Hayride 2015

The children spent many hours cleaning up and decorating for our fall hayride.

So it was disappointing when the day dawned wet and foggy.

We postponed the ride till a later hour but decided to go ahead with it

since so many people said they were still planning to come--fog and all!

I hadn't been able to shop much, so we used our heads and came up with some farmy things we already had around, like this old fashioned Prairie Gold bag of whole wheat, which we put behind a pumpkin and a pretty mum, with a branch of crackly leaves behind it.

I love simple things the most.

Here we're getting people loaded up. We had people from several different ethnic backgrounds, including five folk from Missionary Training Institute who had been at our church Sunday.

Carrie lugged out an extra comforter. 

The fog was damp, but it also kept the air from being any crisper or colder.

A Korean couple from Boston, enroute to the middle east, seemed to love the ride, as well as the 

Carters who are enroute to Cuba.

A man who has married a Kazakstani lady told us that as we were getting off the hay trailer later, he was thinking, "I am seeing the world!"

So many different ethnic representations.

One Malaysian mother, a Hindu who asked me to show her which dishes had beef in them so she could avoid them later, sat on the hay by me and exclaimed, "This is priceless!"

She and her cute little black-haired girl loved the evening, and asked for us to invite them back next year.

It was such a blessing to a mother who had felt at age 17 that God was calling her to "the ends of the earth," and she's ended up out on the Colorado prairie.

This particular night God brought the "ends of the earth" to Jonathan and Anna Lucas and family!

And Sis. Naomi French hugged Hannah next to her little tiny dog that used to belong to dear Sis. Carol as we headed off.

We made two short hayrides before supper for first comers and then later comers.

I didn't know how it would work to have everyone inside when we'd planned for everything to be outside, but everyone took the crowdedness in stride, and we had a great time eating all the yummy food different ones brought. 

Below, a young man from Central America eats on his knees by the piano bench, beaming his thanks before leaving our home.

There were several young children whom the church folk are reaching out to, foster children, and a baby one young lady was babysitting.

One fourteen-year-old boy told our Timmy that he lives in his room playing at his X-box, and when he's hungry he throws ramen noodles into his microwave in his room.

That is how some neglected young children are living in the city, and it's a challenge we sensed to reach out to them in this way perhaps more often.

Just having a mom and sisters who plan and cook nutritious meals with veggies and fruits and whole grains is a precious privilege. 

You don't have to be a missionary in Haiti to find a hungry child.

Just go to the city and find children of parents addicted to drugs or in prison.