Easter with Kezia's Family and Church

Easter photo of my youngest sister Kezia and her family.

A behind-the-scenes picture of Easter Eve after arriving late at Chris and Kezia's lovely home. 

I couldn't help thinking as we pulled into the driveway how cozy my sisters' homes look with lights glowing inside, checkered curtains at the windows, and little lamps or candles. Here Kezia is practicing her harp to accompany Crystal and me next day in the service.

Crystal and Carrie playing a piano duet, "O Worship the King," after Crystal played a beautiful rendition of "Christ the Lord is Risen Today."

 What a treat to sing with sister and daughter accompanying! We did "I Walked Today Where Jesus Walked." Then our family sang "Jesus Was a Carpenter...

and He worked with a saw and hammer.

And His hands could form a table true enough to last forever.

And He could have spun His life out in the coolness of the morning,

But He laid aside His tools, and He walked the burning highway

To build a house from folks like you and me."

Then they had asked Jonathan to share about his work with Mission Helps. We were glad to be a blessing--and then they shocked us with an incredible offering--which we took as a token of God's blessing and provision for us as we are starting to branch out a little more recently with Mission Helps trips. It was so unexpected--and we thought how we keep wondering how we are going to do what we feel God is calling us into, but wherever He calls, He always provides!

 Our family on Easter Sunday near the church parsonage in Illinois

 Loved this very midwestern scene--church across the road from granaries. Chris was loading Kezia's harp.

 Jonathan had wanted to go on Sunday afternoon to Eric Heimlich's farm in Indiana, but having gotten to Kezia's so late, I was terribly disappointed to only have minutes to visit apart from all the hurrying to get baths and put ham in a crockpot and practice our music and get everyone to bed after a weary day of travel.

So we put off going to Indianapolis till after IHC. And we stayed Sunday afternoon with Kezia's family. She had beautiful children's books which I read to the little ones.

 Kezia's little Lydia was just a little dolly!

Kezia, Crystal and I had sung an acapella trio in church that morning, "Because He Lives."

"How sweet to hold a newborn baby,

 to feel the pride and joy he gives!

"But sweeter still, the calm assurance, 

This child can face uncertain days because He lives!"

This precious time with family, humble church folk and friends reminded us that because He lives we can face tomorrow--even when the yesterdays have been fraught with one difficulty after another, 

even when you begin to wonder if anyone at all thinks you are doing the right thing,

but remembering that when anyone decides and keeps deciding to serve God

the devil will fight tooth and nail.

But the madder the devil gets, the more likely it is that you are doing the right thing. 

Birthday Thoughts on My Birthday

I just posted photos a while ago of our time in the Creation museum in Kentucky. I saved these special ones for a separate post--a birthday thought post.

 

 A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. So without too many words, you can see what meant so much to me outdoors at the Creation Museum.

 While the others were at the petting zoo, I slipped away to enjoy a few solitary and quiet moments--just the Lord and me--and this cardinal....

 and flowers all around. My heart tried not to hurt--or did I just let it hurt? I am just an eastern transplant that can't help how much I miss the woods and the violets and daffodils of springtime.

 But God has given me other beautiful flowers to brighten my life!

 And different kinds of sunshine, like little boys following along behind their daddy...

 the one who is the sunshine in my life, the one I look forward to his coming home each day. 

I want to share a couple sweet things the Lord did for us and me on the trip. Right before we got to the Creation Museum, I was raving about the beautiful budding trees, and Jonathan remembered that he needed Claritin for his allergies. I felt like I can never enjoy spring anymore since Jonathan gets so miserable with his allergies, and I hurt for him and choose not to go for walks together where there are blossoms or flowers or lilacs or anything with pollen that will just get his allergies stirred up. And I miss those things so much. I went to look through the motorhome for where in the world did I put his Claritin, and later, after we had spent all day at the museum, walking all over the place with all those flowers, we realized that he had done okay and not been miserable! He had an allergy treatment in town a week or two earlier, and taken that Claritin, and perhaps those helped, but it also seemed that the Lord was just good to us!

Another blessing that happened was on the trip home from Ohio and Indiana, I offered to drive a while for Jonathan as he had been driving for hours, bucking fierce wind across Missouri and Kansas. Once the wind suddenly blew our motor home halfway over onto the shoulder! I thought we were going to blow over, and shrieked! But we didn't. Jonathan was getting so tired, so we stopped and I took over. For just a few minutes, the wind continued to blow, but all of a sudden, I noticed that it had really calmed, and the motor home wasn't swaying so badly. For that first while, I had to clutch the steering wheel for dear life and on perfectly straight roads, I was having to keep turning it perhaps an eighth to a fifth of a turn just to keep the motor home on the road. But it was like the Lord knew how tired Jonathan was, and how much his wife wanted to help, and just said, "Peace be still!" I pulled over at a McDonalds later, and when we got out, the wind was rough. I could not imagine how I had driven easily in that wind! Perhaps the Lord had sent an angel to part the wind for us to go through! When Jonathan started driving again, the wind was bad again. Then it let up again--and we praised the Lord!

Most of the trip on the way to Illinois the first day of our trip, we had fought wind, too. In fact, I was very sick in the morning from all the swaying of the motor home. I had never had carsickness before, but several of us felt sick. Rose threw up! It was hard to want to eat all day. Lots of things to overcome! But God gives grace!

Another thing I had to overcome was when my shoulder blade/neck almost went out the first morning of IHC, and I felt a little panicky that I was going to spend IHC in pain. But I remembered how to prop myself in bed just so for a while to get my bones back in place, and thank the Lord! The pain eased a lot and was almost gone by evening. God is so good to help us!

At the Creation Museum

Our family was blessed to visit the Creation Museum enroute to the Inter-Church Convention in Dayton, OH, in late April. We met our friends the Delbridges there and spent the day with them. She took family pictures of us on a bridge there, and I hope to put a similar one on the top of the blog if I can figure out how to do it!

Walking across the floating bridge...

 Entering the main indoor part of the museum. It is true that you could spend two whole days there and enjoy every bit. We didn't even take in the planetarium show, as it was expensive for a whole family. Though if we had known about the family membership for a year, we might have purchased that, because it includes unlimited planetarium shows and much more.

 Enjoying the information about the truths of God's Word and the wonders of creation.

 Well, I just got interrupted by a friend from church calling to wish me a happy birthday! That is the fourth call today from friends and family! God bless them everyone! I feel very loved!

Below is Hannah dancing about on the swinging bridge. 

You are not supposed to run or jump, so she danced!

 I was so thankful to see these beautiful daffodils--and an eastern springtime in general! I wanted a picture of Jonathan and me there for our birthday picture!

 More daffy-down-dillies! I just drink in the beauty for all the days at home where there aren't many flowers...

 If it had been the weekend, the children could have enjoyed camel rides which are only given on Fridays and Saturdays.

 While the children were all at the petting zoo, I slipped away back to the picnic pavillion where I could sit and watch the cardinals, robins, butterflies, and beautiful flowers. It was hard to tell how I felt--kind of like crying as I miss the eastern birds and flowers and beauty so much. Later, I sent the children all back running back this path on a treasure hunt to find what I had discovered...

 At the corner of the pavilion a robin flew out of a thorny bush, and I saw a nest. I could barely see one blue egg, but when I set my camera up and took a picture, this is what the camera saw!

 Inside, we enjoyed two or three talks or shows about creation and what we can teach our children and how we can answer people who do not believe in a 6-day creation. Below, we watched a show about where and when dinosaurs disappeared, as it is obvious from fossils that such creatures did exist. Job talks about such a creature. It was most interesting. It is thought that dinosaurs lived best on certain kinds of plants that thrived before the flood, but after the flood, climate changed and plant life changed, limiting how the dinosaurs were able to survive or multiply. 

I never cared for dinosaurs, thinking they were used so much as part of the evolution theories, but learning the truth about them really made me appreciate these amazing creatures more.

 We were amazed at the many collections of beautiful insects--all made by God!

 Everything He makes is good!

 Ours and Delbridge children before they all took off to spend three days with the Delbridges while Crystal, Hannah, Jonathan and I went on to Dayton.

May Your Resurrection Day be Blessed!

I am not writing in my blog because I have so little to do, but because I have so much, that I'm kind of on overload, and blogging like this kind of gives me a little re-start for a few minutes. 

Now to get back to packing and getting ready to go back to IHC.

This weekend we are to be at my sister Kezia's church for Easter Sunday.

She and we are practicing some songs to do together, her on the harp. Crystal is practicing the piano accompaniment for "I Walked Today Where Jesus Walked,"  and Kezia is practicing the harp with it as well.

And a little brown sparrow will be trying to sing the words.

Kezia, Crystal and I are supposed to sing "Because He Lives," and she and we have little songs or poems for the little ones to do. Really looking forward to this!

Crosses Are to Lean On

I once read a devotional about a grandmother who did such a good job of raising tomatoes.

One of her secrets was that she put stakes in the ground next to them,

in the shape of crosses,

to keep them from sprawling all over the ground as her neighbors' tomato plants did.

 The tomatoes clung to the crosses, grew, and prospered.

"Crosses are to lean on," that grandmother said.

That really touched me.

So often we think of crosses as something we have to carry, or trials we have to endure, or something we have to do to be different as Christians.
Or maybe as something we have to be nailed on and die on!

But ever think of the cross as something to lean on?

 We all need something to lean on--because life can get pretty wobbly sometimes.

This Easter season, may we remember this grandmother's simple words,

"Crosses are to lean on."

Because It Has a Song

                                        

 "A bird does not sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song."

--quote from an old Taste of Home 

I was going through some things in my drawer a few days ago, and ran across an old letter I wrote family, starting off with that quote--actually from nine years ago, and I had printed it off--and I reread it.

Maybe we don't have all the answers to dish out to people, but we can still sing--in our homes, in our hearts.

Saturday afternoon, I felt like I lost my song for a little while. About a dozen of our church people were practicing for prison service, and I had just a little earlier been hit with something that was too heavy for me--that I didn't have an answer for. I was struggling against the bitterness of it.

I was afraid it was showing all over my face. 

Body language, you know. 

I stood there trying to sing my little solo part, and my voice would hardly sing. It just wobbled. 

Those are moments when it isn't just you getting ready to cry--everyone else probably was, too--unless some were wishing someone would throw me off the platform!

The next thing I found myself doing was saying, "I don't need to sing a solo. I'm just falling apart!"

And then I was shaking so bad that I put my music down and exited the sanctuary. 

Maybe no one else wobbles every once in a while like I do. But thanks to a couple sturdy friends who took the little brown sparrow who had lost its song

under their wing

and prayed with me and cared about what I was dealing with even though I could not share all the details. 

They were determined that the bird who had lost both wing and song

should sing again.

The Lord lifted the burden and took away the sting of bitterness, and Jonathan and I went to prison with the rest--and we laughed and chatted on the way,

and waited quietly as the prison wardens waited for doors to unlock

praying and drawing hard on God's strength.

 It did not have an answer, but a little brown sparrow 

sang again.

Busy Days in Snowy Spring

Putting together a display board for both Arms Around the World Convention at our church last week and for the Inter-Church Holiness Convention in Dayton, OH next week where we are to represent the Construction Department of Mission Helps alongside Mission Helps.

 Hannah and Danny "help" by peeling off double-sided tape for Mommy to use to stick pictures on the board.

Danny came to me this morning, begging me to patch his holey pants! Poor guy, I could not find matching patches, but he is fine with what  I sewed on. Plus, no one will see them except whoever looks at this blog!! :)

A poem the boys memorized for presentation night

 

"Overheard in an Orchard"

Said the robin to the sparrow,

"I would surely like to know

Why all these anxious human beings

Rush about and worry so!"

Said the sparrow to the robin,

"Friend, I think that it must be

That they have no Heavenly Father

Such as cares for you and me!"

What the winter storm we had last week left behind in our side yard--drifts and bare ground.

 More of what it left by the pasture fence

 And what it left on our deck steps

The children built forts and had a ball.

Rose and her fort

   The boys rolling a humongous snowball--

 until...they discovered someone was taking their picture.

 

Sorry this looks a little elongated, but Hannah had a chick on her shoulder.

 Captured this one through the window when they didn't know it! Everyone, including Mom, has been helping with shoveling a trailer load of composted horse manure from our neighbor all over our yards and raised beds.