Apples

This week has gotten off to a great start!

On Sunday, the Waller family (of thirteen) visited our church and shared their testimony. Read about them at http://www.hayovel.com/. This month they are traveling around the country in their big red bus telling people about their family's work in Israel and how it all began. On the side of their bus it says, "Israel, the apple of God's eye." Sometimes as Christians we ignore the many references to Israel but God commands us to pray for the peace of Israel. Here are a few verses and comments that I copied from the Hayovel site.

Why is the work in Israel important?
Israel holds a special place as a prophetic people. Prophetic means to tell what is going to happen, like a prophet. Through Israel we can see the spiritual climate of the world - it is the center of the world. As time ticks down to the coming of the Messiah, the nations of the world will focus on Israel. Ezekiel 3:5

Why should I care about Israel?
God, the creator, neither slumbers or sleeps concerning Israel. Psalms 121:4 If we want to know our heavenly Father we will look into His eyes. He says that Israel is the apple of His eye, the very center of His eye. Zechariah 2:8 When we look at Israel we can see God. To be disconnected from Israel is to be disconnected from God.

Pray for Peace
Psalm 122:6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love you.

God's Perspective
Zech. 12:9 "It shall be in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem."
Zech. 8:2 "I am very jealous for Zion, I am buring with jealousy for her."
Isaiah 49:14-16 "But Zion has said, 'the Lord has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me.' Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you."
2 Chron. 6:6 "Yet I have chosen Jerusalem, that My name may be there, and I have chosen David to be over My people Israel."
Psalm 132:13-15 "For the lord has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His dwelling place: 'This is My resting place forever; here I will dwell for I have desired it. I will aboundantly bless her provision; I will satisfy her poor with bread.'"

Franklin Springs Media made a video documentary about the Waller family and their transition from city living to rural community life and to Israel. It is beautiful! http://www.franklinsprings.com/films/journeyhome/

We truly enjoyed the Wallers' singing, dancing, speaking and just down-to-earth sharing about Yeshua in their lives. And we will be more faithfully praying for the peace of Israel as a result of their testimony.

We were picking apples this morning. It's not really the season, but they are falling off of the tree in Ms. Ennis' yard and she is moving today. She asked us to pick them since she knew we'd make applesauce with them and otherwise they'd go to waste. (She does not ever want anything to be wasted) We've been trying to help her with this move in various ways, but this was a request that seemed to be for our blessing, rather than hers. That's how she is, always blessing others, even when under the incredible stress of moving out of her house!

It's hard to see the pickers since the branches are so low, but since Kelsey took the time to take pictures, I decided to post them anyhow. This is Joy, Mary, me, Noah, and Anna.
Here are Mary, Joy and Kendal.
Ms.Ennis is a box collector, and has been anticipating a move for over a year, which increased her box saving. The house was packed and the contents were already relocated but she still had some leftover boxes today and couldn't bear to see them wasted. So she asked us to fill the boxes with apples.

This is a small portion of the applesauce that came from Ms. Ennis' apples. The applesauce is easy to make, organic, free, and Kendal and Kelsey are making it together! What more could a mother ask?

Ms. Ennis has been a tremendous blessing to our family over the last fifteen months, therefore her move is very bittersweet. She suspects we will only miss her pool or ironing. But that is very far from the truth.

In April 07 Ms. Ennis hosted the Hendry family and a Shelley Hendry Ladies' meeting that I attended at her house. Ms.Ennis wanted to find a way to bless the Hendrys after they'd returned home, but realized that there were other large families that live much closer whom she could help. When she called me offering to help our family, I only knew her as the mother of my dear friend, Joy. I've never let, or asked, anyone to help me do anything at our house that I can remember. But I had been feeling very overwhelmed and somewhat sad about mothering "all alone" so I had to say "yes." I believe she was God's answer to my prayers.

My mom, who had always lived only 20 minutes from us, had recently moved nearly eight hours away. Our family had no outside activities, except a very small house church on Sundays. And we rarely had any guests in our home. Ms. Ennis' Thursday visits/workdays at our home made all the difference. Suddenly there was another person in our house to see what really happens in our life. She was a constant encouragement in every way. Ms. Ennis loved us all, inspite of the faults she observed from week to week. I never felt condemned, disappointing to her, or judged. I realized that she was truly a Titus 2 "older woman" to me and to the girls in our home.

As I was able to swallow my pride and line up "work" for her, we became more comfortable with each other. Then she offered to teach Kendal and Kelsey to smock. We started sharing lunch, recipes, books, prayer requests and even a new church service for a short time. I loved that Bob's clothes were so neatly ironed each week. When summer came we were able to "relieve" her guilt over having an unused pool, by swimming in it! ha, ha! What more could a mother of seven ask for than a private swimming pool surrounded by beautiful flowers and attended by a gracious lady who helped watch the little ones in the pool?

I'm so thankful to have been on the receiving end of a Titus 2 experience. It is very rare to have multi-generational experiences in daily living. Modern day homeschooolers and mothers of many children do most of their work in isolation, in contrast to their foremothers, who lived in community in rural settings. Alone, we try to do what the women of the past did with their extended family all around. Spiritually speaking it's dangerous. We need accountability. We need someone to tell us that all our hard work is not in vain and that it will reap beautiful fruit one day. If the Lord tarries, I hope my daughters and I will become Titus 2 older women.

Ms. Ennis will ultimately be living very near to one of her daughters and their family of eight. So I cannot be sad that she is moving away from us. It is a dream come true for all of us as we've prayed for the Lord's will in this. Her house sold in four days. That is a miracle. She has collected every orphan book, basket, window, piece of wood, twine, etc. for years; yet she has managed to pack up her whole house and MOVE! That's a miracle!

By the way, a family at our new family worship service, just moved into our neighborhood this week! I mentioned them in a previous post: the Wards have six boys and one girl. They now live one block away! After we picked apples, we went swimming at their house this morning.

God is so good!

Forgiveness

Some of the children thought we should add photos of everyone to the blog since it's usually just Noah's photos. So the following are pictures of Anna (6), Daniel (8), Kelsey (12-until Sept) and Kendal (14). Isaac, Joy and Mary missed out this time.

Forgiveness is a subject that is frequently entering into Bible study, shows we're watching, and thoughtful conversations we're involved in lately. Bob and I read a book called 23 Minutes in Hell after we saw the author on a Christian talk show. Then we watched a documentary called The Lazurus Phenomenon which highlighted the death experiences of several people. Most recently we had dinner with new friends; the husband's brother had an experience of torment during a coma that was attributed to unforgiveness in his life. We think God is very serious about our extension of forgiveness to others. Because we are saved it seems we dangerously think that we can get away with ignoring the rest of the Bible. Our family is beginning to pay much closer attention! Check out these verses:

Matthew 18:32-35 The Story of the Ungrateful Servant

"Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed (which was equivalent to millions of dollars by the way).
"This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."

Galatians 6:7

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.

Mark 11:25

And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.

Sometimes it's hard to know for certain if we've forgiven someone, especially if there are repeated offenses, no confessions have been made, and they continue to offend us.

Here are some definitions and descriptions of true forgiveness that have been shared with us recently:

*If you truly forgive someone you will not hold the offense against them. They no longer owe you. You will reject the temptation to recount how they've offended you.

*If you truly forgive someone you can sincerely pray God's richest blessings on their life.

*If you truly forgive someone you can genuinely receive them trying to be in relationship with you, whether they are asking for your forgiveness, or not.

Love is not easily angered and it keeps no record of wrongs (I Cor 13:5). That's the easiest way to deal with forgiveness-not to be so easily offended in the first place.

Since we've been more in tune to the sin of unforgiveness we've noticed that nearly every argument in our home is founded in unforgiveness for previous offenses. That means we walk around almost waiting to be "bumped" by someone with whom we are already angry or defensive towards, and then respond out of the abundance of our heart. This led us to studying how to fill our hearts with the "right stuff" in the first place. As always, it drew us back to being more diligent about filling our hearts and minds with the Word of God. It's not about controlling ourselves, or pushing down an angry emotion, or being forgetful, easy-going people. It's about truly loving God and loving others. And the only way we can do that is to be full of Him and His word!

Be blessed today!

How then should we live?

We're having more opportunities now to catch Noah laughing and smiling!
The recliner in our bedroom is usually a very peaceful place to nurse Noah, but today we were invaded by three giggling little girls who took up residence behind my chair.
Thinking higher...

We've been anticipating the return of Jesus to gather His church (the Rapture) for a long time in our family. My grandmother used to talk to us about it all the time. My mother and I continue to talk regularly about all the signs of the times.

The legacy of my grandmother's enthusiasm for Christ's return lives on in our family. Every one of our children (down to age 4) are mindful of the fact that our lives are only like a vapor in God's plan, and if Jesus does gather us into the clouds as soon as we expect, we won't ever see death. Christians have been waiting for Jesus' return for 2000 years. To some it may seem like a dream that will never happen so they deny it. But, Jesus said he will return just as He left this earth and that we are to be watchful!

That leaves us begging the question of how then should we live? If we knew the exact date was two weeks away, how would we spend that time? What if we knew it was 2 months, or a year away? How should we view long term investments of money, health, or even homeschooling? Our big dreams of selling everything to go around the country spreading the Gospel are interrupted by the reality of being responsible for eight other lives. Certainly the LORD wants us to be faithful in what He has already assigned to us. We don't want to be so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good! We wake up each day asking Him to direct our steps and plans because the prospect of not being on this earth much longer really changes our view of what matters.

His answer today was something new: We were reading the website of The Voice of the Martyrs at their link: Persecution.com. There is a page for writing letters of encouragment to prisoners of the faith. The computer offers a long series of phrases and Bible verses that are already translated in the prisioner's language. You choose what to say, translate it, print it and mail it. Amazing! There are also statistics on the sidebar of how many letters have already been sent and other details. Here's the link to the letter writing page: http://www.prisoneralert.com/ There are several tabs on the page where you can choose which prisoner to read about and send mail to. It's less than a dollar to send a letter to China.

We've made many decisions lately that were largely a result of "short-term" thinking. For example, although we've saved baby clothes for the last fourteen years, we're giving Noah's away as soon as he grows out of them. A lady Bob works with, is due in August, with her eighth child, and all her baby stuff burned in a housefire this year. Their family is not saved. Also, our children made a very generous gift of their own money to bless each member of that same family with his own monogrammed towel. All the other things that filled their temporary home were second-hand. This is a gift our children have loved, so they passed on the blessing.

Most recently the children gave their own money to help a missions team to El Salvador. Upon their return, one of the team members shared the story of exactly how our children's money was spent on the El Salvador children. She spoke with tears in her eyes. I'm sure our children will not soon forget it.

Regardless of when He returns, we know the LORD is pleased with generosity and all acts of kindness. If we sacrifice a piece of our future, or our children's future, to bless someone in the present, we're sure the LORD will repay us, if we need it. He always has. It is a prayerful issue, and the LORD loves that too, since He's commanded us to abide in Him daily.