I Just Want to Thank You Lord!

For Salvation
     Redemption
           Adoption
                Family
                      Health and Healing
                            Forgiveness
                                    Loving Kindness
                                           Seasons
                                                 Snow
                                                       Fall
                                                             Leaves
                                                                     Insurance
                                                                             Assurance
                                                                                     Friends
                                                                                            Laughter
                                                                                                   My Husband
                                                                                                           My children
                                                                                                                   Their Spouses
                                                                                                                             Their Children
                                                                                                                                       Animals
                                                                                                                                              Pets
                                                                                                                                                    Oceans
Lakes
         Boats
               Books
                       Libraries
                                Music
                                       Church
                                               Choirs
                                                      Singers
                                                             Movies
                                                                     CDs & DVDS
                                                                               Heaven
                                                                                      Jesus
                                                                                             The Bible
                                                                                                     Christians
                                                                                                              Teachers
                                                                                                                     CHILDREN
                                                                                                                              e mail
                                                                                                                                     computers
                                                                                                                                             cars
My Mother in Law
           My Parents
                     My Brothers and Sisters in Law
                             My Best Friends
                                       My home
                                               Vacations
                                                       Flowers
                                                               Trees
                                                                      Butterflys
                                                                              Bees
                                                                                     Honey
                                                                                            coffee
                                                                                                   chocolate
                                                                                                          forgiveness
                                                                                                                  forgetfulness
                                                                                                                          and the person reading this.

Remagnetized ?

http://www.science.ca/askascientist/viewquestion.php?qID=61

A few weeks ago I spied a couple of strip magnets hanging on my pegboard behind my computer.  Ah Ha I thought I can use these at Sunday School to hold up the Bible Verse of the Week, the Bible Picture and other paraphernalia that goes with each lesson on our white board.  Currently we double fold masking tape on the back of each item and stick them up. Very old school for sure.

I took them to church that Sunday and watched with amazement as they fell right off the marker board.

Then I got the bright idea maybe they could be remagnetized. (There is a lot of useless info in this 68 year old brain....mostly half baked info.)  But my coteacher Sarah has and i phone so I asked her to look it up.....after I had thrown all the magnet strips in the trash.  Yep, she said....just use a higher power magnet to remagnetize the strips. (Back to the trash can I go.)

The next week I spent time moving a big magnet up and down each strip.....letting it sit in one place on the strip for a couple of hours and then moving it down the strip.  How long does it take to remagnetize.....I have no clue....But by the next Sunday the strips were sticking to my refrigerator!

Back to Sunday School.....back to the posters and pictures and Bible verses......wallah......I place the strip on a poster and it falls right off again, shoot, I think I said.

I knew the strips worked at home.....what could be the problem?  Ah Hah.....the board wasn't magnetized.  I researched white boards; some come magnetized and some don't.  Who knew!?
All the ones I had at school must have been magnetized because they held all manner of ephemera.

Now I'm begging the Children's Pastor for a magnetic white board!

During my quiet time yesterday, it came to me......I need to be remagnetized.......by spending quality time with the strongest magnet I know......JESUS.  He drew people to Him......He drew me to Him....He was and is a People Magnet.  Do you need to be remagnetized, too?  Let's try to spend some time with Him during this busiest of all seasons.  If we don't, we may find ourselves falling off the wall and not being effective Christ followers.   Thank you God for speaking my language....teaching me through the every day things in my life....and not trashing me when my efforts don't work out....stay close to me, Lord.... that I may be like you. Amen

Has the Lord taught you anything lately....share with us please.

Hubbalicious

I am way overdue for a tribute to my wonderful husband, Curtis.  I just love these pictures of him growing up.  I wish I'd known him in elementary school when he and the boys would ride their pretend horses around the girls on the playground.  Or when his Mama dressed him up as a "Sweet Pea" for Halloween; thank goodness she kept a great photographic record of her boy :)

 One of his uncles, Bill States, fiddled with photography and I imagine he took this picture since it is lit so dramatically.  I love seeing Uncle Ro's pic in the background.  Ro was one of my favorite people in the Evans-Chapman family.

 As you can see, Hubs was slim as a boy but after he got his tonsils out he blossomed.  I love the vintage plaid bathing suit with a belt.  Curtis loved the water as a boy swimming in ponds and lakes.  Now he'd prefer a hot shower but he will go in the ocean with me; in fact he got me over my fear of the ocean on our first beach trip together.  He taught me to go beyond the breakers where you could actually swim and not be beaten to death by the waves.  I grew up swimming in the Chesapeake, no big waves or undertow.

Don't you love those little leather sandals and that sweet smile on his face?  He is truly a sweet heart who gets emotional over his younguns, their younguns and doggies.  I asked him recently to recall an act when he felt he was most courageous....after a long pause he said, "I guess when I faced down that man at the Hartsville football game who tried to take that little game ball away from Fred."  Fred was one of our foster children.  This gentle man would not challenge some one unless it was over a child or a dog.

I don't know how many dogs he has had (I don't think he does either) but I love to hear about them.
Pee Wee was one of his favorites. His first rat terrier. He had a little cart she could pull. She had lots of puppies  (ohhhh puppy breath and peanut feet heaven.) Shep an English shepherd lived the longest, sixteen years.  Shep could round up the cows and calves on the farm.  Once when he was a young boy, Curtis got between a cow and her calf and  Shep charged in and threw the cow down before she could trample Curtis.

Those are just a few of the millions of things I love about my man!  In 45 years of marriage, I have only just begun to discover his wonderful qualities.  Almost every day I thank God for bringing this little DC girl to Coker to meet and marry him.  God is Good.  All the time. Even when we don't deserve it.

Good Reads

This is our Book Club book for November.  Sooooo good I read it in one day.  About a Chinese Woman and her daughter who emigrate from China to NYC.  The mother, a former classical violinist is forced to take a job in a clothing factory (aka sweatshop) owned by her older sister who financed their trip.  The daughter is the narrator who endures terrible living conditions and poverty and rises above them.  My friend Rita's father had to flee Austria and his upper class life during the Holocaust and endured similar deprivations upon reaching New York.  Man's inhumanity to man still shocks me.  God giving strength and hope to the disenfranchised does not.

Like me, the main character of this novel grew up reading biographies of heroic American women....Clara Barton, Molly Pitcher, but she followed her dream and became a nurse in an oncology ward.  When her brother comes down with cancer in his teens her desire to be a heroine in tested and bent but not broken.

I'd Know you Any Where by Laura Lippman....our October book Club selection is the story of a woman who was abducted by a serial killer at age of fifteen and lives her life keeping it a secret until the day her suburban life is shattered by a phone call from her abductor. 

 Nothing Daunted is the true story of two wealthy young ladies who decide to leave their privileged upbringing on the East Coast to teach children in the "wilds of Wyoming."
Being a school teacher  myself, it was amazing the obstacles these ladies undertook daily to teach in a location where a two hour horse ride through mountains of snow were required to get to their school each morning.  The community understood the value of their children being taught and made the school a primary focus in the wilderness where they lived.

Honolulu: a novel by Alan Brennert.
Tells the story of a picture bride that was brought to Honolulu from her impoverished home in China in 1914.I learned a lot about the history of Hawaii and the courage of these disenfranchised women.
I also read Maliki by Brennert which deals with the leprosy victims in Hawaii who were sequestered on that island for their lifetime.

Halloween and Propofol

It turned into dark and chilly night after the three goblins set out to trick or treat in the haunted forests of Darlington County.

The three Hardee cousins wore their night vision goggles to protect their eyes from bats and vampires.

But this was all that was left of them after midnight.


Hubs and I have been keeping Hannah and Gates while their parents went off "on business" in the Caribbean.
It has been quite a while since we have enjoyed the privilege of staying with them over night for a couple of nights.
Getting them each up and off to school hasn't been too big a challenge since Nana gets up at 5 am.  That works real well since she is the designated sleeping person who gets The Gator into the bed by 8:30 pm and lays still as a mouse until he falls asleep :)
The two biggest pleasures for Nana has been hearing each child pray at supper time:  Here is a sample:  "Dear God thank you for this wonderful day!  and Dear God thank you for PopPop making my favorite Chicken Bog for dinner. Amen"
Hannah is becoming a real spiritual friend.  She asks me to do devotions with her each night and I am so delighted to share her concerns and joys.  We discovered we both have the same life verse from the Bible, Jeremiah 29:11 and she can quote it as well or better than I.

Our Bible study group is reading Anne Graham Lotz book, Expecting to See Jesus.  Anne believes, and I agree, that things are lining up very quickly for Jesus' return to earth.  She thinks her generation, which is the same as mine, will live to see His Coming.  When I read the newspaper or watch the news, I think, "How long, O Lord, how long, will you let this perverse, corrupt world continue to blaspheme your name and persecute your people.  How long will 3/4 of the 7 billion people on earth live in abject poverty while we here in Laodicea live in plenty without a thought to those who are suffering world wide?"

Our minister spoke Sunday on suffering for the sake of the gospel.  He said if we aren't suffering we aren't following close to The Master.  And truthfully folks I am not suffering, yet.  My cousin's daughter who is 30 has an inoperable brain tumor and has daily radiation and chemo.  She and her family are suffering.  The Muslims who have become Christians in Jakarta and see their families disown them are suffering.  What will it take to wake me up and get me to live like these are the last days?  I truly don't know.  What will it take to wake you up?  Do you think we are all under the spell of a materialistic proponol that has us sleeping away our last hours?  Wake the church, O Lord, sound the alarm!