the joy set before

This past week I got my pictures taken for my visa and began filling out my visa application. It's a lot easier than I expected, but it's another step in the process. The money for the trip is steadily coming in from God's hand through His servants-- my family and friends. I now have approximately 20% of my support. God is so GOOD!!!It is hard to explain the excitement that fills me with each new day as I look forward to this trip. I can only truly share this joy with friends who are like me preparing to enter the mission field carrying in their arms the amazing Gospel of Christ to a world desperate for life! We as Christians here in America become bored with the Gospel because we have heard it from the time we were children, or because we instinctively feel we don't need it in our comfortable American lives. But imagine the joy, the release that fills the heart and mind of soul whose eyes are finally opened to the freeing power of the Gospel for the first time in his life after living a many years in bondage to works, to evil spirits, to a priest, or simply to his own sin! That joy that comes from seeing a life rescued and changed by Christ alone is "the joy that was set before Him."