I Did IT!!

 

I Finished!

I started January 1st, 2011 and on December 29th I completed my reading through the Bible chronologically.  I loved it, as I had never read it in this order before.

I thought getting through this last few weeks on time was nearly impossible, but I burned the candle late some nights to keep on track.  Last night after enjoying a wonderful dinner at my sweet friend Betty's house and arriving home to a sleeping house, I cozied up with a good fat blanket and my last few chapters of Revelation.

Tears were in my eyes as I got to the last few words...

Come Lord Jesus come...

what a wonderful year I had with Him.

I am not sure what I will be studying this year...the Holy Spirit hasn't said much as of yet.  I am asking though, as I want to follow His heart for me and don't want to miss a thing.  I long for deep and meaty times with Him.  I long to have more time in prayer with Him.  I long for Him to transform me into His likeness, definitely less of me and more of Him.  I want Him to teach me how to give to each what they need from me in that moment.  I want to learn to be intentionally present.  I want to be a better listener and a kinder friend.

I have a heart full of adoration and thankfulness for what He called me to, that He enabled me to stick the coarse and finish well.  I encourage each of you to consider reading through the Word this year.  If you've done it before, maybe it is time to begin once again.  I honestly was amazed at how it spoke to me afresh this time through.

I pray He uses it all for His glory and that somehow it encourages you too to press in harder. 

Come Lord Jesus, please do come!

picture courtesy of my friend Jeff Crandall

Adoption Update from the Three Year Old

Sweet Princess Mercy (3) is quite obsessed with being a big sister. Most days she is telling someone she is now 21.  (which makes her older than her oldest sibling). She is weary of being in last position in the family: the baby.   She is growing a bit impatient with the wait for her arriving sister.

She says God is very quiet about it when she asks Him when she is coming. 

I asked her why she thought He was being quiet. 

With a big smile she said very firmly, "Because it is going to be a BIG surprise. 

But I am going to be the big sister!"

 From my heart:

we continue to wait for a birth mother to choose us. we have given our agency 5 books filled with sweet and tender pictures.  The book is filled with beautiful descriptions of our home, each of us, our faith, our heart and our hope.  we wait with eager expectation on a phone call from our worker telling us that we have a match.  we think that our Princess Peace is still growing and forming inside her mother still.  some of us are expecting an April announcement.   

God is holding us all in the palm of His hands 

and we continue to keep our eyes and our hearts on Him.

Merry Christmas From Our House!

Merry Christmas...

May the Savior reign in your heart now and always!

My friends...

Sorry I went missing.  

I've been so flat out busy with trying to get ready for Christmas, helping to take care of my friend who just had a double mastectomy and also run my home from afar.  Don't think I have ever been so tired. My sweet friend is doing well, they think they got all the cancer (YEAH!) and she is resting well.

I miss all of you and hope you are enjoying the last few days before our celebration of Jesus.

Bless you my friends!

Youth Group Dress-up Party

meet my dressed up girls:

The Queen of Sheba,  Lydia the seller of purple and Miriam

They went, they had fun and they were admired.

all in a day's work I guess.

glad my girls were able to raid my closet.  don't know if I should be offended, as this is stuff I wear.

well, not the eye shadow ;-)

Homemade Christmas Gift (easy!)

Handmade Chocolate Covered Pretzels

(easy peasy!)

Grabbed this container at Target

my homemade double-boiler

Putting on the chocolate

The  berbere action shot!

Get the kids involved in this!

Oh, YUM!

Recipe:

Pretzel Rods (can do dried fruit too!)

Chocolate (pick the kind you want) We used Ghirardelli 60% cacao, bittersweet chocolate chips.

We used about 2 cups worth.

1-2 Tbs. coconut oil (you could use Crisco shortening if you don't have coconut oil.

Sprinkles

Cinnamon and sugar mix

Berbere (Ethiopian spice mix...kickin' hot)

Chopped up nuts (we used some smashed up peanuts)

wax paper to let them cool on

transparent gift bags

pretty ribbon

handmade gift labels

Make a double boiler if you don't have one.  Basically a pan with an inch or two of water that will host a bowl of chocolate above it.  Warm chocolate and oil until melted.  (stay with the pot...you just want it to melt).  Turn it off once chocolate is melted.  Put back on double boiler if chocolate begins to harden.

Grab pretzels and baste with chocolate. Making sure to only cover 1/2- 3/4 of each pretzel rod. Allow excess to drip off.

While chocolate is still wet on pretzel, coat with desired coating.  (The berbere is yummy. Cayenne would work too.)  We tried bits of dried cherries, but they were just too heavy.

Lay out on wax paper, making sure they don't touch each other.  Give them time to dry and then bag those beauties up!

I didn't get a shot of ours before we blessed our friend Robin with a beautiful bundle of love!

We used all the left over chocolate to make some Bark.  We spread a cookie sheet with wax paper, poured out the remaining chocolate, spreading it fairly thin with a spatula.  We sprinkled all the goodies that were left over the top.  We set it into the fridge for a few hours and then broke it into bits and bagged it up too!

Merry Homemade Christmas!

What Is Christmas to You?

Do you have a moment?

I am wondering if you can share what Christmas means to you?

  Life is so busy, but my heart yearns to know what it is that you are celebrating this season.

What does your preparation look like?  Who do you celebrate with?  What is your favorite thing about Christmas.  

and

If you have a prayer request...I'd LOVE to pray with you this week. 

Let's open our hearts and let Him fill us.

Freezer meals (for one or two?)

 

I could use some suggestions on freezer meals.  I have a friend who will be having a double mastectomy next week, due to cancer.  I would love to set her up with freezer meals.  Problem being, I haven't a clue. 

Any ideas or websites you'd recommend? 

She is a single girl and will have need for meals for quite a while I think. I'd love some ideas or pointers.  I tried freezer meals on our first trip to Ethiopia...let's just say they weren't really very successful.

Also, can you think of anything she might need?  She really hasn't been given a lot of post-op information.We don't really have a clue as what it will be like for her post hospitalization.  Have any of you any experience with this?   She has been getting some stuff off of the Internet, but still we are feeling like we might not be totally prepared. 

  A few of her friends will be taking turns in staying with her and helping her until she can manage, but meals would be one less thing to worry about.  (I am one of the small list of friends who will stay with her and do whatever is needed.)

I would covet your prayers because being there for her through this is so huge.  I want to be able to bless her and walk her through this, but also have to balance my family.  I could use prayer.  My dear friend would like for us to be able to take care of her (without a nurse)...but not sure if this is realistic or not.  I am not sure I am tough enough to handle changing the bandages, but am willing if it is possible. 

thanks for your help.

On Becoming the Fragrance of Him

Sometimes we need to speak to ourselves and replace discouragement (fear) with courage.  Sometimes God sends someone to do this for us, sometimes He doesn't.  Sometimes we need to just speak it out loud to our souls, which are in process of being saved. (our spirit is saved upon our salvation, but our souls (mind, will and emotions) are daily being transformed (saved) into hopefully His likeness.  

Today I spoke courage to my heart.  I find myself slowly slipping towards discouragement, slowly losing confidence in what God is asking of me.  I doubt, which you know is fear and this of course busts us right off the road of faith. 

In a moment of quiet time with the Lord I found myself discovering this in His Word...

But thanks be to God, who always (got that always) leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere (got that everywhere)  the fragrance of the knowledge of Him.  For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.

2 Corinthians 2:14-16a

read it in The Message Bible yourself

Hmm.  

Guess I need to keep on and do what God has asked of me.  Seems that He is wanting to use me as incense (the smell of Jesus) before this world.  Some will smell His life, others will be convicted and smell death; their own.  I can't control anything but my obedience to Him.  I want to be used by Him, I want others to find Him and the life He wants to give them through His Son.  

When I was encouraging myself, somehow I forgot to breath deep and smell the fragrance of Jesus that surrounds me.  Don't you think that would be the encouragement we all need to do whatever?

Hope you too are en-couraged for whatever it is you are facing.

Prayer Request Sunday-Would YOU??

 

I would love to pray for you this week, but I have a request to make of you my praying friends. 

Would you, could you pray for my new friend Robin?

The last few posts have been about her and how we met.

God put it on my heart to take her Christmas shopping tomorrow night.  God arranged part of the details in getting her a message (the woman who works with her, well her husband came to church this morning and God told me to give him a note, so his wife could give it to Robin on Monday.)  I gave her my phone number and AM hoping and believing that she will say yes.  I am not sure if she considers me more than a nice stranger yet, I am hoping she is thinking of me as a friend.

You see, I want to introduce her to my family.  Every year I go shopping with two friends, one who happens to be my sister in love/best friend and the other is her factual actual sister.  They too love Jesus and they too would love to be in on some Kingdom business- so we are hoping to have Robin join us on our annual shopping event.  My thought being that if she meets Rachael and Beth, that she would begin to feel more comfortable.  Rachael and Beth (and their husbands) go to my church.

Also, we are having a Christmas special next Saturday and Sunday and I'd love to invite Robin and her husband.  If she knows me, Rae and Beth...then maybe she would come.  

I so want her and her husband to meet Jesus.  

God keeps opening gates to her heart...praying she is open and ready for Him to come in and establish His throne on her heart.  This morning He even had someone willing to do His bidding in getting her my note and phone number. 

Would you pray with me too?  

I am banking on God's Word...here is what He has told me..

Where two or more are gathered, there He is in our midst.

If we ask anything according to His will, He will do it. 

Matthew 18:20

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

1 John 5:14-15

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: 

that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.

And if we know that he hears us,

whatever we ask, 

we know that we have what we asked of Him.

Father;

We thank you for this day and that you have put our hearts together in this place.  Thank you for each that comes, I pray that you would move in their lives and that You would show Yourself strong to them this week Lord God.  I pray too that as Your spirit leads, that we would willingly follow.

Lord, I thank you for my faith and for being able to believe that Your Holy Spirit is moving in Power in my new friend Robin's life.  I ask You Lord to open the eyes of her heart, that she would know you as her Lord and Saviour.  I pray that no weapon formed against her would prosper, that the enemy of her soul would be bound and that You alone would be revealed to her.  

I pray that you would give me opportunity to lead her to You, that I would be strengthened by You and given wisdom and power to do Your will.  Oh Father that she would understand that she is a sinner, that her heart would be repentant and she would be ready to confess you as Lord and Saviour of her life.  Father, I ask that You bring her to harvest.  Prepare her even now oh Lord God.

Glorify Yourself in me and Glorify Yourself in Robin.  We ask all of this in Jesus' Name amen.

Thank you friends...let's love her to Jesus!

Wondering When?

To get this you need to have read:

part one

part two

Okay, I am nearly bursting at the seams...

God led me to some special gifts for my new friend Robin.  It was so fun to shop for her, just imagining her face as we bestow God's love on her. 

Funny, some people you know really well are hard to shop for- you can look and look and never be quite satisfied with what you've found for them.  However, I just knew in my heart what she'd like.  I knew what would bless her.  Isn't God cool!

I made it a priority to run errands on Wednesday, so I could offer her a ride home-instead of her taking the bus.  And Thursday, my kids have a Bible club they go to, right in the path my Box Girl takes to get to the bus stop.  So now we've gotten to know each other 3 times.  Time two she was very quiet, I thought I might be annoying her or that she would rather just take the bus.  BUT I know that satan is a liar and that he comes to steal, kill and destroy (God's plans)...so I pressed in past what seemed like a wall, trusting God to open her heart.

AND guess what!!

She let me take her for coffee (Starbucks!)  before I brought her home.  She was much more open and began to share her life with us (I had two kids in tow-my 17 year old and the 3 year old).   I found out she is 29 and began to get glimpses into her heart, through how God led our conversations.  Exciting stuff I tell you!

After we brought her home the three of us ran to a local shop and went Christmas shopping for her.  We located 3 things we wanted to bless her with.  I was so eager to just give them to her, I would have seriously drove back to her house and given them to her just then.  I so want to see her face and to see how God uses this to draw her to Himself.  (my Knight knew I was planning on doing this, he is much more of a generous giver than I have ever been. He encouraged me to go for it, as God led me.)

I instead used self control and decided that I should at least wrap her specially chosen gifts.  I also want to give her a Christmas card (a picture of us) with her gifts.  I am pondering when to give them.  Should I do it today.  Should I give them to her one at a time?  Should I wait closer until  Christmas?  

So hard.  What do you think?