Mail call!

Can you believe it? The TEAM actually received a letter the first day they were in Peru! Imagine that! They got mail, well, e-mail to be exact. The letter was very personal and meaningful. Jan Daigle wrote to them, and she has graciously allowed us to post her thoughts to the TEAM for their family and friends. Here’s what she shared with them.

Hello Crosswave and Arrows!

Welcome to Peru! I pray that you had a safe trip. I actually boarded the plane with you in Miami as I was talking with Mary on the phone when she was boarding! I was glad for that moment for it really gave me the feeling of "being there with all of you."

I know that a part of your theme this year is about hope. I pray that hope grows large in each of your hearts and that you are given many opportunities to pass God's message of hope to others. Hope is something that is certainly needed by many who live in Peru. Hope is big for me too, but I must admit that I have been thinking a lot about choices the past 2 days. I would love to invite you to add choices to part of your theme as you go thru the coming week. YOU are so much a part of why choices has become my theme for this week and let me explain why this is so...

Many of you know me, although some do not. However I have heard that all of you have prayed for me and I am so very thankful! I have been in Peru with the Crosswave team every summer since you first came in 2003. I love Peru, I love the Peruvian people, I love what God is doing there as He is pouring out His love thru people like you and me. My plans have been to be in Peru every summer but this year it was not to be. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in January of this year, 2 days before I was to leave for Peru with a team from my own ministry, Face to Face Missions. I did not make that trip, and now not able to make this one. If you know me at all, you know how difficult it is for me not to be there with you. Heather says I am practically Peruvian! I had become quite sad about not going this summer...until God reminded me of choices. You see, no one made me not go to Peru this summer. I had a choice, it was my choice, and I chose to remain at home. Even with a diagnosis of cancer I could have delayed treatment and gone to Peru anyway...but it would not have been the right choice. It was not an easy choice to stay home, but it was the right choice. Many times in life we are faced with difficult choices, ridden with emotion. Not easy choices, but gut wrenching ones. My choice this week to remain at home is because I am choosing to move to the front like in my fight against cancer. While you were en route to Peru I sat in a chair in the chemo room of my Dr.'s office receiving my first chemo treatment. I chose to be there. By choosing to be there, I chose not to be in Peru. It brings God's light into my situation and lessens the pain of not being with all of you to know that I had a choice..and I am choosing life.

What choices will you make this week? You will have many opportunities to make choices. You can choose your attitude, you can choose an opportunity to give when you would rather receive, you can choose to go the extra mile when you are already bone tired, you can choose to love, you can choose to serve, you can choose to bless, you will even be faced with a choice to forgive someone. Or, you could choose to be selfish, unforgiving, unloving, etc. What choices will you make? What will you do with your choices? Some choices may be difficult for you. Some may even bring you to tears just as my choice to remain at home has brought me to tears. However, it is in those type of heartbreaking choices that you may discover the most tender intimate moments with Jesus that you have even known! Jesus is our example of such deep and heart felt choices. He prayed and cried tears of blood in the garden, but in his struggle over choices he came to the place of "not my will, but yours’ be done." That's what it all boils down to...what choice will bring the most glory to God. Aren't you glad that Jesus made the right choice!

God spoke of choices in the Old Testament. In Deut. 30:19 Just before going into the Promise Land, God spoke to the Israelites concerning choices. "I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life." Don't you love it? God not only gives us choices, He even tells us which one is the better choice to make!

So this week, choose life, and choose blessing!
I love you and am praying for you each step of the way!
Dios te bendiga mucha!
Jan