"I Look to Thee in Every Need"

 Sometimes I still sit down at the piano and play one of my favorite hymns, or I will just sit and read it.

"I look to Thee in every need,

And never look in vain.

I feel Thy strong and tender love

And all is well again.

The thought of Thee is mightier far 

Than sin and pain and sorrow are.

Discouraged in the work of life,

Disheartened by its load,

Shamed by its failures or its fears,

I sink beside the road;

But let me only think of Thee

And then new heart springs up in me.

Thy calmness bends serene above,

My restlessness to still;

Around me flows Thy quickening life

To nerve my faltering will.

Thy presence fills my solitude;

Thy providence turns all to good.

Embosomed deep in Thy dear love,

Held in Thy law, I stand;

Thy hand in all things I behold,

And all things in Thy hand; 

Thou leadest my by unsought ways,

And turn'st my mourning into praise.

 

Palm Sunday--Corrie ten Boom and the Donkey

As I wrote in my last post, music is a joy and passion that I delight in when I must deny myself so many other indulgences.

Last Sunday, Palm Sunday, was full of music, and I felt so happy to be part of some of it. 

I love the hymns, both old and new, that are sung at Lakota Chapel.

Palm Sunday our family sang "The Lamb of God," a contemporary hymn, with my autoharp. 

It was a very cold, snowy-road Sunday, and we didn't know if anyone would even show up to church, but a few did, including the parents of a military man who is training troops in an undisclosed location overseas, including troops from the country of our beloved mission field when we were first married. It was a joy to get to know them during the fellowship meal after service.

For the last three weeks, different people have come each Sunday--and we love it! We never know who will be there, or who will be missing that is regularly there that we can take a meal to. Pastor Ambrose and his wife, frail as they are, whether with broken ribs, a black eye from a fall, or concerning recent health issues, keep the church door open and the sanctuary decorated.

For the fellowship dinner in the basement, we took along a crock pot of cabbage rolls I had made Saturday. 

Jonathan found huge cabbage heads for 39 cents a pound in Winner last week, so I got inspired to make cabbage rolls for a change for Sunday. As you can see, this head was so big, it nearly filled my big pot! I made two baking dishes of cabbage rolls. They were soo good!

Palm Sunday evening, a beautiful sight met our eyes as we climbed the steps to Hope Family Chapel in Mission where Jonathan was supposed to lead the service in the absence of Keith Lavery (gone to Rincon Marquez to an All Tribes board meeting). 

Tasbah had decorated with a bunch of palmettos and palms and candles for this special day.

At the end of each row of chairs was a candle and palmetto with a name of Christ.  

I have never been so enamored with the way a church was decorated for Palm Sunday.

Kim Lavery, Keith's sister, played a couple beautiful Palm Sunday arrangements and our family sang "Lamb of God" again for this service, since there was no preacher! I had a Palm Sunday quiz, and Jonathan shared a couple devotional thoughts. 

Jonathan told about Corrie ten Boom and the donkey!

He read how Corrie was once asked if it was difficult for her to remain humble after she became famous and had many media appearances and book signings. Her reply was simple: “When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday on the back of a donkey, and everyone was waving palm branches and throwing garments onto the road, and singing praises, do you think that for one moment it ever entered the head of that donkey that any of that was for him?”

She continued, “If I can be the donkey on which Jesus Christ rides in His glory, I give Him all the praise and all the honor.”

This devotional thought was the highlight of Palm Sunday for me!

Apron at Work---and Squelching the Thoughts that Arise

Saturday was a busy day for this wife and mother...

--baking a big batch of bread and rolls. 

after using up the banana bread and muffins made a couple days earlier. 

I'm thankful for the blessing of housework, routine, normal. 

Sometimes, such as when I was taking down the few pieces of Valentine decor in preparation for some spring decor,

the thought strikes me, "What if?

What if this is the last time I put away valentine decorations?"

But then I know that I have to let go of that thought. 

I have to let it go--

into the hands of God. 

I have to keep on going, shaking the rugs, mopping the floor,  

making popcorn for the family one evening when supper wasn't real filling.  

Standing there watching my family munching happily,

and me munching happily, too. 

Keeping my hands, my heart, my mind, and my apron busy doing what I can 

while I can.

No dramatics, no worries, no energy wasted on unchanneled tears when I could be spending it loving someone--or praying for those I love. 

O God of the mother's kitchen and floury apron, infuse my kitchen and my home and hands and heart with Your love and Your grace each day. 

Amen. 

 

Three Spoons in the Honey of His Love

Last week a friend stopped by who has a lot of bee hives and sells honey. We provide his wife, who cannot handle store bought cow milk, with our good goat milk. In turn they share honey with us, including some thicker, stickier, lighter-colored honey than usual. This honey had been made during a wet season, with more moisture in it, and it ends up with more probiotics in it than normal our friend says.

 

When our friend asked if we had finished the jar of honey yet, I said no, waving over at the counter where the jar sat. He stepped over to  look inside the jar. 

"Three spoons in it!" he exclaimed. 

What? Sure enough. I had to take a picture! Somebody or somebodies must have loved their honey! 

I love honey, but I am not allowed to eat it anymore because cancer cells gobble up sugar and grow.

"When I get to heaven," I said a day or two ago when my family was slathering honey or maple syrup on their buckwheat pancakes,  

"I'm going to eat all the maple syrup I want!'

So I must find another kind of honey and syrup to indulge in, like music.

When I cannot eat honey, I can still sing. 

I can attend the community Easter cantata, as I did last evening. I hated to go by myself, but Jonathan couldn't go, and I wanted to make contacts in the community and hear some good music, so I went. 

And I can sit there with tears running down my cheeks as they narrate the gospel story and sing this beautiful, reverent song about the cross--

with a rugged cross standing next to the choral group on the platform of the high school auditorium.

My sins put him there, but He died for me

so that I could be forgiven.

He shed His blood--like great sweet drops of honey, dripping on the sand.

Drops so full of love that I can take in my spoon

and taste and see that the Lord is good. 

And I can be forever satisfied with the honey of His love!

New Book Published--and Another Started

 Today my sixth book, Lemons in January, arrived by UPS--three boxes of them. I had ordered 250 to be printed.

The other three boxes were shipped to Ohio for the missionary reading course this year for the Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist churches. My old friend Lydia Kunselman spent many hours helping to edit and edit again this book. If any errors remain in it, put that on my account. I already discovered a double period at the end of a sentence near the end of the book. How did I miss that?

 I am so grateful for how God allowed me the strength and time to see yet another book published, this time with true stories from my year teaching in Honduras where we picked lemons in January--hence the title of the book!

No sooner was Lemons in January being sent for proofs and then to the printer than I was beginning to write another book--this time about the "underground" trip my brother Elon and I took to C h i n a in 1989, the year of unrest there. My tentative title is Under His Wings in China, but another appropriate title could be "We Were There During Tia nan men Squ are Mass acre."

 Yes, my brother Elon (whose journal of the trip is pictured above) and I were in the country, though far from Bei jing, when that happened. And yes, it affected our trip majorly, but you'll  have to read my book to find out the exciting details. I am sitting on pins and needles myself, writing the book, and I know the whole story! It is that exciting! I have been writing nearly every single day and am just a few chapters from the end. Yes, those two weeks are filling up an entire book--not a long book, but I'm guessing it will have about 120 pages. So if my blog hasn't been updated as often, or isn't as inspirational as it could be, maybe it's because I'm too busy writing another book!

I feel an urgency to write my stories--not so people can read about me, but so they can read about God's faithfulness and care to someone as simple and lowly as I am. 

I want the readers to know that if God would lead and protect and care for someone as straggly and skinny and simple and weak and sometimes crazy as Anna, He will surely do the same for them!

Seventeen Eggs--He Wants to Gather Us!

One warmer day this late winter, our happy hens gave us seventeen eggs!

 

I've taken on the pleasant task of gathering the eggs each day (at least usually), and I just love all the different colors of eggs our hens give us.  

But then for a couple days, we were only getting about eight eggs. Something seemed to be wrong. Danny had taken out the bag of wood chips that used to be on the big shelf in the chicken coop, and that is where a few hens liked to lay their eggs. 

They were like, "Where are we supposed to lay our eggs now?" 

There is an empty nesting box just sitting there welcoming any egg-layers, but they went and hid in a corner under the shelf, Hannah discovered, and did their laying business!

Thankfully we found them before they went bad!

We use a lot of eggs around here, especially for breakfast.

So last week after Jonathan was at the Arms Around the World board meeting in Mitchell, SD, he ran into Tractor Supply and picked up some new chicks for us. 

Danny repurposed a broken water tank into a chick pen, and even created a couple of pretend mother hens, complete with feathers, for the chicks. They love to hide under these feathers any time they are scared by loud noises.

It seemed very appropriate that I was reading in Luke right about that time, where Jesus was saying, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem...how often would I have gathered you, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, 

but you would not!" 

 My prayer is, "Lord, may we let You gather us under Your wings! May we not be among the 'would not' group, but accept You as Lord and come to You for refuge from our fears and distresses. Truly You want to protect us, comfort us, and hold us safe in the darkness!"
 

When Glue Smiles

Today was one day in the week when Jonathan stayed home with Danny to do some work on our own house, because Crystal is planning to move into our basement apartment at the end of her school year at Mt. Zion Bible School. Plus we have offered to keep the entire choir from Northwest Indian Bible School in a few weeks when they come through on choir tour with the director's family and my old friend Connie Sanders. She used to be girls' dorm dean at Allegheny Wesleyan College when I was there, and now she is dean at NIBS. 

They need a place to stay for three nights.

Anyway,the basement bathroom is coming along. Danny set the vanity and sink and even did the plumbing so the sink works!

Today they glued in the shower surround, after Danny glued circles onto the back of it. 

"You have to make glue circles," Jonathan explained, "so that it creates suction and sticks to the wall."

Danny did better than that. He made glue circles, but turned them into smiles--as if the glue was not just going to do its job, but it was going to do it cheerfully!

Just like Danny and Hannah cheerfully helping their daddy with landscaping and building block retaining wall and steps out front,

not just doing the job, but doing it with a smile. 

Danny has been doing other work with a smile, too, such as putting new tin on the back of the Mission fire station.  

He and one or two other workers enjoyed doing this job-- 

and Danny would have gotten roped into applying as a volunteer fireman except that he is not quite eighteen yet! The recruiter was quite disappointed to discover this, and Danny was disappointed, too. 

That very day there were four fires along the road not far away, because a tanker truck had blown a tire and was driving along throwing sparks, lighting one fire after another in the tinder dry grass along the road.  In the absence of other firemen, Jonathan had been asked to drive the one water truck to the fire.

Thankfully, the fires didn't spread far, and Jonathan got back to the station, minus his phone which he accidentally left in the water truck!

What a day at the fire station!

Wedding Invitation--Our Daughter and Tommy!

A few weeks ago we received a very, very special wedding invitation--from our own daughter Rose and her fiance Tommy.

 

It's hard to believe. At last we have a daughter getting married. 

June 15th is the big day! Before that, there is a bridal shower on April 10th, at our old church, High Plains Fellowship. Hannah is excitedly looking forward to that. Oh, and so am I! Danny is looking forward to traveling down with us and getting to see Sam and sisters and friends again.

I feel so blessed to know Rose has a good mother-in-law, besides a good husband-to-be.  She has been such a good friend to me. Today we were texting back and forth a little about our mother-of-the-bride or mother-of-the-groom dresses.  

I was thinking recently how it almost seems as if the past thirty years have slipped suddenly away since I first went to Ukraine and then got married and started having babies--one after another. Life was so full and so busy and so exhausting. 

But it was so fulfilling, with never a dull moment.

No end of adventure when you got Jonathan and Anna together with a bunch of littles!

Two weeks ago, our pastor at Lakota Chapel asked Jonathan to talk about Ukraine, and give our opinion about what is happening there today. So Jonathan did, and I shared a true story about one of the young students we knew in Ukraine who is still serving God today. It was the story Dima himself told at the IHC convention last year--how he used to hate the woman in Lithuania who took his father away from his mother in Ukraine, how he hated his father and his little half-brother. But then Jesus came into his life with all His glorious love, and all the anger and hatred melted away. When the war came and Dima's family needed a place to escape, it was the used-to-be-hated little brother who messaged Dima, "Send your family to us. We will find places for them!" 

It made me so happy to unpack a nesting doll and use it again, to talk about our beloved Ukraine again. 

Writing my books of stories from my journals and newsletters and life brings back a lot of memories.  I don't know what the future holds, but I am grateful for the blessings the Lord has given us. Jonathan and I plan to fly to Arizona again in a week and a half, for doctor appointment, and cancer treatments. I am so grateful we have happy events like a bridal shower and later a wedding to look forward to after that!