Just Some Stuff

Recently I posted something about how we let things in our lives that may start out as good thindgs, but end up being a big pile of bird poop My blogger buddy Annemarie made the comment about sometimes the computer is the bird poop for her. OUCH! That one hurt. It hurt because the computer is the biggest pile for me. Sometimes I say I am just going to check something right quickly, then as much as an hour can pass. So, I am going to take a break from the fluff. For one month no Blogger, no Facebook, no forums. I use the computer to help prepare for Children's Church and we have an e-mail prayer list at church. So I will check e-mail once or twice a day. I will use the computer for church and school purposes. But that is it. I waste time that I could be be spending doing something worthwhile. This must be contagious. In addition to Annemarie, another bloggy buddy, Rthling, is also taking off for a while. Mark and his pal from California have both recently deleted their Myspace pages. So, when I see you again I will (hopefully) be revitalized and have lots of pictures to post from our end of the year party. See you end of May/early June!!!

The Orphans Are Not Coming

I got an e-mail yesterday that made me very sad. The orphans from Ukraine are not coming this year. The orphanage director decided against it. What makes this even worse is the fact that kids coming this year were going to be coming from the Belaroschensky Orphanage which is a very poor orphanage. Reach Orphans With Hope has done fundraisers to buy these kids sinks, showerstalls, beds, cooking pots, windowpanes, you name it, they probably needed it. Or even worse, still do need it. Please be much in prayer for these kids. It is the understanding of the people at Reach Orphans With Hope that the kids had already been told they were coming. To give you a kind of idea what life offers these kids read this:

Orphan Statistics for Ukraine

* Ukraine has over 100,000 orphans.
* Only 10% of these are orphaned due to death of a parent; the rest are social orphans – due to alcoholism, abandonment, or imprisonment of parents.
* Every year, more than 2,000 mothers abandon their babies in maternity hospitals. Between 6 and 7 thousand more are abandoned at an older age or removed from home due to crime or neglect.
* Many social orphans have experienced abuse and violence from parents who were drug addicts or alcoholics.
* Orphans typically grow up in large state-run homes, which may house over 200 children.
* Many children run away from these homes, preferring to live on the street.
* Children usually graduate from these institutions between 15 and 16 years old and are turned out, unprepared for life outside the home.
* About 10% of them will commit suicide after leaving the orphanage before their 18th birthday.
* 60% of the girls will end up in prostitution. Those who run prostitution rings target orphaned girls, who are especially vulnerable due to their lack of options and lack of people who care what happens to them. Though promised good jobs, they end up on the streets and brothels of cities across Europe.
* 70% of the boys will enter a life of crime. Many of these will die young of violence or end up in prison. Most inmates contract TB in prison.

That is horrible! These kids need people acting on their behalf. Through prayer and humanitarian efforts, through Bible study and the teaching of job skills, these kids can learn that God has a plan for their lives. They can learn that they ARE precious in His sight and does care for them. I know I asked this before, but please pray for the kids who are in these orphanages. They need someone to.

Samuel's New Bible

Our kids have all had a Precious Moments Bible of some sort since they were born. They have all had a small hands edition NKJV. Nathaniel had a beautiful CEV. The pictures in it were more vibrant and colorful than most Precious Moments pictures. Now that they are older Nathaniel has a plain, black Bible, Benjamin has a Faith to Grow on Bible, and Samuel has gone through several kinds. I have gotten tickled at how he points out things in certain storybook Bibles that are either illustrated too cutesy or or just worded poorly. His favorite Bible story is Noah's Ark. Ever since he found out that Noah's Ark was not a tiny boat with smiling animals sticking their heads out the many windows, he points out that what is in his Bible is not "real".(actually i was a little unhappy about one being too "real" in the Adam and Eve illustations) Tapestry of Grace recommends The Children's Illustrated Bible, but I just have not been super-impressed with it. I have really wanted something he could help read. But not a happy baby story book. Is that too much to ask?

I found a Bible at Lifeway in Huntsville one day. I really wanted to get it, but the dust jacket was ripped. Granted, it was just the dust jacket. Being the perfectionist that I am I was not paying $22.00 for something ripped. I planned to go home and order it online.

The only problem was, I forgot the name of the Bible. Do you know that if you just type in "children's Bibles" into your search engine you might stare at the screen for days? I went to Lifeway and to Christian Book Distributors with no luck. I even called the Lifeway store to ask them what the name of the children's Bible with a ripped dust jacket was. They said they could not find one with a ripped dust jacket.

So I was determined that I would find it. No matter how many hours I was not getting out from in front of the computer until I had found it. I searched all the Bible publishers that I could think of first. granted, that meant Thomas Nelson and Zondervan. Nothing else would come to mind. Then I did remember that the Bible said something about a big picture or a timeline. Every time I typed "big picture Bible timeline" I kept coming up with this, which looks nice, but is not what I wanted. But truthfully, I had never gone past the first few results from that search. I finally found it!!! Not only did I find it, but it was cheaper than it had been at Lifeway!!! Hooray!!!

I am a big fan of customer reviews. I read some of the reviews. They were mostly very, very good reviews. I only saw two negative ones. One of them said that their kid did not the Bible because everyone in it had a sad face. Because I had flipped through it myself, I knew that was not the case. There were lots of smiling, happy people drawn in the pictures. The other said this:

I am a very conservative Christian and I just didn't see this Bible giving an accurate account of the stories. It seemed to have a very "interpretive" spin on them. One I didn't think was accurate or appropriate. I was really disappointed, to say the least. I did, very much, feel like a lot of the stories emphasized God's "punishment" of people. While I believe strongly in discipline, and believe that "God chastens those whom He loves," I do not think the theme of "punishment," which I thought was pretty blatant in this Bible, was doing God's word justice at all. Yes, there is eternal punishment, and the Bible teaches that, but it is not what is being taught in this Bible. Further, the themes of love, redemption, grace, etc are too subtle to really be enjoyed, much less even seen by children. For instance, this Bible says that God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden to "punish" them. This is interpretive. It was not a punishment, it was a disciplinary measure to help them see their sin and their need for God. It was to teach them what life is like without God, and realize how they had been wrong. Further, it was to protect them--God did not want them to eat from the Tree of Life, and "live forever." I interpret that to mean, as in a mortal life, in their sinful state. God, in His *mercy," protected them from eating from that Tree, which would have been far worse since they were in a fallen state. I know that is *my* interpretation, but the "punishment" theory in this Bible is also interpretive. It would have been much better to simply leave out the interpretation, and just tell the story.

Uhm...okay. I always thought that banishment from the garden, hard labor (work), pain in childbirth, etc... WERE punishments.

It came the day before Easter!! How cool is that??? I ordered enough to get free shipping (because I am a cheapskate) so that meant it could have taken longer to get here. As a matter of fact we were not expecting it until the next Wednesday. Samuel LOVES it!!! Most of it is not something that he can sit and just read all by himself, but he can read parts of it. He gets excited that he can read it. Being a "Storybook Bible" means that it does not have *all* of the Bible stories in it. What is does have in it, however, is that Jesus is the theme of the Bible. It shows how the Old Testament gives us hints about Him. It shows how the New Testament is all about Him. It even talks about end times. Most of our story Bibles do not. It is a wonderful Bible!! No, it is not one he can use from now until he is old and grey.
But it seems just right for now.

ps. We threw the dust jacket away. It just gets in the way while we are reading.

God's Been Good To Me!!

I have learned just how addicted to technology that I am in the last few days. Thanks to some stormy weather, we were without power for about 48 hours!! It even took a few hours over that to get our phone/internet/cable back on. (That's what we get for bundling!!)

A tornado hit Grant mountain on Friday. I know that most people reading this have no idea the geography of my town so bear with me. Grant is very close to where I live. When the kids in our area hit high school, they go to a school called Kate D. Smith DAR High School. Which is located in Grant. So, tornado hits a few miles away. It blew right over us. We had some wind, rain and hail. Little, bitty pea-sized hail. There were pictures on the news of softball sized hail in some places. SOFTBALL!!!! The biggest hail I have ever seen has been golf ball size. Can you imagine softball sized hunks of ice falling out of the sky?

After blowing over us, the tornado hit another area on the other side of us. A waterfront area was decimated. Trees snapped like toothpicks. Homes and businesses damaged or destroyed. But, no people killed. Stuff can be replaced, people can't.

I went to bed Sunday thinking everything was just fine and dandy. Which, at the time I went to bed, everything WAS fine and dandy. However, around one or two a big wind came blowing through town. It was called a "gravity wind with a low level jet stream" Ok, whatever. All I know is it was bad. I mean really bad. When I got up Monday there were limbs and pine straw all over the yard, shingles off the roof, trash cans and coolers blown about, and a basketball goal knocked over. A bunch of people from church got together two weeks ago for a work day,. The church and yard had looked so nice. Now the parking lot was full of junk, as well as the yard. I called my sister to look on the Newschannel 19 website to see what was going on. Turns out, we were extremely blessed to have received so little damage. Less than a mile from us the yacht club had been hit hard. Two boat ramps had blown loose from their docking and drifted 200 yards from their original location. These boat ramps had boats attached to them!!!




So, my sister offered to keep the boys since our power was off. We are totally dependent on electricity. I had no way to cook for the boys. Plus, not knowing how long it was going to be off, I really did not want to open the refrigerator. So they go to spend the night. When Mark got up (he is on his night shift schedule this week) he was asking if the power was still off. He said it went off around two that morning. It was getting on up in the day so we headed out for some lunch. Oh my goodness!! Downtown Guntersville was shocking! Trees, powerlines were down, even a port-a potty was turned over. (I would HATE to responsible for cleaning THAT!!) One thing that amazed us was that all these huge old oak trees that were down in people's yards were down in the yards, not on the houses or churches or businesses. They fell in front of the buildings. God protected people. I have not heard of any deaths in Alabama from the storms Friday or Monday. God has really been so good to us. There were a few places that received damage Monday. To my knowledge, there is not anyone who lost everything. We lost a few shingles off the roof and the food in our fridge. Nothing valuable like all of our pictures or a person. So now you know what song I have been singing for the last few days.

Three Posts Rolled Into One

Three things that are worth sharing, totally unrelated, but all worth sharing.
First: I have been enjoying learning the Shorter Catechism with the boys. We have been using lessons that we found online here. We love it! I have been going to Kidzone to print pages for Samuel to trace printed and Benjamin to trace cursive copies of the questions and answers. I was happy with it at first, but the past few months I have been getting pop-ups and having problems getting the pages printed. I am enough of a cheapskate not to actually purchase software to print worksheets. Yes, I know that is pathetic. But now I have come across a sight that I can print trace pages or pages for copy work, that also has math, geography and other things along with it. It is called Worksheetworks. . No pop-ups or times where the page freezes up and refuses to print. Happy and Cheap. That's me.

Samuel did something today that has the potential to be very embarrassing. We were walking home after church. Samuel took off and to the door way before us. Mark and I were talking and I looked up and said, "Where did Samuel go?" We looked for him and it seemed like he had disappeared. Then he came from behind a tree. He had to go the bathroom, and the door was locked so he found a tree. In the front yard. The front yard that is attached to the church parking lot. Nobody said anything about seeing him. Maybe nobody did. We had a talk about not *going* in the front yard. How did we have such a redneck son?

I have a new workout routine. If the physical activity is not enough, the political garbage of listening to Obama will turn my stomach to the point where I can't eat. I should lose weight either way.

Hasty Pudding

We are still studying the Revolutionary War. To really look at some of the harsh conditions that these brave soldiers survived is astonishing. We read about the winter at Valley Forge recently. One of the things that every book website or whatever talks about is the lack of food. My kids have never experienced a lack of food. So, in an effort to drive home how tough that was, we made "hasty pudding" Our first batch was just cornmeal and water mixed together and fried. Benjamin looked at it and said, "I thought you said we were having tasty pudding." (gotta love that kiddo)

I told him that no, it is not "tasty" it is "hasty" meaning that it could be cooked quickly, with not a lot of mess to clean up. Our second batch was cornmeal, maple syrup, an egg and some salt. Not exactly what I would call "tasty" but definitely better than the first batch. We talked about how just an increase of the supplies that the soldiers had would help boost morale.

On a strange note, Benjamin liked the second batch enough he ate all that was on his plate, and a second helping. Samuel liked BOTH kinds. He said, "I think I would make a good a soldier because I can eat anything." Ok, but let's hope they do not serve sweet potatoes or cooked carrots. Samuel will anything but those. :-}