Time Management for Busy Women

Sometimes God Heals in Different Ways!

2012-01-29T14:35:00.000-08:00

This post is way off topic for me, but I thought that some parents out there might benefit from it so here it is...

About one year ago, I woke up to find one of my sons having what I thought was a seizure. Both of us were sleeping in the living room. I was on the sofa because I was a miserable nine months pregnant, and my son had come out in the night and slept across the room. I woke up to some noise and saw him. Since I had no experience with seizures, and I was really scared, we called 911. By the time they arrived things were calmed down, and we ended up taking him to the E.R. where they didn't even seem to think he had really experienced a seizure. I knew what I had seen, but what could I say? We decided to just wait and see what would happen next.

He continued to have similar episodes periodically--but only when sleeping. We made an appointment with a neurologist and since the wait was a couple of months before he could get in, we continued to observe and pray. I had a real feeling that his problem was not a disease per se, but some type of reaction or event being triggered by something he was coming in contact with. I began to carefully observe what he was doing and eating and when he was having seizures. Before we got in to see the neurologist, however, things got worse. He was averaging about three night seizures a week, and one night he had two in the same night.

At this point, I was worn out mentally because these episodes really stressed me out. I began to seriously pray about this problem asking the Lord to show us what to do . One night after everyone else was in bed, I was praying about the problem and as I prayed, I felt clearly that the Lord was going to take care of the problem. A couple of nights later he had another seizure. This was difficult for me because I had felt so sure that God was going to answer my prayer. However, as he was having a seizure I took his hand, and as I did, I saw he had shoe polish stain all over his hand. As I saw it, I immediately felt God speak to me as I have very few times in my life. I can probably count on one hand the times that I have felt God speak so clearly. I felt that he was saying that this was the cause. There is no scientific or reasonable explanation for me to know what I felt, but I felt that this was something I needed to follow up.

Since I knew that he rarely polished his shoes, I knew that the shoe polish itself was definitely not what God was trying to show me. I went in to my computer and began to research and pulled up tons of sites showing the connection between some childhood night time seizures and food coloring. My mind began to connect the dots. I had taken careful observations so now I could reflect on their significance.

That first seizure (which was a more significant seizure) was after eating a significant amount of red velvet chocolate cake. Of course, with Joy's new venture into cake decorating, there were frequently samples of brightly colored pieces of cakes that needed to be eaten by someone...

That day, I decided that whatever we had to do, we were immediately taking him off of all food coloring. I did not think that he was allergic to all food coloring. However, things were in such a state, that I felt that we had to remove all possibilities before trying to single out the culprit.

Beginning that day, his seizures went from averaging three a week to NONE. Weeks went by, and I carefully watched his diet and he had NONE. After about six weeks, we decided to go to Golden Corral for a prize that he earned. Since we still couldn't completely convince ourselves that we had really found the culprit (perhaps it was a really big fluke?), we decided to basically let him get what he wanted. Well, you know what kids get...the brightest colored things--gummies, jellos, etc. That night we paid for it big time and I for several nights afterward. Once we got past that serious of episodes, we just decided that there could be little more debate about the real cause.

We finally got to see the neurologist, and told him our story. He agreed to let us continue with the diet plan although he didn't think it would continue to work, and suggested meds.

Well, to make a long story just a little shorter...it has continued to work. It has been a huge amount of work to eliminate these colorings from his diet. I never could have imagined how much coloring was in our foods, and I think our family already eats a whole lot healthier than the typical family. Even after I eliminated all coloring from his diet, he still had a few episodes after soaking in the tub in cosmetics that were (you guessed it) full of coloring.

Now I know this whole thing sounds really absurd to a lot of people. However, facts show that the day we changed his diet, the seizures stopped. Not only have his seizures stopped, but he's had great changes in behavior. So much so, that someone who didn't know of this situation commented about how much he had matured, and then I told them the story.

Why am I telling everyone our story? Not to start a campaign against food coloring! I have enough to do in life that has more purpose than to devote myself to ostracizing the food industry. I am saying this because there might be some parents out there for whom this information might benefit. My son struggles with the things we have had to limit him from; however, I tell him that I am so thankful that the Lord showed us what was causing the problem. We are blessed because his problem was so obvious. While these ingredients were damaging his body, they could have damaged his body in a silent way and one day we would have woke up to a serious illness or other life threatening situation.

While this one son is completely banned from these colorings, our whole family has adopted a much more conservative approach also to these ingredients. After all, while one child's reaction could be obvious, another child's reaction might not be known for years when it's too late.

There it is...I've put my hat in the ring along with the quacko's and those sponsoring "Food Incorporated." However, thank the Lord, I do have a child that is free of medicine, free of seizures, and in the end has a much healthier diet. Send me your comments...I would love to hear them!

On Marriage...

2011-05-22T12:16:00.001-07:00

Recently I read an article called, "Long-lasting Celebrity couples" with great interest. My first impression was that this article was going to be about well-known couples who have been married for a long time. By the time I had made it just a short way through the article, I realized that the article was not quite what I had expected.

As I began reading the article, I was surprised to see the first featured couple had been married fourteen years. When I got to the next couple, I saw that they had been married nine years. Now considering that the article was titled, "Long-Lasting Celebrity Couples," I was a little surprised to see that the first two featured couples had been married at the most...fourteen years. I am in no way downplaying or criticizing the fact that these couples had stayed married as many as fourteen years, but I really expected the article to reveal some couples who had been married a long time...at least a silver anniversary... and perhaps some beautiful aging couple that had enjoyed living together fifty years.

However, I must say that it saddened me that those who have been married for less than fifteen years now are recognized from a national source for having a "Long- lasting" relationship. When I look at those who have had long-lasting relationships, I look at my grandparents who were married well over sixty years. I look at my parents as well as my in-laws who were married over fifty years. I admire those also who never reached the fifty year mark because one of them passed on, but they stayed committed and cherished each other for thirty or forty years. Yes, it is cause to celebrate when a couple has been married for a year, or ten years, or twenty years, but let's not lower the bar and recognize as models of long-term relationships, those who have been married for what should be just the beginning of a lifetime of commitment.

Now that I've gotten in so far, I want to say that the further I got into the article, I realized that this article was not about well-known couples who had been married a long time. It was about couples who had been "together" for a long time. One of the featured couples stated their position well by saying, "There is really no reason to marry." To further solidify this position, Oprah (who was one of the featured women) stated that she and her partner had chosen a long time ago to have a "spiritual union."

I realize that my idea of marriage is quickly becoming outdated and prudish, but I still think that the only "spiritual union" is one that God approves of. One man. One woman. Married. Until death. A "spiritual union" is a relationship where a man and a woman love each other enough to commit themselves to each other in marriage for as long as they both will live. A "spiritual union" is staying married when facing a life threatening emergency or a debilitating illness. It is cheerfully sacrificing together when facing unexpected financial reverses. It is choosing to see the wrinkles and pounds as more to love. A "spiritual union" is choosing to say sweet words when they may not be deserved. A "spiritual union" is choosing to keep vows that were made in the sweet, carefree days of youth when life turns out different than expected. It's pushing a wheelchair, it's wiping a tear, it's forgetting an offense.

Jusr last week, we celebrated twenty years of marriage. We've found out already that marriage is made richer by the everyday commitments that marriage takes. Pinching pennies to get through a financial crisis, hearing the doctor's bad news together, walking into a hospital room together where a parent is dying. All of these can be done with a partner, but it's God's gift to us to experience it with someone who loves us enough to commit to a life-long marriage. At twenty years, I don't consider myself to have had a "long lasting" a relationship. I'll take that honor some day when I've matched the commitment of those who have made the long haul successfully. Until then, I'll keep enjoying life with a best friend who has made my life so rich and meaningful. As I tell my sweetheart of twenty years, "Happiness is being married to my best friend..."

A New Introduction...

2011-02-17T17:16:00.000-08:00

Hello, everyone! Let me introduce myself--my name is Jubilee Rose Grubbs and I was born on Tuesday just before noon. You all know my mom, and my dad is Mr. Time Management. He's the one that's always talking about "Redeeming the Time" and doing things the fastest way possible.

I don't know what all the commotion was about, but I decided to take his advice and be born the fastest way possible just like he's always telling people to do. It seems he wasn't too crazy about my idea after all because he had to go get a nurse real fast and the doctor didn't even make it. I don't understand that part either because he's always talking about saving money and finding ways to do it. I would think that if the doctor didn't make it, that would be a considerable savings. He usually says that he's not going to hire people to do things that he can do himself, and I think he and that nurse he got did a pretty good job just between the two of them. After all, why even pay all that money to go to medical school if my dad and a random nurse can do the same thing? If he had done the doctor thing for my other ten brothers and sisters, that would have been a really big savings, but I don't think he likes the idea!

Maybe I'll understand all these details some day, but for now, I'm spending my time following more of my dad's advice. Early rising is one of my specialties. This morning at 4:30a.m., when my mom woke up my dad to do his early rising thing, he didn't seem as enthusiastic as normal. I guess that acting like the doctor thing might have worn him out. After all, this is his year of Jubilee...

The Bible says that every fiftieth year is supposed to be a year of Jubilee, and this is the year that my dad turns 50. He's a smart dad to marry a wife that can still give him a baby in his year of Jubilee and he sure showed up those twenty something first time dads at the hospital by stepping up and doing a great job helping to get me here. Better go. Dad's on duty tonight. By the way, if you see my dad, don't call him, "Dr. Grubbs." He doesn't like that. He says he can't even cure a ham.

Now to remind him of one of his major points in that "Redeeming the Time" message--Learn How to wake up and get up." I think he may drop that point for a while. Until then, I'll give him plenty of practice!

People want to know...have I changed my mind?

2011-02-11T07:10:00.000-08:00

Recently, my obstretrician asked me a question that sent me home with a lot of deep thinking for several days. As we were discussing the plans for the upcoming birth of our baby, he asked me a question that has made me consider where I am in life, and how it relates to how God has chosen to work on and in me.

Over the years and pregnancies, things have changed from the days of rushing to the hospital-barely making it in time to deliver, to opting for a scheduled, less painful delivery. Going back to the days of my first deliveries would have a lot of benefits because I know that medical interventions often cause further necesary interventions. However, about the time of my eighth delivery, I decided that the pain levels I experienced, (combined with my increasing age!) had made me decide that I couldn't do it the old way anymore, and that I needed to make some changes.

As I discussed these options with my doctor recently, he said, "Now that you've decided to change the way you deliver your babies, have you changed your idea about how many children you want to have?" That question caught me off guard, but it ended up sending me into a lot of deep thinking over the next few days.

As I thought about the question and tried to discern in my mind if I had indeed changed my mind about how many children I wanted to have, I came to the conclusion that I had not changed my mind about how many children that I want to have. However, I have made a big change in one way that I am thinking.

The one thing that has not changed is my commitment over twenty years ago that I would take all the children that God would choose to bless me with. This decision was made fully understanding the ignorance that most people would attach to it--after all, people that make that "commitment" always ended up with twenty bratty children, right?

The one big thing that has changed is how long, and how deeply I consider my decision to potentially get pregnant again. While it used to be made flippantly with a excitement for the months ahead, now it is made with a sense for what the next nine months could potentially cost me. I've endured enough months of severe nausea, aches and pains, and misunderstanding of people on all sides to know that making the decision to bring another child into the world means work. It means my life isn't necessarily going to be too pleasant at times, and it means that I am opening myself up to a lot of potential pain and problems that most sensible people would avoid.

However, as I thought about all this, it became clearer to me that, no, I haven't changed my commitment to give this area of my life to God--it has just become a deeper, and a more mature commitment. It has become a commitment that costs me more than it used to. It is a commitment that only God knows the value of because only He knows the cost that it means to me.

As I realized this, I realized that this is exactly why people do not understand me and the way I think. They don't know the cost, but neither do they know the JOY! I have come to understand that God never looks lightly on our costly gifts to Him. He never under rates the sacrifices that we offer to Him on a daily basis, and He returns the same to us in JOY. If we offer cheap gifts to Him--gifts which cost us nothing, He knows that. If we offer the commitment of all our lives to Him and what we offer is costly to us, He knows that. As I offer to God my daily living sacrifice, He returns to me joy that is far deeper than the difficulties that I face.

This doesn't mean that I expect a life free of difficulties. It doesn't mean I
shouldn't expect to welcome unwanted diseases, a special needs child, a painful miscarriage, or an untimely death. What it does mean is that in the middle of it all, God is giving joy. Life brings difficulties whether we are experiencing God's joy or not. To sum up the question that I was asked then, I would say, "No, I haven't changed my mind. The only difference is that now I'm experiencing joy" and I wouldn't trade it for any other option in the world!

I'm Unemployed

2011-02-02T16:50:00.001-08:00

I recently had to take one of my children to a medical facility where the typical patient information was taken. When my child was discharged, I was given his paperwork and sent home. A couple of days later, I picked up the paperwork, and discovered to my (shall we say it lightly), "irritation" that I was listed as "unemployed."

Now of all the absurd things that people say about me, I must say that I am rarely categorized as "unemployed." One reason for that is that most people have enough sense to know that any mother is employed and has never been unemployed since the first day she found out she was expecting her first child. I decided that the problem was not that I am "unemployed" but that the person who designated me as unemployed is more likely "unenlightened."

Just in case someone else mistakenly wants to classify me as unemployed, I thought I would clear the record a little. Currently I am teaching a full load of classes such as Algebra II, Geometry, Chemistry, Algebra 1/2, multiple grammar classes, and various history and civic courses such as Economics. I am also teaching Biology, Human Anatomy and Physiology and various science, spelling, reading, and Bible courses. I didn't mention that I'm making more meals a day than most people make in a week, potty training a 2 year old, potty training a 2 year old, and potty training a 2 year old. I'm also supervising three college level students in subjects ranging from missions and powerpoint presentations to criminal justice. Considering these three students are my own children, I'm also helping to manage homesickness, computer problems over the phone and the ins and outs of premarital boy/girl relationships. I am the unemployed business assistant for my husband, and the wife of a minister who travels to places most people haven't even heard about. Some how he gets in the car or the plane while I'm sitting by unemployed. Once in a while I accompany him with a whole bunch of children and travel across the country for weeks, but I'm unemployed while I'm doing it. I'm also unemployed while doing such mundane tasks as are usually reserved for those with the title of "janitor." Too bad I can't qualify for a job as taxi driver, dental hygienist, or an office receptionist.

Yes, folks, I'm unemployed. It doesn't count that I'm currently 99% through making a baby that will last forever, or reading bedtime Bible stories to children that will outlive those classifying me as "unemployed." It doesn't seem to matter that while almost no one will remember who it was that filled out that hospital registration form even one week later, I might affect the history of the world somehow--just through the lives of children.

Yes, I'm employed, but I'm getting ready to get unemployment compensation. Tonight I'm going to put a baby in bed and he's going to call out, "I wuv you" as I walk down the hall. I'm going to get a phone call from a teenage daughter who still likes to say she loves me even though it's not too cool for her age. I'm going to pat some little boys' heads at bedtime, and one of them is probably going to come out and ask if he can sit with me on the sofa for a few minutes when the house is nice and quiet. I'm going to go to bed and feel a soon-coming baby kicking and know that it's a life that will live forever. I'll get my unemployment compensation tonight, and it won't even matter that I'm unemployed anymore because I know the truth. I'm not unemployed, someone is just unenlightened. I feel pretty sure that if we were to trade places for a day (being generous here), I would be listed as "employed" next time around. For all the unemployed moms out there, don't worry--your not unemployed, you're underrated--and your unemployment compensation is coming soon!

P.S. I've included this photo to demonstrate that I'm unemployed, sitting on a sofa, being lazy (notice the pillow).

We're Walking for Life

2010-10-20T07:11:00.001-07:00

If you are a parent, think back to the day that you chose to announce your coming little one to your closest friends and family. Probably, for most of you, your annoucement was greeted like all of our pregnancies have been greeted--hugs, smiles, a kiss from an eager grandfather to be, and promises of support from helpful family and friends. As the long days of pregnancy progressed, and sickness or unforeseen complications arose, most of us received continual support and encouragement from family, our church, and friends around us.

However, while we usually fail to think about it in our secure and loving environment, there are those every day who are meeting an annoucement of a coming little one as a worst case scenario. There are no kisses, hugs, smiles and promises of support. There is anger, denial, promises of no support, and often there is violence. Often, in a time of life where human beings would naturally offer shelter and security, a woman is abandoned and left to face "the problem" alone.

We tend to point fingers and give righteous pronoucements while never remembering or refusing to acknowledge why we are not in her condition ourselves. Most of us were born into families with married parents. Most of us had the warmth and shelter of a happy home where meals were often eaten together and holidays are memories of love and contentment. Many of us went to church from our earliest days and had pastors and loving parents to guide us through the troubling days of adolescence. Most of us had someone to talk to, and a clean place to sleep. None of us had perfect homes, but most of us had homes where we were loved.

We tend to forget that the only reason that we are not the woman pushed into the street is
because we were born into a environment that kept us from this. We forget that we did nothing different than she did to avoid this awful place in life. Rather, we forget that God has been good to us. That's all there is to it...we forget that we aren't the pregnant teenager, or the single mother, or the abandoned wife, because God has been good. I can easily picture myself in each one of these situations, outside of God's mercy to me.

Our family is walking in the Walk for Life this Saturday out of gratefulness to God and out of a fear of God. Gratefulness because God has been better to us than we ever deserve. Fear because God does not give expecting nothing in return.

We need sponsors for our Walk so if you are not in a position to join us on this walk, but want to express your gratitude to God, please contact us. Someday I am sure that I will stand before God with these mothers close beside me. I have a lot to answer for, don't you?

The Half Way Mark

2010-10-05T19:53:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting things about time is that it usually seems to speed up when we're having fun and slow way down when we're not. That's why we're celebrating the half way point of my pregnancy for baby number eleven! Nine months almost always seems like a very long time--especially when those first few months go by very slowly. Thankfully, although this pregnancy has had more than its share of difficult days, we are learning that God's perfect way is for us to glory in our difficulties. The Apostle Paul said that "most gladly" will I glory in my infirmities. Instead of asking God to take away difficulties, he learned that it was more beneficial to him to experience God's power working through the difficulties.

I'm still working on the "most gladly" part, but I will say that I have already learned a lot through the difficulties that I have experienced. Recently, my doctor asked me to "tell him something good" when he entered the room. I replied that I had recently saw pictures of a maternity hospital in the Sudan, and I was glad that I was here and not there! Yes, we all have innumberable things to be thankful for, and the more we look around, the more things we usually find to be grateful for.

I'm grateful for the sickness I've gone through because I learned a little more how to relate to others that experience extended sickness. I'm grateful for those days in bed because it gave me time to think about all the ways God had blessed me (after all, I was resting in an air conditioned room). I'm thankful for the days of isolation from others as I couldn't get out because it gave me perspective on the loneliness and pain that others have that never get out. I'm thankful for the difficulties I experienced because although it's not in the Bible, I believe that all good things come to those who put some effort into it. If that's true, I think we're getting ready to have something really special.

50 Years together for my parents

2010-09-26T16:38:00.000-07:00

God has been very good to our family, and just this weekend, our family was able to celebrate 50 years of marriage for my parents, the Archibald's. Thanks to everyone that helped us to celebrate this time with them, whether you were able to come, or whether you sent cards to them.

I was very proud of our daughter, Joy, as she worked so hard to make a beautiful
cake for them. She did a magnificent job and since she is only thirteen, I think she has many years of beautiful cake making ahead of her! We're very happy for you, Joy, and thanks for working so hard!

If you want to view a video of thanks to the Lord that we made for the anniversary, as well as a power point slide show of pictures, visit this link.

God has been good to totally change a family that was destined for ruin. My father was successful in the world of business, but those who knew him knew that he was an alcoholic. He and my mother were far from God, but God came very near to them and made them an offer that has forever changed their lives--and ours. Everything that we enjoy today is a gracious gift that cost God dearly, but that has meant everything to us. God is good!

Ten Tips for a Successful Year of Homeschooling

2010-08-12T16:59:00.001-07:00

Many families fail in their goals for homeschooling simply because of a lack of planning. Beginning a school year with inadequate planning is a recipe for a stressful, and ineffective year of homeschooling. I have homeschooled our children for fourteen years and people often ask "how I do it?" There's really a very simple answer to that question. The answer is that I do it 1. very prayerfully and 2. very carefully (with about two weeks of my summer given to planning for the coming school year.) Here are ten of my favorite ideas for having a successful school year.

My Homeschooling Picks of the Year

2010-07-24T13:31:00.000-07:00

This is our fourteenth year of homeschooling, and over the years, I would say that I have learned many of the advantages and disadvantages of homeschooling. One of the best things I have loved over the years is the variety of materials available so that each child can have a unique learning experience. One of the yearly events that I enjoy the most is going to our state convention and choosing the year's curriculum with each child in mind. While we usually have a few favorites that we stick with year after year, I also usually find some exciting new texts to try. Here are some of this year's top picks for our family.

Used Homeschool Curriculum Needed

2010-05-10T06:35:00.000-07:00

We are collecting used Abeka curriculum that is still in good condition for a foreign homeschooling family that we met this past summer. It can be very difficult and expensive for these families to get the curriculum they need. If you have some to sell or donate, please contact me. We are looking for Abeka grades 5-9. Thanks!

Pudgy Motherhood

2010-05-07T05:50:00.000-07:00

Recently I read a news article that reminded me of what true motherhood is all about. Now, I don't read the popular women's magazines nor do I watch television; however, apparently Jillian Michaels seems to be a very popular professional body trainer these days. It seems that a lot of women look up to her so I thought I would give my thoughts about a statement she recently made.

In a recent magazine article, Jillian Michaels said that she has no plans to get pregnant or deliver a baby because doing so would "mar" her body and cause her to lose her figure. Currently, she says she is involved in a program where she "stays with a different family each week with the aim of getting to the bottom of each person’s issues and helping them make life-altering changes to better their health and happiness." (Please note the quote marks around this last statement because they are not my words.)

When I read about her current mission of staying with families,
I thought of a place where I would like her to stay and a family I would like her to meet. If anyone out there personally knows Jillian, please let her know that she is welcome to stop by and help us work out some of our "issues." No doubt, she would think we have a lot of issues! I have no doubt also that when it comes to perfect body figures, we wouldn't even be in the same competition since I have delivered ten babies and been pregnant with twelve. However, when it comes to her helping us to "make life-altering changes to better their health and happiness" I believe I would have a few lessons to teach her myself.

Perhaps she hasn't yet learned that seeing an expectant mother waddle around with an obviously unshapely body is one of the most beautiful sights that one can ever see. If you don't believe me, ask the man who waited for years for his wife to conceive and she finally did.

Perhaps she hasn't yet learned that the sight of a one month postpartum woman with a big bulge around her middle is one that will bring a smile to the face of men who see her coming. If you don't believe me, aske the grandfathers who are arguing over who gets to hold the baby first.

Perhaps she hasn't yet learned that when a woman with various bumps, bulges, scars, and sagging features walks in and the room fills with "Welcome Home!" that there are better things than having a perfect body at 36 years old. If you don't believe me, ask the woman who is coming home to her family after a difficult labor and delivery.

Apparently one thing that she hasn't learned yet is that in just a few years, the best of age defying techinques and treatments will be rendered fairly useless on her formerly ideal body. Age will take its toll and her body will also begin to tell its story.

In the mean time, those of us who chose the scars and bulges will have something to show for it. After all, treasured family portraits aren't made with models surrounded by men. Treasured family portraits are made of slightly pudgy, but smiling grandmothers surrounded by children and grandchildren with just a few cookie crumbs and smeared peanut butter in the background. Perhaps the words of my favorite five year old would clarify things a little. Snuggling up to my "baby-marred" body, he said, "You are so beautiful."

Now as for Jillian, no doubt I haven't heard those words from as many people as she has, but I guarantee you that she doesn't have anything over on me. As a matter of fact, is she truly wants to visit families and talk about "issues" that affect "health and happiness" I can recommend a good place to start.

Happy Mother's Day to all the slightly pudgy, saggy mothers out there! Kiss those babies and don't look in the mirror too often and I think those "issues" will just go away.

If you are prolife, you need a baby bottle!

2010-04-21T07:24:00.000-07:00

For years, I thought I was prolife. After all, I'm here today because my mother didn't follow the advice of her doctor to abort me. I was supposed to have some major health issues that made my birth inadvisable. (Maybe this explains my oddities to those of you that wonder about me!) However, he was wrong, and I'm glad my mom did what was right.

So, I've always been prolife--or so I thought--until this past summer when I had an experience that has already begun to change my life.

This past summer we were very busy as my husband presented his seminars all over Europe. Many of our evenings were taken as he spoke in churches, but during the day, we often visited historical places. One day in Poland, we decided to visit Auschwitz.

Although I have read a lot of history, nothing prepared me for that day in the infamous World War II death camp. The camp is left much as it was then, and is a dark, depressing reminder of the millions of Jews that were slaughtered just because of their race.

After we left Auschwitz, I blogged about our day there, (see June 2009) especially as I remembered the large rooms stuffed full of shoes and purses and the display of broken toys taken from the children. A very grim room was full of the human hair taken from those unfortunate to have been taken there.

I blogged about the tragedy that I saw there and wondered about how it could have happened. After all, there are houses around the perimeter of the fences and surely lots of people knew what was happening at least in some measure. After all, how can one hide the deaths of at least 11 million people?

As I pondered about how this had been allowed to happen, another blogger posted a comment that made me question the whole idea that I really was pro life. He ended his comment by saying,
"I would also say that I cannot think of the holocaust without thinking of the American Holocaust, the genocide of the unborn which is continuous and ongoing and for which we all bear great shame. May God forgive us for our silence and may He strengthen us for the fight."

My heart was struck that although I claimed to be prolife, I had done almost nothing to show it. While condemning those of a previous generation, I had been showing the same general attitude of carelessness and resignation. After all, it's the law in our land as it was the law back in the days of Hitler that certain classes of humanity can be extinguished.

Since that time, I have begun volunteering at our local Pregnancy Support Center. While I have to live under laws that allow for the destruction of unwanted babies, I can do all within my power to convince their mothers of the value of their child and to support them through this crisis in their lives.

This is where the baby bottle comes in. If you say you are pro life, then you need to get a baby bottle. The baby bottle campaign in a fund raising campaign that runs from Mother's Day to Father's Day every year. Baby bottles are distributed to the churches in our county and are filled with change (and hopefully quite a few bills!). The funds are used to do everything from providing free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, to providing diapers and infant formula to needy mothers who have chosen life for their children.

If you live in Rowan County, let me know if your church has not yet received baby bottles for this year's campaign. If your church is not involved, we'll supply you with all the baby bottles you can use on your own. If you are not in Rowan County, but wish to be involved, let me know, and we will certainly find a way. After all, faith without works is dead. There are mothers out there who have chosen life and they need us to come along beside them and support them in their choice. Let's all remember the words of I John 3:17, "But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?"

Is Gardening Redeeming the Time?

2010-04-20T21:19:00.000-07:00

Since this blog is supposed to be about Redeeming the Time, I would like some comments about whether you think gardening in today's world is redeeming the time.

Today, I finished planting my garden for the year. After 250 strawberry plants, over 100 tomato plants and multitudes of seeds, I was happy to be finished to say the least. It's always nice to see a big job finished as long as I don't think about how much work it is going to be maintaining a garden and doing something with everything that comes from it.

Now the big question...With vegetables relatively inexpensive at places like Aldis, do you think it is worth the time to raise a garden considering all the time that has to be given to it? Also, if you have a garden how well do you keep it up? Is it redeeming the time to have a weed free garden or does your garden resemble my "jungle patch" by the end of the season?

Post your comments or email me with what you think. Let me know if I cannot use your comments on an article for our website on this topic. Otherwise, I'll assume you don't mind being published!

Cows are Messy (and so are kids)

2010-03-09T15:08:00.000-08:00

Recently I met a man that reminded me of this verse in Proverbs 14:4. "Where no oxen are, the crib is clean: but much increase is by the strength of the ox."

We were walking together as a family and as is usual when people see us all together, this man stopped us and asked if the children were all ours. As we began to speak with the man, he told us about a family that he knew that had a large number of children and how clean their house always was. He said that this family always had a spotless house with sparkling windows. To top it off, he said their floor was clean enough to eat off of.

This was quite impressive to say the least, especially since it reminded me of our house--at least a little. It's true that our windows rarely sparkle because they usually have quite a few fingerprints on them. It's also true that it certainly doesn't rate spotless--at least since we moved in. One thing he said,though, made me really relate to this amazing family that I have never met. This gentleman remarked that one could even eat off the floor in this house. I laughed to myself when he said this because people can often eat off the floor at my house also. Yep, there could even be a few cheerios there right now. Maybe even a Pepperidge Farm goldfish or two. If you get here at just the right time, you'll probably score some leftover birthday cake since we have so many birthdays around our home!

Over the years, I have discovered that each one of us has the same amount of time allotted to us. Some people use their time making their home spotless, others surf the internet or chat on facebook (shouldn't have said that one I guess...), and never take time to clean up the home. Others realize what this verse in Proverbs 14 says brings valuable insight into a proper perspective. If you don't have cows around, you will have a clean barn. However, remember that cows are valuable, so take your choice!

Children are like cows. They're messy and sometimes it even gets smellly; however, I would rather have a house full of priceless children than have a spotless house and none to be seen. Now back to the big family that had the spotless house. My best guess is that the gentleman had failing eyesight. Other than that, I would say that there could have been some misplaced priorities.

Today I took my children fishing with their grandparents. I had plans to get a lot of household things done, but grandparents won't always be around and neither will my kids. In the last few weeks, we have gone fishing three times and caught about 250 fish. Nothing will ever replace the memories we have made standing on the creek bank and watching my daughter continually yank her fish into the tree top while eagerly reeling it in. I also had time to have a picnic with my daughter back in the woods--just the two of us.

Friday, we enjoyed one of the privileges of homeschooling and cancelled school to go to the Discovery Place in Charlotte. On the way back we enjoyed 99 cent meals at IKEA (hint: families watching their budget should watch the restaurant specials at IKEA--we got 12 full size meals for 99 cents each).

Yes, you can probably find a snack on my floor tonight, but you can also see some smiling kids around my table. We don't have a spotless house, but we do have children and as of last week, we also have a cow, but that's another story for another day. Thanks to my sister in law, for keeping my cow at her house. I hope she remembers how valuable it is when she sees the mess it is making!
For other thoughts on children and time, visit our site for ladies.

God is Helping Me

2010-02-24T07:02:00.000-08:00

Thank you so much to each one of you that send kind emails, cards, prayers and even great food our way in this last week. Thanks to the friends who live close by who stopped by to talk and cry with me and showed themselves to be true friends.

During the past week, I have experienced a lot of struggles as I have worked through the loss of our baby. Although I never questioned why God allowed this to happen, I still had questions and things that I did not understand. Since last week, I had been getting very little sleep and my days were not much happier. I know it is normal to grieve over losses in our lives, but I was looking for some answers from God and wasn't hearing much from Him although I knew He was there.

Yesterday morning I was able to spend some time by myself in the quietness of the morning, so I began to talk to God about all the things that were bothering me and things I did not understand. As the Psalmist says, I "poured out my heart before God." When I finished, I decided to read one of the Psalms as I felt perhaps I could find some answers there. I took my Bible and opened it instead to a passage of Scripture that talks about the holiness of God.

As I began to read about the holiness of God and about how everything He does is always righteous, pure and holy, God began to touch my heart in a way that I can only best illustrate by relating what happened at the hospital just a few days ago.

I have always been a private person when it comes to displaying emotions in public--especially among strangers. However, after all the stress of having found out that our baby had died, I found myself crying in front of hospital staff, in the waiting room and in other public places where I normally would have been able to maintain my composure. The day before my surgery, I had to go for pre operation procedures so I was at the hospital for a while in various offices. I'm sure my face was a mess and I was having a hard time just going through with everything. I got to the lab at the end of my time there and by then I had been crying for a while.

The lab technician didn't say much but she looked at my already bruised arm and proceeded to jab it again and draw even more blood. When she was finished, though, she did something that no one had ever done even though I have had blood drawn many, many times.

As she finished, instead a sticking a little bandaid on it, she began to carefully wrap and bandage my arm, but as she did it, she not only bandaged it by carefully wrapping it, but she patted my arm and and squeezed it and communicated to me without saying a word that she didn't know my difficulty, but that she cared. In the quietness of that room, she took the time to care without saying a word.

Back to the passage about the holiness of God...
As I quietly thought on the holiness of God and about how God is different from the other "gods" we often hear about, I realized in a new way that God is a holy God and He does nothing out of spite, or revenge, or hatred, or just to take advantage of us. He does everything that He does out of His goodness, His righteousness, and His holiness. His holiness only allows Him to act righteously toward us, and this began to comfort my heart.

As I sat in the quietness of the morning and began to think about these things, God began to "bind up the brokenhearted" as the nurse in the lab bandaged up my arm. There wasn't a lot said between me and God, but I felt Him bandaging up my heart-- stopping to pat it and pour some "Balm of Gilead" in it and take His time to communicate that He cared. When He got finished, I was able to walk into the day having experienced a wonderful office call with the Great Physician.

Thanks again to all of you who have prayed for me and sent emails from all around the world. Between this blog and facebook, I have received a steady stream of thoughtful comments from those close to home as well as from thousands of miles away. I never knew there were so many people who cared!

Blessings on your day! God is always good.

What is it like to touch the face of God?

2010-02-16T17:02:00.000-08:00

Tonight we found out that the baby we were eagerly waiting to hold has already "slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God." Our loss is temporary, but our child's gain is forever. While we are sad, how can I be sorry when our child is perfectly happy and whole with Jesus tonight? I have so much to be thankful for, that while I am sad, I am glad that God made a way for us to meet in heaven. I like the words of the song, "Blessed be your Name... You give and take away, my heart will choose to say, blessed be the name of the Lord."

Our Trip to Europe in Review

2010-01-17T14:24:00.001-08:00

The newspaper recently wrote an article about our time in Europe. If you are interested in reading it, here it is. Enjoy reading about a miracle trip!

Haiti

2010-01-15T20:17:00.001-08:00

Most of us have been deeply touched by the needs of Haiti in this past week as we have seen the pictures of the devastation that has come upon their land. For those of you who are looking for a Christian organization who will minister in the name of Jesus, you may want to consider this mission which is directed by a good friend of our family.

This organization has been in Haiti for years and already has an established medical clinic, Christian day school, church, and orphanage. Within hours of the earthquake, they were headed for the streets of Port au Prince to minister to the needy there. For years they have been shipping tons of medical supplies, office equipment, and basic supplies to help the people of Haiti through their mission there.

While there are numerous organizations to give to, you may want to consider giving to an organization that has been there for years, and will be there for a long time to come and will be sharing the love of Jesus to these people who cannot be healed by medicine alone. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these..." Matthew 25:40

God Works on Refrigerators

2010-01-09T19:36:00.000-08:00

One of the greatest joys in trusting God to provide our needs is actually getting to see Him do it. Recently, we got to see the Lord take care of our refrigerator.

This year at Christmas, we had a very busy household--much busier than usual for us--with lots of people coming and going. We were looking forward to enjoying several meals with extended family and having large groups in our home. The night before our first guest was to arrive, I was up late working and getting ready when I noticed that our refrigerator had stopped cooling. Not only was this really inconvenient because it was well after midnight, but also because we had two big meals planned for the next day for friends and family. I had a large amount of food in my refrigerator just waiting for the next day.

I must say that I was frustrated, because not only was I very tired by this time of day, but I didn't want to have to go find a refrigerator on Christmas Eve and still have to prepare two meals. It was cold outside, so I knew I could just put things there, but that would be a lot of work which I really didn't want at the time. I just stopped, and partly out of exhaustion, and partly out of frustration, I just prayed to the Lord and asked Him if He couldn't just make the refrigerator work just until the holidays were over. With the faith that I had, I just left the refrigerator and kept working awhile and came back. I was delighted when I came back right before I was ready for bed and saw that the thermometer showed the refrigerator to be very cold--almost too cold. The end of the story is that the refrigerator worked wonderfully through the next few days and through the holidays. Our last guest was preparing to leave, when I noticed the refrigerator was getting warm again.

I mentioned this story to someone in my family, and they said, "Why didn't you just ask the Lord to fix it?" I don't know why I didn't, but I am glad that He did what I asked--He fixed it for the holidays.

The end of the story came tonight right before Lowe's Home Improvement closed for the evening. We had been watching for a good deal on a refrigerator while we used a smaller one to get us by until we could find one large enough for our family. Tonight, Rick went to Lowe's to buy other things when he decided to ask the man back in appliances if they had any damaged appliances that were marked down. Rick told him what we were looking for, and the man said they had one in the back. Now, keep in mind that we were not wanting to spend anywhere near full price for a refrigerator that would suit our family size. We were looking at used options or praying that we could find a blemished one.

He took Rick back and showed him a refrigerator that was a great refrigerator--much better than we have ever had before, but the original price was $1700. They had marked it down to $1500 for some marks on the front, which was a nice discount, but still way more than we wanted to pay. Rick began talking to the man and he said that he would sell it to him for $900. Rick said, "Well, I tell you what, if you will take $800, I will buy it tonight." He agreed, and we walked out of the store with an amazing deal and a brand new refrigerator (with a little scratch on the door). We also came out of it with another story of God's provision for our family! What a blessing we would have missed by just walking in, handing over a credit card, and buying a refrigerator big enough to meet our family's needs. God provides for those who choose to place their trust in Him!

My Christmas Present to my Husband

2010-01-07T07:52:00.000-08:00

This was one of my Christmas gifts to Rick this year. I had been wanting to purchase vinyl word art for our home, but when I saw the price, I decided against it. However, after researching online, I was able to make this word art for about $1, and I think it turned out fine--even if I say so myself! If you are interested in how to do it, visit this link that I made. If you try it, send me a photo. I'd would love to see your work!

Help Identify this Artwork

2009-12-08T21:08:00.000-08:00

While we were in Northern Italy this past summer, we stayed at a Christian retreat center where I saw this artwork. It really got my attention, and I have been trying to identify the artist. This is a picture of unbelievers drowning while Christians continue their business or amusements without noticing the predicament of those around them. Does anyone know anything about this piece?

Choosing Activities that will Pass the Test

2009-11-12T05:14:00.000-08:00

Recently, I have been considering my priorities in light of a Scripture passage that I was reminded of at a recent church service. I Corinthians 3:13 says, "Every man's work shall be made manifest for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is." Often when I am deciding what I should do in a day's time, I determine it based on several factors that we all use--what is the most urgent or important thing that I need to do today? A question that I have been focusing on recently is the one that this Scripture passage brings to light and that is, "will this activity I am planning today, stand the test of fire?" This passage apparently teaches that our works will be tried by fire, and only some of our works will make it through the test.

When I think through my previous day's activities, I have to wonder if some of the activities I chose to do will stand the test of fire. Works that will stand the test of fire will not necessarily mean only "spiritual" tasks such as reading my Bible or praying. Rather, those enduring works would be the things that God has asked me to do no matter how temporary they may seem to be. Changing the baby's diaper or making a meal for my family can be a work that will stand the test of fire because it is something that God has called me to do.

On the other hand, Martha in the Bible was doing ordinary tasks, and her works did not stand the test of fire. Why was it that her preparing of a meal, which would seem legitimate, did not stand the test of fire? I suppose we may never know the full reason for why her work did not make the test because we do not know her motives when she was preparing the meal. Maybe she was preparing an extravagant meal when her budget didn't allow that. Perhaps she was working to impress Jesus instead of listening to Him. Maybe she didn't realize that when Jesus was there, it was the time to serve hot dogs and keep it simple so that she could have time for Him. Perhaps it was none of the above. I can see why Martha wanted to prepare such a nice meal because I would have thought of doing the same thing if Jesus were coming to my house to eat.

There is no way we can fully know why Jesus didn't approve of Martha's seemingly legitimate activity, but I believe we can know which of our activities will stand the test of fire. Many of our activities are obviously things that will burn up--and we don't want to be honest enough to face that fact so we keep going about it every day. Other activities may not be so clear--my standards for how clean my house should be, how well I maintain my yard, how much I need to earn, or how many cheerios I allow to accumulate in my child's car seat! That is why we are told to walk in the Spirit. God's Spirit will tell us what we should be involved in if we take the time to listen and if we walk closely enough to Him. Most of the time, I think our works fall short because we fail to know God's will in those areas.

Today as I plan my day, I should first focus on eliminating those things that I already know will not stand the test of fire. Then on those areas where I just don't know, I need to walk close to God so I will know what He wants me to do.

At the end of the day, I can have peace about how I spent my time whether I spent it in the obviously "spiritual" activities or whether my mundane activities became spiritual because I was walking in the Spirit. Since all my works will be tried by fire, it is insignificant what others think, or what is customary, or what has always been done a certain way, or how awkward I may appear to others. Rather, what is it that God wants me to do and will I choose to do it His way today?

My husband wrote a great piece on holiday time management. If you are interested in three ideas for redeeming the time during the holidays, read his article.

The Measure of a Life

2009-11-04T09:35:00.000-08:00

“Life is not measured by the breaths we breathe, but by the moments that take our breath away.” Author unknown

Think back to the moments that have taken your breath away. You probably have some major life events that took your breath away—a wedding, a birth, a special occasion that took months of planning. In reality, however, how many of the most special moments in your life took just a few seconds and then they were gone from sight, but never from your heart. In my life, while I have enjoyed the big things that make my life richer, it has been those sixty second spaces of time that have given me the rich life that I enjoy. My four year old last week cuddling up beside me last week, and saying, “I love you.” A special email sent from my husband. A note from my teenage daughter. A smile from my fourteen year old. An innocent bedtime prayer, “Help Mommy to be good” from my little boy.

I have experienced these breathtaking moments in nature—my first glimpse of the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone in the Spring, seeing the Acropolis in Athens at night--but most of those moments have involved people-- people that have invested less than sixty seconds in my life. Sometimes those moments have been made when I take a fraction of a moment to notice the people around me—pudgy baby feet sticking out from under a blanket, standing outside a bedroom door and listening to little boys talking, watching my little girl play with her baby doll.

If it takes so little to remember so much, why don’t we do it more often? Too often we’re measuring life by the breaths we breathe-- how much we can do, and how much money we can bring home before the day’s breaths are past. We’re busy seeing how successful we can become while we can still breathe, and forget to make those moments that will outlive us when our breathing has finally ended. Savor the moments today before they are gone!

2009-11-04T09:32:00.000-08:00

Recently I had an event in my life that brought back memories of what it was like in the MOMYS stage of life. In case you haven’t heard, MOMYS stands for a Mother of Many Young Siblings! I am still a mother of many young siblings, but now there is a big difference because I am also the mother of many older siblings. Maybe this event can demonstrate how much things have changed and express the heart that I have for other MOMYS.

One of our best memories of our time in Europe was the time that we spent in Belgium. We did not have too many expectations for our time in Belgium and did not even know where we were scheduled to stay during our time there. When we arrived, we were very pleasantly surprised to find out that we were spending several days in an old castle, and we had the whole place to ourselves. Tthe castle was beautiful with lots of little nooks and crannies and meandering hallways to explore. It seemed like the perfect place to relax and spend some time reading a book in the privacy of one of these hidden areas of the castle.

One morning during our time there, I awoke earlier than the others and was cozily thinking about the good time I was going to have downstairs sitting by myself with a cup of tea. I was looking forward to taking my Bible down and having some special time with the Lord reminiscing about the trip and enjoying a nice, quiet morning of devotions.

In just a few minutes, though, before I even made it out my bedroom door, I experienced the “event” that brought together this whole blog. One of my older children told me that the baby was a mess, and I knew by the sound effects and atmosphere in the next room that “mess” meant that he had caught the sickness that one of the other younger children had experienced during the night.

The thought of the quiet time downstairs disappeared into thin air as I began to instead experience the sights and sounds of a baby in a “mess.” Before it was all over, linens and clothes had to be changed, a bath given and quite a while later, I had finally taken care of the “mess.”
Of course, by this time everyone else was up and ready to start the day and my plan of starting the day had been drastically changed. As I thought of my options, I remembered what it was like to be a young MOMY. In those days, I experienced a lot of frustration and guilt on days that started out just like this day had. In those days, I couldn’t do what I did next. I asked one of my older daughters to please watch the baby while I went back upstairs to read my Bible. Then I went upstairs, read a few minutes, and fell asleep after all the stress of the morning.

Back in the days of having only small children and no one to help out, getting back to that Bible time was often nearly impossible. If it were not impossible, it certainly wasn’t a private time by myself. It was most often a time of trying to concentrate and offering a short prayer for the day while managing to handle all of childhood’s needs.

Many times I felt guilty over my devotional life because it was far from what I wanted it to be. I felt that I should have gotten up sooner, stayed up later or come up with some different plan. In my heart I wanted to have time with the Lord, but not only was I dealing with many young siblings with needs that often couldn’t wait, but I was also dealing with back to back pregnancies, late night breast feeding and the general weariness that comes with being a MOMY.

Would I do it again? Absolutely! What I am enjoying now is worth it and more. The life I enjoy now is a direct result of spending so much time and physical energy investing in little people that could give little in return. This morning, my husband and I are in California with just our youngest child. Yesterday, we thoroughly enjoyed a day at the Monterey Aquarium. We had not planned on going, but our older children wanted to give us money to go there, so we enjoyed a day at their expense!

Now, I realize something that I did not fully realize then. That is, God is not standing ready to punish the MOMY that wants and actually misses that special time with the Lord because she couldn’t make it happen. He is not standing there criticizing me because I did not get up early enough because the baby cried so much in the night. He is not there critically marking down how many times the devotions were less than satisfactory because I couldn’t hide away somewhere and have peace and quiet to concentrate for a few minutes. Back then, the idea of a prayer closet sounded wonderful-- just give me any closet by myself for a few minutes to restore my sanity!
God was watching and knowing that all along there was a desire in my heart, often made stronger by my circumstances, to spend that time with him. He knew that instead of carelessly skipping opportunities to spend time with Him, I actually more eagerly looked forward to the times when I could slip in a few extra moments of peace and quiet. I know more now than I did then that God knows. He knows where I am, and He knows the conditions I find myself in. He knows when the baby wakes up in a “mess” before I get my Bible time, and He knows when my mind can’t stay alert any longer because I am weary from the struggles of the day.

Am I excusing laziness, lack of discipline, or lack of love for the Lord? I don’t think so. The same God that knew when I couldn’t meet with him also knows when I can and choose not to. He knows when I am weary because I stayed up late the night before in frivolous activities. He knows when I choose to get up early and go shopping before spending time with Him. He knows when it is not my true heart’s desire to meet with Him, and when I am using flimsy excuses to cover my true lack of love and lukewarmness toward Him.

It is reassuring, and it develops a proper fear of God to realize that “God knows” and His knowledge is far purer and holier than ours. When I think that “every one of us shall give an account of himself to God,” I can both rest in the assurance and stand in the fear of God knowing that He really does know.

Take a Break to Redeem the Time

2009-10-19T06:01:00.000-07:00

One of the best time management techniques that we have discovered is to take a break on Sundays. Often when considering time management, we sometimes forget that the best thing we can do to manage our time well is to take a break.
When God created the world, He took a break after six days. Was this because He was tired? We know that God never slumbers or sleeps or even gets tired so the reason that he rested was to set the example for us. God has already prescribed the perfect time managment schedule for us by His example--work six days, then rest on the seventh.

When we first married, we agreed that Sunday would always be given to worship, rest and time with our family. Over the years, we have tried to define exactly what that means for us. Especially as we began to have children, we started to realize that what others did on Sunday might not work for us as a day of rest so we started making our own standards to live by. For example, the traditional large Sunday lunch did not work for us because on Saturday evenings when all our children were small, I did not have time or energy to finish the evening by preparing a large lunch for the next day. We began having our easiest meals for Sunday lunch and then we began making it tradition to have a "breakfast meal" in the evening after church.

Yesterday as I was enjoying a day of rest, I recalled one way that God taught me about taking a day of rest. Several years ago, I was working very full weeks of taking care of little ones, homeschooling and travelling. One Saturday evening, I was preparing for Sunday and was definitely ready to go to bed. The baby had been waking up every night and I was very tired. Everything was fairly complete for Sunday, and as I walked toward my bedroom, I passed the dishwasher and noticed that I had not unloaded the clean dishes. Now I know that some people are going to throw mudpies of legalism at me, but as I noticed that dishwasher, it came to my mind that I could unload that dishwasher on Saturday night instead of Sunday morning and in this small way show God that I wanted to honor His day in just another way. I really wanted to just go to bed, but I finally decided to go ahead and unload it. When I went to bed, I just told the Lord how tired I was and let it go at that. That night was the first night that our baby slept the whole night through! If I remember right, that was the beginning of his sleeping through the night. I felt that God was showing us that if we choose to honor Him, he will honor us.

How does all this relate to time management? God prescribed a day of rest because as the Great Physician, He knew that our bodies needed it. One of the most relaxing things of my week is to go to bed on Saturday night and know that now I can rest because God told me to. I don't have to feel guilty about sitting down or choosing to take a nap because God has already ordered me to do it!

Next time you are tempted to redeem the time by adding on a list of household chores or business for Sunday, relax--take a break! As my husband says in one of his seminars, "What does God want me to do RIGHT NOW?" (How many people still have one of those bright yellow stickers?!) He wants you to rest. He wants you to calm down. He wants you to redeem the time--so go take a break (next Sunday--not right now)!
Here's a thought provoking radio minute from Rick on the topic

Time Saving Tortilla Lasagna for supper

2009-10-15T12:53:00.000-07:00

If you are trying to redeem the time and feed a large crowd, you may want to try out this recipe that our family came up with this week. Using a basic recipe I already had, we experimented a little and came up with a hit that everyone liked. That's pretty hard to do with twelve of us! Actually, baby Paul didn't get to taste it, but eleven of us voted for it to be served again. It's a one pot meal and fairly quick to make. Let me know what you think!

At your funeral...

2009-10-14T05:12:00.000-07:00

My husband did a radio program on, "Who will be crying at your funeral?" The idea is that there may be a lot of people at your funeral, but only a few of them will be crying. Our priority in life should be to invest our time in those who will be crying at our funeral.

Just this week, we lost an acquaintance to a debilitating disease. Both my husband and I had admired this man for his many great character qualities, but one thing he was remembered best for was his diligence in witnessing to every one that crossed his path. Those who knew him best knew that he rarely let an opportunity pass to tell others about Jesus and what He had done in his own life.

As I have reflected on what people remember most about this man, I have been reminded to invest my life in those who will be crying, but to also make sure that the things they will be saying reflect a life well spent. As those who are crying at my funeral summarize my life, will the things they say reflect a depth of spiritual life and character or will I have been just a good person? A wife or mother can be remembered for doing lots of loving and sacrificial things for her family, but in order to really succeed, she must have lived a life that was consumed in focusing others on eternity.

Who will be crying at your funeral and what will they be saying? Will their statements reflect a life of temporary good or of eternal significance?

Thank the Lord for a Great Trip

2009-10-13T07:32:00.001-07:00

We're finally rested up and fairly recovered from our four months in Europe and Africa. We visited thirty countries and ministered in twenty one of those countries with the seminars translated into thirteen languages. I must say that it was nice to get back and hear a little English for a change!

This morning I posted a country by country review and slide show of our ministry there. God worked in marvelous ways His wonders to perform!

God Pays for What He Orders

2009-10-08T07:33:00.000-07:00

For many years as we have travelled and spoken in churches, we have told people that, "God pays for what He orders," when people ask us how we afford ten children. It has been one of the biggest blessings of my life to see God pay for all the children that He has ordered for us. One example happened just this week...

One of the ways that I try to manage money carefully is by buying in bulk when I find food items on sale. Obviously, what our family considers bulk is different from most families because for us, a weekly trip to the grocery store would still be a huge amount of food to purchase. A family of our size consumes a large amount of food--especially when you consider that six of our ten children are growing young men!

Because we emptied our freezers before we left for Europe, we came back having to buy food at the going price rather than having a stockpile of food we had gotten at good sales. We buy so many groceries that this quickly makes a big difference in the food budget.

Earlier this week, we travelled to Rick's mother to visit her and while we were there, I picked up a sale flyer from her local grocery store to look for any good deals. I noticed that they had chicken breasts there for .99 a pound, and I intended to go by and get some to freeze, but we left without doing so. The next day, on a whim, I decided to shop at a totally different Walmart than usual. One of the things I like about Walmart is their price matching guarantee, so to save time, I just take the local grocery store papers in there and match the prices. I knew it was a stretch, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to see if this Walmart would match the sale prices from a competitor in Rick's mother's town even though the other store was not anywhere nearby.

I got to the meat counter and showed the lady there the ad and asked if they would match it. She said that she didn't think so because it was not really a competitor being so far away, but that she would ask the manager. To make a long story short, after a while she came back out and said that they would match the price on those chicken breasts, plus they would give me what I considered a much better grade of chicken for the same money. I took all they had and she got me more from the back of the store!

Before I left the meat department, I decided to just check on the ground beef prices and nothing seemed to be unusual. Usually I buy ground beef at a big discount and then I don't have to buy it again for a long time, but I always wait until it's a super deal. Just as I was walking away, I noticed a little sign that had fallen down into the bin of ground beef. It was a special sale sign, and I quickly started filling my cart and then called my mother and got more for her.

I knew the real test would come when I got to the cashier as she might balk when she saw the awesome deals I got on such a huge amount of food. At this point, it looked like I was running a restaurant by the amount of meat in my cart! When I got to the cashier, I showed her the sale paper and told her the manager had approved selling these chicken breasts for .99 versus the normal price which was a whole lot higher. She called the front manager and they started overriding the price on all these packages of chicken. After a few packages had gone through, the manager stopped and looked at me and said, "what was the original price on this chicken?" I replied that I wasn't sure, so she told the cashier to scan one and see. I figured that this was where the great deal was going to end, but I was hoping that this was how God was going to pay for His children! The cashier scanned the price and the manager saw that I was getting each package of chicken for about $3.50 less than the normal price. She said, "Hey, you really got a great deal on that chicken!" She helped me bag up all the chicken plus the huge amount of ground beef and I went happily on my way!

I was so encouraged to see how God always pays for his orders and it is so fun to see how He is going to do it! One more thing...I don't know if God is paying for the cashier's children, too, but I noticed she kept my sale paper. I am just guessing that on break time, both she and the manager were back there in the meat department loading up on chicken!

Now since this blog is supposed to be about time management, you can find out a great timesaving way to prepare ground beef ahead of time. No, it's not frying it all ahead of time. It's a much healthier and quicker way to prepare large quantities of meat for meals in the future. If you are interested, check out this tip on our website http://www.lifechangingseminars.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3192&Itemid=315

Thank the Lord for Clean Water

2009-10-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

And now an advertisement...

When we were preparing to go on this trip, one consideration for me was where I was going to get good water in all the countries we were going to. Since there are so many of us in our family, buying bottled water everywhere we go for four months would be very expensive, not counting the times and places where good water might not be available. We purchased a pump water filter for the family, but this takes time to set up so it was not the best solution for having good water all the time.

Our plan, which actually worked very well ,was to pump several gallons of water at a time so that we did not run out. However, I drink water almost continually and I very, very rarely drink any carbonated drinks. Because I am still nursing our baby, I did not want any situation where I would be without good water. I also didn't want to change water every few days.

I found what worked perfectly for our situation, and I thought that there might be other missionaries or short term trip takers that might like to know about my water bottle. The water bottle that I took for these last four months through thirty countries including several third world countries and Africa, is a bottle that has a special filter built into it. You can buy bottles with filters to improve taste and to moderately reduce chlorine, etc., but this is not what this filter is. It says on the side of the bottle, "Serious Protection," and that is what it is.

Basically, you can take any water source whether it is coming from a kitchen tap in Moldova or a river in Morocco and the filter will bring the water up to the World Health Organization's water safety standards. It is an instant filtration system as the suction of drinking forces the water through the filter. This bottle was invaluable for me as I could just walk into any place and fill it up while the others had to either stop and pump or try to find quality bottled water. Not only that, but it gave me a continual source of water that remained the same for four months.

The bottle is very durable as it has been dropped numerous times on our trip. The only disadvantages that I found was that it is just a little bulky without having a handle. Another small annoyance is that it stresses airport and other security officers a little bit when I carry it through. It is a semi transparent bottle and the filter contraption inside makes it look as if I might be carrying some highly explosive water bottle. I never was stopped in security, but it did attract a few extra stares.

If you are going on a short term trip overseas or if you are going long-term, you may want to go to Walmart.com and check it out. It's called the Sawyer serious protection water bottle. Although buying the bottle is between thirty to fourty dollars up front, it's good for 500 fill ups and since it's a large bottle to start with, it's a good deal all the way around. That's my advertisement for today. Here's the link to see the specs... http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=8283710. Let me know if you try it out and if you like it!

To Africa and Back

2009-09-14T07:28:00.001-07:00

Monday morning we experienced a unique adventure in our lives as we crossed the Mediterranean on a 35 minute ferry from the southern tip of Spain to Morocco on the continent of Africa. I hadn't thought that I would ever visit an Islamic country in Africa, but it didn't take me long to figure out that I really had arrived.

The first thing I noticed besides all the bribing being done at the border crossing was how the western style of clothing was quickly fading away. The further we travelled into Morocco, the fewer western style clothing we saw and the more typical Arab clothing we saw until we got to the place where we were definitely in the minority. It was interesting to see the range of clothing in the Islamic world as we don't often think of our own culture as having this range of clothing styles.

In our culture, we see the range of clothing from the Amish to what we would see as very immodest clothing. I suppose in the Islamic mindset, they have the same range although I must say I saw very little immodesty. For the first time in a long time, I had fewer clothes on than most people around me--that was quite a change! Perhaps the best way to express what we saw is to tell you what happened on our first evening there.

Our son, Christian, is five years old and has learned some about the Islamic world as we have prepared for this trip. I have tried to teach him that just because someone has a head dress on, doesn't mean that he/she is Muslim, but he can't seem to get that concept. Although it is fairly uncommon to see a person dressed in Arabic clothing in our area of North Carolina, once in a while when we are travelling, he spots someone dressed in this way, and usually lets me know.

Our first evening in Morocco, after our service, we went back to our apartment where we were staying and decided to take the whole family on a walk. The biggest reason for doing this was that it looked like an excellent opportunity to experience the Moroccan culture as it was the heart of Ramadan--a major Islamic holiday. The people had finished feasting and now the streets were full of celebrating throngs of people at about 11 at night and we wanted the kids to see what was going on.

We got out on the streets and all around us were throngs of Arabic speaking, long-robed wearing people. Everywhere around us were men in fez hats or other traditional male clothing such as long shirts, robes, and sandals. The women were dressed in a wider range of clothing from simple head scarves to complete burkas and gloves.

I know I felt a little uneasy myself as I was obviously ridiculously conspicuous with all twelve of us walking down the street of Morocco's holiest city in western wear, and all around us were these people of such a different race. However, I can only imagine how my little five year old felt as he experienced the night of spooky black burka-clad people walking by! To my amazement, we had only been out just a little while when all the sudden, he said with great excitement, "Mom, I see a Muslim!" I was so caught off guard by his obvious innocence in realizing that he had just seen a Muslim--thousands as a matter of fact--and he never realized that he was the only nonmuslim on the street! I quickly said "shhhh" as if hoping people wouldn't hear him, understand, and actually notice us! Oh, well, I guess the mind does quirky things when under stress!

Another very interesting thing we experienced was going into, the Medina. I had heard about the Medina of Fez before we got there and just thought it was a large flea market type place with lots of different products to buy. I assumed we would go there for a couple of hours, buy some souvenirs, and that would be it. I was very uniformed however, as to what the Medina is. As I quickly found out, the medina is not a flea market, but is actually the old city of Fes and is a cultural experience that can not be found anywhere else in the world. We travelled to the city walls, parked our van and walked in through the medina gate. Immediately we realized that we had just walked into another world. The medina is a modern day city that is still living back in medieval times. It is an area enclosed in old city walls encompassing about ten square miles of the city. No motor vehicles are allowed in the whole ten square mile area. People live, work, buy and sell in this enclosed area of the city as they did a long, long time ago. All around us were little shops, craftsmen, fruit stands, public baths (get a bath and massage for about 3 dollars), tanneries, schools and houses. This was no living history museum, but it could certainly qualify for it! We walked for hours in this medina as someone guided us through. All the information about the medina says not to go in without someone who knows the way as you will certainly get lost. Our contact there in Morocco actually lived in the Medina and guided us around. It would be almost certainly impossible for a newcomer to enter and not get lost as there are 7,000 little dark streets, alley ways and small roads, all jutting off in odd angles.

I don't claim to be a softie, but even I got a little shaken when I was standing in the street and saw a robed person approach the counter of a little shop right near where I was standing. I hadn't paid a lot of attention to where I was standing although I was standing taking pictures of the live chickens hanging out there. The customer approached the clerk and apparently requested a particular live chicken. I assumed that the customer would pick up the chicken and go home with his squawking purchase. However, before I could even turn my head to protect my sensitive feminine senses, the "clerk" plopped the chicken up on the counter and promptly pulled out his big knife and began sawing the chicken's head off before I realized what was happening and could turn my startled head. I have seen chickens butchered before, but I was totally unprepared for this and just never expected someone to start butchering a chicken right where you would normally see a cash register in my day and age. I mean, nice chickens are supposed to go into Walmart bags aren't they? Anyway, my sensitivities quickly adjusted again as I realized they were going to continue to prepare the chicken right there including singing it and defeathering it. I decided not to watch anymore as I never intended to see any part of it anyway and headed on to slightly better sites.

As we walked through the narrow streets, frequently, we would hear yelling and so we would squeeze up against the sides of the shops as a heavy donkey load of vegetables or market products would squeeze by.

We headed on down the street and soon came to the leather tanneries. Here, again, this was not a tidy museum experience in leather making. This was men sloshing around in hugs earthen tubs of liquids out under the baking African sun. Animal skins were hanging up, lots of smells were wafting around and inside we saw beautiful leather sandals, purses, jackets, etc.

In the middle of all these experiences, one thing was really bothering me. Here we were in the middle of a country that was listed in the top ten countries for persecution of Christians. Being a Christian in Morocco is a serious thing and there is no option on the national identity card for "Christian" on the space given for religion. It is forbidden to tell any Moroccan about Jesus. The churches that are there are for foreigners serving in Morocco only and the police have made that very clear. Morocco just threw out a group of missionaries not long before we got there, and although it is not technically against the law to become a Christian, they make it so unpleasant that the law doesn't matter at all. One person there told us the penalty was 20 years in prison.

Why did this bother me? It bothered me because when I walked into the English speaking churches, everything in me wanted to step outside and invite the throngs of people outside in. We were there during the holy month of Ramadan so in the evening, we would hear the call to prayer coming from the mosque and would see the throngs of mostly men heading for the mosque to pray before ending their fast for the day. They all came out a short time later while the voice from the mosque would continue to chant for a long time later over the loudspeaker. I wanted to stop them and let them know about the Way, the Truth, and the Life. It was a new experience for me to stand there and not be able to do a thing. It went totally against my nature to enter a gate to go into a church and know that those outside could not easily come in. Rick was speaking inside and a police was standing outside so it was not even an option to invite people in even if we had been able to speak their language. I'm not sure how it happened, but I do know that at one point in the evening, one Moroccan man did come into the service, so pray that God would satisfy his hunger for the truth and protect him from those who would try to hurt him. He must have been very hungry for God to come in as he did.

When you think of Morocco or hear about it on the news, remember to pray that God would make it possible for the people there to hear about the true way to heaven. One person who is working there with the people, told us that when the Moroccans can hear about God, the people are very responsive. He said that there is great responsiveness to the Gospel, and he was not the only one to tell us that. However, he said the problem is "when" they can hear the Gospel. There are so many hindrances for those who are there to tell it that it is extremely difficult for them to do it, but we met those who are spending their lives trying to tell as many as possible.

Another thing that I realized when I was there was the importance of meeting and sharing with the Moroccans and other Muslims who are living in both the Europe and the United States. They are moving to western countries in huge numbers, and if they can be reached, they can influence their own families as we never could. This was brought home to me twice on this trip.

On the way over to Morocco, I decided to step out onto the deck of the ship with Paul and get some fresh air. I decided not to stand near the rail as the ship ride was not the smoothest ride I had ever taken (it was choppy enough for the kids to enjoy it without getting sick at least if we weren't on there too long!) I stood back against the wall of the ship and a young Muslim woman and her husband and baby also stood there beside me. Both of our babies were about the same age and communicated in their own baby language. However, I realized that unless the Gospel could be shared with this young family, no doubt our little boys would have drastically different futures.

One the way back, I saw even more clearly the opportunities that we miss when we fail to befriend Muslims in our own country. We boarded the ship to return to Spain late at night. Right before the ship left the port, I stepped out onto the deck to enjoy the ride. Just as the ship was preparing to leave, I noticed two people step out onto the darkened deck, and cross a chain to go past a "no access permitted point." I wondered what they were doing so I stood and watched them without making myself obvious. It was a young Muslim couple. They were nicely dressed and appeared to perhaps have on special clothing. She had on a beautiful long dark blue robe with gold trimming and he was standing nicely dressed beside her. They made a striking picture standing there, but I wondered what they were doing there at the very edge of the ship where they weren't supposed to be. In a moment, the young man lifted both his arms and began waving them slowly back and forth and just stood there doing that. I wondered what he was doing and I kept wondering as he just stood there slowly waving his arms back and forth at something in the distance. In a moment, though, I realized he was crying and his wife beside him was wiping her face on the edges of her head scarf. Then I realized they were telling someone goodbye so I looked toward the terminal, and I saw a fairly large group of people standing outside the terminal, and they were doing the same slow waving of the arms back at him. This was not a casual goodbye as they apparently were leaving their family in Africa. It went on for a long time as the young man kept slowly waving his arms and periodically putting both his hands to his mouth to blow solemn kisses to the people on shore. As the ship moved away, they continued to stand there and wave and cry until the people were gone from sight on the shore and someone came from the ship and asked them to move from the area. I realized very strongly how sorrowful this young couple was to be leaving and how likely it would be that someone with compassion and tact could befriend them in their home where they were going and have a lot of influence for God in their lives. I know now that I will be watching for Muslims in our area and making aggressive efforts to befriend them so that I can share what I was not able to do in their own country.

The Strange Moroccan Stoplight

2009-09-14T07:27:00.001-07:00

This is the case of the strange Moroccan stoplight. We have been travelling in Europe for four months and during these last few weeks in Europe, we have had several meetings in southern Spain. On Sunday night, we travelled to Gibraltar and then the next morning we boarded a ferry for Morocco on the continent of Africa. Now, everyone else may not be as geographically challenged as I was, but I never realized until we were planning this trip, how close southern Spain is to the continent of Africa. After church on Sunday night in Gibraltar, we saw the lights of Africa in the distance, and when we got on the ferry, it was just a 40 minute ferry ride before we disembarked in a whole different world in Africa.

We knew all along that a trip into Africa, and into Morocco in particular, would possibly be both very challenging and very rewarding. Since Morocco is listed as one of the top ten countries for persecution of Christians, we already had a clue ahead of time of what they thought about us, so we were under no delusions, but now that we are back out of Morocco after three full and exciting days, I can honestly say that I am very glad to be out of Morocco, and I am very glad I went to Morocco. With all this said, perhaps you will more easily understand the case of the strange Moroccan stoplight.

During our time in Morocco, we noticed that their officers of the law seemed to hang around everywhere quite a bit, but they never seemed to pay much attention to us other than to take note of who was entering the church where Rick was speaking (it was supposed to be only foreigners--but one very brave Moroccan made it in toward the end of the meeting). We drove for three days in Morocco with Rick speaking in three different locations. During our time on the highways, we noticed that these vigilant officers would randomly appear on different sides of the highway quite unexpectedly and dutifully pull over apparently non-law abiding citizens. Nothing seemed to be out of order until we approached the capitol city of Rabat for the third and final time during our stay in Morocco. We were moving along with the traffic at about 45 miles per hour as everyone around us was when we noticed a stoplight up ahead. It was green as we approached so we dutifully prepared to proceed as we have done since the day we first learned how stop lights operate. This is where we learned about the oddities of Moroccan stoplights.... Just as we were ready to proceed through the intersection with the other cars in the other lanes beside us, the light suddenly and inexplicably turned red. We were shocked, but we were already entering the intersection and there was no way either we or the other vehicles could stop so we just sailed through. At that perfectly timed moment, the aforesaid vigilant officer was standing ready ahead of time to motion us to the side of the road.

Now with all the commotion of Moroccan roads going on around us, we quickly pulled over, but needless to say, we were a little stunned. Neither Rick or I ever run red lights, and we didn't see how such a thing could happen as a stoplight turning red instantly. The friendly officer came over and asked for Rick's license and chuckled merrily about how he didn't know if he could interpret it. Rick wasn't chuckling. Especially when the dutiful officer told him just a few chuckles later how much the fine would be. (that's a sentence fragment I know, but it gives the effect I want to express)...rules don't matter right now it appears.

Rick tried to explain, but the officer was unmoved--it was all our fault because we were going too fast. Just then, noticing what was happening a little clearer, I turned and looked where the officer had been standing, and saw his stoplight switching station. Now, I had learned earlier on in our stay in Morocco, that the government there has a very wonderful policy in effect in their country. That is, King Mohammed VI, Islam, Mohammed, and everything even remotely related to them, are and always will be perfect in every way and if you think otherwise and are smart enough to say so, they will arrange an extended visa and free lodging to go with it. (A Moroccan recently found this out when he noted in the newspaper that the King didn't seem to be healthy).

Now, we have prayed for a lot of free lodging on this trip, but considering the fact that our ferry was leaving later that evening, I decided that I didn't want to take advantage of their free lodging offer by opening my mouth to enlighten the officer to the criminality of his stoplight switching station, so I just started thinking some choice thoughts about this dutiful officer.

He saw that we weren't going to pay him this huge fine so he told us that we would have to pay this fine when we got to customs in a few hours. He took our customs paper so he could kindly arrange the details for us, and we proceeded on our way. I don't know all of God's reasons for sending us on this trip, but it seems that I am having a lot of practice in holding my tongue, so maybe I am going to need this practice later because I really wanted to say, "Wait a second before we go...my little boys back there in the van are really into gadgets and neat little inventions, and I'm wondering if you would be interested in just taking them over to your little light switching station and demonstrate how it works? I mean, if I have too, I could slip you a nice little sum--but you probably don't know what I mean by that, do you?"

We travelled on for a couple of hours to the customs office praying that God would either hinder the officer's message getting though or would work in some other way to accomplish His plan. When we got to customs, Rick went in to have his form stamped and the officer never even noticed that we had to pay this fine. We asked no questions and actually kept the form which I thought was supposed to be turned in. We'll put it in a nice little scrap book of Morocco to show how God is bigger than any of Satan's devices. This was just another example of how everything is really under God's control. We think we have a difficult situation, but all situations are the same to God. Nothing is big or small to Him because the word "problem" is not in his vocabulary. God has no problems--He only has perfect solutions to the situations we find ourselves in!

Random pictures

2009-08-30T07:45:00.000-07:00

Now that we only have a few weeks left here in Europe, I thought I would post a few random pictures. Enjoy!

A visit to Pompeii

2009-08-30T06:26:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered what happened in the story of Sodom and Gomorrha? I mean, have you ever imagined how the people responded and all the chaos that surrounded God's destruction of those cities? Well, if you want to get a real glimpse in to what those people must have experienced, visit Pompeii, Italy.

I had head about Pompeii and saw historical information about the destruction of Pompeii, but I was not prepared for what I saw when we visited Pompeii, last week.

For those who do not know, Pompeii was a city that sat directly under Mt. Vesuvius. It was known as a totally corrupted and erotic city. Even in those days, the godly people of that generation regarded Pompeii as a modern day Sodom. During the days of the first church, Pompeii was totally given to sensual living in the extreme and even today, there are some historical venues about Pompeii that require people that enter to be 18 or have written parental permission to enter the site. Obviously, we weren't interested at all in those sites, but the fact that the historical evidence for this city has to be guarded so carefully from innocent minds, speaks volumes about what the city was like.

Anyway, in the year 79 A.D, Mt. Vesuvius erupted and buried the city of Pompeii in a heavy layer of ash. Now you can go to the city and see remarkably preserved remains of a once great city. I went expecting to see a few buildings in ruins, but the significance of Pompeii is that basically the whole city was preserved. We walked across the city for four hours looking in houses, businesses, temples and stadiums and still we didn't see half of the city. Because the city was buried in ash, most things in the city are very similar to what they were on the day it was buried. We saw paintings on the walls of houses, beautifully tiled floors, cart ruts on the road, and graffiti that the inhabitants had scrawled on places around the city--again, some of it, obscene. Pompeii has one piece of graffiti that says "Sodom and Gomorrah" and no one has been able to discern if it was written before, during or after the eruption. Either way, it was apparently an appropriate description of the city.

The most grim part of it all was seeing the plaster casts of the people and animals trying to flee the city. One of the first archeologists to work with this city did future generations a service, by pouring plaster into the body-shaped cavities that were in the ash and preserving the actual figures of the people and animals. The people tried to escape as the city filled with ash and poisonous gas and their postures and positions are perfectly preserved in these casts as well as the positions of animals as they tried to escape. A fully harnessed mule was in one shop and both adults and children are preserved in the "garden of the fugitives."

Pompeii is an experience that I won't forget for a long time, and I sometimes wonder if this city wasn't preserved for a warning to future generations. Whether the destruction of Pompeii was a destructive act of God or a tragic natural occurrence may never be known, but the picture of this city starkly reminds me that we are leaving footprints on the sands of time and future generations will certainly judge us by what they see.

A Visit to the Colosseum

2009-08-30T06:24:00.001-07:00

While we were in Rome, we were very privileged to visit the Colosseum. I had looked forward to going to the Colosseum because of the rich, historical heritage that it held. We were not disappointed in what we saw there. For one thing, we were prepared to pay a very significant amount to get into the colosseum because we really wanted to see it. Those of you who know Rick's frugality would be surprised at what he was going to pay to get in! The rule is that everyone pays full adult price unless you are under 18 AND a citizen of the European Union. Obviously we had a whole lot of people under the age of 18 with us, but being a citizen of the E.U was a different story. The kids can mimic some of the accents here fairly well, but when they asked us where we were from, we had to tell the truth. The man at the ticket counter said, "Oh, it's going to cost you a whole lot to come in here." Rick already knew that:( However, apparently God touched his heart because he said, "Let's just charge you for the two adults and you can come in!" Rick didn't argue and we walked in very quickly before they changed their minds!

The colosseum was a very special place because I had read in many books of the many, many Christians who had stood in the center of the Colosseum and cheerfully gave their lives for the Savior that they loved so much. I remember reading of young people who stood in the center of the Colosseum and sang beautiful songs as the lions were released to kill them. Now, we were standing where they had stood, and I must say that I felt very unworthy, but so privileged to see this sacred place. Now, there is a cross erected near where so many of the Christians gave their lives.

This was not the first time on this trip that we had seen places that had been such bastions of wickedness, but now the evil is gone and the symbols of Christ still stand. Isn't it amazing after so much wickedness took place in the Colosseum, and so much blood was shed because of the name of Christ, the central point of the whole colosseum is a cross?

Another example of this was when we visited Corinth in Greece. Corinth was one of the most degraded cities at the time of Paul, and I am sure that in all their vain glory, they thought that their statues and monuments to the gods would stand forever. Now, though, Corinth is about Paul and the ministry that he had. An insignificant man left his mark on that city with preaching a seemingly foolish message. It is encouraging to see that however strong evil seems to be, God and His Word will last forever!

A mighty fortress is our God

A Bulwark never failing

Our helper he amidst the flood

Of mortal ill prevailing

Let goods and kindred go

This mortal life also

The body they may kill

God's Word abideth still

His kingdom is forever!

When in Athens...

2009-08-17T05:35:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow we are leaving Greece, but we have enjoyed our time in this Biblical country. We started out in Thessalonica and continued on to Athens. Yesterday was a full day of services here and we spent the evening at the Acropolis. Our little Paul didn't preach on Mars Hill like the Apostle Paul, but he did enjoy the view! Tomorrow we head for Corinth and Rome and tonight we work at an Iranian Refugee Feeding Center (our instructions are to not wear any American flag logos--wonder why?)

Ministry in Albania

2009-08-10T14:50:00.000-07:00

Today we are in Albania. I never thought that we would get to visit Albania, but God has graciously opened the door, and here we are. Albania is one of the most interesting countries that we have visited. Probably most people know that under communism, Albania was one of the most closed countries that there was. As one person put it, Albania under communism was a sister to North Korea today. Now that it has been open for almost 20 years, it is still a very third world country, and quite interesting to visit.

We came to Albania from Macedonia. When we crossed the border into Albania, it was on a lonely border crossing high on a mountain. We approached the border and were greeted by friendly Albanian border guards. After they finished practicing their English with us, chatting about our huge family size and stamping our passports, we crossed into Albania. We usually like to exchange money right away when we cross into a country so this time, Rick decided to go into the official bank right there at the customs office. He stepped into the dingy "bank" with broken windows and looked around but there was no one to be seen so an official led him into another room where a bank teller was asleep on a sofa. He woke him up so we could exchange money. Rick asked what the exchange rate was for Albanian money versus the U.S. dollar. He said that he didn't know but he thought it was 1,000 to 1. Then a few seconds later, he changed his mind and said, "No, I think it's 100 to 1." Considering that was such a big difference in money, Rick thanked him and went on our way without changing money! Later we found out that it is about 90 to 1.

As we crossed the border into Albania we immediately began descending deep into a balley. The road was a very winding road deep into the valley. It looked very similar to descending into the grand canyon. One of the first things we noticed was that we had just dropped off into a different world as we descended into the valley. Immediately we saw countless numbers of circular bunkers all over the place. These bunkers were built to withstand heavy bombing and they are literally everywhere over the countryside. Lots of places there are more bunkers than there are houses. When we entered the main town that we were staying in, between each building in town, there was a bomb shelter built into the ground with a little chimney sticking up. The pastor here told us that the dictator built 600,000 bunkers and I can believe it by just how many we have seen.

There are literally miles and miles of terraced mountains that the people were required to dig out to make way for the communist fruit farms. Last night on our way to a church in an outlying town, I had a hard time imagining the amount of work (slavery) that was required of the people to literally use hand tools and terrace the mountains in order to plant these huge fruit farms. When communism finally fell, the people were so angry over the slavery that had been subjected to that they destroyed these fruit farms--also causing great hunger for themselves. Now there are just terraced hill sides left with very few trees or else very young trees growing randomly. Another reason that their mountain sides are without old growth vegetation is because when communism fell, the western countries (most notably Italy--a neighbor), came in and cleared the forests of old growth trees and gave the people almost nothing for the trees. For example, the Albanians who were unbelievably poor after years under a despotic communist leader, were given about five dollars for an old growth oak tree. Five dollars was a huge amount to them, but it seems terribly wrong for them to have been cheated just because they didn't know the value of the trees. Now they have beautiful mountains that have almost no trees.

Most of our time here in Albania we are spending at a church and christian radio station in one of the most beautiful area of Albania. If you look on a map and see the eastern border of Albania, you will see a very large lake. We are at the southern end of the lake, not too far from Greece. As we have travelled to churches at night, it has been some of the most beautiful scenery that I have ever seen. There are towering mountains with this very large lake below surrounded by the cities of both Albania and Macedonia. Last night, Christian, our four year old stated it very well. He was sitting behind me in the van as we descended the mountain toward the lake. The sun was setting and the lights of the city were beautiful. He said, "Mom, this is a nice view." I said that it was. A few seconds later, he said, "This is a nice view (and then with his characteristic North Carolina drawl, he said with great emphasis, 'MAN!'"

During our time here in Albania, we have enjoyed the beautiful Mediterranean temperature and lifestyle. Last night we went out late after church with the pastor and his wife. We walked along the beach here in perfect cool weather and ate outside at a little restaurant along the shore of the lake. We had typical mediterranean food of meat, cheese and salad. The restaurant is owned by a neighbor to the pastor. Years ago when the pastor came here, he was preaching on the street when the owner of this restaurant hurled a rock at him. He thanked him for throwing the rock and later the two became neighbors. The man is still not overly friendly, but the pastor thought it would be a nice gesture to take our family to his restaurant and give him some business. This man was jailed a while back for human trafficking so it's not like he is your model business man, but the food was delicious. This picture is Paul with the wife of the human trafficker. I was sitting very close by...Then tonight we enjoyed pizza also near the beach. We ate inside, but the restaurant was had large open windows where we could here the albanian music outside. The music is live and you can walk along the beach from restaurant to restaurant (almost all outdoor seating) and see people playing accordians, or singing opera or playing other instruments.

Albania still has many physical needs that we take for granted. The city we are in tonight is only one of two cities that has water all day every day. The rest of the country has it when it comes on. Electricity can be sporadic. It has only gone off once since we have been here, so that's probably doing pretty well. As many third world countries are, environmental carefulness does not seem to exist. I have been appalled to see how much litter and garbage is left sitting around, especially in the rivers and streams. There seems to be a mentality here that they lived so many years with a dictator telling them what to do so now they don't want anyone to tell them what to do. I can understand how they would get that mind set, but it seems a no littering law couldn't hurt much! Wages and prices are also still quite low here. Today the six men in our family got haircuts for a grand total of nine dollars! A man who does manual labor here makes ten dollars a day and today we were told that a "pricey" hotel in this city goes for twenty dollars a night.

Albania is a beautiful country in spite of all the difficulties they have endured. Today we drove just a few miles and had a picnic at what used to be the private park of the former dictator. It is a beautiful park with waterways and swans and nice walkways. As with most of Albania, it needs a lot of maintenance and repair, but it was a beautiful place to walk around in (don't fall through the foot bridges over the river--repairs desperately needed here).

We passed out tracts at the gypsy market on Saturday. Many received the tracts cheerfully, several asked us for them, and several threw them on the ground or tore them up. Overall I think the reception was quite good considering that a big percentage of the people that were given the tracts were muslim.

Our time here in Albania has been one of the most rewarding of our whole time here in Europe, and we are so thankful that the Lord allowed us to come. The people here appreciate being able to hear the Gospel and they are enjoying their freedom. Two stories that we heard here made us realize the depth of slavery they had here just a few years ago and made us rejoice with them that those days are past for them. One man here complained about the lack of concrete available for building his house. He made the comment that the government had plenty of concrete to make all the bunkers they were making so they should have enough for him to build his house. He received TEN YEARS in prison for his lack of appreciation to the communist Albanian government. Another man made a similar complaint when he saw Macedonia from a distance and commented about how much greener it looked over there. He also received a harsh penalty.

Now the church is growing as the former regime very successfully destroyed practically all churches and religion. Most of the believers here are young people and seem very sincere. The church we are staying in has a Christian radio station that broadcasts over a large part of Albania as well as Macedonia. They are now playing Rick's program also so we are glad about that! Their antenna is made from some strong pipes welded together, and we are sleeping in one of their studios which is soundproof by being covered with cardboard egg cartons!

Come over into Macedonia

2009-08-10T02:29:00.000-07:00

Today we are in Macedonia, and honestly I must say that I expected something a whole lot different that what we are getting. I don't know what the typical American thinks about Macedonia, but I have been pleasantly suprised with our experience so far here. When we arrived, I first noticed that there appeared to be a lot of Islamic influence here. I was right. The pastor here told us that Macedonia is the most Islamic country in Europe. Not only are they the most Islamic country, but they are not content to remain at the levels they are at. "Somewhere" is pouring huge amounts of money into Europe and especially into Macedonia to further the Islamic religion. Here is a striking and scary statistic. Look at how small Macedonia is and then consider that in the last year, the muslims have built 164 new mosques in Macedonia alone.

Then he told us something that was painful to hear, but perhaps it is worth passing along. This pastor is in charge of one of the biggest and most influential relief agencies in this part of the world. During the word in Kosovo, his organization was the only organization that managed to work with both the Serbs and the Albanians--although some people hated them for this. He told us that most of the aid that was sent to Indonesia after the Tsunami came from Christian churches. The people were obviously in great need, so this was wonderful that so many Christians gave to this need. The problem is... while Christians were giving so heavily to help the devastated people of Indonesia, the government of Indonesia built a enormously expensive mosque in Sarajevo. The pastor said it is a beautiful mosque in downtown Sarajevo and it is a greenish color. I said it sounds to me like it's the color of money..

The pastor we are staying with is president of the Evangelical church here in Macedonia. In the last 20 or so years, they are averaging about 2 new churches a year. It's not that they aren't trying, but the Islamic countries are literally pouring all their resources into the spread of their faith.

When I thought of Macedonia, I thought of dirt roads, donkeys and hay wagons, people working in fields and basically a lot of what I saw in Romania or Moldova. Frankly, I thought it would be worse than what we saw there. Instead, I have seen very little of these things. The roads are nice compared to Romania and we were in on interstate type highway part of the way here today. Although we did see some of the rural way of life, here in the capital city of Skopje, it is a fairly modern city. It has even more of the feel of an eastern or Turkish type of city than even Bulgaria. I guess the presence of so many muslims makes it seem more like the middle east also.

When we arrived, we were greeted by very friendly people and went out to eat at a restauant with some great (although somewhat unusual) items. We were stuffed and then the pastor said we were going out to another restaurant for dessert. We enjoyed kiwi ice cream which none of us had ever had before. Macedonia grows lots of kiwis and sells them by the kilogram in the markets. I thought kiwis were only grown in Australia and New Zealand--dumb American again!

Although there is a very modern city, we see here again the anomaly of cities that we have seen so often here--wealth and western stores, restaurants, and business and abject poverty on the other side of the street. In our directions to the capital city here, the pastor had given us specific directions to go around one city and not to go into it. We obeyed his directions and quickly saw why. As we pulled on to the bypass of the city, I glanced to the side and saw horrific housing like I haven't seen in a very long time if ever. The houses were decrepit pieces of junk piled together and people were living in garbage all over the place. I could only see it for a few seconds because the government had conveniently built a wall to hide it from the view of the main road.

When we got to Skopje, we never saw any housing like we saw in other places, but there were still plenty of people begging. At one traffic light, children came out and got in front of our van and beside it, calling to us and wanting money or food. When the traffic light changed, they moved and we went on. I would guess the oldest child to have been 8-10 years old. At another stop light in the city, a gypsy man came up and began to wash our windows as they commonly do here when they get a chance. Rick shook his head no, but he continued to wash, hoping we would pay him. The lady with us told us to ignore him and drive on. As we drove away, he spit on our windows! Later in a parking lot, children surrounded us asking for money. We walked on because there was no way in the world we could ever do anything for these children. They persisted for a while and then left. When we came back, the air was out of our van tire. Some things just look very suspicious once in a while!

Nodding in Bulgaria

2009-08-10T02:11:00.000-07:00

For the last two days, we have been in Bulgaria. Bulgaria is not a country with very many dramatic sights to see or too many unusual historical events that took place. Being there, however, was a little disconcerting at times because it was like getting our first taste of Eastern culture as Bulgaria has a lot of Turkish influence.

I was not in Bulgaria very long until I felt like I had missed something very important way back in kindergarten. Had I really learned the alphabet? Everywhere I looked were signs I couldn't read, and I got a small taste of what life must be like to be illiterate. Even when we are in other countries, I could still often read the words and can often get an idea of what they say just by looking at similar words or root words. However, in Bulgaria, they use the cyrillic alphabet so I felt like I was operating on the level of a three year old. It is very humbling to not know the letters of the alphabet or how to even write the simplest letters or words.

Another thing that was very disconcerting is an unusual custom that Bulgaria has kept for hundreds of years. The story that we heard was that a long time ago under the occupation of the Turks, the Bulgarians decided to resist this occupation by confusing the Turks so they changed the way they nod their heads when saying yes or no. They began nodding their heads "yes" for "no" and vice versa. This piece of resistance stuck with them, and now Bulgaria is one of the few countries if not the only country that nods their heads the opposite of the rest of the world.
Now this may not seem so difficult to you, and I honestly thought it was a cute little anomaly, but the way it works in ordinary life makes one realize how often we Americans nod our heads without ever realizing it. For example, last night we were in a church there in the capital city of Bulgaria. The church leader was in front doing the preliminares and leading the songs, and I noticed all of the sudden that I had been slightly nodding "yes" and smiling while the leader was speaking as I often do as a guest in churches. It struck me that I was communicating "no" to everything the speaker was saying. Try smiling at the preacher and nodding "no"--it's very hard to do!

A short time later, Rick experienced the same thing. He got up and began speaking as usual on the topic of "Redeeming the Time." Before long, he noticed that the congregation was nodding, "no" at him. Fortunately, he remembered that they were not ready to throw eggs at him, but were actually agreeing with him. Nevertheless, there is just something psychologically difficult about preaching to a congregation that is nodding, "No"!

Another thing we learned about Bulgaria is that they are very well known for their roses and rose oil. I discovered this after I had gone into several shops and noticed they all had shelves full of rose products--rose oil, rose water, soap, lotion, you name it. I thought, "wait a minute...either all the shops in Sophia got a really good deal on rose based products or there is something to this. I asked the missionary we were with and he told me that Bulgaria grows huge fields of roses and sell the oil to the companies that make the most expensive perfumes in the world. Needless to say, the shops smell wonderful...

Ben Hur in Romania

2009-08-03T03:40:00.000-07:00

Have you ever read the book or saw the movie, "Ben Hur"? One of the climax points of this story is where Ben Hur's enemy locks chariot wheels with his him and attempts to wreck his chariot.

This reminds me of the experience we had while driving back from our church service last night here in Romania. We had to speak at a church about three hours away and had gone about half way back on the highway when we met up with a modern Romanian kamikaze driver. Romania has more than their allotment of kamikaze drivers as they seem to almost be the majority here rather than the minority. Basically, they believe that if they can pass another vehicle with more than two seconds left to spare before hitting the oncoming traffic head on, then they are not good drivers.

Well, last night we were happily driving along when one of these kamikazis tried to pass us. Unfortunately, he had less than two seconds left to spare by the time he passed our back left wheel. Very unfortunately for him, an eighteen wheeler was coming the opposite way. Very, very rapidly he found himself with his driver's side mirror being whacked off by the semi truck and his passenger side wheel rubbing against our tire at about 60 miles an hour. Now this is not too comfortable a situation to be in so he rapidly slammed on his brakes and got his damaged car to the side of the road. The semi truck never even stopped and several hours later we got on our way again with just our hubcab polished up to the color of his wheel. The police chewed him out very well and he went shaking on his way with a tract in his hand in case he should think of his very impending death while he was falling asleep that night.

In my case, I thought of the song, "Holy Ground" that says, "and I believe that there are angels all around." The Bible indicates that children each have at least one angel apiece, so last night we kept at least ten angels busy. How many angels does it require to control these types of situations? Who knows? Maybe it took one hundred, or maybe it just took one very strong angel just stretching out his arm a little bit to keep our vehicles separated. What does it matter how many angels it took--God always watches over His children and He only allows the circumstances that fit in His perfect plan. The fact that we are in Romania makes no difference to God--He is not limited by borders of countries. This situation could have just as easily happened in the U.S. The only difference is that the kids had to go to the bathroom at the Romanian police station and they only had an outhouse. That just made it a little more interesting--especially when they never could find it in the dark. That's the fun part about being in another country--you just never know what might happen, but it doesn't matter because God is always there.

Life in Moldova

2009-08-03T02:53:00.000-07:00

Our time in Moldova was an educational experience for the children that hopefully they will never forget. Most of the people there speak Russian and the billboards, etc were written in Russian. Moldova is one of the last remaining communist countries and it was obvious as soon as we got to the border.

As soon as we pulled up to the checkpoint, a very cocky looking young man in full regalia including communist looking hat came out. I have been to China before so I am familiar with their ways of intimidation and need to "boss" people around. He and his "comrade" proceeded to try some intimidation by staring in our faces when they checked our passports and giving little commands that were not necessary in order to establish their authority. For example, they told us that Paul was too hot in his car seat and to take him out and give him a drink. If I had not been wanting to get in his country, I probably would have said, "Yes, he's hot because you have spent so long staring at our passports while we sit here and bake in the sun because you don't want our engine idling. If you would kindly just let us by, he'll get cool right away." By the look of his cocky hat, I didn't think he would appreciate my little speech so I took Paul out and gave him a drink. He and his "comrade" thought they were the president of the United Nations or some similar organization, but he didn't know that we were getting a lot of enjoyment out of his strutting around. One young guard we saw was actually walking so similar to a turkey that the kids just burst out laughing.

After we got through the border we continued to have incidents with the police. I guess there is a reason that a communist state is called a police state--it seems like everywhere we looked, there were police there watching and observing and pulling people over. Whenever we drove into the city, we just had to plan on being pulled over once or twice because all along the roads, there were police with little wooden signs, and they just randomly held them out to passing motorists who had to pull over for "checks." We got pulled over often because we were driving a right hand van from England. We were very careful however to keep all traffic laws so it would be more difficult for them to fine us.

We did end up with one fine, however. One of the random police men pulled us over and we quickly did. When we got to the side of the road, he walked up and said there was a big problem. Now we had already met this guy before earlier in our stay so I knew his name. Earlier when he had pulled us over, he basically just wanted to practice his English. When he approached our window the first time, I asked him if he knew English, and he said, "of course" like he was horribly insulted to think that I thought that a policeman in Moldova would not know English. The kids got a big laugh out of this cocky policeman saying, "Hello, my name is Vladimir." Anyway, here he was again with a big problem. Basically, it boiled down to the fact that we pulled over too quickly. He said that when he flags us over, he wants us to keep going a little while and gradually work our way through traffic to get to the side of the road. This was safer he explained. Well, fortunately my sarcastic tongue can remain under control at times, because I felt like say, " Oh, I get it Comrade Vladimir. You want us to continue travelling after you flag us over and gradually work our way through the traffic so that we won't cause an accident. Then when we get way down the road, you want us to back all the way up since it is safer to back up on the side of the road than it is to cross lanes of traffic. Once we back all the way up, then you would have a wonderful opportunity to fine us for waiting too long to pull us over!" We paid him his fine of about five dollars and went snickering on our way. He said that he had to fine us because just when he pulled us over, his big boss drove by so he would know if he didn't fine us. Sounds like a fine excuse to me. After he left our window and walked on his way, I told him to enjoy his Big Mac. Good thing he didn't hear me--I would have got a fine for something no doubt.

During our time in Moldova, we saw hungry people and children. We were told that some parents actually maim their children shortly after birth so that they can use them as beggars the rest of their lives. Some of the people though just looked hungry and we knew they needed something to eat. For example, right outside Moldova in Romania, we came out of the grocery store with our purchases and a little boy just followed us. He didn't ask for anything, but we could tell he was hungry. We gave him one our ice cream bars and he was so excited that he went and showed it to everyone coming out of the grocery store.

One interesting event took place while we went in a Greek Orthodox church. We wanted to see how the people were worshipping and what the inside looked like. It was very quiet in there where people were going in and out to pray and burn candles to the icon. Paul, however, was intrigued by all the glittering gold, candles and beautiful stained glass windows and he could not keep quiet about it so the lady that was with us said she would take him out while we finished looking around. She took him in his stroller out to the front steps and stood there with him. We found out later that someone came by and gave the lady a dollar for him. She explained that he did not need it, but they insisted. We found out that the place where she was standing was the place where all the beggars gather at church time to try to get money. They assumed she was begging for Paul so he got his first Moldovan lei given to him by a stranger.

During our time in Moldova, we spent a lot of time with a doctor and her husband who was a deacon in the church there. She is a cardiologist and makes $300 a month. I was shocked when she told me what she made, but her wages are about all that any doctor makes. She was just as intelligent and skilled as any cardiologist in the states, but she is just practicing in a poor country.

If you consider the common person makes $30 a month, then she still makes ten times what they do so perhaps that is equivalent to our own economy. She studied nine years to make these kind of wages so it's really a pitiful economic situation.

During our time with her, she told us several shocking stories about the health situation in Moldova. She said that one of her most difficult problems is trying to convince people that what their grandmothers did is not necessarily the best way. She said that especially those in the village just will not listen to her if she tries to convince them any differently than the old grandmothers say.

One example is in the care of babies. Because of the extremely high cost of baby food (I saw one jar for $2), mothers chew whatever food the baby needs, then they feed it what they just chewed. The babies get lots of infections and diseases being fed this way.

Another superstition that they hold is that a stomach ache comes because the stomach some how twisted while they were sleeping and now it needs to be straightened out. She said they lay the person on the floor and someone else gets on them and roughly puts their thumb on the persons belly button and twists their thumb around until the person's stomach is straightened out, the person is hospitalized or otherwise gets better.

She also told us that one in twelve people have some form of hepatitis and they have a firmly held belief for how to get rid of it. The cure for hepatitis is to find a very fat dog and to eat the fat of this dog. The doctor said the she had a nice little dog herself and had gotten fat from being so well cared for. Well, it disappeared, and she found out the rest of the story.

Now don't continue reading if you have a weak stomach. Don't blame me if you get sick because I have forewarned you...The doctor told us that there is a lot of tuberculosis in Moldova and here again, they have some sure methods for curing it. She said that they believe that if a person eats a prescribed number of lice for several days, fixed in a prescribed manner, that their tuberculosis will be cured. This was hard enough for me to digest (literally!) but then it got worse. She said that some parents actually let lice grow in their children's hair to sell for "medicinal purposes." I could hardly believe this was true so I questioned her further. It is true and it's easier to believe these things when you see the poverty of these people. The way they think is that if those bugs are on their hair, why should they destroy this source for getting money for those who don't have these bugs? After all, if you are only making $30 a month, life is already so tough that it can't get much worse for many of them. In our time here, I have passed many beggars, but I think I have not turned away any child--that's just too hard to do.

Now if you don't recognize this last picture, I'll let you know. This was the bathroom at the Moldovan border. One thing we learned right away--you don't have to ask where the bathrooms are...just follow your nose.

Learning Generosity in Moldova

2009-07-23T01:06:00.000-07:00

I have been moved to tears more times in the last few days than in a long time. We have been in Moldova for several days, and I have been overwhelmed by kindness time after time since the moment that we arrived. The kindness that I have experienced here reminds me of the story Jesus told about the widows mite. Most of you probably know the story of the poor widow that gave a very small coin and Jesus recognized her as giving everything she had. His emphasis was not on the amount she gave but on the amount she gave compared to what she had to give and her apparent motives in doing so.

We arrived in Moldova completely exhausted, hungry and smelling rather "stinky." We had started out from Budapest, Hungary on Thursday morning and started out for Romania. We travelled all day to Romania by way of a detour to Serbia (and that's another long story about how we ended up in Serbia) and arrived at our church service there. Immediately after Rick spoke, we got something to eat and found out that instead of going to bed we were going to have so start our trip for Moldova that night without sleepiis any. It didn't look that far on the map, but we had adequate warning that it was going to be some tough travelling roadwise and that we needed to start right away if we were going to get there in time for our service the next evening. I must say that I reluctantly got back in the car because by this time we just wanted to go to bed.

Anyway, to make a long long long story short, we drove all night and all the next day until about 5 in the evening to get to Moldova stopping only to have a picnic and get gas. Rick slept a little bit while the rest of us ate. Not only was the trip grueling in terms of hours in a vehicle, but the roads were well, we'll say it nicely,--they were not good roads. They were either winding through the mountains or Rick spent his time dodging huge pot holes. Not only that, but our air contitioner decided to become very anemic on a baking hot day.

There were so many little kindnesses the people showed toward us every day, and we were so touched by how well they treated us especially when you consider how little they have. Moldova is the poorest country in Europe and the average wage in 250-300 dollars a month. That's the average wage. A lot of the common people make 30 a month. After we spent three days doing seminars for them, they secretly took up an offering for us. The pastor came to the back of the church and handed us this wad of bills. This was the first time there in Moldova that I just felt like crying. We insisted that we did not want the money, but he would not hear it. They insisted and we went away feeling like they had just taught us what generosity was. The amount of money they gave us was not large at all by our standards, but it was a huge amount to them, and we were very humbled by their sacrifice.

Yesterday was another case where I felt very humbled. We were invited to speak for staff devotions at the local medical clinic. There were about 15 doctors and medical personnel there. The building was very clean and pleasant, but it was very simple and bore no exterior resemblance to the hospitals in the United States. It was painted concrete or plaster, and there were no comforts at all visible--just hard beds and stark walls. Inside, though, the people were so glad to have us come and listened attentively while Rick spoke. When he was finished, the director of the clinic called me forward and said he wanted to give us a gift of appreciation. He very movingly presented a beautiful wall hanging to us. Again, I was moved to tears because of their desire to be generous, and they were the ones that needed so much. On the way out of the building, one of the doctors came to me and asked us if they could give us any medicines (like ibuprofen) for the children. This time, I flatly refused because there was no way I was going to take their limited supplies of medicine when in a few months, I can just walk into Walmart and buy ours. In the end, we compromised ,and I walked out with two boxes of Rolaids which I will leave with a missionary in Romania.

However, the most touching incident of generosity came later that same day. We were about to leave Moldova, so we wanted to buy a few souvenirs. All along the trip we have bought little things, but when we got to the open air market with a lot of older people selling little hand made items, I told the kids to go ahead and buy what they wanted because it was obvious these people needed the money that our purchases would bring. There was one lady that told us that she would give us good prices, so we decided to buy several of our souvenirs from her. While we stood there looking at her items, she was watching us and smiling and Paul was happily sitting in his stroller. One of the main items that she was selling was little stackable Russian dolls that are popular in this part of the world. She had very inexpensive ones and mid priced ones, and then she had large ones.

I wasn't paying a lot of attention to Paul so when we were about finished buying, I looked at him in his stroller and there he was, holding one of these large doll sets--the largest set she had. I didn't know what had happened so I asked through the translator. He said, "No, she wants to give this to Paul." Right then, I lost my composure. Here we were coming from the richest country of the world buying souvenirs of our time in one of the poorest countries of the world. There she was sitting on the side of the road selling little hand made items that kept her from starving, and she chose to give it to a little baby who smiled at the whole situation. When we realized that she ws not going to take it back, I looked over and realized I wasn't the only one touched. Rick was looking away from her and was sniffling too.This was another big lesson to me in what real generosity is.

Rick spoke at a church on Sunday night, and the people were so appreciative and wanted to talk for a long time after the service. One elderly man came up at the end and spoke eight words in English very movingly. He could not communicate much in our language, but he stood in front of us and with tears in his eyes, said, "You are my brothers, and I love you." I can tell you that we have spent a lot of money and energy going a lot of places where people just quickly file out afterwards, and often there didn't seem to be a lot of appreciation, but this elderly gentleman made up for it all. It seems like the least among us often can teach us the most and set the example for us all.

These are just a few of the most poignant memories that I carry with me of our time in Moldova. I'll blog a little later about some of our day to day experiences there.

Criminals Incorporated

2009-07-15T23:57:00.001-07:00

Anyone ever heard of "Monster's Incorporated"? Well, we recently ran into their close cousins in the Czech Republic. I named them "Criminals Incorporated." Here's what happened…

About two weeks ago, I saw in Rick's journal where he had written that he was expecting something very difficult and challenging to happen. In his private devotional time, he felt like God had shown him that we were going to experience some difficulties soon. About a week later, Rick was talking about it to the children during our family devotional time, and I told him privately later that I didn't like him saying such things as it alarmed me.

Two days later, we were on our way to Hungary and were still in the Czech Republic. Everyone was happy and I was sitting in the back working on the computer when I heard a noise and then right after Rick pulled off the road and said, "This doesn't look good." The oil light was on and the engine had shut off and was very hot. We obviously couldn't go anywhere so we decided what our next step should be. We could see a village in the distance sou our first thought was to walk there and try to find an auto mechanic, however, we looked in our tour book and found the emergency roadside number so Rick called it. Suprisingly, the operator spoke English so he was able to easily tell them where we were at. Before long, they said a tow truck was on the way, and the price seemed quite inexpensive to have our vehicle towed to the nearest mechanic.

After some time, the tow truck driver arrived and wanted to know what we were going to do with the children, and I told him we were going to walk to the village and wait on Rick there. That wasn't ideal since it was quite a ways, so eventually, the tow truck driver put our 15 passenger van up on the tow truck (the platform type) and told us to hop inside.

Now I don't know about you, but I am a very safety conscious person and riding on the back of a tow truck in a van high above the ground is not my idea of safety. However, the kids thought it was a great ride and it was quite humorous to see us riding along on the back of the tow truck. Perhaps my finger nail marks are still on the head rest in front of me! Anyway, he slowly lowered us down and said he was leaving us with "his friend" at this auto service who could fix our van right away today.

Well, it didn't take us too long to discover that we had landed at "Criminals Incorporated." They handed us the bill for towing and discovered that had attached on every imaginable fee. They had our van there which we couldn't move and they proceede to attempt to advantage of us in every way possible.

After about four to six hours of sitting there, we finally realized that the engine was ruined and would have to be replaced or rebuilt. Of course, they had a nice fee for that and who knows that they would have done if we had agreed. Besides that, they said it would take most of the week to get it done.

At this point, Rick called our friend in Romania and asked his advice since we were getting ready to spend the month with him. He made some calls and called back and told us to catch the next available train to Romania, leave the van with the crooks and he would send a tow truck to get it. Basically, we could have the van towed 10 hours one way across four countries, and get it fixed faster and still come out cheaper than "Criminals Incorporated" were giving us a price for.

We asked Criminals Incorporated (afterward referred to as CI) if we could park the van there until we could make other plans and they agreed to do it—for a fee. We didn't tell them we were sending someone to get it because we figured they would make it disappear. However, if they were receiving parking rent, they would probably keep it for a short time.

We only had a few minutes to gather a few things out of the van so I started dumping bags and frantically sorting out just the essentials we would need for a week or so. Then we had the criminals take us to the bus station—for a fee-- and headed on our way. We travelled all night on various trains and finally arrived in Oradea, Romania about 9 in the morning.

At midnight we had our plans laid and our Romanian friend took off with the tow truck driver for the Czech Republic to try and get our van back. Of course, there were a lot of prayers going on during this whole episode and we prayed through the night while they were travelling. Sometimes, I was tempted to pray "imprecatory prayers" if you know what I mean, but God helped me to "bless them that curse you" and we were thankful for the kindness of so many people in Romania who helped us out with meals and a place to stay.

To make a very long and tiring story short, two mornings later, I woke up to the sound of a diesel engine outside our window and the tow truck driver had arrived with our van. Thank the Lord that CI had been thwarted at least from stealing or damaging our van. We had our van back with several more fees attached so it was being taken to another mechanic in Romania.

Well, that's the story of Criminals Incorporated. We believe that nothing happens to us without God knowing it and allowing it. We knew that all of this was in His plan so we did not have to worry about it. We got to see God work in so many ways especially in working it out for our van to be repaired at a Ford mechanic in Romania rather than at the CI place.

Another thing that really encouraged me was in how God watched over our every need. When was the last time that you needed food? We don't have to pray for food because we usually have all the money we need and a Super Walmart down the road. In our situation, we had just a few minutes to grab things from our van so we didn't have much food to take with us. We knew from our experience in Europe before that we needed to take food and water on the trains, but in this case, it was all we could do to just get to the train station in time let alone stop and buy necessary food. We had water in the van so I grabbed that, but food was in short supply.

We travelled for hours and everyone started to get hungry. We had a lay over at a dumpy little train station in Arad, Romania in the early morning hours. I took the little ones inside the train station to keep them warm and had not been in the station long when an old lady walked over and handed Christian and Precious candy. I told her "Thank you" in English since I know no Romanian. A few minutes later a young lady walked over and handed Christian and Precious sandwiches and said, "Eat." I guess she heard my English and knew at least one word.

Let me say this—we were not dying of malnutrition as most of us have enough spare fat to survive for quite a while, but food was getting to be on our minds. The children were not acting hungry where people would know that we had not eaten—it was God who was prompting these people to do this. After a while, someone else walked by and handed Paul a banana. Before we got where we were going, we were all sitting in the train station talking with our Romanian friend when an old lady got up from across the station and walked over and handed us a whole bag of baked cakes—similar to pancakes. We wanted to thank her so our Romanian friend went to speak with her. She said that she didn't know why, but she made extra that morning and brought them with her.

This was all quite amazing to me because no one knew that we hadn't eaten and no one knew our situation. When was the last time some one just walked up to you and handed you food? I don't know when it has ever happened to me like this before, but maybe it was because I never needed it. Anyway, it was such a blessing to see how God took care of everything we needed. Criminals Incorporated may have looked like they were winning for a while, but God was never very far away. What an encouragement to know that God is never very far away.

Goodbye (for a while) to Grandpa

2009-07-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

Tonight I received the news that my grandfather had passed away. I'm in Romania tonight so my thoughts have been on the many, many wonderful memories that my grandfather gave me. Just the fact that I am here in Romania is to his credit because ever since I can remember, my grandfather has inspired me to do right and to follow the Lord.

I knew before we ever came over here that there was the possibility that he would pass away and we would not be able to attend his funeral. Although I knew this, we knew that we were doing what God wanted us to do, and we knew that we were doing what grandpa would want us to do. Tonight in heaven, I think that grandpa knows where we are and he is glad. The fact that we cannot attend the funeral means nothing to him now because he sees the bigger picture—while funerals are a way for us to express our human grief, a funeral is just an unnecessary formality for one who is already in heaven! This Thursday, I will be very sorry that I had to miss such a special event, but I know that seeing him in heaven will be a much more joyful occasion and just a little more reason to look forward to getting there.

When I think about my grandfather, there are lots of memories that come to mind because he always invested so much time with his grandchildren. He and grandma always made it a high priority to be at any special event in our lives, and many years of photographs show them always there for us. My grandfather loved me a lot, and I always knew it. Because he was a tall man, his hugs were always lopsided, but they were always there. Whenever we arrived at his house, he was already coming to meet us part way and give us one of his "behr hugs" and welcome us to the Bear's den. For those who knew him very long, you will know that his mother was a "brown bear."

Grandpa sent us birthday checks in the mail, gave us educational games at Christmas, sent us big blocks of cheese in the mail, took us on hikes through the woods, took us fishing, played "skin the cat" and made a loud train noise with his mouth. He drove excrutiatingly slowly so that he never broke the speed limit, and always kept his gas tank at half a tank. Before we left his house he would casually walk around the car to inspect the tires and think of some tactful way to tell us if they needed attention. In the days when Brach's pick a mix candy was popular, grandpa would always show up at our house with a bag of sweets. I still can't pass Brach's candy without bringing back memories.

Grandpa loved ice cream and passed that love on to me. Grandpa owned a big green recliner and some of my earliest memories are of being with him at that chair. Grandpa's house was never scarey because something about him sleeping down the hall made everything calm and cozy.

Grandpa always said something good about the worst situations. My first year of marriage, we began the tradition of inviting grandpa and grandma to our home for Thanksgiving. We kept that tradition for years until they moved away. That first year, I was so excited to have them come that I cooked enough food for an army and left out off the seasonings for the stuffing. They never said a word about how terrible that stuffing tasted, and I didn't even discover it wasn't good until later. Grandpa's "get along" spirit was perhaps best shown by turning off his hearing aid at the church when either the music got too loud for him or else he didn't like the music—I never figured out which one it was! Later, when he came to our house and our children asked him to go to the Thanksgiving parade, he went along although I knew that at his age, it wasn't really something that he would normally do. When the children had collected too much candy to handle, he promptly took off his baseball cap and allowed them to fill it.

Grandpa was generous with his grandchildren. Not only did he send me a yearly birthday check, but if he knew I needed something, he just got it for me. When I went away to college, he knew I needed a typewriter, so he just went in the store with me and got it for me.

Grandpa was a precise person. His hair was always neat (by the way, he never colored it). Grandpa always dressed neatly. Anyone remember his rainbow shirt? Grandpa always thought ahead to get his hat, jacket, bug spray, and umbrella before heading out and he always reminded me to do so. It took over thirty years for me to catch on and think about these things ahead of time, but now I am finally grown up enough to remember to grab a jacket. Thanks for teaching me that, grandpa! Grandpa always neatly opened his mail with a letter opener and always sat in his recliner to do it.

We always looked forward to grandpa and grandma coming to visit us. It was a strict rule at our house to have evening devotions no matter what so my dad would always read a passage of Scripture and then pray. However, when grandpa came, things changed! Grandpa never knew it, but after reading the Bible, my dad would ask for "comments" and grandpa always had one!

Grandpa always respected grandma. I never once saw him disrespect her and we always knew that he believed marriage was very sacred. I remember sitting in the living room of their house and grandma got out her marriage license and showed it to me.

Rick and I spent much of our time dating in grandpa and grandma's house. They always welcomed us even though in those days, we had more interest in spending time as a couple than as a foursome. We would go to their place for a weekend away from college, and then spend the days exploring a park or other tourist site, and then get back to grandpa's at bedtime.

Grandpa was the only grandfather that Rick ever knew and they treated him just as a natural born grandchild. They were always there for a hug and handshake for him and regularly told us that they were proud of us. It meant a lot to Rick to be treated so lovingly as he had always missed having grandparents. It meant so much to me to hear them say that they were proud of my choice for a husband and that they appreciated my children and enjoyed having them around.

I remember being with grandpa for the days following his open heart surgery. Although he was in a lot of pain, I never remember hearing him complain or have a bad attitude.

My grandfather left priceless memories with me of unequivocal love. He motivated me to do right, and I always knew that if I did wrong, he would be disappointed, and that helped me to choose the right way. They were so proud of me at so many special occasions, and they were never afraid to say so. Thank you, grandpa, for giving me so many wonderful memories. I will always be grateful to God for giving you to me. I will look forward to seeing you in heaven

Sunday in Romania

2009-07-12T07:59:00.000-07:00

We have had a very busy day here in Alba Iulio, Romania. Rick spoke three times today and the cihldren sang twice. We got here on the train last night after midnight so we are a little tired, but do not have a schedule tomorrow so we should be able to get caught up on sleep. Here are some pictures from our day. As you can tell, the grandmothers love Paul and Precious. Precious enjoyed having a little extra attention when she was spoon fed her lunch today!

Rick recording at Christian Radio Station

2009-07-12T01:12:00.000-07:00

Rick spent a good part of a day recording at a Christian Radio Station in Oradea, Romania.

Random pictures of our time in the Czech Republic and Romania

2009-07-12T00:48:00.001-07:00

Here are a few random pictures of our time in the Czech Republic and Romania. These may not be in order but you can probably figure it out.

Christian and Precious outside a church in Vyskov, Czech Republic.

Paul enjoying sitting outside.

Christian found a familiar friend at McDonalds.

The boys entertained themselves with clothespins on a rainy day.

This old military bunker was outside our house in the Czech Republic. The kids had lots of fun imagining stories about it.

Sunshine and Alex Birnbaum on Charles Bridge in Prague.

Royal with grilled piglet livers sign.

Me and my long lost twin sister in Prague

The kids enjoyed a wagon ride with new friends.

Crippled Caleb and Toothless Christian

2009-07-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

During our time in Czech we had two incidents where we needed medical help so we experienced excellent care in the Czech medical system. It was quite different than we are used to, but we certainly have no complaints about the type of care we received as well as the friendliness of those who helped the "foreigners."

First, Christian was with us as we took a walk into town. He was bouncing along as usual and was smiling happily when he suddenly demonstrated why they don't give four year olds drivers' licenses. He quickly cut right in front of someone else leaving only an inch for them to stop. They didn't stop and he fell to the ground and got up with a seriously cracked front tooth. We didn't want to take him to the dentist as we have all enjoyed his joyful baby tooth smile, but nothing could be done about it. Rick found out where the dentist lived and knocked on her door. She told him to come in and looked at his tooth and knew she couldn't do anything for it besides pull it as he would have lost it before long anyway. She had Rick hold him in the dentist chair and then gave Christian a shot without him even knowing it and pulled the tooth. When she was finished, she gave Christian a little Czech truck and then charged us a grand total of about nine dollars. She did excellent work in a clean office and we were grateful for her helpfulness.

A few days later Caleb came to me and said, "Mommy, I'm bleeding a lot," and he was as he was leaving a trail of blood behind him. He had stepped on a sharp rock and left a big gash in his foot. When we got the bleeding under control, we started for the hospital and put him in the stroller as we headed for where the lady at information told us to go. It was a plain concrete block building that said something that we could understand as being "orthopedics." Here we knocked on a door again and a nurse appeared. She asked us if we had the Czech medical card and when we said "No" and explained our situation, she said, "well, it doesn't matter anyway" and took us into a room. A doctor joined us with another nurse and they proceeded to quickly clean and glue his foot back together rather than using stiches. The room was very plain and looked like something from the 50's, but it was very clean and the staff was very careful to keep things clean and be friendly.

In probably less than half an hour from the time we walked into the information desk, we were walking back out with Caleb bandaged and happy and the doctor said we didn't owe him anything. I must say that although the room was old, plain and didn't look at all like our hospitals, they certainly not lacking at all—and we didn't have to fill out any Hippa forms. For that matter, they never even asked our name or address or had us fill out any form. Oh, for the days when life was that simple!

Friends in Czech Republic

2009-07-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

Today we are on our way to Prague. We are on our way to see friends that we already know and to see new friends that we are eager to get to know. We have met so many wonderful people on this trip, but once in a while, it just seems that there are people that just seem to rise just a little bit above the rest of us and I view them as treasures that are here on earth for a while before they go to heaven where they belong. Let me tell you about two of the treasures that we visited with in the Czech Republic.

First, let me honor Pastor and Mrs. Fojtu. We have known them since we lived here in Czech seventeen years ago and my esteem for them has only grown over the years. We travelled about two hours from our place in the Czech Republic to the little village where they live. We visited with them for about five hours and in that time, they insisted on us eating three different times! They were so pleased that we had come by that they welcomed us with lots of food. This was just one example of how they have been giving people over the years. After one of our meals, Pastor Fojtu (who is now 75 years old), took us way up high in the mountains and picked mushrooms and wild blueberries. When we returned to the house, Mrs. Fojtu (who had stayed behind to cook more food), cooked these delicious mushrooms and we sat down to another meal.

What is so special about this couple is their grateful and servant attitude. What a person would assume if they didn't know better was that this couple has enjoyed a typical life for a couple married over fifty years. Instead, if you can get him to tell you so, this couple has suffered more for their faith than probably anyone else that I know personally. Under communism, as a young pastor and father, Mr. Fojtu continued to pastor his church there in Czech until he was put on the Russian's "black list" as he termed it. Because they found him with a Russian Bible twice, he was put on their hate list and removed from his pulpit. They then sent him to work in a chemical factory. Other friends of his were imprisoned, one for a very long time, while he was sent to work in difficult and unsafe conditions.

It was such an inspiration to sit and talk to him and never hear one word of bitterness or hatred toward those who took so much of his lifetime from him. Although we asked questions about the conditions he suffered under, it was very rare for him to say much more than, "it was difficult at times" or "it damaged my health some," the rest of the time, he was always telling ways that God had been good to him and helped him through it all. I would like to honor a gentle elderly pastor and his wife living in obscurity in a little village in the Czech Republic as a couple that have immeasureably inspired my life!

Another jewel in our lives we also have known since we lived in Czech before is Milada Birnbaum. Some people seek for great things and positions and only want to do things that other people see. Then there are those like Milada who love those around her in so many humble ways and seem to think nothing of it.

Milada is the mother of Alex Birnbaum who attended Hobe Sound Christian Academy after we returned from Czech. She was diagnosed with cancer eight months ago and was given six months to live. Even though her strength is waning and she endures much pain, she insisted on doing our laundry for us a couple of times during our stay in Czech. Have you ever seen laundry done with love? When she returned it to us, I could see that she had done each piece of clothing with love. Every piece of clothing was carefully washed, folded and lovingly thought over. How do I know this? Because I know Milada and even though I can speak very little with her because of our language differences, I have no doubts about her love for me, and I hope she knows that we love her in return.

When we saw her for the last time today, I knew that she would not want her picture taken as today was not a good day for her, but I took a very special gift to her—to a lady that I have adopted as my Czech mother. I took some roses in and two coffee mugs. One coffee mug said "to the best mother" and the other one said "daughter." In my very limited Czech I told her that I would take the daughter mug home and think and pray for her when I use it, and I would leave the "mother" mug for her to remember me by. I don't know why we don't have the custom of stroking the face of someone you love very much, but when she stroked my face and spoke to me, I felt her love and cried with her. I want to honor my Czech mother in this blog today. God bless you Mother Milada and may God's love be with you as you face difficult days ahead. Perhaps the words of a song are best to express my prayer to God for her…

His (God's) strength is perfect when our strength is gone
He'll carry us when we can't carry on,
Raised in His power, the weak become strong
His strength is perfect, his strength is perfect.

We love you!

Our day at Auschwitz

2009-06-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

Today we went to Auschwitz. I had lots of pictures in my mind of what Auschwitz would be, but nothing could compare to being in such a place. We started out by going to Auschwitz and going through several barracks. These barracks had different displays set up depicting prison life or memorials to those who were killed from particular countries or ethnicities. The museum was very moving seeing people that were just like me yet ending up in such terror and misery before their lives were taken.
The people were brought in to the camp and immediately separated into two groups. The people themselves did not know why they were being separated, but an SS doctor divided them based on their ability to work. Those who were able to work, stayed at Auschwitz until they died or became unable to work any longer. Those who were not able to work, children or those with children or the elderly were sent to Auschwitz Berkenau which meant immediate death in the gas chambers. There were so many painfully poignant reminders that these people who were murdered were innocent of any crime and were in reality people enjoying life just as I do. One section of a barrack had just a mountain of shoes—shoes that were taken from the people before they entered the gas chamber. One big mountain of shoes was just the shoes of little children. There were other things too horrible to even think about including a glass enclosed room of human hair—about 4,000 pounds of it.
During our time there, we saw the awful evidence of how degraded a human heart can become. As we ended our time there, we went to the gas chamber and crematorium. Already, before we ever got there, my heart was already heavy with the inescapable presence of an overpowering evil. It seemed like the whole complex just reeked of death and the stench of it seemed to permeate every inch of the place. When we got to the “showers” as the guards convinced the people that they were, it was almost overwhelming to enter, and I did not want to imagine all the horror that went on in that place. Some places I have to try to imagine the history that took place. In this large, dark room I was only trying to not be overwhelmed with the reality of what did happen there. There were candles lit and a few fresh flowers, but other than that, everything was just how it had been then only we were looking at it from history’s perspective.
I must say that I could not stay in such a place but just a few moments. After seeing the evidences just a few feet back of so many beautiful lives and then seeing their ends, made me have to get back into the sunlight and see if I could sense God’s presence there. As I left, I wondered if the sense of evil and depression that I felt was just because of what I saw. Was this just a human reaction to seeing the depths of depravity that a human heart can sink to? Perhaps almost everyone that comes out of this camp feels much of the same way. The other part of me couldn’t help but wonder if this feeling I had was more than my imagination and that there really was a deep spiritual darkness over this place. I am not a theologian, but somehow I just believe that the heart of God is still deeply grieved over all the hatred that took place there and one cannot help but feel it when you enter the gate.

In Germany and Poland

2009-06-18T06:28:00.001-07:00

We are in the Czech Republic today and are enjoying the beautiful countryside. Our time in Czech is relatively laid back as we have had a very busy schedule up until this time and expect to have the same after we leave here. We felt that our time in Germany and Poland was very beneficial and hopefully very fruitful in the lives of the people we met there.

If you have ever been at the birth of a baby, then you probably know a little bit of the feeling that we experienced while in Poland. Quite some time back, we knew that we would be speaking to a homeschool group in Poland, but we assumed it would be a very small and did not realize the significance of the coming event. As we got to the location and began speaking to the host, we realized the magnitude of the coming meeting as the homeschooling community is just now being "born" and are very excited about the possibilities that they have. We thought that this would just be a few people from the local town and that was it.

We were delighted and humbled to know that when people heard about these day long meetings through the internet, they decided to come from all over the country of Poland to attend. I spoke to a couple of ladies that had started at 4 a.m. from their community of Gdansk (the home of Lech Walensa) and caught a train to attend the sessions which started at 10:30 a.m.
The group was excited as they realized that there were others in the country of Poland that were also homeschooling. They don't have any curriculum in Polish or any aids at all, but they have a desire to make a difference in the lives of their children and their country.

The experience taught me a good lesson too--how can I think I have difficulties homeschooling when I have untold catalogs of books, cds, dvds, magazines and lots of conventions, associations and tutors available to me, and they have nothing? The birth of homeschooling in Poland is going well and was a joy to see.

We spent time in Germany, however, and the birth of hoomeschooling there is not near as easy or pleasant. We spent the night with the Dudek family in a little vilage in the middle of Germany. They have been sentenced by the courts to prison terms just for choosing to teach their own children. It doesn't matter that both parents are highly intelligent and loving parents. It doesn't matter that the father tutors German children after school hours for his own livelihood. The problem is that Germany wants no "parallel cultures" as the courts state it. Somehow this term sounds vaguely familiar after visiting World War II museums in Berlin. It seems like that era was supposed to have died long ago, but somehow it is still alive after all these years and after so much suffering to supposedly free them from that type of thinking. At any rate, we were humbled and appreciative of the courage of this family who has endured so much already just to do what they think God wants them to do.

Here are also some random pictures of our time in Poland.

Christian saw so many muslim people in London and western Europe that he thought he would also fix his towel like them. By the way, over here, London is now called "Londonastan." It is humorous to hear him say, "Mom, there's a towel head."
One of the many plaques around Warsaw where Hitler's soldiers went on a killing rampage.
The International Church in Poznan, Poland.
The homeschool organization of Poland.
"Old Town" Warsaw, Poland
Rick buying me a basket of strawberries in Poland
Sunshine at Aldi in the Netherlands
The cultural palace in Warsaw, Poland
Pope John Paul in Warsaw.
Royal and Christian with the executioner in Warsaw. This guy was dressed up and would do a little jig when someone dropped a coin in his bowl at his feet. People were surprised that neither Precious nor Christian was scared of him. They went right up to him and touched him. I should have known that he wouldn't be afraid of this guy after what he did to the mummies at St. Michans church in Dublin, Ireland, when the guide said he could touch the finger of one of the mummies that was about 800 years old. He was in the room with Rick and the kids and I was outside with Paul. Just let me say this...if mama had been in the room, he would not have done what he did, but when dad is in charge, you just don't repeat what happens. Ask me when we get back--the internet is too public!

In Berlin Today

2009-06-08T15:17:00.000-07:00

We are about three weeks into our trip now. We had services here in Berlin yesterday and visited lots on interesting places today. Tomorrow we head for a full week of ministry in Poland. Here are some pictures of our trip so far.

Here Royal and I are with two soldiers at the Brandenburg gate in Berlin. Can you tell which one is the statue and which one is living? The real guy is to your left...

The family at the Irish Sea in Northern Ireland

One of the highlights of the trip was touring the Ten Boom house in Holland. We saw the "hiding place" there.

Having fun in Northern Ireland

2009-05-27T12:41:00.000-07:00

We have finally made it to Northern Ireland. Our days have been packed with ministry in lots of different places here. Tonight we are in the Republic of Ireland in Dublin where Rick is speaking in a Romanian church. We enjoyed ministry in New York City on our way out.

Will it be a Happy Mother's Day Thirty Years from Now?

2009-05-06T12:13:00.000-07:00

What will your child's world look like? When we answer this question, we often think in terms of technology, finances, and new inventions, but if we were to know the reality of what this world will look like in just 30 years, it might give us cause to reconsider our current trends in hopes of preserving for our children, the culture of Christianity that we have enjoyed.

It's nearing mother's day, and people often ask me about the number of children that I have. What can I say??? I have ten children because I love children! I don't have ten children because I like changing diapers, getting up in the middle of the night, enjoy labor and delivery, don't miss going out with friends, and don't have a need for privacy! However, several years ago, not only did God put a love in my heart for children, but I realized that many of today's mothers are going to have to step up to the challenge of doing what other generations have done--even if it was done then because there were few other viable options.

In past generations, our Christian culture has been maintained largely because women had a culturally sustainable number of children. Although they may not have realized that the privileges and freedoms they enjoyed came in a large part because of the number of children they raised to carry on their deeply-felt beliefs and convictions, that is the real result of what happened.

Today, we have plenty of options for avoiding having children which those generations before us did not have. Now we have the option of limiting children, and many have taken up the culture on that option and have achieved a higher lever of affluence, freedom, and career success than our mothers before us. While these things are not necessarily to be avoided, we should rest assured that there is sowing and reaping and cause and effect. Whatever we sow, we will reap, and by the looks of it, we may want to change course rather quickly. Is there anyone out there who will step out of the norm and accept the responsibility for averting a coming culture change? Are there those who will accept the stigma that our culture attaches to the couple who chooses to have a large family and who chooses to give up temporary freedoms of adulthood for the responsibility of raising future generations?

If you are truthful and if you are brave, take a look at this video on you tube. Keep in mind I did not produce this nor do I know the organization who did, so don't get mad at me! However, if you can stand some truth about the statistics of what your child's world will look like, check this out...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU. Happy Mother's Day!

I didn't have time to do it

2009-04-30T22:32:00.000-07:00

How many times have you heard someone say that they, "didn't have time to do it." Whether it was a task that didn't get finished or an activity that was left undone, we often excuse ourselves by saying that we didn't have time to do it.

In reality, however, we did have time to do it--we just chose to do something else instead. Each one of us has the same amount of time in a day and how we choose to spend it is up to us. When we say that we do not have time to do something, what we are really saying is, "I think something else is more important or I have something else I want to do more; therefore, I don't have time to do anything else"

The fact of the matter is that we always have time for the thing we do FIRST, and if we really want to do something, we can always make it first. Over the years, I have often thought that I did not have time to do something, but generally found that if I really wanted to do it, I could make time to do it by just throwing out activities of lesser importance. When we know what we should be doing and use the excuse that we do not have time for it, we are really just admitting that the problem is that other activities are a higher priority in our schedule.

My husband has an example that he uses in his seminar to prove this point... Think of all the things that you have to do. Do you have time right now for a two week vacation? Probably most of us would say that we do not. However, if you were to receive a call that a friend had just given you a free two week trip to the Holy Land if you could be ready to go in two weeks, would you suddenly decide that you really did have time for a two week vacation? Why? Because all those cleaning projects and petty activities that seemed so important just a few minutes before suddenly just really aren't that important any more!

We have been homeschooling for twelve years now, and quite honestly, with all I am doing, I just don't have time for it. I could name a hundred things each day that I have to do, but each day for 180 days a year, I start out by doing first what has to be one of the most important things in my life--teaching my children to love God with all their heart, and preparing them to effectively accomplish what God has called them to do in this life. Sometimes I get other things done, and sometimes I don't, but I do get done what I make time for.

In just a couple of weeks, our family will have two big milestones. First, our oldest daughter, Sunshine, will graduate from high school. When I see how she wants to serve God and is adequately prepared to do so, I am not sorry about all the things that I didn't have time for while I was spending it helping to prepare her for life!

Just a few days after her graduation, our family is leaving for a four month trip to Europe to share the messages on "Redeeming the Time" that we have shared for over twenty years here in the U.S. It seemed like an impossibility that God would ever work it out, but now it's almost here, and we are excited about how we will be able to minister (all twelve of us!) in countries from Ireland to Albania. We'll be posting what we are doing as we get the opportunity.

If you have the time--actually, if you take the time--be sure to check back in and see how we are "redeeming the time"!

No Regrets

2009-03-23T19:38:00.000-07:00

"Live each day as if you knew it were the last day of your life." I have heard this statement often, but never really stopped to think it through. Many times I would hear it and attempt to practice it only to end up frustrated. As I began to think through what it really means to live each day as if it were the last day of my life, I began to come to the conclusion that it is not possible to live each day as if it were the last day of my life. A better challenge seems to be, "Live today so that if I die tonight, tomorrow I will have no regrets."

I know some people may think that the difference between these two goals is trivial, but in the working out of them, there is a great difference. For the person who thinks that he must live today as if it were the last day, any activity that is just a necessary chore of living becomes insignificant.

For example, if you really knew that this were going to be the last day of your life, what would you not do? I can guarantee you that if I knew today were my last day, I would eat all meals out to avoid cooking and washing dishes. I would skip all school work with my children and just sit and read books. I would forget about doing laundry and go for a long walk through the woods with my family. I would get up very early to spend extra time with God and then would spend the rest of the day consumed in enjoying the final day with family and friends.

This might be okay for a day or so, but eventually I would have to come back to reality and start washing dishes, doing school work, and cleaning the house--none of which I would have chosen to do if it were my last day on earth. This is why I think we sometimes feel frustration when trying to live by this standard of living for our last day. God didn't intend for us to know our last day of life because He wanted us to be living each day fulfilling our responsibilities, but continually living in light of eternity.

Now to the second goal statement: "Live today so that if I die tonight, tomorrow I will have no regrets." How is this statement any different than the first one? This statement realizes that life cannot be lived the way that the first question demands, but that it is possible to live with no
regrets. Today I can live so that if tomorrow I am in eternity, I will have no regrets for how I spent my time. In eternity, I will see that doing the daily chores were necessary. I will see that sweeping the floor was not any less spiritual than spending time with a child. However, I am afraid that I will also see that so many of the ways that I chose to use my time were only living for the temporary instead of the eternal. Even when it comes to daily chores, I may discover that so many of them were unnecessary in light of more important things.

I wonder if I were really living today so that in eternity I would have no regrets, which things would I leave undone? Who would I spend my time with? How would my standards for living change? How would I use my money differently? Which words would I choose to say or not to say?

For me, it brings a sense of freedom knowing that doing daily tasks are not just a necessary evil, but they are actually a very important part of God's plan for my life today. However, every moment of my life that I trade today for more of the temporary only takes away from the eternal significance of my life.

Borrowing from my husband's favorite quotes, I should continually be saying through out my day, "What does God want me to do RIGHT NOW?"

By the way, I have a wonderful sixteen year old daughter that is trying to live this statement out in her life. She chose to invest in my life on Valentine,s Day with a dozen roses. Her investment in my life, and my investment in hers will be something neither one of us will regret in eternity.

Another Big Day in History!

2008-12-09T18:37:00.000-08:00

Today we brought home little Paul David who was born on Saturday. Incidentally, as we rode home from the hospital, we listened to a program on National Public Radio where the speaker was emphasizing the fact again that our culture rarely understands the value of a child. Not only is a child a direct gift from God Himself, but it is the opportunity for parents to impact the world in a way that is rarely possible in any other way. It is amazing to me that more people do not realize the footprint they could leave in the timeline of history by just investing more of their time in children. While many Christians rarely directly disciple more than just one or two people during their lifetime, I have the opportunity now to be deeply involved in discipling and nurturing ten people in hopes of their making it to heaven--just by being a mother!

We are also grateful at how God works in response to heart-felt crying out to Him in a time of need. Just a few days before Paul was born, we were shocked to find out that he had a goiter on his neck--discovered through an ultrasound. Immediately, our plans for a quiet birth at a little small town hospital were pulled out from under us as we discovered that we were being rescheduled to deliver at a major hospital an hour from home. Not only that, but instead of a doctor that had delivered many of our children, we would have a whole team of doctors brought in from a nearby university hospital. The possibility of this goiter obstructing the baby's airway the minute he was born was a great concern so although it was totally against my nature, we began to prepare for this big "production."

To make a long story short, God began to work and change the hearts and minds of the doctors without us ever saying a thing. The next day, the lead doctor called back and said they had decided that it would be best for us to at least attempt a natural birth instead of a c section. This was enough for me to heartily thank the Lord. My main prayer was that God would touch the baby in such a way that the second it was born, before the doctors began all their procedures on him, he would cry so loudly and vigorously that everyone would know that this child did not have an obstructed airway!

At the moment of birth, there were nine doctors, specialists, and various medical personnel in the room ready to assist the baby when he was born. However, at about 5:15 pm on Saturday, I believe that the Great Physician walked into the room also because shortly afterward a very loud cry came out of some very little lungs, and the specialists started packing their bags. In five minutes the room was clearing out, and we had the great news that our little boy was going to be just fine!

On a lighter note, I have once again discovered that even in dire circumstances, if we choose to, we can usually find something to laugh about if we look hard enough. For hours, I was just minutes away from a c section during the labor and delivery. Because I did not wanted to be "carved up," (as I like to call it) a nurse was faithfully helping me by flipping me back and forth from side to side in an attempt to keep the baby's heart rate up. The doctor, noting the trouble I was going to in order to avoid a c section mentioned that I was getting the "rotisserie chicken" treatment. What he didn't understand was that from my viewpoint, it's much better to be a rotisserie chicken than a carved turkey!

Thanks to everyone that knew about our situation and prayed for us this last week. We're thanking God for adding arrow numer ten to our quiver. The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich! Proverbs 10:22

The Most Significant People in my Life

2008-06-03T18:10:00.000-07:00

Recently I heard a leadership quote that said, "Focus on the critical few, not the insignificant many." When I heard the quote my first thought was that it didn't sound Biblical. After all, are there any insignificant people? As I began to think about the statement, however, I realized that there really was a lot of truth in it.

When Jesus was here on earth, he could have spent his time reaching and healing as many people as possible, but he didn't. Instead of focusing on many, he focused on the critical few--the few that would go on to influence the world for eternity solely because of His influence on their lives.

God has spoken to me time and time again to focus on the critical few in my life. Obviously for me, this is primarily my family. It is easy to spread myself thin with lots of projects and plans with many people that in the eternal scheme are probably fairly insignificant. I know that friendships with those outside of the family are important, but they are usually temporary and then life moves on .

Focusing on the significant few takes discipline. It takes denying myself what I want to do for what is best in the lives of those significant few around me. That's what the life of Jesus is all about and that is what He has called us to do.

Focusing on the significant few is not all work and discipline however! Actually, I think that the longer we focus on these individuals in our lives, the more joy and rewards we receive from it. Our family is a close-knit family because we have tried to focus our lives around each other for many years.

One of the greatest joys of this philosophy is being able to leave home and the children and take undivided time to focus on the most significant person in my life--my husband! We recently returned from a long weekend at Yellowstone National Park in Montana and enjoyed one of the most memorable weekends in our married life. Staying focused on one person

for life has its rewards--and it only gets better with time!

www.lifechangingseminars.com

The Funnest Day of my Life!

2008-04-30T16:18:00.000-07:00

Another year of homeschooling is almost over, and I have a whole evening of paperwork waiting for me just to complete my record keeping. Many times over the last eleven years, I have wondered what type of insanity possesses me to continue teaching my own children when there are so many other easier and far more reasonable methods of seeing that my children get a quality education. We now have seven children of school age and a couple more still in the "coloring and "eating coloring crayon" stages. Often when I sit down in the mornings and begin my school day, I wonder if I am really doing the right thing by intentionally committing myself to Algebra and Geometry from 7:30 to 2:30pm every day. After all, most other moms have more sense than that don't they? Periodically, I take a walk or find a quiet place to reevaluate my real reasons and motives for committing myself to such a daunting task.

Recently, I was contemplating about the financial reasons for homeschooling. Contrary to popular belief, homeschooling is not the easy route out for a free education. In reality, teaching our children has cost a lot more than I ever imagined it would. Not only does it permanently limit our household to one income, but it is the only major system of education that I know of that is unsubsidized by other parties. Even church schools and private schools are often given financial support by those who are interested in their success. Just one example of this is brought home very painfully ever year at this time when I fulfill the requirements for homeschooling here in the state of North Carolina. Not only am I required to pay for the state mandated tests for the public school students, but I pay lots of taxes for the teachers in my county to receive significant bonuses if their children score well. However, it doesn't stop there. It's not enough that I pay for their tests and bonuses, I must also give each one of my children tests, pay for the tests out of my pocket, and get someone to give them the test. All that to say, that it is not for financial reasons that I homeschool!

As I thought over this past year and all the fun that I had enjoying my children as they learned, I was reminded once again of the real reason for choosing to teach my own children. Because of my investment of time, I am hoping for a windfall of a return for God's kingdom through the lives of my children.

This year we have been able to add to our long list of learning activities that we have enjoyed as a family. I was there when my children saw the Grand Canyon for the first time. I was there when my girls dissected their first animals, and when my little boy finally figured out how to borrow when subtracting. I was there when my children toured the White House, U.S. Capitol, the Creation Museum, and seemingly countless museums between here and Phoenix, Arizona. I got to experience the excitement of accompanying a ferrier on his trip to shoe horses on an Amish farm. I was there falling off a chair while trying to take a picture when my children shook President Bush's hand! I was there when we saw baby chicks hatching. I was there when my kids climbed to the top of a volcano and wondered why I wasn't going to try it! I was there when they started their first worm farm, and their first caterpillar farm, and their first minnow farm, and well, you get the idea. I was there with them to hear the symphony at Christmas.

I was also there this year when Algebra seemed overwhelming, and Geometry seemed like the most impossible subject to conquer. I was there when the laundry was piled high, and I couldn't call in a teacher for a teacher work day so that I could get it done. I was there when nausea from baby number ten started hitting strong and someone plopped a Physical Science book in my lap. I was there when dear, old mom had to make some apologies for cranky attitudes and an impatient spirit.

I think I can sum it up well to say that I was there this past weekend when our children went deep sea fishing for the first time. I was there when my kids hauled in some of the biggest catch on the boat! I was there to see their excitement, and to share in the fun. I was there when I was on the sofa trying to recover from the long weekend of fishing, and one of my older daughters stopped by to say, "Mom, this was one of the funnest days of my life!"

I was there on all those days, and looking back over the year, I am glad I was. It sure would have been nice on some of those "down" days to help fill up that free yellow bus that comes by every day, but I'm glad I didn't. I think some day, I'll be really glad that I didn't. I'm glad I took part in the funnest day in my child's life!

If you are homeschooling and want to take part in our free, online, time-management course be sure to visit our site soon.

The Best Investment I Have Ever Made

2008-04-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

One of my heroes is Susanna Wesley. When asked by someone about her method for raising children, she made this statement. "No one can, without renouncing the world in the most literal sense, observe my method: and there are few, if any, that would entirely devote above twenty years of the prime of life in hopes to save the souls of their children. "

The older I get, the more I see how much of an investment of time and energy it takes to invest in the lives of our children. Often our poor excuses for not investing in our children is a shallow cover for really wanting to pursue our own dreams and ambitions. I think Susanna Wesley was never more right when she said that few if any would really give what it takes in hopes of "saving the souls of her children." Taking twenty or more years of the prime of my life is the best investment I will ever make if my children are with the Lord forever in eternity. Why then is it so easy to trade temporary and selfish pursuits at the cost of investing in these little lives? It is a focus that is not on eternity. It is forgetting that a goal of seeing all of my children faithfully serving the Lord all of their lives is a goal that does not come easily. It comes from laying aside everything that would keep me from my goal and only investing my life in what will matter in eternity.

The more that I invest in the lives of my family, the happier I become! If we could ever once realize the tremendous potential that children have, we would realize that every minute spent with a child is an investment that could never be matched!

Speaking of potential, our house is bursting with it! We recently found out that with baby number 10 on the way, we could potentially just start our own mission board someday! Right now we have our own public relations firm every year when we go to the National Religious Broadcasters convention. Other broadcasters have to pay big money to attract attention at these huge conventions. We just appear and the attention is there! Recently at this convention our children shook hands with President Bush and got a picture taken with James Dobson. It all happened on Caleb's birthday, so I hope he doesn't expect it every year!

My prayer is, "Lord help me to give to my children like you have given to me. Help me to give until it hurts. Thank you for giving of yourself way past where it hurt. Thanks for giving your all!"

www.lifechangingseminars.com

The Busiest Days in my life

2008-03-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

Today I crawled out of bed at the crack of noon. Sounds like I am a real example of redeeming the time, right? Actually, the truth is that I got out of bed much earlier, but ended up going back to bed with a migraine trying to come on. I get migraines rarely, but when I do, if I act quickly, I can usually prevent having several days of pain and lack of productivity.

Anyway, as I got back into bed, I thought how nice it was to be able to go back to bed and leave the household in the capable hands of one of my children. I thought of the days when I couldn't even think about going back to bed because I had little ones that needed care, and I could only hope that they would eventually need to take a nap--and would all do it at the same time!

Many young mothers often comment to me, "I don't see how you manage a household with nine children--I have two and I can hardly make it!" When I hear this, I usually ask, "What are the ages of your children?" Almost always they say something like, 4, 2, and the baby. When I hear their answer, I usually assure them that while I am busy, I am probably not nearly as busy as they are.

My busiest and most stressful days were the days when I had several children all under the age of 5 and none of them were very capable of doing much for themselves. Now that I have children to help out, I am far less busy, and can actually enjoy all my children much more!

The benefit of training children to help out and be an integral part of the family can only be realized several years down the road--and that is where I am now. I can leave and go out with my husband, or go take a nap when I am not feeling well, and everything will likely be just fine when I return. Getting to this point, though, was not easy. It took a lot of time, training, and quite a few tears.

Here's encouragement for that young, busy mother...Enjoy those little hugs and kisses and wait a while to do the dishes if your little one wants to read books. Spend time teaching your little ones to enjoy work and taking part in the family work load. Someday you will enjoy the benefits of all the efforts that you put forward. I had to get through those rough early days, but now I am enjoying the best of both worlds--little ones with hugs and kisses, and older ones with lots of plans and wishes. Investing in the life of your child will reap eternal benefits!

To view our family tract, visit http://lifechangingseminars.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=180&Itemid=254.

The Greatest Need

2008-03-25T12:11:00.000-07:00

Have you ever felt that your family had more needs than you could ever fill? Some days around my house it seems like there are so many needs--often all at one time--that I cannot sufficiently meet them all.

Often, as busy women we get frustrated because there is just not enough time or resources to able to what we feel like we should do in order to be called "successful."

I came across a quote recently that really spoke to my heart about getting done what is really important. Robert Murray McCheyne, a nineteenth-century Scottish preacher, said, "The greatest need of my people is my personal holiness."

The greatest need of my family, spouse, church, friends, or my ministry is not an organized and efficient woman that appears to have it all together. The greatest need from me that any of these people will experience is to see me living a life of consistent, personal holiness.

In the urgency of the moment, other needs often rise to the top of my "to do" list, and if I consistently allow it, these needs will crowd out the real needs that must remain a top priority. Not only is my personal holiness the greatest need of those around me, but my priority has to be to encourage and inspire holiness in their lives.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss said in her book, Holiness, The Heart God Purifies, "What others most need is to see in you a reflection of what God is like." If I don't have time to spend in God's presence, I've missed the most important things of all, and will someday ultimately disappoint all those counting on me. This may mean I have to make some tough calls about how I will spend my time today, but in eternity, it will be a wise investment.

For more meditations for busy women, visit http://www.lifechangingseminars.com/.