Hobe Sound Blogs

Kalena is one of the most outgoing children that I have ever seen. She loves people and always tries to put smiles on grumpy faces! It is so fun to watch. At church, she doesn’t really want to held after church is over, she wants to run around and talk to people. So what happened a [...]

It is not keeping the rules but the relation with God, that gives us salvation.

Truth trumps hardships.

The people around Christians are either sad or glad.

Always praise God and you will always be right.

God is always right so if you want to be right just agree with Him.

Opening gifts at our house.

Katie was keeping her eye on those cookies. She is my sweet eater.


We went to the Thanksgiving Banquet.
Me heading to the banquet.
The girls were so excited to go too.
Tricia after she "restyled" her hair...lol!!!
We are having a wonderful time with our little family. We are so blessed!! Tricia was on the A honor roll this quarter. We are so proud of her. She gets all her smarts from me...lol!!!

One more Bonhoeffer post and I promise that will be it for a while. The more I read this brother the more he stands out as one of the outstanding Christians of the 20th century. When I read him some of the adjectives that come to mind are Christocentric, catholic, and Bible-saturated. Above all, he was a pastoral and churchly theologian, beginning with his doctoral dissertation Sanctorum Communio ("Communion of Saints") which Karl Barth called a miracle. Not a bad endorsement! Bonhoeffer's writings constantly point me toward the finished work of Christ and the visible Body he left behind. I thank God for him.

The following quotes come from the last chapter of The Cost of Discipleship. For me this book and Life Together are in the category of books I should read once a year.

With the loss of the God-like nature God had given him, man had forfeited the destiny of his being, which was to be like God. In short, man had ceased to be man. He must live without the ability to live. Herein lies the paradox of human nature and the source of all our woe. Since that day, the sons of Adam in their pride have striven to recover the divine image by their own efforts. (p. 299)


God sends his Son—here lies the only remedy. It is not enough to give man a new philosophy or a better religion. A Man comes to men. Every man bears an image. His body and his life become visible. A man is not a bare word, a thought or a will. He is above all and always a man, a form, an image, a brother. And thus he does not create around him just a new way of thought, will and action, but he gives us the new image, the new form. Now in Jesus Christ this is just what has happened. The image of God has entered our midst, in the form of our fallen life, in the likeness of sinful flesh. In the teaching and acts of Christ, in his life and death, the image of God is revealed. In him the divine image has been re-created on earth. (p. 300)


Through fellowship and communion with the incarnate Lord, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race. (pp. 301-2)


Indeed it is wrong to speak of the Christian life: we should speak rather of Christ living in us. "I live, and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20). Jesus Christ, incarnate, crucified and glorified, has entered my life and taken charge. "To me to live is Christ" (Phil. 1:21). And where Christ lives, there the Father also lives, and both Father and Son through the Holy Ghost. The Holy Trinity himself has made his dwelling in the Christian heart, filling his whole being, and transforming him into the divine image. Christ, incarnate, crucified and glorified is formed in every Christian soul, for all are members of his Body, the Church. The Church bears the human form, the form of Christ in his death and resurrection. The Church in the first place is his image, and through the Church all her members have been refashioned in his image too. In the Body of Christ we are become "like Christ." (p. 303)

The price of loyalty is beyond your means.

The extent of mercy cannot be measured.

Walking in darkness creates loneliness.

I will never understand the cost of my sins, to Jesus!

Whether an earthquake or a heart attack death is incomprehensible!

Believe it or not, we are still alive. Things have been really busy here in the gorgeous south. Camp has started and this weekend was the 50th anniversary for the college. Lot's of people are here right now. It's great to see lots of friends that only come around this time.

We enjoyed getting to see the Lebanon Christmas Horse Parade with the Dickinson's and Pilmores. It was a FREEZING COLD day, so thus the reason for the heavy coats and Rudolph-like noses! It reminded us a lot of our days in Russia because of the extreme cold temperature.

Natasha enjoyed being a part of God's Bible School Christmas Musical.

When pride is replaced with thankfulness then true service begins.

Pride limits your spiritual gifts.

Praise is always the right attitude!

Giving is living.

Death may separate our bodies but not our hearts.

HT: Current

For those of you who may wonder why all of the changes in the blog, I will fill you in on the details. I know this may be a shock because all of my deep intellectual insights have been and will be lacking in comparison to the light, frilly things that may take place in the future. I do hereby bequeath the insightful privilege of managing this blog to the rest of my family. Someday, I will reclaim my distinguished position as supreme commander of this blog and officially boot out my willing and subordinate subjects. Huh?

At least in the country, you are busy doing something worthwhile.

If you agree with me we can still both be wrong.

A college degree is valuable but imagination is priceless.

Forgiveness is the best stress reliever.

Pain is easier to manage in others than in yourself.

One of the things we look forward to during Christmas time is the arrival of the Paul & Jen Pedersen family from Indiana. They had decided this year to stay put in the hopes that they could get some visitors to come their way for once...well their planned worked. The Estes family spent a few days there and once we realized they weren't coming down here we decided we'd just have to go see them!

We packed up our SUV and drove through the night to arrive on Thursday morning. It's our favorite way to travel, the kids sleep great and to them the trip feels like just a few hours. We arrived to very cold temps that just kept getting colder as the weekend progressed! But we didn't let that affect the fun factor and we had a great weekend.

Rick's brother Randy and his family were in the area and he and their two sons spent all day Saturday with us while Jane was enjoying a girls day with her sisters.

Liz was able to stay and enjoy the weekend with us before catching a flight back to FL Saturday evening. We left Sunday evening and arrived back home Monday late morning - so glad we took the time to go, always enjoy spending time with them and making memories together.

Here are a few pictures from our weekend....

We had a great time but I must say I am so glad I live in FL! We returned to record breaking cold temps in South FL for ten days in a row but it felt balmy after the very frigid temps we experiences while in Indiana!

To see more pictures from our weekend you can click on this link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=135358&id=616327758&l=2cc7a6185a

This is a slightly reworked post from 2008. I like it because it includes two subjects I love: Wong Kar-wai and C.S. Lewis.

Three minutes into 2046—the 2004 film from Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai—the screen goes black and the words "all memories are traces of tears" appear. This will be the thread that runs through the film we're about to see. 2046 is a companion piece to Wong's masterpiece (I don't use that word lightly) from four years earlier—In the Mood for Love. He has been called—without hyperbole in my opinion—the world's most romantic filmmaker and lauded for the "visual splendour of his film aesthetic." And music, oh how he uses music! There are few films that made as big an impact on me as In the Mood for Love, which I first watched on the splendid Criterion DVD, and was my introduction to Wong's cinema of longing.

C.S. Lewis described his experience of being in a record shop and hearing Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries for the first time as "like a thunderbolt" because it conjured up "the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing" he felt as a 14-year-old boy. The Germans (a more naturally romantic people) have a great word for this—sehnsucht—which means something like wishfulness or longing. German artists such as Goethe, Beethoven and Brahms richly mined the vein of sehnsucht in their books and music. Wong's films are shot through with this sense of longing—longing for lost loves, lost eras (especially the 1960's Hong Kong of Wong's childhood), lost years, and the music, fashion and art of the past.

Another major obsession is time. 2046 is separated by title cards which announce the day/month/year or sometimes simply "one hour later" or "1000 hours later". It takes the viewer effortlessly between present, past and future exploring how time works on our memories. Chungking Express (1994), another favorite of mine, features a protagonist whose girlfriend dumps him on April 1. He obssessively collects tins of pineapple with the expiration date May 1 (his birthday), reasoning that if they haven't gotten back together by May 1 then their love has expired. A pile of empty tins serve as visual metaphor for his frustration.


2046 was four years in the making, and in my opinion, is a penultimate film in which Wong synthesizes much of what came before. For instance, he brings back characters and musical cues from earlier films, and uses all of his formidable stylistic tools. In the Mood for Love has a fairly unified look and static style (very static to the irritation of some viewers), but in 2046 Wong alternates between the kinetic style of earlier films and the ravishing slowness of In the Mood, even throwing in a dash of future-noirish CGI. Think Blade Runner. It's worth noting too that Wong loves shooting at night, and with rain. But then, so have many of the best visual stylists.

I would have a hard time explaining to you what exactly happens in 2046 or its predecessor. Well I could, but it would sound absurdly prosaic. Asking the question "what's it about?" of these films reminds me of Steve Martin's line about music: "talking about music is like dancing about architecture." So true! One can't do justice to the works of a cinematic genius like WKW by explaining plot details. Snatches of music from a radio down the hall, a tear suspended in air, steam rising from a bowl of noodles, the sound of rain on a sidewalk, a passing glance or searching gaze—these are the more important details that go into creating something ineffable, intangible. An overwhelming sense of loss hangs over the proceedings, yet there are moments of uncontrolled hilarity. We're passing through a vale of tears, but laughter is a frequent and welcome companion.


Wong Kar-wai is in love with beauty, but I see hints in his films that perhaps beauty is his idol in a way that carries within itself the seeds of destruction. C.S. Lewis writes of beauty in the autobiographical Surprised by Joy:

The books or music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

How sad to mistake the beauty for the thing really desired. Yet, beauty of the kind conjured up by Wong Kar-Wai seems (almost) enough.

There's a deeper life, there's a higher call
There's a giant sleeping in us all
There's a God who gives rest to the soul
There's a deeper life than the one we know

I was recently reading Mark 9:14-24, where Jesus turns his attention to a crowd of people who are obviously in a moment of chaos and confusion. Jesus goes to them and asks what is going on, and a man steps forward and says, “Teacher, I brought you my son, possessed with a spirit which makes him mute; and whenever it seizes him, it slams him to the ground and he foams at the mouth, and grinds his teeth and stiffens out. I told Your disciples to cast it out, and they could not do it."

Jesus chides his disciples for not being prayed up enough to cast the demon out, then turns his attention to the father for the largest part of what follows. He asked him, "How long has this been happening to him (the son)?" And he said, "From childhood. It has often thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!"

And Jesus said to him, " 'If You can?' All things are possible to him who believes." Immediately the boy's father cried out and said, "I do believe; help my unbelief."

This father figure embodies where I'm at on my journey.

“I brought you my son” . . . the real question was not whether he believed. he already believed. There’s no other reason he would have bothered to bring his son to them, unless he believed there was a chance for healing. His real crisis was accepting that it would be real for him, that God would even want to meet his need.

It actually doesn't seem too hopeful at first, does it?

“I told Your disciples to cast it out, and they could not do it” . . . The miracle didn’t happen. You could say that his first attempt at faith failed miserably. Nothing but more of the same bondage and failure.

Have you been there? To be honest, I am there right now. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the difficult circumstances that my family and I face, and right now, this story hits close to home! Sometimes the curse of ministry is that you have to struggle alone; that you have to constantly have the right answers and attitude. We have to be the strong ones, they say.

I’m not strong right now. Honestly, I’m beat down, depressed, and feeling like a massive failure. My struggle isn't even close to the anguish this man felt, but when you consistently fail at something, no matter how small, it grinds at you. We all struggle with unbelief, and I’m just like this father who has believed, but is now looking at a wall of confusion. I’m the man who musters up the courage to bring my need to Providence. I’m that man who is waiting for the miracle, and nothing is happening. Nothing but more of the same . . .

I sympathize with that father. He must have been so frustrated! Scripture says that the commotion was so great that it caught Jesus’ attention.

This is a guy who’s incredulous! He’s seen miracles all around him. He knew that this Rabbi, this Teacher, had the solution to his problem. Jesus was constantly healing and casting out demons for others, so why not him?

He had tried so long to provide for his family, for his hurting son. He had summoned the strength and courage to endure the stares and ostracism as he carried his shaking boy through the crowds of people, working his way to where Jesus was, stopping occasionally to hold his son while he seized . . . keeping him from hurting himself or others.

He had belief. He goes through all of that to get to the disciples. His belief carries him so far, all the way to the inner circle . . . just to be told “I’m sorry, it’s not working for some reason!” Can you imagine the humiliation?

He lost it.

Can we blame him? If this was all of the story, I would give up. I’d throw in the towel because I couldn’t take the realization that providence is preferential – that somehow I didn’t qualify.

But that’s not the end of the story.

Thank God.

This wounded soul lost it, but that doesn’t mean he was giving up, and that is the lesson learned here. It would have been easy to accept that he wasn’t worthy. we all do, to a certain degree.

But there was no way he was quitting after all he had just gone through, after carrying his son, enduring the comments, and seeing the devastation the enemy was causing.

No way.

He was going to have his say, and he was going to find answers. He was NOT going to be satisfied with “I’m sorry, it’s not working for some reason”!

So he stood his ground. He demanded an audience.

And God showed up.

Where does your faith take you? To Sunday School? To Church? To Counseling? To Accountability Group? To Scripture?

Those are such good resources for our progress, but understand this clearly:

There will come a day when our faith is taken to a place of discomfort, to a place of darkness, and to a place of doubt.

You will feel alone.

You will feel unworthy.

You will wonder where God went.

Take heart and grit your teeth. Stand your ground. Demand an audience. In our dark places, sometimes we fail to see what is right in front of us . . . a door.

This is the door of the Deep.

This is where God takes us to the end of struggle, and to the beginning of rest. This is where He waits for us to call out, to stand our ground, to cause a commotion!

Romans 12:12 says "Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer".

James 1:2-3 - "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance, for perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything".

Does God want us to be halfway filled, halfway effective, or halfway redeemed?

No, He doesn't.

Our pain is our path to progress. He is faithful to complete us, in the work He calls us to do.

We just have to persevere, to stand our ground, to remain faithful, and to demand an audience.

This is when God shows up.

This where we surrender our spiritual inferiority and put on His infinite worth.

This is where Belief no longer stands on a precipice.

Here, in the dark, I'm reaching for the door . . .

Join me.

© Copyright Derek Hickman 2010

Drive as if your life depends on it.

A bad attitude is the worst disability.

Are your fork and your waist at war?

A mind set is a mind lost.

To be lost you need to have a destination.

This is a cool new site about how to "do-it-yoursel" crafts!!! Looks like it's going to be fun!!!

"To celebrate the launch of this new show, our friends at Janome are letting us give away TWO (yes, TWO!!) dream machines! Someone is going to win the Janome 350e EMBROIDERY machine and a second person is going to win the Janome DC4030 SEWING machine! Now how cool is that?!"

Hats have always been important to all three boys.



J worked and worked the other day to make a basket. It was nice to see him so engrossed in something while Jeremy and Justin were doing their school work.



I caught Jeremy taking a break from his school work. Even though the county schools have been off all week, we've managed to get full days in. No snow days here.



Justin was hard at work even if it wasn't his top choice of an occupation, but he is usually quite motivated to get his work done for the day so he can go on to something more fun.



J found his clothing from the previous day and dressed himself over the top of his pajamas. Even though his clothes don't look that great, he has a great smile.

The New Testament clearly teaches that all Christians ("saints") have received the gifts of justification and sanctification. Like love and marriage, they go together like a horse and carriage. Both proceed from the same source -- the crucified and risen Christ, and have the same goal -- fellowship and communion with him. Though inextricably connected, they are different. This excerpt from The Cost of Discipleship is worth reading and rereading!

Justification is the means whereby we appropriate the saving act of God in the past, and sanctification the promise of God's activity in the present and future. Justification secured our entrance into fellowship and communion with Christ through the unique and final event of his death, and sanctification keeps us in that fellowship in Christ. Justification is primarily concerned with the relation between man and the law of God, sanctification with the Christian's separation from the world until the second coming of Christ. Justification makes the individual a member of the Church whereas sanctification preserves the Church with all its members. Justification enables the believer to break away from his sinful past; sanctification enables him to abide in Christ, to persevere in faith and to grow in love. We may perhaps think of justification and sanctification as bearing the same relation to each other as creation and preservation. Justification is the new creation of the new man, and sanctification his preservation until the day of Jesus Christ. (pp. 277-78)

Slavery in the Bible

Wow! What an interesting study this has been! I've been all over the Bible in this one, and I'm about to do a very non-scholarly thing. I'm going to give you a smattering of all of it with no references. I can hear the boos- stop it! I've looked it all up, but between caring for children and such, have misplaced my various scribblings and jottings. If you have time to fill in the #s, go for it. Of course, this is not going to be comprehensive, but here we go.

So. Why talk about slavery in the Bible? Well, it's February- Black History month- the time when Christian radio (my intellectual stimulation when Nathan's not available ;o) is flooded with chatter about slavery, modern and ancient. And I keep hearing about the evils of slavery. How we're all 'endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' Which by the way, is a direct reference to the Stoics, not the Scripture. What is your answer to this question: is slavery morally wrong? is it evil to own another human being?

What is slavery, anyhow? Is it not a complete lack of say-so over one's own destiny and responsibilities? (By the way, aren't the masses of the world born into societies where they live under varying degrees of this?)

So I'm a bit confused. What about Job, whom the Bible calls PERFECT; he had manservants and maidservants. And Abraham? And Rachel and Leah had handmaids. According to my father-in-law, there's not a different word for the 'slave' that Joseph was and the 'servants' of these men. Pharaoh gave Abraham servants. Hagar ran away; God told her to return and submit herself to Sarah's authority. The law is full of regulations for slaves and masters. The Gibeonites became servants to the Israelites after they tricked God's people into not annihilating them. Philemon was a slave-owner (think Onesimus) and the church at Colossians had more than one in the congregation. Where are the "Slavery is a moral evil. Release all your slaves!" statements?

Non-Christians love to point to the lack of condemnation of slavery in Scripture as a strike against the morality of God. What did God really think about slavery as a social system? According to scripture, slavery was instituted as a penal system. Think slavery instead of debtor's prisons. And as they interacted with and were attacked by other cultures, think slavery instead of annihilation. There doesn't seem to be any scriptural evidence of owning another person being wrong.

There WERE laws against kidnapping other people. It could even be punishable by death. That is what makes the black slavery of early America immoral. They were stolen people groups. They did not attack us, nor were they indebted to us. Also, the American slave movement was based on the superiority of the white race to those of color (which goes completely counter to the Genesis account of one set of parents for all races).

God told masters in Colossians to be fair and just to their slaves, keeping in mind that they, too, had a Master in heaven. And when the Israelites broke their pledge of safety with the Gibeonites, they suffered a plague because of it. God obviously cared about the conditions of slaves.

Conclusion: It seems to me that, biblically, slavery as a social status is not inherently immoral. It was an alternative to prisons and death sentences. How one acquired a slave and how one treated a slave seems to be the areas of judgment. God blessed Joseph in his slavery (even though he was taken immorally), and Joseph submitted until asked to commit sin. Thoughts?

Plant the good and compost the bad.

Are you a winner or a whiner?

Dial prayer for hope.

Marriage is heart business .

Greed honors no friendship.

Today is National Signing Day. If you're not a college football fan that probably doesn't mean anything. Today is when high school athletes sign on the dotted line to play college football at Florida, Alabama, Texas, etc. It's the culmination of a crazy process in which grown men like me obsessively follow the whims and shifting "commitments" of teenagers. It's easy to get cynical, but there are some good stories too. For a select few today is a ticket out, a reward for years of hard work on and off the field.

Here's an article by Pat Dooley on one of the new Florida Gators:

The growth can be measured by the tangibles, the 310 pounds of man who will be leaving Philadelphia behind. The quick feet that helped him become a five-star recruit. The strength that allowed him to brush offensive linemen to the side as if they were flies on a sandwich.

Those you can measure. Those you can see. Those make it hard to believe he was so small when he was born you could hold him with one hand.

But the intangibles, to see that growth you have to know his story, how he has gone from premature baby to mature adult.

“I've made the best of it,” Sharrif Floyd said. “It helps you grow up fast.”

The defensive tackle from Philadelphia will sign a letter of intent to become a Florida Gator today. He already has plans to head south the day after he graduates from George Washington High School.

“I can't wait to get down there,” he said.

Floyd is one of those kids who had every reason not to make it out, every reason to get caught up in the mean streets of Philly. Instead, he is a 3.0 grade-point average student who has had recruiters salivating for two years.

“Whatever he gets, he deserves,” said Washington coach Ron Cohen. “He's worked his tail off for it.”

His story began when he was born three months premature. Floyd spent several months on a heart monitor before being released from the hospital. The world he entered was not a pretty one.

He would go to school wearing the same clothes day after day, sometimes with buttons missing. He didn't want to go to school because he was so embarrassed by the way he looked.

But he hung in there, stayed out of trouble and started getting big. Huge. As a ninth-grader, he was 6-foot-2 and 275 pounds.

Continue reading

@ theatlantic.com

Is your life an encouragement or a warning?

Balance is not being caught with your bad side up.

Love can endure solitude but not loneliness.

Never over estimate your influence.

Never undervalue your impact.

Since my two cousins, John and Philip Olsen, were going to be visiting their parents over the holidays....and since one wife, Janan used to be Addison, who was in my sister Brendas class was going to be here...and since the other wife Jennifer used to be Brown, who was in the class below me and a very good friend of mine was going to be here....and since we ladies had known each other for years, long before we were cousins by marriage....and since Jennifer's classmate Sheila used to be Vogel who was also a friend of mine and we all knew her wanted to see all of us since it had been years....we decided to all get together one evening at our home. If you followed all that, I'm impressed!

Jennifer, Sheila, Charlene and Janan...it actually wasn't nearly as dark as it looked and all the husbands/kids were in the backyard - everyone had just arrived so we were doing a little catching up.


Some of the cousins playing a game - they seem to always pick right up where they left off....
Brenda and Philip are the same age...we have a lot of great memories growing up with the cousins from both sides of the family tree. So thankful for parents who knew the value of family...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=134414&id=616327758&l=f9d83dffee

…over at the newindevopmentblog 

The less we depend on our abilities the more productive we become.

Complexity is only entwined simplicity.

Being nice sweetens every life.

To purge your mind fill it with joy.

Sadness flees happiness.

The last day of January already! This month I spent quite a bit of time assessing where I am as a person: physically, spiritually, as a mother and wife and writing up some goals for the coming year. Most of the goals I set this year were spiritual. I've learned that if I keep that area of my life on track and nurture my relationship with God, pretty much all the rest of my life falls in order. So though it's been a busy month, it's not been unreasonably so...until this week.

The week started well enough. We had a huge answer to prayer on Tuesday for a family that we had been praying for. The boys were so excited and it was a faith booster. That evening we had some friends over and had a very profitable conversation on prayer.

Wednesday things started getting a little hairy. They found that my mom has a blood clot in one of her lungs which ordinarily would cause concern but with all the other complicating factors she has going on it certainly isn't anything to take lightly. Wednesday afternoon Stephen started feeling feverish and that lasted the rest of the day.

Thursday started well but about noon Stephen was running a fever again. This pattern has continued through today so I have a feeling we're in for a Dr's appointment tomorrow. The fever gets a little too high (103.8) and has lasted a little too long for my comfort. That evening somehow he and Daniel collided heads and Stephen got knocked out. Perhaps a small concussion ...whatever it was scared us pretty good. We checked on him periodically until about 11:00 that night and he seemed to be fine and was back to normal by Friday morning.

At breakfast Friday morning Daniel leaned over to make a face at Stephen and Stephen reached out and poked him in the eye. To make a long story short, we took him to Urgent Care in the afternoon to find that he had a vertical cornial abrasion so that required an antibiotic and patch.

Saturday I was vacuuming downstairs and all of the sudden lost power. Philip's home office and the guest room are on the same breaker so I flipped it but nothing happened. It's been determined that the breaker/fuse is fine but something has happened somewhere else.

I'm really hoping for an uneventful week! I have one cake order this week and then we're getting ready to fly to Florida on Thursday as a family. Philip is to speak at Hobe Sound Camp this year so the boys and I are going to be with him for part of the time.

For those of you who have nothing else to do...you can pray for us this week. I'm specifically asking the Lord for four things:
1. That every member of our family be well for the trip and the duration of our stay
2. That we have a safe, enjoyable trip
3. That we have enough down time this week so that we can be rested, organized, and prepared so that the previous two can happen.
4. That camp will be beneficial to our family. Pray for Philip as he speaks.

I made some goals for blogging this year also and I hope to share those when I get back.

This week brought very cold temperatures that caused a challenge for some of my runs. It is almost impossible for me to stay comfortably warm when it gets below 20 degrees. I did my first hill workout, which is meant to strengthen a different set of muscles and increase your speed. I did that on the treadmill on Monday because the weather was dangerously wet and we were in a flood state--I decided not to risk getting drenched by passing cars.

The rest of the week had runs ranging between 3 and 5 miles. My week culminated with a 6 mile "long run". I had to put that off on Saturday because the temperature hovered around 14 degrees, and the weatherman promised a balmy 20 degrees on Sunday!
I really don't like running on Sunday--it is a full day of church and family dinner and activities and I am usually too pooped out to take a long run. But I planned carefully, took some extra snacks to church to keep fueled up, and headed out the door while my sweet hubby fixed lunch for the kids.

In addition to my runs, I kickboxed for an hour on Monday and did hour-long strength training classes with my trainer on Tuesday and Thursday. I noticed on one of my 3-milers (that was particularly hilly) that my stamina was not what it usually is--I even stopped to walk one-tenth of a mile. I have not done that since I started running! It was a bad idea too, because it has been a real temptation on the rest of my runs this week--to just stop for a minute or two. I find that I have a very hard time re-starting though, and it's just better for me to grit my teeth through it when the going gets tough.

I am so very thankful for the support my husband and kids have given me in my training - never complaining about my Saturday revolving around getting that run in. They are a bunch of keepers!

Late Friday afternoon, we got a call asking if we would be willing to keep J's brothers for the weekend. Even though I used to think that I would love to have six children, and I used to think that I would love to run a children's home, I wasn't certain that I wanted five boys over the weekend. After talking to Dean, we decided that we would welcome them and I made the necessary phone calls. It wasn't until after I had made all the arrangements, that I remembered we were supposed to be getting a snow storm and I wondered if I was sane.



The boys were all happy to be together and had a nice evening before a long, drawnout bedtime. Our three quieted down quickly, but the other two took more than an hour to get quieted down. I finally fell into bed grateful that I could rest. The next thing I knew, J called out "mama, it's snowning." At that time, there was just a dusting of snow, but by the time we finished breakfast, we had about three inches. All the boys wanted to go out, so we rustled up boots, hats, coats and gloves for all of them. It wasn't until that they were all outside that I looked at the thermometer and saw that it was 18 degrees.



They didn't last long and at least two lost gloves in the snow and were in tears before getting warmed up. I set them to the task of painting which again didn't last long.



By the time the day was over, we had 10 inches of snow and all of the boys had been unhappy with at least one other boys sometime during the day. Bedtime went a lot better - I think they were all pretty tired. Now today we're home again since church has been canceled. The boys have been out and wet clothes are in the laundry room. We'll have worship together and I'm sure that before we're down to three boys, they'll all want to go out and play in the snow again.

Complexity is only simplicity entwined.

You cannot live without failure but failure is not living.

What God cannot do for you cannot be done.

Live in the shelter of every moment God gives you.

Almost all divorces are a result of lack of self-control.

Becoming the right person is more difficult than finding the right person.

It is impossible truly to pray for our daily bread, or for tomorrow's bread today, without being horribly aware of the millions who didn't have bread yesterday, don't have any today, and in human terms are unlikely to have any tomorrow either. But what can we do about this, as we pray this prayer in church and go home to our Sunday lunch?

Well, obviously, we can give, as best we can. Obviously, we can become more politically sensitive and active, to support programmes not just for foreign aid but for a juster and fairer global economy. This is part of what it means to pray this prayer. But, in addition, we should be praying this prayer not just for the hungry, but with the hungry, and all who are desperate from whatever deep need. We should see ourselves, as we pray the Lord's Prayer, as part of the wider Christian family, and human family, standing alongside the hungry, and praying, in that sense, on their behalf.

We offer ourselves, in this prayer, as representatives of this world (this is what it means to be a 'royal priesthood') . . . . And when we have prayed in that fashion, the test of whether we were sincere will of course be whether we are prepared to stand physically alongside those for whom we have claimed to speak. This is, after all, a dangerous and subversive prayer to pray; but it's the one Jesus taught us.

N.T. Wright, The Lord and His Prayer (Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 45-46

Many who don't see my Facebook page have been interested in knowing what is going on with our work at MFI since the massive earthquake struck Haiti two and a half weeks ago. I have many stories to share, but very little time so I thought I would add a couple of links on here to keep you up to date with our lives. Harold handles much of the logistics and humanitarian efforts at MFI so he has been nonstop busy. I have a feeling that our world will be forever changed by this catostrophic event.

Click here and scroll down to hear an interview Harold did on Moody radio.

http://www.mbn.org/genmoody/default.asp?SectionID=BBEB0643894748C9A140DF94338651A0

To learn more about MFI's partnership with Hendrick Motorsports, click here.

http://www.nascar.com/video/cup/2010/speed/highlights/01/2

The less you depend on God the less stable you become.

You will fail on your way to success but to choose to fail is the ultimate failure.

Peace is never a result of persecution.

Sin clogs and repentance clears.

Destitute are those who have success without Faith.