August Interests

Here is our new calf with his mommy, Mrs. Wow.I know most of you had garden salads from your own garden long ago, but finally our gardens bore enough to actually make a 100% homegrown salad! The children were so proud!
The extra project for August was to try to get our garage under control. I would have taken a "before" picture if I hadn't been so ashamed. But here the boys are assembling one of the five shelves Jonathan bought to make a difference in the garage. The reason you don't see much stuff is that much of it is outside. Don't ask me to take a picture of the outside of our garage right now!!

I managed to get the above picture before the boys caught on. By now they have caught on and are trying to NOT get their picture taken. With the mother they have, that does not work. They get a picture taken of them anyway, and she puts it on the blog--like this!! Next time, they may as well grin and bear it.

Daddy having several children help him stain the cedar swing I bought for our anniversary.

Roping, Kids, and Puppies

Now it was Bro. Reiff's turn to share an object lesson. He had two little ropes that he tied around his neck. There were two of them and he tied both around his neck. He could never break those ropes. Then he had at least three or four children take turns tying the ropes into even more knots. There was no way he could ever get free from those ropes and those knots!

Bro. Reiff compared the way he was all caught in those ropes to the way some people are caught in sin. Some are so deep in sin that they think they can never come loose. They can never get free. Then he asked if we thought he could get free. We didn't think so. Except that we thought there must be some trick to it. And sure enough there was. Bro. Reiff grabbed hold of each rope and gave a quick yank and behold! The ropes broke! You better believe we all gathered around to watch him explain the trick! But maybe someday we will come to your place and do this object lesson, and we don't want you to know the trick, so either you will have to come visit us or we will have to come visit you to show you. Ask us next time.

Well, about two weeks ago, we had a harrowing day when our black nanny goat couldn't have her kids. I ended up taking her to the vet, expecting whatever kids she was going to have would be stillborn. Instead, when the vet delivered the first dead kid--it ended up being alive! That poky vet hurried up really fast! He ended up delivering triplets! Here they are in the little pen in the garage that we fixed for them.

Unfortunately, one kid did not make it, but the others are fine and dandy (see below in the wagon), and I will have to take them to the vet again in a couple days for them to be disbudded. I decided not to try to do it myself this time.

And below is one of our newest batch of goldendoodle puppies. Yesterday we took pictures and have them advertised.

Here is another picture with some of our flowers in the front flowerbed.

Rosie's Birthday

Rose and the girls had a wonderful time decorating her blueberry cake with real flowers--petunias and marigolds from our flower garden! I knew marigolds were edible, and we hoped petunias wouldn't hurt anything either! There were a few candy butterflies.

Here is Rose with her cake. We had her party at our nearby park, and invited two other families, Grandma and pa, and Bro. Glen and Sis. Helen Reiff, who are filling in for a few weeks at our church while we are waiting to find a pastor. We like to have the fill-in pastors out if we can, and this was a nice excuse since Grandma and pa could bring them.

Sis. Helen Reiff is tremendous with object lessons for children and adults alike. (As you can see in the photo, young and old are crowded around watching her give an object lesson----EEEEKKS! Hannah and Danny just came in with two toads to proudly show me. I try, oh, I try so hard to be appreciative, but it really is hard for me to enjoy an upside down toad being handed so near my eyeballs by my smallest daughter. I mean, Danny with a big toad is bad enough, but to have my little daughter bringing in toads leaves me wondering what kind of daughter I have!!) So much for that, and back to the object lesson (perhaps Sis. Reiff could come up with object lessons from toads, too!)

I had asked Sis. Reiff to bring an object lesson for all the children, and she shared a little story from her life. A young fellow at GBS showed her how to balance ten nails on one nail without the ten ever touching the board that the first nail was nailed through. When Sis. Reiff had tried to figure out how to balance them, she couldn't. But when she turned the nails over to the young fellow who knew the trick, all the nails balanced perfectly!

Mrs. Reiff compared that to how her life was all messed up and out of balance before she turned everything over to Jesus. After that, Jesus took all the broken pieces of her life and brought balance into her life.

Then Sis. Reiff asked several volunteers to try to balance these nails. Sammy was first, then Jonathan, then another boy. Here are the ten nails balancing on the head of the first nail.
Can you figure out how they did it?

Family Photo 2011

Mischief made us have to take more pictures. Can you spot the culprit?One, two, three, say, "Mrs. Wow!" Jonathan shouted. "Longhorns!"

Sam, Jonathan and hay going up to the longhorn pasture to try to lure our cow back.

Timmy's birthday.

Jonathan gives Timmy a birthday ride on a borrowed four-wheeler.

"Fruit with Patience"

Has God's Word ever seemed dead to you? It has to me. Recently I could not get anything out of it. Then I realized that it wasn't about God's Word. It was about me. I was feeling dead! So I just told God about it. And wondered if God's Word would speak as I opened it again--just because. As you scroll through this pictures the children took of our garden plants, here are some thoughts God gave me that I thought were worth sharing.

"Your Word is a light to me," I said to Him. Would He shine a light? He did. That day I read about the seed the sower planted. Some fell into a thorny patch, and were "choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity." I pondered that. I am so oppressed with cares, sometimes with money problems, and occasionally with pleasures (or the lack thereof). But I felt that I should read on .

Then there are those who "with a noble and good heart keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience. " The word "patience" was a light to my path."
Jesus did not say we should eliminate cares, money and pleasures from our life. He said we dare not be CHOKED with them. In other words, we have to have space and time in our lives for bearing fruit to maturity. We have to have margin. Cares will be there. We need money to live; we are obligated to pay our debts. We need some pleasure to keep a sparkle in our eye. But we must watch that we do not become ensnared, overcome, choked by these things to where we cannot prioritize what really matters and give time and space to eternal things like growth in grace and patience in tribulation; like teaching our children diligently, praying without ceasing, giving thanks, submitting to one another, loving God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves, worshipping God.

The thorns will be all around, even in the garden or at the edge. But they must be kept under control, at a distance. We cannot let cares, money and pleasure crowd out the word of God, our love for Jesus, and our love for one another. We must prioritize bearing fruit with patience, and patience means time.

Patience means endurance. Patience means keeping on growing and bearing fruit despite the battle against the encroachment of cares, money issues and pleasures. Lord, grant us noble and good hearts that keep Your Word and bring forth fruit with patience.

Tent and Longhorns

Eric Lefever puts his youthful energy to use using a jack to pull out the tent stakes.The men and boys start pulling down the tall tent poles.
Now they are folding and rolling up the tent tarps.

I don't have time to tell the 3-week long story about our cow and steer getting out of our pasture and deciding to live three weeks with the longhorns near the bluffs. Here they are.

The girls made 4th of July cookies.

We ate them.

Helping Take Down Tent

Tuesday evening last week, I joined Jonathan and the boys to help take down the tent meeting tent by our church. Jonathan is pulling down the side tarps. Jon McVey is taking down lights. Bro. Gault and Edington are rolling up carpet.

Danny helps carry chairs.
And slides down tent poles!

Sam pulls out stakes and sticks out his tongue.

Anna and Naomi French help unlace two of the three sections of ceiling tarp. Oops, this picture is out of order. This is after the tent came down.