The Lord provides

Update! The team had exceeded the needed support to make this trip possible financially, so no further donations or gifts will be needed. Praise God for providing yet again! Thank you for your prayers, and I look forward to sharing how He works during these weeks with you on the other side (mental note: The Other Side is a song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and a good one at that).

Revolving Door

Thank you for the wishing me a safe return home. I currently sit in Denton unwounded and feeling only moderate fatigue. When we landed this morning at 6 am, it dawned on me that I had 29 hours before I’d be lifting off of another runway in a different plane to another continent, traveling about 8,000 miles, with two different destinations, in two days’ time. Pretty awesome! However, there is much to do. Due to file format haggling/failure, I will only be able to post one picture from my camera of Alaska, “The Last Frontier.” There are many others. This was taken from a plane.

Please pray for my team and the French people tomorrow and the 3 following weeks!  We want to be clear communicators of the love of Christ and, especially in a foreign culture, can only do that with His help. Also, if you were hoping to support me financially on this trip and it feels like you are too late, there is still an opportunity to do so, as I am still in need of $200. Please just email me at stevenwilbur@gmail.com to notify me of your desire to give. I would be very grateful to have you as a part of my team! If you are unable to support financially, please pray for God’s provision for our team and that we would trust in Him to do miraculous works in France far beyond our expectations. Thank you, and I will see you July 4! <salutations in advance> Happy Independence Day! <end of salutations in advance>

I want to be an Alaska Outlasta’

For the few that read this, don’t expect much for a week and a half or so ’cause I’ll be kickin’ it with the fam in Alaska. Here are some pictures of where I will be.

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Hoping to make it back ok, the last time I went somewhere like this (except Colorado) I fell on a rock and then saw a reflection of my lung and back muscles in a bathroom mirror. See you on the other side!

A Traveling Man

Last weekend, some of us went to Eureka Springs, Arkansas for Darren and Lindsey’s wedding. It was a marevlous experience. Dana wrote about and depicted the weekend pictorially at her blog, whose link can be found to the right. Glorious.

Also, as lame as it is, I started a myspace account to put up future videos and audios of my work. You can find it here. Please be my friend :).

 There’s been some transition at home recently and a lot to be excited about.

• Ben left for Kenya yesterday. He will be gone for two months.
• Paul moved in two weeks before. He will be here for those two months, and his stay so far has been delightful.
• I leave on Thursday for Alaska (!!!) with my family, and about 30 hours after returning will be carried by planes and trains to Nice, France until July 4.
• I have a lot of friends who are moving and traveling as well. Not too many to name, but, yes.

Though my end of the traveling has not quite yet begun (aside from our recent retreat to the land of revelations), in all of this for-all-practical-purposes-unemployment phase I’ve been taking day-trips into the recesses and caverns of my mind, revisiting old behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. The fruits of my mining some days have been fragments of poems and conversations, both in the first and second person. Other findings have actually contaminated my thoughts in the present and made me acknowledge their ugliness through the looking glass of my actions in real-time, as though the memory was insufficient. Some days I have been thankful to let these pieces of my past and present life breathe. However, I am coming to this conclusion:

It is hard to wait.

Maybe it’s just that now I’m getting to be productive doing things I enjoy all day, but to be so mentally engaged with one study, or one love, or one life, celebrate its end with family and friends, and then have to finally go to sleep on the other side of it alone with only ethereal hopes of what lies next has been bittersweet. I’ve gotten to read, write, dream, talk, and take walks, but every few hours I’m looking up at the sky, palms up, asking, “God, is this the best use of Your time? Do the thoughts that are moving the banks of this river I’m barreling down please You?” No one else’s path is my own (at least not yet), and I am thankful for that. I am thankful that God is the Master Author, penning us into the greatest story ever told, with seasons, and family, and acquaintances, and friends close as brothers, and bankruptcy, and victories for which King Arthur wasn’t worthy, and tears that make the very seas we sail to reach people stranded by their own, and time fast on our heels ’til the day we see Him welcoming us home.  However, the past two weeks or so I have felt like I sit in that blank space after the words in Chapter 3 end and yet not quite on the next page, gleefully falling into the title of Chapter 4.

And I’m excited, not just because I’m getting to travel to some of the most amazing places on earth with some of the most amazing people, but because it’s out of these times that God shows us He has been with us, preparing us, the whole time. It’s out of these times He renews and strengthens our faith. Just know that if you feel like you’re treading water, I’m right there with you. You might have to look a hundred yards or so off to your left to see me, but I’m there.