The Joy of Worship

"Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing."

Our family so loves to sing and play instruments together and with brothers and sisters in Christ. Whenever we have people over to sing, it is sooooo refreshing to worship the Lord as a group. During the week we sing as a family in the evenings 2-3 times a week. Whenever we do, we almost always have to make ourselves stop at 10:00 p.m.. :-) Dh, Sunshine, and Vision all sing harmony while I sing the melody and it almost makes me cry at times. I love the verse that says God inhabits the praises of His people. Last week, during one of our sing times we were talking about how we can't wait to sing with the angels in heaven to our Holy God! Can you even imagine?????!!!! It will be the most amazing beautiful thing ever...to be in God's presence and to praise Him all together in perfect harmony. I can't wait to be able to sing harmony in heaven since I can't sing a hoot of harmony here. ;-) Here we are singing together during our Bible time in school. The little neighbor boy loves to join in and often plays the marraca.

It is so beautiful when Vision plays his harmonica. He is very much a beginner, but I still really enjoy it.

Bible/sing time is one of my favorite parts of the day. We also have been doing Scripture memorization during this time.

Are we ready?? That is a question that the Lord has really laid on our family's heart. Are we ready for hard times, for persecution, for maybe even the end times. As a result of this heart burden we have started to spend most of our school time at home studying the Bible, memorizing Scripture, copying the Bible, praying, singing, and reading very inspiring biographies of Christians who have utterly lived their lives for the Lord. I was recently reading the parable about the 10 virgins and my heart just cried out that I want to be ready for my bridegroom. I think Jesus desires us to live every day being ready and waiting...for Him!! My husband and I want ourselves and our dear, dear children to be ready for whatever the future holds. We don't know how long we will be doing this new school plan, but at least for a season. The children and I are already so blessed by it. It has opened up some really precious times before the Lord as a family that I don't know if it would have happened otherwise.

The biography we are reading together is 'I Dared To Call Him Father'. It is a very inspiring story about a Muslim woman who came to the Lord. We are all copying in the book of Matthew at various spots.

Well, God bless you all so wonderfully. May God strengthen each of you in the things you have to do this week. May we all be more than conquerers.

Help us Lord to not let our love grow cold and to be longing for your appearing.

More Curls, Bike Ride, & Middle Eastern Dinner

Hello family and friends! I hope you are all having a blessed week. I just had to post these two pictures of Beloved's curls when wet. This is what his hair looks like when freshly washed. We all think it is the cutest thing ever and cannot not stop ooooing and aaaaing over his adorableness. :-) It is so fun to have some hair in our family that is other than stick straight! LOL In August we went on a family bike ride that was really fun. We borrowed a neighbor's bike trailer for Silas to ride in...he did great! We packed a meal and took off into the 105 degree heat. After riding for about 8 miles we stopped by the wayside for our meal. We were all soaked in sweat. :-< Now 8 miles out here is a bit more challenging than where we used to live. The hills here are almost constant which makes for wonderful excerise. After our meal we turned around and headed back home. On the way back we all got cold since the sun had gone down and the temp had dropped about 30 degrees. Since we live at a higher elevation, it is almost always cool to cold at night. We really like that about where we live. Sunshine and Vision did great to bike for 16 miles up and down hills. It was a beautiful ride and Beloved fell asleep on the way home.

The other night we made middle eastern food for supper. We had salad, bread, dates, and hummus. I made the hummus in our blender with garbanzo beans. It was all simple yet delicious! Our family loves to try food from other countries! So far, my personal favorite is probably Thai food. We have made food from Mexico, Africa, India, Nepal, the Middle East, and Russia. It is really fun to make food from some of the countries that we study in our Geography.

A close-up of the hummus. We just spread the hummus on the bread to eat it. This bowl is one of my favorites and is extra special since it was 99 cents from Goodwill! :-) It is so fun to see what treasures can be found at resale shops.