A Quick Catch-Up
Since this publication has the subtitle. “the newsletter of sondance and the higgs family,” it’s about time to do some catching up on the comings and goings of the Higgs family. The photo at left was taken this summer on the front porch of our former home in Canby. When we first moved in almost 17 years ago, we took a family photo at the same location, one we used as one of our earlier LINC Ministries prayer/support cards. We were hoping to include both photos here so you could see the “subtle” changes to us all, but since Terri and I have been living pretty much out of suitcases for the past several months, the original photo is in a box somewhere. Use your imagination: Lilly was 5, Levi was 2, Terri had long hair and I had dark brown hair!
Kids first: Lilly is in Kansas City preparing to travel to Jerusalem on Sept. 14 for a three-month internship/practicum at the House of Prayer there. What a cool adventure for her! Her parents are thrilled that God is leading her to pray and learn in such a spiritually (and politically) intense and strategic location.. She and other interns from literally all over the world will take a number of history and theology classes, prayerwalk the city, and engage in intercessory worship from a prayer room that overlooks the Wailing Wall and Temple Mount. Levi will remain in KC, where he is in his second year at the Forerunner Music Academy at IHOPU. If you get a chance, go to www.ihop.org and click on the prayer room webcast, which is free and broadcast 24/7. What you will see – about a dozen singers and musicians leading a room of 100-200 people in “intercessory worship” – has been going literally non-stop for twelve years. It’s a pretty amazing place, with around 1000 students attending several different schools at the university, within a community of several thousand others (of all ages, but the majority young adults) who are committed to night and day prayer.
As for their parents, Terri and I are enjoying being homeless! That is true only in a sense – our Canby house did sell, and our move to Idaho won’t be until sometime in 2012, but for now we are staying at my Mom’s house in southwest Portland, preparing it for sale while she enjoys an active social life in a nearly retirement community. After the sale, it’s an empty nesters’ adventure! In the meantime, it is just a bit odd and fun having a makeshift office in the bedroom I grew up in.
Terri recently surprised me with a table lamp she found in an Idaho thrift store. It’s a tripod style, made with three arrows, and when I saw it I was immediately reminded of what I wrote in an old LINCLetter about the “three sharp arrows” in my ministry quiver: character, prayer, and unity. God clearly led her to buy the lamp for me so I would always be reminded of those. Yet the lamp is also a reminder of the three mission emphases He gave Terri and I when we founded sondance: spiritual formation, family restoration, and community transformation.
In his book The Torch and the Sword, Rick Joyner wrote of being admonished through a prophetic word: “You must resolve to walk each day in the domain over which the Lord has given you to rule. He has given you authority, but you must walk with Him in your domain. Only then will you be fruitful and multiply as you are called. Your domain is your garden.” Terri and I are in a transition season when our home and ministry “domains” or “gardens” are changing. While the exact timing remains unclear, there is nothing unclear about the changes – as we begin to spend more and more time in Idaho, our daily experience there includes new relationships and Kingdom connections that are all about our mission of spiritual formation, family restoration and community transformation. We don’t have to force things, God just brings stuff our way, and it is SO EXCITING to live that way!! The same is true regarding our “domain” outside of Blaine County, Idaho. More on that next month.