Iris Ministries

Hello Everyone,

Life is going very well here. It is becoming fall, and the cool air and changing leaves bless me greatly. To update you on Roy's coming-to-the-US status, I'll tell you that he already has his passport, and he will be paying for the visa interview today and will find out when he can schedule that interview. We would greatly appreciate it if you kept that in your prayers.

Meanwhile, I spent a much-needed weekend at Shepherd mainly just basking in God's presence. I had much trouble getting stuff "done" just because He has so captivated me. I just feel a new sense of heaviness that sways from nostalgia and loss to instense love for whoever is before me or whoever He lays on my heart to swelling with feeling the love that He has for me to homesickness for Honduras and even more of His presence.

A couple weekends ago while I was at home, I stumbled across a documentary called Mama Heidi. Even just the title captivated my attention, and the premise resonated with me--it's about Heidi and Rolland Baker, missionaries to Mozambique, who founded Iris Ministries (http://www.irismin.org). They have a very similar ministry to Alvin's, and their stories are phenomenal. From an outside, worldly perspective, Heidi Baker is crazy, but she is precisely the kind of crazy that I want to be. Thousands of children call her "mama," and she is so fearlessly in love with Jesus. I don't even know how to express how her story and seeing a small glimpse of her life touched my heart, but I feel it has mildly ruined me in a good way. I watch clip after clip of her speaking or of her ministry in Mozambique, and all I can do is weep and tell God that I want the kind of anointing that she has. God has worked through her to heal the blind and the deaf. She has seen people raised from the dead in Mozambique, and they are experiencing an unspeakable revival because at the heart of it all is intimacy with the Father. It's not about strategies or plans or numbers. It is only intimacy with the Father. And that's what I so desperately want for Honduras. I want people to be healed. I want people to be raised from the dead. But most of all, I want the people of Honduras to encounter the love of God, for God to be so real to them that they not only experience salvation but also the tangible, presence of the love of God. I want to be a vessel of God's life so that His love can spill from me onto others. I want God to purify my heart, burn away everything that is not of Him, and crash like a wave into every element of my being so that I can be a fountain of His love. He is so real to me--more real to me than ever before. And I am so overwhelmed by Him.

With love,
Sarah