Happy Days--When You Surrender Your Joys

Today was such a happy day!

Last night while we cut watermelon and made a garden salad with greens from our garden and a tomato from our greenhouse...

 

we watched as rain pummelled us. We had nearly 2 inches of rain within about 2 hours...

and our pond filled up and overflowed the banks! 

We needed that so badly!

We went out that evening before dark to watch the water pouring into the pond from the gulley next door, and still washing down the pasture.

We listened to the frogs and toads croaking and puffing out their throats in the middle of the pond water.

Where did they all come from?

The dogs, cows, and children celebrated excitedly this morning!

The cows waded, too!

These have been such happy summer days, with most of the children home at least some of the time,

and a new love story beginning!  

I had wondered if this would ever, ever happen. 

Maybe our family was just too unusual, too one-of-a-kind, and love stories were never going to happen.

Right now Tim is traveling with two cousins after finishing a job of driving a vehicle from Pennsylvania to Washington for friends.

 They sent this photo from the state of Washington near Mt. Baker.  

I don't deserve to have this much joy--rain and sunshine, 

rainbows and storms, 

ponds full of water with children canoeing in it,

 goats and cows and horse contentedly finding new green grass in the pasture. 

This evening Tommy was here, helping unload feed, helping Rose vacuum the van and get seats in for a whole load of people going to hear missionaries to Africa,

and helping Jonathan figure out why the horse trailer lights weren't working.

It was just two blown fuses!

This coming week, several of us plan to be back in hot South Dakota, working more on the house.

It is supposed to be 104 degrees Tuesday. 

I get to do dishes outside in the heat under the travel trailer awning like last time. 

But today, I surrender my joy--this day and these days of Colorado bliss--into God's hand and will. 

I sometimes take our comforts and delights for granted--

such as that all our children love the Lord and have trusted Him as Savior.

Such as that they help so much that I am still finding time nearly every day to write. 

I don't deserve these joys when mothers in war-torn countries, for example, are losing their sons and leaving husbands behind.

I read a heart-breaking story this week from missionaries in Ukraine.

And we also received a call asking if I'd be interested in going with a former fellow-missionary in Ukraine

to work with the Nazarene mission that is asking for volunteers to spend a week or two on the border of Poland and Ukraine.

Maybe Jonathan and I could go together for a belated anniversary, with one or more of our children.

To simply meet Ukrainian people who are getting off the train at the first stop in Poland, mostly women and children, and to help them carry luggage up the steps. we are told. 

Such service to weary and broken people has been invaluable, and Jonathan and I are seriously considering it, though we don't know for sure whether we can make it happen September 20-29 or not. 

I did find two digital Russian/English dictionaries at the Goodwill right about the time of this call!

Maybe I can sent them to whoever goes. A niece is considering going, and maybe one of our children.

I am not exactly strong enough to carry luggage all day, while dealing with days of jet lag.

I discovered my passport had expired, so I am in the process of renewing that, just in case.

It seems like too much for us with all we are doing. But perhaps we are just the ones to let others know, 

and perhaps others can go.

I have carried my own heavy burdens in the past; I know I will carry more in the future;

but today,

today I surrender my simple but precious joys to the Lord!

 

It's Official!--Rose and Tommy

Sunday afternoon, what had been in the works for months became official!

Tommy Hagerty is dating Rose! 

("Well, it's about time!" Grandpa Lucas exclaimed when I gave him a heads-up yesterday on the phone!)

Everyone in both families knew Tommy was on her mind almost non-stop for the last several months as they continued to get to know each other better and better.

She was having a hard time being distracted, and it got worse by the day!

However, the rest of us are enjoying the whole thing almost as much as she is.

We know very well who she is thinking about, even when she is swinging on the new swing in South Dakota.

The two wanted to take their time to get to know each other and be sure they were doing the right thing before making any announcements. 

Our families have known each other now for five years, and the children in both home schooling families had become like brothers and sisters--four-wheeling together, skiing together, playing together, having Bible studies every week together, working together, and in general having a great time being friends.

So early last week, Tommy asked Rose about courting, and then he asked her father.

Jonathan and I invited him for dinner Sunday, had a little chat with him and Rose, 

asking and sharing from our hearts what we felt was important, 

and finished the time together standing in a circle holding hands,

with Jonathan asking for God's blessing and guidance on their courtship.  

And then we all hugged each other before sending them off on their next "official" date--and now our family gets a little bigger,

with more and more room for love. 

We are so proud of Tommy!

We see Rose growing and thriving and becoming a sweeter, more loving, more mature person because of him, and that says a lot.

This evening we invited Tommy to join us at Grandpa Lucas's home for supper. It's been a while since we've been into Grandpa's house, what with our being gone so many weeks to South Dakota recently. He's come out here a couple times this summer, but this time we went there.

You'd have thought there was a big shindig going on, what with all the vehicles! 

After supper, I spent some quiet time outdoors while the children played a game with their grandpa.

It was a chance to just walk and pray in the warm outdoors in the back yard.

I loved how the lights shone through the door and window in the front when I went out to see what Jonathan was doing at the truck as he finished some plumbing repairs for his dad.  

If you had peeked inside the front door, this is what you would have seen. 

It was such a pleasant evening, as we watch another of our children take the step of entering a sweet relationship of love and joy.  

Guess who photo bombed the picture of Rose demonstrating Grandpa's player piano for Tommy!

I was so thankful that all our children (except Tim who spent four days helping drive a family from PA to Washington as the family moves to Alaska) stayed to play a game and give Grandpa a happy evening. 

Grandpa wanted to take a picture of the dating couple, so he suggested they go out

"by the sweet peas," where it was pretty. 

"I didn't think about the 'sweet' part!" he admitted later, laughing! 

Rose and Tommy helped prune the sweet peas by picking off as many pea pods as they could. ]

Grandpa said it helped the plant grow better when it didn't go to seed. 

The only trouble was that Rose thought the peas were edible and ate a couple! Then, like Adam and Eve, Tommy ate one or two, too!

I was a little petrified, as I had heard sweet peas were not edible, maybe even poisonous!

Jonathan arrived from work about then, looked it up, and discovered that indeed,

sweet peas are toxic!

However, Rose is still very much alive, and so is Tommy, 

and we are very thankful! :)

Dying from eating sweet peas would be a very, very sad ending to a very, very happy story!

The Gynormous Bull Snake

One day at our place in South Dakota, Jonathan had just called me to come watch the placing of the steel beams and get pictures, and so I was running up the path up the draw when I realized that I had just passed a huge snake!

After the steel beam was set, I got Henry to come help look for the snake, and then Danny came, too.

Sure enough, we found it slithering up toward the tool shed! Its head lifted way up and it was about to go right up the step into the door when Henry caught it with a big stick.

It was just a harmless bull snake, the boys decided, actually a friend rather than an enemy. 

We've heard bull snakes keep rattlers away, as well as eating mice and bugs and other varmints.

Then Danny got it on his own stick. 

It kept sliding off, but Danny would get it back on. 

What did Danny have in mind? Hunter, who was nonchalantly sitting in the bobcat, would soon find out!

Danny nearly scared the wits out of Hunter when he shoved that dangling snake into the front of the skid steer, practically into Hunter's nose!

Sam wasn't a bit afraid of that snake. 

How about wearing it like a scarf? 

I guess the boys had a sort of "stick-out-your-tongue contest with the snake.  

What fun!

Back here in Colorado, we just have garter snakes sneaking into our mint patch!

When You Swelter in 108 Degrees!

A week ago Monday South Dakota heat was well above 100 degrees!

Jonathan and the boys worked all morning, rising about 5:15 so they could place joists, but by noon, it was just too hot to work. So we took off for the Black Hills, thinking it would be cooler there.

 

This was at a rest stop along the way. 

It was not cooler, but at least we could sight see instead of work! 

It was fun getting to see the mountain carvings that my family used to live so near 44 years ago.

Henry found it fascinating to see the places where his mother and I had spent four years growing up. 

 

I took this picture for his mother! 

We used to drive right by this face every week on our way to church in Custer, South Dakota. 

We used to attend a small Wesleyan church which at that time was still conservative, though it changed right during that time, with the song leader making excuses from the pulpit about why he needed to open his trail rides business on Sunday to make enough money. 

This building was one where our dad and we ran a summer business of selling old time photos, carved name signs, pretty rocks, and other things.

This is from the other side. It used to be called Frontier Emporium when we rented it, but now it is called the Tradepost.

 A mile down the road was the road we lived on, Bear Rock Road. I don't know how this huge rock looks like a bear, but someone thought so.

Up that road the house we lived in still exists, with many modifications.

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Responding to my knock, the man of the place became friendly when he heard my family used to live there 40 some years ago. The lilac bush was still in the yard, and iris still hugged the sides of the house near what used to be a stone wall.  

From there, we started down the Needles Highway, but stopped at Sylvan Lake where Tim wanted to get sunset photos--and where he lost his phone!

Jonathan got some sunset photos, too! 

It was so peaceful sitting there waiting for the three boys to return from their jaunt up the hill for photos.  There was a resort nearby this lake where in those long ago days we children took turns accompanying my dad when he hung wall paper in room after room there. 

My dad was an amazing wall paper hanger--he could paper a room in three hours sometimes!

He had invented a pasting machine that really sped up the process, and we children helped by unscrewing plates off the walls and gathering up the wall paper scraps and carrying equipment.

So many pleasant memories of our time growing up in South Dakota!

And to think that 46 years later, I would be returning with a husband and children into native American ministry!