Hello to all. As you may have guessed, I miss you all a lot.

I just arrived to my new job as dorm staff at Miracle Meadows School (a boarding school for at-risk youth in WV) two evenings ago. Last afternoon began my “Two Weeks of Hell,” as it has been called by the staff. The basic idea is that I’m working 2 weeks straight in the dorm (336 hours in all) to see what I’m made of. Being nearly 24 hours into it, I see why they call it what they do.

Naturally, this endeavor has been accompanied by intrepidity and and anxiety–intrepidity in that I’m doing something I’ve never done before on a scale that I’ve never even imagined, and anxiety being the natural result of uncertainty. The only certainty in my mind at present is that the Lord has called me here, and keeping that in mind, I press on.

One passage of scripture has been indelibly etched in my mind since I decided to come here; Philippians 3:7-14

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith–that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Coming here, I realize that though I have a decent amount of knowledge and experience in a lot of things, I cannot rest on that, but rather I must consider all my accomplishments as worthless in order to reach the level upon which the Lord is calling me to minister here at MMS.

Your prayers are and will continue to be much appreciated.

Much love to you all,

-The Middleton