella, along with her sister, Hillary and her parents, Oscar and Andrea Nunez (see picture). They are wonderful family from Costa Rica who have found a new life and purpose in God in the USA. Pray for Oscar who is employed but is hoping to get called back to a former employer and work he liked very much. 

Carol leaves tomorrow morning for some consulting work with the Pacific Southwest District COB in California. Tomorrow evening Gene and I are invited to dinner at the home of Pastor's Raul and Lydia Gonzalez and then on Thursday we're both invited to lunch at another members home, and then again another meal invitation for Friday. If I don't keep bicycling and walking regularly I'll be coming back to PA weighing more than I did when I left! I did get a good brisk walk in today and it's back to the Blue Ridge Parkway tomorrow morning for bicycling!

Today reading from Howard Thurman, For the Inward Journey, and the chapter "Growing With a Sense of Values," I am compelled to share this reading with you, "I Want to Be Better":

The concern which I lay before God today is my need to be better:

I want to be better in my ordinary day-by-day contacts:

With my friends-

With my family-

With my casual contacts-

With my business relations-

With my associates in work and play.

I want to be better in the responsibilities that are mine:

I am conscious of many petty resentments.

I am conscious of increasing hostility towards certain people.

I am conscious of the effort to be pleasing for effect,

not because it is a genuine feeling on my part.

I am conscious of a tendency to to shift to other shoulders

burdens that are clearly my own. 

I want to be better in the quality of my religious experience:

I want to develop an honest and clear prayer life.

I want to develop a sensitiveness to the will of God in 

my own life.

I want to develop a charitableness toward my fellows 

that is far greater than my most exaggerated pretensions.

I want to be better than I am.

I lay bare this need and this desire before God in the quietness 

of this moment.

I hope this reflection on "values" speaks a word of encouragement and challenge to you as it has to me. Salaam and Shalom.