Category: Friendship

THANK YOU

~ jesusluvsall ~ 9 Comments

Do I ever have that old Beatles song in my mind today- Get By With A Little Help From My Friends. I have truly been blessed by so many people, friends from church, friends from New Breath the Ukrainian church, and fellow bloggers.

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I shared an Amazon wish list and within two days it was fulfilled. People have given me rides to physical therapy, the doctor, to teach, and to church. I have even received a few donations to help with medical bills. All of these things have been a blessing and so running through my mind all day yesterday today is-Get By With A Little Help From My Friends.

So this is a short post to say THANK YOU. THANK YOU for prayers, support, and encouragement.

Thank you for reading. God Bless.

Thankful For Friends

~ jesusluvsall ~ 22 Comments

I guess I needed that. I just woke up at noon today, Sleep is good for recovery from surgery. I might even take a nap today. Recovery is slow this time, Walking even with a walker is harder than after the first surgery.

But something to look forward to tomorrow is church in the morning. I think I will skip the walker and use crutches tomorrow and not put any weight on my right leg. Tomorrow morning will bring a new opportunity for ministry.

I will offer a class May 19th on how Jesus partners with us in our healing journey from trauma, Tomorrow morning a short video will be shown of my talking about the class. Between services, I will sit at a table with the counseling pastor from my church to answer questions.

I would like to go to the Ukrainian church too, but will decide that after my church in the morning.

Jesus has certainly blessed me through friends these past few months. Friends have given me rides to physical therapy and doctors appointments, brought food, taken me to the store, and taken me to church. They have also taken me to go to the college to teach. One friend even helped me clean my apartment.

How comforting it is to know that Jesus calls us friend when we come to trust in him as our Savior. He is the friend who sticks closer than a brother.

I shared an Amazon wish list with my friends. Matt’s Recovery. Thought I would share here too. Please pray it is fulfilled. A few of the items I realized I would need this time, a few the surgeon suggested, and a few are just for my comfort.

I so appreciate all of the encouraging comments and prayers from my fellow bloggers. This all began March 11th with the first surgery. The recovery time for this recent one is minimum six weeks. Looks like I will be depending on friends longer than I thought.

At home, able to blog, will listen to worship music and try to read. That is my Saturday. How is your Saturday?

Thank you for reading. God Bless.

Update- I Am So Ready to Be Among People

~ jesusluvsall ~ 12 Comments

Before my surgery almost five weeks ago, I shared a post about the things I looked forward to having time to do. I have to admit I was naive. Reality set in quickly.

I spent the first two weeks mostly in la la land with the pain pills. I started to taper off of them and last Sunday was my last one. I also spent the first four weeks with my leg elevated and knee iced. That is not exactly a position to be in and still write.

I am grateful for friends who have given me rides to physical therapy. That was the extent of my social life the first weeks with the exception of joining my Ukrainian friends on Easter Sunday.

Physical therapy has been a bear, but finally this week I reached the goal. Also I am using a cane now having graduated from the walker. I am thankful I only have five more sessions. lol

My classes resume next week at the college and I am so ready to be among people. Last Sunday I was able to go to my church in the morning. Hopefully this Sunday I will be able to go to both my church in the morning and New Breath, the Ukrainian church, in the afternoon.

This is just an update. I wish I had some deep spiritual truth to share from my experience, but in reality, I was in la la land too long. I will say that it is a great blessing to have friends who give rides and bring food. Jesus has blessed me with good friends.

Thank you for reading. God Bless.

Three Days Until……

~ jesusluvsall ~ 28 Comments

Woke up to see that we had a dusting of snow overnight. Just a reminder that it is still winter even though we have had warmer than usual weather the past few weeks.

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Waking up in pain was also a reminder that in three days, I will have my knee surgery. The past few days have been busy ones getting things done before that. On top of that, two of my classes finished for the quarter. The other two will have next week off and come back for one week. So I am looking forward to some down time for four weeks after my surgery. However, I am not looking forward to physical therapy. I am also not looking forward to six weeks of no driving.

No coffee shops for a few weeks, but maybe, just maybe I can bribe friends with a free coffee to take me there. However, there are a few things I look forward to.

1- more time with Jesus. Worship music will be playing, prayer time will be had, and a few Christian books to read.

2- more time for blogging. The past few months of teaching, finishing a book, and ministry, I have not been as active.

3- more time with friends. Zoom chats, people giving me rides to physical therapy and other places.

4- hopefully no more pain- After I get through the recovery, hopefully the pain will be much better.

So March 11th is coming whether I want it to or not. 🙂

Thank you for reading. God Bless.

Wonderful Meeting Over Coffee

~ jesusluvsall ~ 9 Comments

Yesterday afternoon I met with my friend Alex who is the new person on staff at my church. I shared about him in my post Monday- Could This Be Why The Floodgates of Writing Opened? Alex will work with creative arts.

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We met at a local coffee shop called The Harbor. The Harbor is not my usual one to hang out at, but it is a good place for more serious conversations because the music is not very loud and in the afternoons it is mostly older people playing cards.

The age difference perhaps showed in our coffee orders. I had a cold brew coffee black no cream or sugar. He had a brown sugar latte. Obviously I need to help him with coffee issues. 🙂

We talked and caught up on each others lives. He read my new short story Teen Girl Cyberbullied Meets Mary The Wife Of Clopas. We talked about my ideas for making videos based on my short stories and books. That is my weak area-video edting.

I left feeling hopeful about making videos. I joked with him that when we meet for him to walk me through video editing to bring the hand puppets to help explain it. The first video I want to make is about cyberbullying and that Jesus understands being harassed.

Since last weekend, three short stories have been finished and ideas for two more are in my mind. This weekend will be a weekend of writing along with church and watching a football game with friends.

What will your weekend bring?

Thank you for reading. God Bless.

Thankful For Friendship

~ jesusluvsall ~ 31 Comments

Jesus has blessed me with wonderful friendships over the years. Friendships that help me to understand the meaning of Proverbs 18:24

One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

The one who sticks closer than a brother is Jesus. Jesus said in John 15:15

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

Jesus calls us friend when we come to faith in him. Friendship with the creator of all we see, friendship with our Savior is the most precious friendship we can experience.

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Jesus has blessed me with many friends at church. They are friends who have met for coffee with me, given me rides to my rheumatologist in another city, gone on missions trips with me, and blessed me in many ways.

Jesus has blessed me with friends from many cultures. I have learned about the world through them and have been blessed by them in many ways. Having friends from many cultures gives me a whole new understanding of what Jesus said in John 3:16

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” 

I consider many of my fellow bloggers friends. It has been a blessing to meet two of them in person, Alicia of forhispurpose.blog and Gary of garyfultz.com. So many other bloggers have blessed me with their posts, their comments, their encouragement, and some have partnered with me in ministry by donating to my ministry for Ukrainian refugees. They have done so anonymously so out of respect for that, I won’t mention names, but you know who you are so a BIG THANK YOU. Some have purchased my books and left positive reviews on Amazon. More about that in a future post.

So today I am thankful for friendship. What are you thankful for?

Thank you for reading. God Bless.

What Do We See in Others

~ jesusluvsall ~ 11 Comments

What do we see when we see someone who speaks English with an accent, speaks broken English, or no English? One thought that I have had many times is that if the roles were reversed and I was a refugee in their country, I would be the one speaking their language with an accent, or not at all.

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I had dinner with friends Monday evening and shared this thought with them. My friend Alekseyi was a pastor and had a high level job in Ukraine. My friend Carmen was a judge in Venezuela. My friend Luis was a math teacher in El Salvador. If I was a refugee in their country, they would be the professionals helping me.

My interactions with people from diverse people has given me respect for them. More important than their professions in their countries, or their roles in society, is that they are all created in God’s image.

Each person we meet is created in God’s image. Each person we meet is someone Jesus died for because of his great love for us. Each person we meet is someone who needs our Savior’s love.

In the eyes of Jesus there are only two groups of people, those who know Jesus as their Savior and those who do not. In John 3:17-18 Jesus said:

“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

My desire is for everyone I meet to come to know Jesus as their Savior. My desire is also to show the love of Jesus to those I meet and interact with that others might overlook- my refugee and immigrant friends.

Thank you for reading. God Bless.

45 Minutes Late to His Own Birthday Lunch

~ jesusluvsall ~ 15 Comments

Yesterday was my friend Alekseyi’s birthday. It as all set up for him to meet me for lunch with the surprise of three other friends; the pastor of the American church that hosts the new Ukrainian church and the missions consultant and his wife. I got there first and got our table. The missions consultant and his wife came next and the pastor of the host church. After 20 minutes of waiting for the birthday boy, I called him.

He was finishing up helping a new family from Ukraine. He started to apologize suggesting maybe we could meet for coffee, but I told him to come now. He finally arrived with his wife Ruslana- 45 minutes late. We were happy to wait for him to bless and surprise him.

After I talked with him on the phone, the first time, and shared what was happening with the others, we laughed about the situation of trying to arrange a surprise for a man who seems to never slow down. 🙂

As we were eating lunch, I thought about what Alekseyi and Ruslana have been through the past few years. Fled war torn Ukraine to go to an unknown future, came to America to an unknown future, and now starting a new church. It makes me think of Abraham when God first called him in Genesis 12:1

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”

God told Abraham to get going and that God would show him along the way. That has certainly been true for my friend Alekseyi and his family.

Happy Birthday Alekseyi.

Thank you for reading. God Bless.

I Think I Met Me?

~ jesusluvsall ~ 9 Comments

For years the pastors at my church have joked a bit about me telling them I have an idea. There has been a line of succession, Pastor Scott, Pastor Brian, Pastor Robb, and now Pastor Daniel. Some of the ideas have come to fruition such as Lunar New Year lunches for Vietnamese and Chinese friends, Brazilian lunches for students from Brazil, a Ukrainian wedding, a Sudanese fellowship, and a Korean church meeting temporarily at my church.

You know how sometimes parents tell their children they hope they have children like themselves someday so they know how it feels? I wonder if the pastors wished that on me. Why?

My friend Oleksii talks me to every time he has an idea. He tells me the idea, says, “this is good vision” and then asks for my involvement. It feels like I met the Ukrainian version of me or maybe he met the American version of him.

We have had some fun adventures such as an evening of worship in a smaller city, Norfolk, in my state for Ukrainians living there and the start of a new Ukrainian church here.

I just wish a younger version of me met the Ukrainian me because it takes a lot of energy. 🙂

Today after my Sunday morning group and worship at my church, I will spend the afternoon at the new Ukrainian church. At least this time I had an advance notice that Oleksii wants me to speak. 🙂

What is your Sunday like?

Thank you for reading. God Bless.

Burgers with Friends- Fellow Blogger Gary

~ jesusluvsall ~ 12 Comments

My fellow blogger, friend, brother in Christ Gary of garyfultz.com came through Nebraska again. He stopped for a few hours in my city. He met me at my church this time. We had a good chat in the same room where I teach my weekend groups. My church hung a picture of group from my church having a lunch in Brazil in the room which is fitting.

Gary has many interesting life stories but the one that gets to me each time I hear it is how God worked through his daughter to bring an EMT and his family to Christ. The EMT was worried about Gary’s daughter and prayed telling God that if he helped Gary’s daughter live, he would go to church. Gary’s daughter lived and the EMT kept his promise to God, went to church, and ended up coming to Jesus, him and his family.

We had burgers at a local burger place called Honest Abes. Honest Abes has normal burgers and also ones with interesting combinations. My favorite is called Hammer of Thor. It has sricracha cream cheese, pepperjack cheese, and grilled brussel sprouts

My friend Pastor Daniel from my church joined us for lunch, It was a fun lunch of three Christian guys sharing stories. No stories were embellished for sure. 🙂

Gary thanks for stopping in Lincoln again. Maybe next year we can try some interesting ethnic food. 🙂

Thank you for reading. God Bless.