Our Both Hands Project

Yesterday was our long-awaited Both Hands project. If you haven’t heard about this, Both Hands is an organization that assists with adoption fundraisers. They follow James 1:27 by helping an orphan and a widow at the same time. We planned every detail of this project, by sending out sponsorship letters (all money raised goes toward our adoption costs), bugging local businesses for supply donations, planning each project we would do for Joyce (our awesome widow), designing t-shirts, making schedules, and recruiting volunteers.
 
Every step of this project was met with difficulties. I believe that the enemy did NOT want this project to happen. But, I remembered the story about Peter in the book of Matthew. Jesus was walking on water, and Jesus called out to Peter for him to walk to him; to take courage and to not be afraid. Peter went out to meet him, and he started walking on water, too! But, when Peter saw the wind, he became afraid. He stopped trusting Jesus, and then he started sinking. Jesus reached out His hand and caught him. He said, “you of little faith. Why did you doubt?” I feel like the past month, Jesus was saying this to US. Just as we started to doubt and sink, Jesus would provide and ask us why we ever doubted Him.  We had trouble finding someone to serve at first (I even got yelled at one the phone asking someone if they knew of anyone who needed help), but God led us to Joyce. A lot of businesses didn’t want to donate supplies for our project (but then a few donated a lot of needed supplies), we had trouble finding enough volunteers (but then a lot of unexpected people showed up yesterday), and our adoption fund wasn’t growing at all (but then a few more people donated!).
 
I believe that the enemy hates adoption, he hates community, he hates service, and he works against these things. Serving together brings us closer as brothers and sisters in Christ. It is encouraging, it is beautiful, and it shows the love of Christ. It’s everything that he hates. The good news is that God is so much bigger than anything the enemy can throw our way. There are a lot of words for God in the Bible, but my personal favorite is when He is referred to as the “God of Angel Armies” in the Old Testament. He is the God over ANGEL ARMIES! It’s crazy to think about. And this same God loves us and is our father! He is the kind of father that fights for us. He is the kind of father that rips open seas and drowns armies for us! If the God of Angel Armies is for us, than what can we possibly have to fear? Nothing that the enemy can do to discourage us can compete with that! Right now God is fighting for our little Selah all the way over in China. He’s fighting for her to become a part of our family!
 
We are so encouraged by our project yesterday. We are encouraged that so many people donated their day (a beautiful Saturday) to work HARD and fix up Joyce’s home. We are encouraged by their sacrifice and their joy in serving. It was truly a happy, joyful, fun day! We are encouraged by the businesses that donated all of the supplies we needed (including Home Depot, www.budgetdumpster.com, Sherwin Williams, Lowe’s, Chickfila, and Podojil Builders). And, we are encouraged by the people who are donating to sponsor our day of service and help us bring little Selah home!  If you still want to be involved, you can donate here: http://www.bothhands.org/project/lunde-219. All of the money raised goes towards our adoption costs. We want to thank everyone who helped to make our Both Hands project wonderful and a truly amazing experience!