Hey, Darling Things! I just have the quickest moment to post an update. The Moores and Joneses are six hours from Houston in our Cactusland and far from cell/internet service. We came into a nearby town to worship today and right this moment we’re in a delightful little restaurant where we – and the entire community’s Lutherans, Methodists, and Baptists – are grabbing lunch. From what we hear, our properties and those of our staff members are either fine or have sustained minimal damage, may the Lord be praised!! Keith and I learned that our fence is down and we lost a couple of trees but our home is ok. The ministry building, which is surrounded by tall trees, is untouched. We were floored and so blessed. Many, many Houstonians – friends and loved ones included – took serious hits. The home of one of my dear friends was completely flattened. Several of our big churches also sustained considerable damage. We are among several million Houstonians who still don’t have power so we’re sitting tight until we get a green flag to head home. This is a great time for control freaks to exercise surrender. Needless to say, we are hoping for a green light soon. About half of our staff members stayed in town and trust me when I tell you that Houston/Galveston is NOT where you want to be this time of year with no electricity or fresh water. Please pray for them. For Heaven’s sake, pray for everybody in this part of the country. So many lost so much. We also thank God so much for not allowing Ike to have all the power he wanted.

We don’t know about Bible study Tuesday night. Doesn’t look promising at this point but we’ll keep you posted. Things could happen fast, God willing. I will DEFINITELY head to Billings, Montana, this weekend, so no threat there.

We love y’all like crazy, care about you so much, and thank you with all of our hearts for your prayers. We will ask God to spread them lavishly all over our region.

We hope to be back in touch very soon!!

Hey, my dear Siestas! I hope you are well and thriving in Christ! For those of you who may have been with Priscilla, Kay and me in Las Vegas, thank you so much for the privilege to serve you. You were a fantastic group! All three of us would have brought you home with us if we could have. Thank you for your patience with us and your astounding diligence in the Word. You hung in there when I would have sworn and declared we’d have worn you out.

Just in case somebody could use the encouragement, I thought I’d pitch something out on the table that God ministered to me this morning then led me to share at staff prayer time. Maybe some of you are like us. We each have some long term prayer requests out there that we’re still waiting for God to bring to wild fruition. Like you, we get tempted at times to give up on that thing ever coming to pass even though we were so sure it was God’s will and had the support of His Word. Maybe we got what we thought was a vivid word from God about something but now we’re confused. Sometimes we really do misinterpret what He said or what His Word promised and God graciously reveals that to us. Other times, however, we let impatience strangle our spirits and near-sightedness steal our vision. We lose sight of the fact that He’s using time and subsequent events to bring the word to pass. His point to me recently has been that if I’d live in a greater present reality and awareness of all He’s brought to fruition, I will be more patient and full of faith concerning what is still in process. The thing is, we’re on to the next request before we’ve even gotten a chance to sit and savor how He answered the last. Maybe this is too much review for some but I’m one of those kinds of people who needs to constantly relearn things.

God’s been reminding me of the powerful words of Isaiah 55:8-11.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

The part He’s really been highlighting to me is the “seed for the sower and bread for the eater.” Seeds: words we’re planting and waiting on. Bread: words that have endured the test of time and the heat of the furnace and finally made it to our tables. Here’s what occurred to me. At any given time, we have both: words from God we’re still waiting on and words from God that have recently come to pass. Sometimes we’re so focused on the seed that hasn’t shown a harvest that we ignore the bread sitting right in front of us. We faint from sowing the seed because we’re not eating the bread. Stop a minute. Consider what God has done. Marvel over how He’s answered prayer and brought words to pass. Think about a crisis five years ago that doesn’t even take up ink in your prayer journal anymore. Reflect on how many things God has taken from seed to bread in your life. Note it. Meditate on it. Don’t drive through it. Dine on it. Slap some butter on that warm bread and savor a slow bite of it!

I don’t know about you but sometimes I’m so busy pestering the seed that my bread is gets stale.

While you wait on that seed, eat that bread.

I love you,
Beth

Hey, my dear, dear Sisters! I had the biggest blast with the Siestas who made the trek to San Antonio and missed the rest of you so much. I’m back from a real, live vacation and pecking away at my computer in my office. Star’s right here at my feet. It’s Labor Day so my beloved staff members are with their families just as they should be. Since I really did take the week off (I usually cheat and still throw work into it somehow but refrained this time), I really needed the day to get a jump on the load I knew would be waiting tomorrow.

I’d have lots of silly things to tell you but my frame of mind is seriously tempered by Gustav. Having lived in Houston for 35 years, I, like anybody half-awake on the Gulf Coast, am highly alert to the constant wave of threats written across the sky from August through October. We find ourselves in a terrible quandary, asking God to cause the storms to bypass our areas but sick at heart to imagine them hitting another. None of us want to lose our homes but none of us want to see others lose theirs either. Of all people on the planet we want spared, surely its the population of New Orleans. Oh, Jesus, especially the poor. And, Lord, our dear Franklin Avenue Baptist and other faithful fellowships like it that have only recently reopened their doors. Have mercy! My heart has been in my throat for the areas devastated by Katrina, many of which have yet to be rebuilt. Let’s give highest praise to God that He sucked some of the air and water right out of Gustav’s angry lungs. This morning in my quiet time I reminded our gracious Father of His powerful words to us in James 5:16b-18. “The prayer of the righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.” Elijah, a man with “like passions as we” prayed a change over the weather. THE WEATHER. And God heard him and said yes. That ought to give us some courage to pray like the same thing could happen today.

Keith and I have been in the wonderful middle of nowhere for a solid week on our cactus land at the edge of the Texas hillcountry. No cell phones. No internet. Just him and me and our two new baby girls, Star and Geli. The most exciting things we had going were watching God paint sunrises and sunsets, cooking on the Old Smokey, dodging rattle snakes, and taking rides on our rigged-for-dirt-roads golf cart with the dogs to admire the wildlife. I read the new Jan Karon novel (I think the name is “Home to Holly Springs”) from cover to cover and LOVED IT. Yes, I’ve read all the Mitford books and am so sad when one ends and another is not out yet. She is one of my favorite all time fiction authors. I want to be her BFF.

On the way home Saturday afternoon, however, we saw the eeriest sight. Keith was asleep at the time and yours truly was driving his big ole blue Ford truck. I even went the speed limit. (Believe it or not, I’m a slow driver. The leading cause of road rage in America, you might recall.) We were going east on Interstate 10 and right around the Luling exit I came over a hill and saw 200+ yellow school buses from Dallas, empty except for the drivers, in the left hand lane traveling lickety-split in a caravan our same direction. A police car led the pack and another had its back. We’d seen several Red Cross emergency vehicles already on our way home but this sight beat all. We knew those school buses were heading either to Houston or New Orleans (it was still up in the air – no pun intended – at that time) for emergency evacuations. I told Keith to wake his hind up and look at a sight he might live the rest of his life and never see again. It was so freaky. And to be one of very few vehicles heading their direction while traffic packed the west-bound lanes was sobering. There was no turning back, though, because Curtis, Amanda, Jackson, and our little Avocado were in Houston and I was going to be where they were or bust. Turned out our fair but hot city would be just to the west of Gustav’s fiercest breath. Far better than that, it appeared that New Orleans might not be hit as hard as they were three years ago. Oh, Lord, be her levee.

Anyway, I’ve looked so forward to saying hello but feel like it’s just not the day to be silly. And, oh, could I have been silly. After all, I’ve been perched on a porch for a week watching my man move the earth all over heck’s half acre on his green tractor. About the time I decided to venture out on my own and go for a walk, he popped the clutch and hollered, “Lizabeth, did you bring your snake boots?” Where am I? But I’ll just have to save that for another time.

I love you. Gulf Coast girls in particular, let us know how you’re fairing through the weather. We are on our knees for you.

Hey Siestas! I haven’t had a chance to just shoot the breeze with you lately. It’s Friday night and Keith won’t be home for a while. I’ve got the Olympics on and my feet propped up and I thought I’d touch base with some of my favorite girls on earth. Here are a few random things going on in the life of your very own Siesta Mama.

1. Keith and I are totally in love with our puppies! If what we were looking for was some high life in the Moore home, we certainly got it. Most of the time our house looks like we run a daycare center. Between Jackson and 2 puppies, we have toys from pillar to post. Star and Geli are crazy about each other and most of the time insist on playing with exactly the same toy, one biting one end and the other biting the other end. They even like to share the same chew. I’ve never seen anything like it. Geli stays with Keith during the week days and Star goes with me to work so we have a very enthusiastic reunion every workday evening. We still miss our old girls so much. I bawled about Beanie again just a few days ago. But we are so thankful to have these new babies to spoil. Geli is honestly one of the cutest puppies you’ve ever seen in your life. I’m talking ADORABLE. Star, on the other hand, is the smartest. (And, yes, she’s mighty cute, too, but Geli honestly is gorgeous. German Shorthairs are beautiful specimens.) You can’t believe what my little smarty pants has accomplished in three and a half months however. She can sit, fetch, jump, walk on a leash, bring me the leash, and come give me kisses when I ask her to. She constantly tries to anticipate what I’m about to do. Every morning when I grab the keys, she heads to the car and hops right up in her seat. Loves to even sit in Jackson’s carseat in my SUV so that she has a good view. Danged amazing. I’m nuts about her. She is the mascot of Living Proof Ministries. My whole staff loves her. She knows exactly who offices where. When she’s full grown, I’m going to get her one of those capes like the mascot at Texas A & M wears only ours is going to have “LPM” on it. Yep. She’ll be darling. As it is, she wears a different color bandanna every day. I have lots of nicknames for her: Starry Starry Night, Rock Star, Starlet, Stardom, and on patriotic holidays, Stars and Stripes. If she’s running really fast, she’s Shooting Star.

2. I am getting to catch my breath for five minutes after a hard summer. I appreciated one of you commenting that I seemed rested or peaceful (you used the word “soft” – I’m going to take that as a compliment as long as you don’t mean my arms) in the most recent Siesta video. You were so sweet to notice. It has been a difficult couple of months for a number of reasons and what you discerned was that I’ve recently come out from under a considerable measure of the stress. We are putting the final editorial touches on Esther and, before we know it, it will go to print after eighteen months of work. I will miss it so much but I will also be very relieved to see this baby girl birthed. I am never happier (ministry-wise) than when I’m working on a Bible study because I so love the process – hard as it is – BUT wrapping one up and getting it to print on time and in tact is always extremely stressful. Add to that about a dozen other things – some of them personal and painful – and you’ve got yourself a challenging summer. Thank you all for your prayers. You will never waste one on me. Please say another for me and for all of us who will seek the Presence of the Lord next weekend in San Antonio. I want to see Him there so badly.

3. Curtis, Melissa, and I are doing the neatest thing this Fall. The sanctuary at our church has been under reconstruction all summer. Since we weren’t positive they’d finish on time for our Fall study, we decided we better do something smaller for one semester so we weren’t dependent upon the sanctuary. For the last year or so the fire’s been burning in us to construct and teach a Bible intro class to a smaller group we could really invest in. I want to know my class members names, for crying out loud! I’ve been dying to teach my own rendition of the series I took years ago in my twenties that lit such a passion in me. And I don’t even have to tell you that this subject matter is right up Melissa’s alley. When we considered that we might not have access to the sanctuary in time to begin, we knew the time was NOW. We’re calling it “Lit” based on the verse out of Jeremiah where the Lord says, “Is not My word like fire?” We’ll teach things like where the Bible comes from (transmission) and what on earth you do with it (Bible study methods). We’ll go back to some basics and actually learn the Books of the Bible (yes, to a song, and, no, not by ourselves in front of the class!) and find out all sorts of cool things about how the Word of God got into the hands of regular people. Melissa and I are team teaching a “graded” class of 18-25 year-old young women (she’ll be able to make 5 of the 10 classes) and Curtis is teaching the same material (one week later) to an ungraded class of both men and women. I’ll be looking in on his class and getting to know them a bit and he’ll be looking in on mine and doing the same. The whole semester will be a team effort. We kept the classes small so we can really invest in these lives. It’s a free course but we took sign-ups this time since we had limited space. Both classes are full (which surprised me, by the way. I wasn’t sure how many people would be interested in a Bible intro course) but I thought you’d get a kick out of knowing what we’re doing and might stop and pray for us. We’ll wait and see if God has any further plans for this concept. I don’t know if we’ll end up working it into a series to be published or not. We’re just going to give our all to these two groups and let God take it from there. Oh, Sister. God completely changed my life with the study of His Word. I want every person on earth – particularly every woman I encounter – to know the transforming power of Christ and the Truth that sets the most hopeless captive free. It was the turning point for me. Even this morning in research for this course, I wept over the beauty of Christ displayed on the pages of Scripture. I am convinced He will give ANY willing soul an insatiable love for Him and His Word…a spirit of wisdom and revelation to know Him better.

Well, Starzy (my favorite nick name for her) is about to wet her pants (no, she doesn’t really wear any. She’s smart but not that smart) so I better sign off and go out in the backyard with her. It’s been storming so she might need some moral support. You know how women are about going to the ladies’ room in groups.

Oh, and our Little Fig is a darling little Lemon now! Amanda’s feeling better every day. Thanks for praying! We are already falling in love with that precious one and can’t wait to hold a newborn in our arms again.

I love you guys so much. Have a great weekend! And believe God for something BIG. He’s so capable.