Thursday January 16, 2014

My day on Thursday started off with the realization of how lucky I am to be friends  on Facebook with many Godly women. My news-feed consisted of a shared message from Dr. David Jeremiah by Kathy Joyce, comments on selected Bible scripture by Michelle Smith, a chart  with suggested scripture to read when you are experiencing different feelings and troubles by Judy Hardwick. There were also posts from Liz Curtis Higgs a Christian speaker and author and many Moravian Churches that I have befriended because of work. God just really blessed me that morning with all his goodness right there on Facebook! Sort of made me wonder what I would be facing that day. 

I arrived at work looking forward to getting some things completed and then off to a new photography class at Surry Community College, something that I had long  wanted to do. Right about noon my world came crashing down. No really! I heard something that sounded like glass falling. I covered my head and dove  for the opposite corner of the room, because I could imagine something big coming through the window. When all the noise stopped I was on the floor, I turned too see the ceiling tile on my desk, plus plaster off the wall above the dropped in ceiling. 

My nerves were shot to say the least.  I had always wondered if I would have the presence of mind to protect myself if I were ever faced with with to. I was pretty impressed that I knew enough to get out of the way. Only injury was a small carpet burn on my knee and some congestion from all the dust. 

                                                                                                                                                         

And here we have Graham Morgan. Practicing with his bow for the NoFo Hunters Safety Shooting Team. This was late in the afternoon and I did not use a flash which was my aim: to control the lightness in the photo with the ISO setting. So I did learn a little something in the class on Thursday night! Next I need to address the balance of ISO and aperture settings. Go ME!
So those are the events that Thursday brought to me. How blessed I am to not be hurt  and was able to calm my nerves from the days events well enough to move on to my evening schedule and to have a mostly normal day with all the blessings in my life. 

In the waiting - Advent Devotions, week 1 part 2

 Dec 5 -  Gift- My Grandfathers birthday, he carved out the stone in the photo, Daddy said the stone stayed under a faucet like this so the chickens would always have fresh water. Pappaw was a gift to my life. I thought about him a lot yesterday.
Gift - John 4:10 “Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’”





Anticipate - 2 Pet 3:13 "But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home."

 Dec 6 – Prayer
 Mark 1:35 “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”
Dec 7 – Weeping
 Ps 31:22 “I had said in my alarm,
   ‘I am driven far from your sight.’
But you heard my supplications
   when I cried out to you for help.”

A promise from God...our country could stand some prayer right now.

The (not so) Little Twin in the Door Way

Grahammy and I were roaming around "Old Salem" and "Salem College" the other night and he, like his big brother had to look in each and every covered door that there was. And there are a lot in Salem.

We peeped in windows of shops selling Moravian itmes, played in yards of olden days that were empty, because tour times were over. We pumped water out of the hand pumped well. We even marveled at a road that was built for a 1870's trolly car. He also tryed to find a way to get inside the college library, because even though it is a women's college, to my G man, a Library is still a Library!

The picture isn't that great because I took it with my cell phone but it maybe someday will be a way for him to remember an evening with just he and I, as Kenny would say "moving at the speed of Lamb". Those times come pretty seldom when you are a twin.

Easter 2009

Just wanted to share some photos of our Easter. The boys and I started our day with rounds at Fries this morning at 1:00. We had ham biscuits and sugar cake at our church. At 2:00 this morning we headed out for rounds. The purpose of rounds are to go through out the city playing songs to invite all the residents to the sunrise service. We rode on a chartered bus that dropped us off in different locations through out the Bueua Vista neighborhood. Fries' little band of 13 sounded pretty good, I must say. The weather was wonderful.

We finished rounds at 4, went back to Fries and got in our own cars and drove to Old Salem. Where we were served a breakfast of country ham, eggs, sugar cake, biscuits and moravian coffee. It was getting pretty chilly just before daybreak in God's Acre. But we survived and managed to play for the glory of God! Before we had it back to where the car was parked, G said: "this was fun. Can we do it again next year?"

After the sunrise service was complete we went back to Fries to have breakfast with the ushers for the service, where we met up with Daddy Boy. So we had our 3rd breakfast of country ham, eggs and biscuits and sugar cake! Of course.

Came home and had a nap.

Oh yeah, even though we were up pretty much all the night we never saw the Easter Bunny. But when we got up from our nap, there was a basket full of goodies on the back porch for the boys.

The Lord is Risen.

The Lord is risen indeed!

Happy Easter!

Valentine's from God

Though the mountains move and the hills shake, My love will not be removed from you and My covenant of peace will not be shaken,” says your compassionate Lord. Isaiah 54:10

…I am the Lord, showing faithful love, justice, and righteousness on the earth, for I delight in these things…Jeremiah 9:24

I will heal their apostasy; I will freely love them, for My anger will have turned from him.

Hosea 14:4

You will lead the people You have redeemed with Your faithful love; You will guide [them]* The bracketed text has been added for clarity. to Your holy dwelling with Your strength. Ex 15:13

He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will bless your descendants…Deut 7:13

Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love. II John 1:3

No one has ever seen God. Since God is an infinite being, no one can see Him in His absolute essential nature; If we love one another, God remains in Or remains among us and His love is perfected in us. I John 4:12

… I received mercy, and the grace of our Lord overflowed, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. I Timothy 1:13-14

The LORD has appeared of old to me, saying: "Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you. Jeremiah 31:3

It is the little things in life that make me thankful.

It is the little things in life that make me happy and thankful. Tuesday night I handed B his math book and agenda. Told him to put it in his back pack. He took it to his room. It wound up buried under a dirty clothes, that should have been put in the laundry.
Wed. morning at 7:35 AM the phone rings. CID says NWMS. It was B, being very sweet, which is a rarity these days. He had left his math book, agenda and his Spanish homework in his room. I agreed to bring it to him.
I dropped off the twins and headed down the road the extra 10 miles to B's school. I park my car right in front of the door, after all I am only going to run in leave the book at the desk and be on my way. Just as I reach for the door handle I hear this really dull buzzing sound. A lady from inside opens the door and says, "I guess this is a real fire alarm, I think there is a fire in a bathroom up stairs". I cringe at the remembrance of the last fire drill I endured at this school. It took about 45 minutes to get all the kids out, accounted for, and back to class.
So I go lean on the back of my van thinking, B is upstairs but I hope he comes out this door. Sure enough about two classes file out and then the teacher that B is with. Next comes the B man. Dressed only in a T shirt and hoody, ( I told him to put on a long sleeve shirt this morning also, but he decided all his LS shirts were "too dressy".) It is 27 degrees outside. I realize that I am wearing his scarf, maybe I should hand it to him... not! I have some toboggan's in the car I could hand him one of those...no! I told him to dress for the weather, he choose not to.
And now for what I am thankful for: If I had arrived 5 minutes later, I would have never known why they were all standing on the lawn, I would have never seen B in all that bunch of kids and I would have been worried sick about him. [FYI: Monday night we got a call saying that there had been a student that day bring some kind of plastic gun to school-so my nerves are a little on edge anyway. The students are just acting crazy right now for some reason] So God put me there at a really good time. I handed him his books as he crossed the parking lot. After all the kids had filled out the door, I told a teacher that was standing there I was going to back up and get out of the way, and I was off...just as the fire trucks roared into the parking lot...thank the LORD for good timing (and a warm scarf!) The End.

B's Confirmaion Page

It took several weeks but I finally got it done!

He walked by one day and stopped to look at it and fussed at me for putting the certificate on the page...he asked "What if I need that?" I told him that I had not glued it down it was just tucked under the photo and the ribbon photo corner. He was OK with that. The small photo inset is Uncle George. He was B's mentor during the confirmation class. It is only right, George was his Sunday School teacher for a majority of the last 13 years! It worked well also because George is used dealing with Lamb boys!

The journaling is just what was on my blog entry back in May.

I have a stamp with I Cor. 12:13, and forgot about it until this was done. So if you have any ideas as to where I might sneak it in on this page, let me know.

Home Again

The twins and I arrived home at 11:30 on Saturday morning. I did not realize how tired I was until I sat down to watch TV after lunch. I didn't watch much TV, I had a nap. The boys were also very tired.
We had a wonderful week, I really do not possess the words to describe the feelings that I have for this past week. Being with a group of people, adults and kids alike that can learn and worship God, in so many ways is an unspeakalbe feeling. I can say that the boys are already making plans to go back next summer. I probably will be there with them. I can say that I was not ready to come back to reality. Saturday afternoon and evening, I received two phone calls and an email about different things that needed to be done at church, the letter from B's school came telling him his assigned teacher for the year. I WANT SUMMER BACK!
I met some very interesting people, people that I will never forget, people that I feel my children are lucky to have met, and benefit form their presence at this camp. The kids that were there were great kids, I don't think there was any behaviour issues, all week.

This is G with Rauj. Rauj is from Jamaca. Every year he sales t- shirts or other fund raising items to get money to travel to NC to work on the M staff at Laural Ridge. These are college students who live in the camp all summer, they help cook, KP, lead interest groups, lead songs at campfire, clean the cabins and lodges, drive the bus back and fourth to W-S and anything else that needs to be done. G took an imediate liking to Rauj because he nomally does canoe's. I think he must be one othe the many special people who you run accross at LR.

I leave you with a photo of the twins favorite activity from the week, my camera seems to have lost some of the ones that I made earlier so I don't have a lot to choose from. Look closely at this photo, for all you people that can only tell the twins apart because one has glasses, changes are a coming!

Today...

I have been collecting herbs for VBS.
I have found in my yard (and windowsill) sage, rosemary, parsley, aloe, lambs ear, mullein and mint. I did not realize until today that roses are sometimes considered herbs, I have heard in the past that they are eatable.
Here are some Bible verses that mention herbs:
Cinnamon-Solomon 4:14, when he is expressing his affection to his lover. "Nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all the trees of frankincense, myrrh and aloes, along with the finest spices. You are a garden spring,..".
Dill-Matthew 23:3, "Woe unto you...hypocrites. For you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness."
Mint-Matthew 23:3, "Woe unto you...hypocrites. For you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness;".
Rose-(Isaiah 35:1) The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the rose.
Aloe-Numbers 24:6) Like valleys that stretch afar, like gardens beside a river, like aloes that the Lord has planted, like cedar trees beside the waters.
…they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen clothes with the spices{ myrrh and aloes}, as is the burial custom of the Jews. [John 19: 39-40

The End of the Rainbow

So as the end of the weekend came to a close, we were driving home from Nana's Annual Mother's Day Cook out and came to the end of the rainbow. I have never seen the end of a rainbow before. The boys were sure there was a little green magical leprechaun out there in the middle of that field guarding his pot of gold! Just to the left of the rainbow if you look very close there are two rainbows. As we were driving off the second one was becoming more visable, yet another promise of more beautiful things to come? And so at the end of the rainbow is the end of the very eventful week end.

This photo was made from Dinkin's Bottoms, May 11, 2008.

Confirmation

As a I said yesterday we headed home early so that B could take part in the confirmation service on Sunday morning. He has been attending a confirmation class since last September.
And has decided to join the church at this time as a full member. Ben was baptised as an infant, where we as his parents promised to raise him in a loving christian home and to make sure that the church was a part of his life. I guess our job is complete. He is now a member of the church by his own choice.


I can not say that I have been excited about this, just because I was not sure if this was his choice or not. But as I sat in the service yesterday my heart was softened, and I realized that there was not a better Mother's Day present that any one could hope for, than to watch her "awfully grown up looking son join" the church.

Happy Times?

Yesterday in Sunday School we talked about how so many people say they do not want to be a Christian because it is depressing. So I just wanted to share this happy scene with you, that I have placed in my header. What a joyous celebration it must have been that morning?!? Well I for one do not see the love of the Lord as depressing, I feel very uplifted every time I think, about how I don't have to be worried about being good enough to deserve His love, because the grace of Jesus Christ is great enough to cover ALL sins. So I hope you enjoy my little celebration scene (about the only decortating we do here at the Knoll for Easter)!

not feeling very bloggy lately....so...

thought I would share a video with you that we watched at church last week. I think it is well done and the message that it conveys is very true...watch and see what you think:

http://buzzconference.com/films/entry/gods-pies/