The leaves are almost all on the ground now. The late hangers-on will only slowly give them up. It is good to be back home in West Virginia. Now whenever we say the name of our state I think of our grandchildren and the permutations of their pronunciation of West Virginia; it is a mouthful for a little child. The 3 year olds cannot grasp that we are not able to come over to their house to see them because we are far away in “Wessperginia”.

Though we miss all our children and grandchildren and would love to be nearer them, we cannot now. We know God has called us to live here in “Wessperginia” until such time as He indicates otherwise, until He releases us. As Randy says, we are under orders. And we wouldn’t have it any other way. To serve the King above all, and have His blessing on our lives; what more can we ask? We do harm to ourselves and those we love if we think we can live our lives our own way and still have God’s smile on us. I’ve seen that too, and it is heartbreaking. As much as I’d love to live near my children and grandchildren, I love them too much to cease to be in a position in which I can effectively pray for them, if to live near them meant I “thumbed my nose” at the call of God on my life. And so it is for every believer. Whatever is dear to us must never come before Jesus and His call to obedient service. If we try to hold onto them, we will lose them, whether things or people. Amazingly, in God’s economy, what we give up for His sake and the kingdom, we gain back, and God makes clear in His word, with interest.

I will have all eternity to share with those I love. But I only have now, this day, this lifetime, to answer God’s call to serve Him here and now. And my obedience now will affect that eternity. My “now” will affect how I am able to serve Him “then”.

So, having said all that, I am happy to be back home in West Virginia! Ah, so much to do. I am slowly getting caught up and moving ahead both with tasks for Mustard Seeds and tasks at home. I am striving not to become overwhelmed.

One of my “home” tasks is to organize all the photos I took on our cross country trip, driving our car home from CA to WV in early October. It was a great time of seeing wonderful sights along our route and spending time with good friends along the way. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to visit everyone we know who lives along the route we took, let alone those who live in adjacent states, or we would have taken much longer to get home. But it was good to see those we did visit. God used those times, I believe, to encourage us all. We are grateful for the time with friends and the safety God gave us in our thousands of miles of travel.

One of the many tasks for Mustard Seeds I will be attending to this fall is furnishing the 3 upstairs bedrooms in the Manse, Mustard Seeds and Mountains’ headquarters. You may recall about 3 years ago we first started talking about furnishing these rooms. Well, we are stepping out in faith to go ahead with purchasing all the beds and bedding, chairs, tables, dressers, window treatments, etc., needed for these 3 rooms. Wendy Hammond will be helping me on this project. The purpose of all this is to have these rooms available as alternative housing for families who come up for Mission as Life trips outside our regular summer program, mainly long weekends in the fall and spring.

You may ask, “why is this important?” Mustard Seeds is emphasizing families serving together, putting God’s kingdom priorities at the center of their family life, assisting parents to develop a family lifestyle which will help propel children and parents into lifelong commitments to Christ Jesus and His agenda. We want our children to be more than nice people and good citizens of their country and communities. We want them to be white-hot followers of Jesus, living out His values in this world, and passing them on to the next generation.

Can you see how this ties in with what I was saying earlier about being obedient to God’s call to service? We must love God supremely, above all other loves in our lives. Our love for Him must outweigh our love for our children, parents, spouse, and all others. Then we can truly love them and others as God requires, “as ourselves”, when our “first love” is truly our “First Love”. This is a lifelong pursuit. A never ending choice, made anew every day.

The world shouts at us every day. And at our children. We must counter that with tuning our ears and training our children to tune their ears to the voice of Wisdom, as Proverbs personifies the voice of God. We have His word. We must hear it and put it into practice. Live authentic Christian lives.

So let’s pray for each other. Please pray for my continued strength (for which I thank God every day), my continued healing from cancer and MG, for the ability to continue chipping away at my “To Do” list and not allow myself to get overwhelmed. And I will pray for your health and welfare, for the voice of God to ring clear in your ears as much as in mine, for the guidance of God’s spirit to teach us to live authentically in His likeness.

Also, please pray for our newest grandson, Jaime Elias Wallace. We learned today he has developed colic, is not gaining weight and is crying more. He was doing so well when we left CA early October and has since started this. It is also a strain on mommy with 2 other children.

I appreciate you so much. Thanks for being a friend.

Jacque