My New Adventure

Next week, I (Jeannette) am starting a new adventure in ministry. Our church, Cottonwood, has for some time wanted to start an Immigration Legal Resource Center to assist aliens in working through the INS paperwork, to obtain work visa's, to gain residence status, to bring family members over legally, and even citizenship when appropriate and other actions needed involving immigration.
Also, as part of this resource office, we would help them to enroll their children in school, find medical assistance, maybe look for jobs, just assist in whatever way we would be able to.

We feel that God has called us to this. The Bible is speaks clearly that God's people are to reach out and care for the widows, the orphans, and the aliens (or strangers).
Lev 19:34 You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. This has proved to be a formidable project, because it involves working with the Immigration Office and having knowledge of immigration law. In order to establish this type of ministry, someone from the church has to be certified to work with INS. Although I am very supportive of this ministry, I have not been a part of any of the planning meetings. Last week, our mission pastor asked if I would consider going to a week of training, along with another woman from church, so that we would both be certified in this area. He felt that this new ministry would reach mostly women and that it would be good for me to attend the training and help with this ministry.

Since I intentionally default to a "yes" to ministry opportunities, and let God tell me "No" if he needs to, I felt that I needed to really consider this. I talked to Les about it, and he was unconditionally affirmative, even though it means I will be gone the whole week of our anniversary.

So, Sunday night, I will head off to San Antonio with Linda McDowell, to be ready to start training on Monday morning at 7:15.

Hopefully, Les will take some time off remodeling to keep you up to date.