TWENTY TWELVE!

Here's a little more of what New Year's Eve in Lima looked like. I toasted with...what else...Dr. Pepper! Decided to craft some ridiculous headgear for skyping in the new year in a few different time zones. Also note that I am wearing a tank top with gold stripes because A) it's the only thing sparkly that I own in Lima, and B)...it was hot. Remember, it's summer here! Got up into the 80s today, and no A/C. 

You can also enjoy this video taste of the ridiculous unregulated fireworks going on across the city at all hours of the night. Keep in mind that you have to magnify the sound by a factor of about 20. And compared to Christmas eve, this was pretty tame:

I also really liked the Decemeber 31st entry in "My Utmost for His Highest," so I thought I would share.

"Security from Yesterday: "God requires that which is past." At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to arise from remembering the yesterdays. Our present enjoyment of God's grace is apt to be checked by the memory of yesterday's sins and blunders.  But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them in order to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual culture for the future. God reminds us of the past lest we get into a shallow security in the present.

Security for Tomorrow: "For the Lord will go before you." This is a gracious revelation, that God will garrison where we have failed to. He will watch lest things trip us up again into like failure, as they assuredly would do if He were not our reward. God's hand reaches back to the past and makes a clearing-house for conscience.

Security for Today. "For ye shall not go out with haste." As we go forth into the coming year, let it not be in the haste of impetuous, unremembering delight, nor with the flight of impulsive thoughtlessness, but with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us. Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ. Leave the irreparable past in His hands, and step out into the irresistible future with Him." - Oswald Chambers


Bring it on, 2012! The God of Israel will go before us.