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.

Curls & Cheddar Corn Chowder

I happen to love the art of cooking and serving food. Oh yes, and eating it! :-) So you will probably notice that I am often including something about food in my posts. For my birthday I got two soup cookbooks from one of my sisters and her husband. We are having so much fun trying out these soups as a family. We have only made three soups so far, but are looking forward to making many more. One of the books is titled "The New England Soup Factory" and the other one is "The Culinary Institute of America Book of Soups". Wonderful cookbooks to own!! So here we are having a new soup from the Soup Factory book. It is Cheddar Corn Chowder. Delicious!! This was a wonderful soup! Dh so loves coming home to a warm kitchen with yummy, healthy food being prepared. It warms his heart. Along with the soup we are having salad and bread. Vision did the garnishing of the soup with fresh chopped chives. Nancy Campbell has really inspired me in the area of cooking with love and gusto for my family and others. She has a book/Bible study that I have really been encouraged and challenged by. It is called, "The Family Meal Table and Hospitality". We also have a DVD of her speaking about this subject called "The Family Meal Table". Both of these are just wonderfully inspiring! Here is our precious Beloved who is getting the MOST adorable curls! We can't believe that God has blessed us with such a beautiful, special baby. I am sorry that this picture is flipped wrong. Can you believe those huge, chocolate eyes?? They make my heart melt.

Pancakes & Park

There is a beautiful walking park near where we live. There are all kinds of trees and bushes planted there with wonderful, winding paths all throughout. We took the children there to walk and read God's Smuggler together. What a beautiful day! Someone walking by kindly took a family picture for us. Our three blessings! I love this picture and am sooooo thankful for how much Sunshine and Vision adore Beloved! If you were a mouse in our house you might get a bit nauseated from listening to us all coo and oogle over Beloved! :-) Remember Dad how I used to talk to our dog? Well, I am afraid things are even worse now with three of us all talking to Beloved that way. Beloved found this box of fruit that was left on our doorstep. Here is our precious son making pancakes for us. Someone gave us some buckwheat flour so this was our first attempt at making buckwheat pancakes. They were delicious! Vision loves to cook and at times says that he would like to be a chef like his uncle.

How Fun!!!

Last week the children and I got together with one of our neighbors to learn how to make chappatis. We invited another neighbor lady that is from Nepal to teach us. We had a wonderful time! She taught us a few things about the type of food they eat in Nepal and how they spice their food. I find things like this utterly fascinating. It is so good for our children to be around people of other cultures. Our town is really great for that-there are lots and lots of people of all different races here. To make the chappatis you just mix flour, salt, and water together until you have a soft, but not wet, dough. Then you roll them out into circles and fry them. We ate them warm with hummus on them. Yum!! The people from her country eat them with beans, rice, and/or vegetables. After we were done making a few dozen chappatis, we made fresh, homemade french fries. These were so yummy. She seasoned the hot fries with salt, chili powder, tumeric, and garam masala. I would have never thought to put those seasonings on fries, but it was wonderful. On Sunday our family made chappatis and french fries again for our lunch. Dh had not been able to try all of this wonderful food last week since he was at work, so we had a great time making it all for him. He thought is was all delicious as well. Another night we had Vawanee over to just sing and talk with our family. She is Hindu and told us in lots of detail what she believes. We had served her hot tea when she first came. As she was talking to us, she said, "Why do you care about me? Why do you serve me hot tea and sing beautiful music to me? You don't know me. Who am I to you? No one ever invites me into their home and gives me tea." We told her that we care about her because the Jesus that we love and serve cares about her. We are just praying and praying that she will see Jesus' love for her through us and that she will know that eternity is real. It has been such a blessing to be able to be so closely involved with our neighbors here. Apartment living is very good for that. :-) Here is the chappati frying. We also made some non-fried ones...sort of like a tortilla. Here I am rolling them out. She was very specific in her technic for rolling them out. She knows just how to do it so that they are very round. Vawanee talked and talked to us while she cooked. I am so glad that she felt free to tell us what she believes and thinks about things.

Sweet Words

"That I may make the voice of thanksgiving heard and may tell of all Your wondrous

works. Lord, I love the habitation of Your house, and the place where Your glory dwells....My foot stands on an even place; In the congregation will I bless the Lord!" ~Psalms 26:7, 8, & 12

I hesitated to post this post (so as not to draw attention to our situation), but I am hoping that this will encourage you all to really, REALLY trust the Lord...especially when hard times come. He cares so much for us and says that we are graven on the palm of His hands. Things have been a bit slim at our home due to the cost of Beloved's adoption and because dh wasn't able to work full time for about 3 months due to an injury and lack of work. Have you ever been in a place where you are counting your spare pennies, nickles, and dimes so that you can put $7.00 of gas in the tank? Or how about bread and peaches for supper? Have you ever gone weeks without even having $1? What about not being able to do laundry for a week due to a lack of quarters for the laundry mat? Handwashing in the tub anyone?? LOL Did you ever wonder if you will have food to eat tomorrow?

This is where are family is right now, but our Abba Father has been SOOOO loving and kind. We have not gone without one thing that we have truly needed. And, it has been so good for us and our children, not only to learn contentment, but to see God work on our behalf. We are so undeserving of all of the things God has blessed us with through brothers and sisters in Christ, but we are deeply, deeply thankful. "Seek first the kingdom of and ALL these things will be added unto you." "Don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself." And like the apostle Paul, we want to be content whether we abound or whether we are abased.

The first picture is a picture of what our fridge looked like a week and a half ago. :-) I don't believe we have ever had a fridge like that in our 12 years of marriage. The rest of the pictures are a praise to our Father. All of the food you see was lovingly given to us by the Body of Christ. Almost daily the Lord sends some big or small gift our way. Sometimes a gallon of milk, sometimes a $100 bill. O, how thankful we are. God overwhelmingly bless all of you that have so generously given. So, if your family ever goes through times like these, know that you have a Jehovah Jireh that will provide for all of your needs. "O how He loves you and me!"

A couple of days ago our beautiful Sunshine came to me and said, "Mama this is our mess of blessings!" She had a big smile on her face and was referring to the food that was covering our counters and the bulging fridge. I right away told her how true and lovely her words were. She knows how much I love a spic and span kitchen, but who couldn't enjoy a 'mess of blessings' ? Thank you for those sweet words dear daughter!

Father, I thank You for your lovingly, generous provision. Father, I want to be as faithful to You as You are to us. Help me to be truly grateful for all of the big and small blessing you have given us. Lord, we just want to love you with passionate hearts that are filled with contentment. I just praise you Lord and give you glory for all of the amazing things you are teaching us. I love You my Abba Father.

"Give us a passion that cannot be denied,

A vision that cannot be dimmed,

And an obession that cannot be quenched."

Hmmmm....

Try as I might, I cannot seem to get blogger to allow me to add any more than five images to a single post. So, here are some pictures of us grilling pizza. Enjoy!!

Also, here is a sweet picture of our dd with her finished rag doll. She had so much fun making it! A friend gave the kit to Sunshine as a gift--thank you!