Today while driving, we passed this little guy along the side of the road. He wasn’t bothered by our SUV stopping near him to take a few pictures, and only walked away when several cars passed by one after the other. He even stuck his tongue out at us at one point.
We love hiking at Fish River Falls. It’s always so beautiful there.
One of our members stopped by just now. He brought food. This blesses me so much. Our church doesn’t pay my husband a salary yet, but this particular member goes out of his way to bring us treats and food every so often. He’s brought everything from ice cream to pies, to huge turkeys, to chicken, to special treats he thought we’d like.
Today it was a couple packs of chicken breast and some hot dogs and bread. I’m not even sure what else – the kids took it upstairs so quickly I never did get to look at it all.
This is such an encouragement to me. With food prices rising, I’ve been trying to cut back on the meat we eat (and which meats we buy). I love chicken breast and eat it a lot, and it’s so nice having something brought to us that we use a lot of.
He also brought stickers and crayons for my Sunday School class. This is great – the stickers will work beautifully for part of the Mother’s Day project I’m doing with the kids in my class.
Sometimes I wish our people knew how much of an encouragement it is to us when they do things like this.
Last week we got a big snowstorm, which isn’t uncommon during early spring here. The weather was snowy and wet and just yuck.
One of our members stopped by. “I brought you some sunshine on this gray day.”
It was two gallons of ice cream. One was orange vanilla swirl.
This member doesn’t know how much my family loves ice cream, he just drops it off occasionally. Sometimes it’s the fancy stuff with tons of mixins. Sometimes it’s homemade vanilla style and toppings. But this time it was sunshine.
What an encouragement.
Then today at church one man brought in a cooler of something for us.
Moose. Ground moose.
I’ve been wanting to try moose since we got here and we just haven’t had a chance to get any yet.
Now there are 3 pounds’ worth of ground moose burger in my fridge.
I can’t wait.
Last year, since everything was so upended due to Covid for 2020, I purchased a digital planner file for 2021 for my iPad. It was only a few dollars, and I thought it was better to try this file instead of spending $70 on a paper planner like I had the past few years. My logic was that if I used it and hated it, I wouldn’t be out much money.
I discovered that I LOVE digital planners. I have Goodnotes installed on my iPad, my phone, and my Mac computer, so I can access my planner in all three places! Even when I’m on the go I can still pull up my planner even if I don’t bring my iPad with me.
But then I discovered that wasn’t good enough. The file I bought was nice enough, but it got slow (quite possibly from all the stickers I was putting in the planner). But then I got to thinking…..it couldn’t be THAT hard to make them, could it?
I had made a few in the past. For a while I sold the Household Management Notebooks as an edit-able .pdf file people could type into and then print, so I took that concept and went digital.
Now I’m obsessed with adding more and more and more to these planners. It’s fun, and nice to see what options can be added to them.
Funny how some seasons of life seem so incredibly boring and others seem so incredibly busy.
Christmas is only a month away and the holiday rush has officially hit for the business. It’s a good thing. While it’s busy, this is the time of year that we try to put money back to live on during the slower season.
It’s not crazy yet though, and orders are still coming in at a manageable pace. That’s a good thing with church.
Church has been interesting. We still live stream services. We have several shut-in members, so this is available for those with internet. It’s also available for those who are staying home due to caution with the pandemic.
It’s been interesting to watch church attendance with the various lockdowns and precautions that are mandated. Some members are determined to be faithful. Some members feel the need to remain cautious. We’ve had some new families come, which has been refreshing. One family has been coming to our church, because their church is in Canada and the border is closed. We’ve loved having them with us, and we’ll miss them when the border reopens.
Over the summer, we put together packets of two tracts, a booklet of John and Romans, and a little slip with our service times. We hung these on all the homes in our town. Lord willing more people will come as a result.
Stephen and Samuel worked on a local farm for potato harvest. It’s great to be able to do something it seems everyone here has done, and it’s been good to get out in the community more as well.
I’ve had some pain in my left hand so saw the doctor. It’s tendonitis and I’m to avoid playing the piano so much. That has been difficult, but I definitely feel the effects if I play much.
Anna and Esther are both progressing beautifully on the piano, and Caleb is learning the guitar. Luke is also beginning piano lessons. Joy wants to start lessons too, so I’ll teach her when she’s older…..and somehow, she’s about to turn four.
Time has a way of not slowing down, doesn’t it?
