Leaving for Slovakia Tomorrow!

Tomorrow we leave.

The last couple days I was catching up with schoolwork with the boys, 

checking lessons, cooking, cleaning,

ironing a huge stack of clothes and hankies (Jonathan likes his ironed) while uploading photos,

seeing that meals get made,

and more packing.

Below are 3-packs of chapsticks I found at Dollar Tree for $1, bags of cough drops and balloons, and more clearance-priced clothing for the orphans.

A few toys for Hannah to share with the 8-year-old son of the girls' home overseer.

Warm socks, mittens marked down by 75%, underwear for toddlers, shirts for big boys,

God was so good to provide all this! I was able to stuff all these piles of items for the orphans into three large duffle bags or suitcases.

We four Lucases are trying to get by on one carry-on apiece, one personal item such as purse or computer, and a fourth suitcase for Jonathan's tools, my autoharp and a few extra clothing items for ourselves. 

We have to lug our coats along. We were told to prepare for it to be cold enough that we'll need to wear long johns and sweaters and slippers indoors and boots outdoors in the mud.

My nerves are struggling, and so first of all I go to my Jesus to ask for His arms

 around this little lady who is taking one child along who is still coughing,

and boarding plane after plane after plane, sitting through the night tonight, remembering how miserable it was on the way over the ocean to PNG.

Hannah read this poem to me from her reader a week or so ago.

"Dear Father, help me with the love 

That casteth out my fear.

Teach me to lean on Thee and feel

That Thou art very  near.

That no temptation is unseen,

No childish grief too small,

Since Thou, with patience infinite

Dost soothe and comfort all."

 In the past several days, I listen to my little girl read, and watch her sort flower seeds for this spring,

and help Danny with writing a poem for his English lesson.

Here is what he came up with:

" A Day With the Chickens

Early in the morning when the sunbeams show,
The rooster in the henhouse begins to crow.

With his cockadoodledoo he wakens the hens,
Who fly from their roosts and exit the pens.

With a flap and a flutter they chase juicy slugs.
They scratch at their grain and peck at bad bugs.

In their cozy straw nests fresh, brown eggs they lay.
Their young chicks they watch as they peck and they play."

Timmy made that cute sign behind the chicks as he is raising and selling chicks again this spring.

He just got an order of about 100 a week ago. 

They make a ruckus in the post office till we get there to pick them up!

Packing for Slovakia

Just two mornings from tomorrow, Jonathan, Carrie, little Hannah and I will be heading to the airport for Slovakia! We go via JFK Airport in NY, and then Brussels, Belgium. Then I think a short layover in Germany and arriving in Budapest,  Hungary, where the Durhams will pick us up.

Dan and Kandi Boardman are joining us there as well as part of the Mission Helps team. 

We are to spend Sunday there in Budapest, attending the Hungarian church where Ed Durham is to speak Sunday. 

We have piles and piles of clothing for the children at the orphanage, or the girls at the girls' home.

I was thrilled to find most of these vitamins and homeopathic herbal remedies on clearance recently for a fraction of what the original cost was.

In the middle of the muddle, I try to keep the children up with their school work, keep the lessons checked, and meals made.

Yesterday Jonathan and the four children who won't be going to Slovakia took a bunch of the Union Bible College choir up Pikes Peak.

At home, I made elk liver and onions for supper for us all, along with yeah, leftovers.

Saturday night the girls made some of the yummiest pizza we ever ate.

Rose said it was to celebrate her finishing ninth grade. Now she is plunging into tenth grade right away. Today she was laboring over biology.

Also yesterday Carrie passed her driving test and got her driver's license!

So while some of the family was up on the top of the mountain far away with young people,

some of whom were whoozy with the altitude,

 I was riding through the brown prairie with Carrie at the wheel, helping Hannah with a cross-stitch project.

(Hannah is also learning to knit, thanks to the patience and kindness of her sister, Rose.)

I was tempted to feel grumpy when I called Jonathan and he announced that he was on top of Pikes Peak, but after hearing about the months of pain our dear friend and former fill-in pastor Bro. Goodwin has been experiencing, I have nothing to complain about even if I do have to miss Sunday morning choir service due to two sick children, and miss a trip up Pikes Peak due to having to take Carrie for her test. 

Here is the fruit plate we made for the choir's dinner Sunday. 

God was so sweet--the choir is coming back to town tomorrow and I get to go hear them tomorrow!

And next week, I get to be in the mountains of Slovakia!

That is what I told myself when my heart was feeling heavy out in the middle of the dead, brown prairie grass.

I told myself to enjoy the ranches we passed, with the cattle and new calves, and the cottonwood trees along the streambed (probably dried up). 

And wasn't God good, too, that last week I found a cart full of fresh produce on clearance so I could stock up for the children while we are gone, apples, oranges, lemons, grapefruit!

I'll probably post a little more before we leave, as that is how I unwind when I have too much to do!

The Terrible Cock Fight

Sometimes you can see the battle line being drawn...

and sometimes it is less conspicuous.

"After a step of faith most persons are looking for sunny skies and unruffled seas, and when they meet a storm or tempest they are filled with astonishment... The best token of His [God's] Presence is the adversary's defiance, and the more real our blessing the more certainly it will be challenged." -Mrs. Charles E. Cowman

I caught this action on camera a few days ago!

"Let’s hold on to the only promise we can hold to: Life happens in seasons, and no matter what they look like or how long they last, God is fighting for us in the muck. He is fighting with us in the ugliness. He has passed through into the darkness with us. He will deliver us."--Paul Maxwell from Desiringgod

Not everyone will be your best friend;
but God will be.

We may wonder where He was when we were hurting, but He was there all the time.

Here is a verse I shared with friends who are suffering extra pain and sleeplessness after a stroke:

"In all their afflictions, He was afflicted,

and the angel of His presence saved them.

In His love and in His pity He redeemed them and carried them all the days of old." -Isa. 63:9

Why Singing in Praise to God Is Enough

The other day I stopped at a goodwill on my way home after delivering Carrie to her job.

Somebody must have just cleared out a lot of good music CD's, because I found a stack of wonderful music, almost all of which were half off the small goodwill price.

Good music truly enriches my life.

While driving Carrie to work or back, I listen to Family Christian Radio, which is mostly hymns and songs in traditional style, and Bible reading.

How I enjoy the arrangements they play!

Recently I realized how few new CDs we've purchased in the last many years. To be honest, I'm a bit worn out on the music we have.

So how thankful I was to find a whole bunch of fresh CDs, even if they were used!

There were several nice Christmas CD's, a couple Easter ones, and even a Cowboy one from the Wranglers. 
 There was choral music such as Mormon Tabernacle Choir, patriotic music, and hymns played by traditional Salvation Army bands.

Recently I've thought a lot about how we worship and praise God, especially as we see others around us giving expression to their praise in ways that are louder, more emotional, vocal, and intense than ours.

What if we don't shout, wave our arms, run the aisles, jump, burst into tears, or throw songbooks in the air like we've heard of some saint doing?
Does that mean we aren't spiritual enough?
Is simply singing praise to God enough?

According to Scripture it is.

There are times when testimonies, shouts and other forms of praise are also acceptable and good before the Lord, as the Psalms clearly teach.

But simply singing with grace in our hearts to the Lord can be enough--

especially if we are feeling under pressure to perform in other ways for somebody besides the Lord.

I read these thoughts recently from desiringgod.org, how that music can lead us astray, 

or it can stir us for God.

"Why do we sing on Sunday morning? What do we hope to “get out” of church? Do I find my joy in Jesus and his gospel, or merely in an emotional experience? We should repent of singing for mere comfort and self-satisfaction, and seek the larger joys which have their source in God alone."

 "We can become infatuated with the emotional high of singing instead of relishing the splendor of our Savior. We can marvel more at the skills of the musicians than the majesty of our Maker. All too subtly, we can begin to delight more in the praise we offer to God than the praiseworthiness of God."

The "war against any hint of idolatry calls us to examine our own hearts."

 "Too often, even if unconsciously, we have operated according to the mantra, 'I’m so happy, therefore I’ll praise God!'" Rather we should "respond, 'I’ll praise God, so that I can be truly happy in him.'

Brothers and sisters facing persecution, pain, doubt, and depression may not feel like singing when Sunday morning shows up. But...God has given us music to stir our affections. Congregational song connects the wires of God’s truth to our depleted hearts and revives us in seasons of coldness.

I always encourage struggling saints to sing, even if their voice feels faint. Singing in faith is a declaration of truth, but it’s also a plea that the Spirit would make the truth more vivid to our hearts."
--Matt Merker

Following are a few more thoughts from another article:

"Pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards discussed the relationship between singing and love when he said,

The duty of singing praises to God seems to be appointed wholly to excite and express religious affections. No other reason can be assigned why we should express ourselves to God in verse, rather than in prose, and do it with music, but only, that such is our nature and frame, that these things have a tendency to move our affections."

 " We don’t only sing because we feel. We also sing in order to feel.

"Singing requires a great deal of physical involvement: demanding posture, deep breathing, vocal exertion, bodily energy. It has a unique capacity to take mental truths and involve our whole person in response. It can help fan sparks in our affections into flame."

Goat in the Birdfeeder vs. Ecstatic Experiences

If you've never heard of a goat in a birdfeeder before, neither have I,

until our goat got out the other day and decided to check out the bird feeder!

We have moments like these in our life on the prairie--
where goats are sniffing out the birdfeeder, and birds, such as chickens, perch on top of the goat's back!

Mark Galli, in the May 2013 issue of Christianity Today wrote, "I have had ecstatic experiences when the love of God penetrated my whole being."
But those experiences were few, he wrote.

In his desire to experience them more regularly, he discovered that he "could manufacture something very similar to a genuine spiritual experience. But it soon became clear that the search for daily wonder was creating a religion of Mark Galli. It wasn't helping me love my neighbor, though it did help me judge my neighbor as relatively unspiritual, at least compared to me."

 Galli goes on to talk about how we are fascinated with divine encounters because of our "boredom with the life God has given us."
"Instead of a life of experience," he wrote, "Christ calls us to a life of love. And a life of love for the most part means attending to the tedious details of others' lives, and serving them in sacrificial ways that feels, well, not exciting at all.

Rather than sweeping the kitchen, cleaning the toilet...or crunching numbers for another eight hours...
surely life is meant for more than this...

Is this all there is to the 'abundant' Christian life?
Shouldn't my life be more adventurous if God is in me and all around me?


..."Love is precisely denying the self that wants to glory in experience.
The cost of discipleship most of us are asked to pay is to live the life God has given us,serving in mundane ways the people He has put in our path.
 
To be free from the self and to discover such love is the essence of abundant life.

"As Paul put it, in the final analysis, love is not about speaking in tongues, having prophetic powers, understanding all mysteries or knowledge, having experiences of wonder, or being all we can be.
Love instead 'bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Yes, endures....

It is not hard to see why the religion of experience...tempts one to make feeling an idol, or how a religion of feeling leads to the watering down of great gospel themes.
...The road of experience leads nowhere except to the barren desert of the self."

Clothing for Orphans in Slovakia

In just a couple weeks, Jonathan and I are taking Carrie and Hannah with us on our Mission Helps trip to work on the girls' home 

that Ed and Heather Durham are overseeing in Slovakia.

We wanted to take some clothing for the orphan children, and didn't the Lord provide clearance winter clothing at Walmart 

just when we needed some to take over!

In the bag  on the floor in the picture above are dozens of soft red, white, or black gloves, at just 25 cents a pair!

Long-sleeved T-shirt tops or turtlenecks for $3, and classier tops with collars and attractive colors and knits.

 These fuzzy red jackets, for teenagers, above were just $3 each!

And there were black fur neckwarmers (one of them reversible) originally $11.98 marked down to $3.

I got those for special gifts for the directors of the orphanage and girls' home and other special ladies. 

In these Eastern European countries, the people like to dress nicely out in public,

even though they may dress poorly at home.

There are a few warm sweat pants for winter.

Here are these lovely tops, above.

And warm red or white stockings for young girls, and a cute little pair of slippers.

 Two cute pink tops with silver horses on the front.

Now below is a picture I took a couple months ago of the post office downtown in Colorado Springs where I took Carrie and Hannah to apply for their passports. 

I love these massive, old fashioned buildings!

 The girls' passports came in good time, and now we are making plans for our trip with them.

God did what we felt was a miracle in that Jonathan was able to purchase tickets all the way from Denver to Brussels, Belgium,

with his free miles, and it only cost as many miles as if we were flying to Harrisburg!

Also, he could not believe the cheap fare he found from Brussels on to Budapest, Hungary.

Because of that, we decided to take Hannah with us as she really gets lonely when we are gone on these long trips. 

She is very excited to go with us!

Pray for us as we get ready to go!

**************

Here is a quote I read recently:

"After a step of faith most persons are looking for sunny skies and unruffled seas, and when they meet a storm or tempest they are filled with astonishment... The best token of His [God's] Presence is the adversary's defiance, and the more real our blessing the more certainly it will be challenged." -Mrs. Charles E. Cowman