Rand♥m D♥zen: Heeere Fishy Fishy

♥ What was the last song you listened to?
My Jesus I Love Thee - the closing Hymn tonight at prayer meeting.

♥ Have you ever had “buyer’s remorse” over anything?
Maybe - but not enough to remember it. I usually enjoy what I buy...even if I feel a leeeetle guitly. ;)

♥ What is something in your life that you are thankful for now that you didn’t think you would be at the time of the event? (Something that seemed ill-timed, inconvenient or hurtful which turned out to be a good thing)
Being disciplined as a child...I'm SURE I needed it and I'm sure it's done some good.

♥ Do you watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade every year? If so, do you have a favorite float or balloon?
I don't watch it every year, but does that mean I can't have a favorite float??? Well, I'm telling you my favorite float anyways. The Big Snoopy!

♥ Share a quote, scripture, poem or lyric which has been an inspiration to you lately.
"Knees out, tuck in, shoulders back, and 1..." - and it's only day 2 of TTapp Bootcamp. :P

♥ This is meant to be a fun question, and this is a G-rated blog, but please share a “guilty pleasure,” something that you enjoy that’s probably not the most edifying, time-worthy or healthy thing you could be indulging in. Did I mention this blog is rated G?
Uh, I dunno...blogging? ;)

♥ What Thanksgiving food are you looking forward to?
The leftover turkey for turkey sandwiches...although, I'm not sure I'm going to LOVE it this year, since last year I had super bad first trimester (and then some) sickness and puked up an entire turkey sandwich...I'm sure Jim won't be so fond of the memory himself, since he cleaned it up for me. *sigh* My hero...

♥ What is your favorite book to read to children, or what was your favorite childhood book?
"The Tale of Three Trees" always chokes me up. I love reading this one and gifting it to others. My favorite children's book growing up was "There's a Monster at the End of This Book." - by Grover.

♥ Do you collect anything? (Feel free to post a photo.)
Pictures...I have to admit...I collect pictures. Shocking, I know.

Here's one that I haven't posted yet...I don't know why I didn't. It's so...huge. The tree...me... :) I didn't realize how much I liked this picture until now, actually. I do like the ginormous tree and that The Hubs and I are Matchy. I also need to clarify that I was only a few weeks away from having Josefine...hence, the preggo hugeness. I love it.



♥ Gift bags or wrapping paper?
Oh, I stink at wrapping gifts. Gift bags all the way!

♥ Share an after-school memory from when you were younger. What was your routine like on an average day?
Walk home (eyeing the neighbor kids house-who I had a huge crush on), have a snack (Little Debbie Star Crunch...Mmmm) and listen to music in my room. Probably pretended I was Whitney Houston or Garth Brooks or something.

♥ True story: Once, in a job interview, I was asked this question and told there would be no clarifying; I simply had to answer the question: “When you’re fishing, do you feel for the fish?” So what about you? Do you feel for the fish??
Definitely FEEL for the fish. I'm all about feelings. Ask my hubby...he's all about the technical...and I can catch a good fish based on feelings, yo.

And for some Feel Good Fishy Pics...

Jim got me a PINK POLE! I think I had to feel less for the fish, since they were so drawn to the HOTT pink of my pole. BTW, I'm not able to stand while fishing here...my feet were s-w-o-l-l-e-n.



Later - we went fishing in the dark...hmmm...sounds like a song??? ;) Why do I have so many preggo fishing pics, you ask? Because we knew as soon as Josefine was born, things like that would be but a blur. And they were...she was born on June 29, and ever since, I have wondered where summer has gone. ;) Not wasted, that's for sure - just dedicated to a tiny little bundle of love, love, love! Ok...bunny trail...here are s'more fishy pics.

*NOTE: I caught them BOTH! Yeeee!

Oooh, CRAZY Red-Eyed Fish Lady!



Fishy #2



Dem waz big fishes...and tasty, too.



We don't need to go fishing anymore anyway. Josefine seems to be our own little fishy!
But, don't worry...we won't eat her.

And more fishy tendancies from Josefine...

You Capture: Fall

Fall Beauty is only a click away...check out more You Capture entries at I Should be Folding Laundry.

We Were Camels

Night before last Jim and I joined the cabin leaders for the Cabin Leader Hunt...the game where the cabin leaders hide and the campers try to find them. It's a fun one.

Well, we were worth a super lot of points so we hid in a super good hiding spot. In the end, I did get found out, but Jim didn't.

Anyhoo.

Sweet 5 year old Alyssa was quite excited about the whole event. She said, "The Cabin Leaders are going to be camels!"

"Really?" I asked "How's that?"

"They are going to dress so no one can see them!"

Ahh, yes. Camo.

I've never been a Camel before, so I was up to it.

Missionary Stories - Mary Slessor

Story-Telling:

It was peachy. I accidently said "customer" when I meant to say "customs." I don't think the kids got it. One or two counselors smiled.

At the end, two Jr. boys showed me the lines upon lines of notes they took. Go them!

How about I share the story with you...

I read the Christian Heroes: Then and Now Series to get all my info, then I jotted it all down in a condensed form so that I can tell it to the kids in under 20 minutes. I actually quite like my truncated version of the story. I took some direct quotes from the book (I can't remember all of them) so, I'm going to cite the reference now, so that I don't get busted for plagiarism. And my source is "Christian Heroes: Then and Now - Mary Slessor, Benge." There. Hope that's sufficient.

From a very young age, Mary learned what it meant to never give up. When her father wasted the family’s money on alcohol, Mary, who was only 11 years old went to work in a cotton mill to help support her family. She worked hard and under difficult conditions. The cotton mill was endlessly hot, but her reward was that she was able to attend a night school the cotton mill had for young children. Working hard in the hot cotton mill was a small price to pay to learn to read and write. Mary was delighted to do it.

One Sunday afternoon, while on a walk with her friends, and not long after she began her work at the mill, she met a woman who invited them in for tea. This woman shared the truth that Jesus died on the cross for her sins and without trusting in Jesus for eternal life, Mary would spend eternity separated from God, in a place called Hell, where it was always hot. Mary’s eyes opened wide. “I don’t want to be away from God forever…” She said slowly. That night she was the only one of her friends who repented of her sins and accepted Jesus as her Savior.

The very next week at church, Mary told her pastor that she had accepted Christ as her Savior and wanted to help serve in church. He suggested teaching the younger children’s Sunday School class. Mary was eager and excited for such an opportunity.

Now that Mary was a Christian, she was thankful for the school at the mill where she was learning to read and write. Soon, she was able to read passages from the Bible! She enjoyed Missionary stories as well. Her favorite Missionary to read about was David Livingstone, a missionary explorer to Southern Africa. She frequently kept up with his work through her churches Missionary Newsletter and by reading the Newspaper.

The more Mary read about David Livingstone, the more she could see they had a lot in common. Like Mary, he was Scottish and worked in a cotton mill as a boy and Mary began to dream about being a missionary to Africa. She turned that thought out of her mind. David Livingstone was a man and a Dr. Mary was a woman, and in that culture, women didn’t do such things. She also didn’t have a skill like Dr. Livingstone. She could use the things she learned while working at the mill, but it’s not likely someone would call on her for those skills. Secretly though, Amy was hoping her brother Robert would become a missionary and she would be his faithful assistant.

With her dream in tow, Amy spent the next several months teaching Sunday School, believing that is what God wanted her to do and enjoying every minute of it and when she was 14, she heard of another chance to teach children the Bible. Her church was beginning a new ministry in the slums of Dundee, where gangs roamed around teasing and hurting others. Her pastor was uncertain of petite little Mary being in such a dangerous place. Mary convinced him that she was able to do the job and after making Mary promise not to venture into the slums alone, he agreed to her being one of the teachers.

3 weeks into this new ministry, Mary decided to go to her classroom early to prepare for her class, forgetting the promise she had made not to go there alone. As she was turning the key in the lock, she felt as if someone was standing behind her. She turned quickly to find 4 teenage boys glaring at her.

One boy reached out and tugged at her red hair and said, “So, Carrots, you’re going to teach the Bible, are you?”

“Yes, I am” said Mary, standing tall. “Would you like to come in?” She invited.

But, the boys just laughed. 2 of them grabbed her arms and the other two taunted her. One boy took a string out of his pocket with a piece of metal tied to the end of it. He began to swing it in front of her face. “Tell me you’ll go home and forget all this foolishness and we’ll let you go. Otherwise,” he sneered at her, “we’ll see how brave you really are.”

Mary’s blue eyes stared hard at the boy and then the piece of metal. She responded strongly, “Do what you want to me, but you’ll not get me to give up my Bible teaching.” She cringed inside at the thought of what might happen next.

The boy with the string held it closer to Mary’s forehead and began swinging it back and forth, closer to Mary’s face with each swing. While the other boys stood teasing Mary, the piece of metal scraped against her head cutting her. Blood trickled down her face.

Suddenly, the boy stopped swinging the string. He motioned to the others and said, “That’s enough boys. She’s tough.” The other boys let her go and Mary quickly reached for her handkerchief and held it up to her wound.

“Now that you’ve had your fun, won’t you come in and see what this is all about?” Mary said with a smile. She didn’t understand why, but the boys, with their heads hung low, followed Mary into the classroom. Soon more than 20 children and teenagers were in the room, listening to Mary’s Bible lesson, and by the end of the day, the boy that struck Mary with the piece of metal became a Christian.

This was a lesson Mary would never forget; to stand up bravely and without fear not giving up on what she believed God wanted her to do.

******************

Several years later, Mary finally achieved her dream of becoming a missionary to Africa. Unfortunately, both of her brothers had died from illness, so she was unable to join either of them as their assistant, but she never gave up and believed firmly that God had called her to reach the people in Africa, specifically the tribe of dangerous people in Calabar, even if she had to go alone.

The people in Calabar were very cruel and unforgiving. Many of their customs were harmful to others and often included death. If a man died, his wife had to be buried alive with him.

Also, if someone died of an illness, they often called a witch doctor in to determine who caused the death by giving a number of people a poison bean ground up in water. If the person didn’t die from drinking it, (and most people did), then they were innocent. Those who did die from the poison bean drink were considered at fault for the recent death. In their culture, there were never accidents. Someone always had to be blamed.

There were many strange laws in Calabar that were punishable by death or by the pouring of very hot oil onto the offender, which often resulted in death because the wounds were left to become infected.

One time, while Mary was in her hut, preparing for the Sunday Bible lesson, she heard a woman screaming and several people chanting and calling out loudly. She went out to see what was the matter and saw a woman, tied up next to a boiling pot of hot oil. She could hear the people chanting in their language. A warrior with painted face was guarding the area from those who might want to stop the carrying out of this punishment. But, Mary was not afraid. She wanted to save this young woman’s life and teach the people about mercy, forgiveness and justice. She ran out of her hut and into the circle of chanting Africans, brought the tied up woman toward herself and yelled for them to stop. The warrior stood up to Mary with an angry expression. But, Mary remembered the day she stood up to the boys in the gang and held her place. Mary and the warrior stood staring at each other for minutes that seemed to go on for hours. The chanting and singing had died down by this time. Finally, the warrior backed down and bowed towards Mary. Mary learned that the woman was guilty of sharing her yams with another person in the tribe. And it was against their law for a woman to share food with anyone that was not their husband.

Mary had earned the respect of many of the people in Calabar, including the King of the tribe, who often sent people with disputes to her. She was able to teach the people of Calabar about God’s justice and love for them while she taught them how to live in love. The people of Calabar called Mary the “White Ma.” They had also never seen anyone with such red hair and referred to her also as the white woman with the fiery head.

Mary faced another custom without giving up. Life was not valued and if there were twin babies born, they were both left on the jungle path to starve and be eaten by animals. To the people in Calabar, it was bad luck to have twins and feeding them would bring them under a curse as well. Soon, Mary was rescuing children who would have otherwise been killed. One of the girls that Mary spared, she named Janie. Janie became one of Mary’s faithful helpers.

Mary continued to press on by sharing Christ’s love with the people in Calabar. She even went further into the jungle, which was very brave. Many men would not venture into that part of the jungle. She continued to settle disputes among people and teach them about God’s love and how to have peace with God and others. Many people back in Scotland expected Mary to die within her first year in Africa. Although, Mary did get sick at times, God would bring her back to health and she would begin right away teaching the people in Africa about God’s love. She lived in the African jungle for 39 years, much longer than any other missionary at that time had even survived in the jungle. Mary never gave up, and as a result, many people learned not to live in fear, but in peace amongst themselves and with God.

Faith...

"Many people are willing to believe regarding those things that seem
probable to them. Faith has nothing to do with probabilities.

The province of faith begins where probabilities cease and sight and sense fail."

-Geoge Müller

Forgiveness

A Promise never to:

• repeat (to others)
• review (in my mind)
• remind (the offender of his/her offense)

-college counseling class my freshman year

Patience

"Bearing evil without resentment."

-from Jim's 2 Timothy Sermon

Humility

"Remembering that God has done a work of grace in my life, too."

-from Jim's 2 Timothy Sermon

Blurt!

We played this game tonight:

The Starkweather kids (ages 15, 13 & 9), Jim, and I took eachother on in a Blurt challenge. Boys against girls, of course. The girls were pretty sure we were going to show the boys up with our incredible word skills. But, alas, they were pretty awesome.

Blurt is a fun word game. One person reads the definition of the word, and everyone else has to "blurt" out the word they think the definition is...uh, defining. If you're the first to guess, your team advances, etc. In good company, which we had, it's a very fun game.

Some HILARIOUS moments are as follows:

---

Crystal reading a definition: "A measure of weight used for diamonds and other precious donuts." --note: it said "stones," which I'm sure you could have guessed. I have NO idea how she read the word "donuts," but it's possible.

Jim called out, "KARAT!" And he was right.

"Wait!" I said to Crystal, "did you say 'and other precious donuts?'"

We were rolling with laughter...rolling.

---

Tony reads: "The 25th letter of the alphabet."

It was on the tip of my tongue, I had to start at "Q" to get to "Y" for some reason and Jim answered before me "Y!"

"Poop on a stick!" I blurted out (hence the name of the game). EVERYONE died. Laughing. I covered my mouth, and said under my breath, "I should NOT be teaching you to say things like that."

They joked that the missionary wife said "poop." I don't know yet if this is good or bad.

---

Tony (again) reading the definition says, "A beetle after it hatches and before it is fully grown."

The answer is "grub," which no one got, but the conversation that ensued was jolly, to say the least.

Jim and I yell in unison, "Larva!" And because this guess was incorrect, we continued our attempt.

My mind draws a blank, I don't know dirt about bugs and their growth stages. Are you kidding me?

Jim makes another attempt he says, "Poopa." And he means to pronounce it "Pupa." Great. Now the missionary AND his wife have said "Poop" in front of the pastor's kids.

At this point, I figured it was a lost cause and we would have fun with it. Pastor Starkweather had joined us by then and he was already enlightened by his kids about the Missionary's wife "blurt" of the game. So, I decided it was too late. I've already been myself. I might as well keep going.

My reply: "On a stick-a?"

Uproarious laughter. You might have to go back a few paragraphs to truly follow this one...maybe it's a "you had to be there" moment that is nigh impossible to translate into the written word.

---

During the previous round, where everyone was thinking of bug life for answers, the 9 year old, Kayla, called out "Callapitor!"

I knew this word sounded vaguely familiar, but there was something about it that didn't sound quite right.

"Say that again?" I requested. She, along with her older sister and brother repeated "Callapitor!"

"Is that how it is?" I asked a little dumbfounded. "Callapitor? That sounds so weird."

So, they say it again "Callapitor!" Over and over. For some reason, it's fun.

I persist. "What a weird word! I didn't think it sounded so strange. I know what you're saying, but it's just so...weird!"

Jim finally catches on that I'm having an absurdly unusual blonde moment and chimed in "CATERPILLAR."

I laugh so hard at my vulnerability, I shed tears. More laughter.

---

Today, I'm thankful for people with whom you can be yourself. Ah, the comforts of a home and your family in Christ.

Inflated Use Name

I'm sitting next to an especially animated boy in the library right now. He's probably about 7 or 8 years old. He and his brother are killing time (I assume) playing war games online. It's 75 degrees outside, why they aren't riding their bikes or tossing a football around is beyond me...and yet, I sit here...inside, on the most beautiful day of the week.

Back to the matter at hand and the reason I'm posting. The younger boy (the animated one) is having troubles logging in. I would offer my assistance, but I'm having more fun listening. Plus, I don't think I would know what to do anyway. So, he's trying to log in and he keeps seeing these words pop up: "Invalid User Name."

"Agh!" He wilts in his seat. "It said 'Inflated Use Name' AGAIN!"

His brother doesn't seem to pay any attention, but I giggle to myself. "Inflated...funny."

Handy Downs & Nine Babies

"I like Handy Downs because you don't have to use any money."

Now that's my kind of 7 year old girl!

---

After playing "Wedding" with some girls across the street:

"Now let's say you had nine babies all at once and they all died except for us two, then you died because you got cancer from having nine babies."

Only a little morbid...

---

While in the imaginary hospital after giving birth to baby #1:

Hands an imaginary phone to the "nurse" and says, a little indignantly, "Can you please tell my husband I had a baby!"

I intervene from the kitchen "Didn't you just tell him?"

"He won't believe me!"

I play along, "After NINE months of being pregnant, he won't believe that you just had a baby?"

"Well," she replies, "He's been on a trip in Canada for the past three months."

"So, for SIX months he didn't realize you were pregnant?" I asked, still enjoying playing along.

"I told him once, then he forgot."

"Ohhh." I answered. "He's pretty forgetful."

---

Playing House:

I somehow get talked into playing the grocery store clerk:

"How much is this?" she asks, holding up a necklace.

"$5,374." is my guesstimate.

She hands me a dime and takes the necklace.

---

While one girl is "grocery shopping" (for jewelry), the other two are baby-sitting at "home" hence, playing house.

"You should baby-sit now," one of them said to me, the Grocery Store Clerk.

She plops the baby-doll in my lap.

"Mom" gets "home" from "grocery shopping."

"Hey!" she cries. "Where's my baby!"

"With the other baby-sitter," they point to me, the guilty party.

"Mom" comes to me, tears the baby away from me, "Don't ever baby-sit unless I call you first!"

Neighbor girl runs upstairs and back again. "I called the police. You're a mean mommy."

"I'm not that mean. She knows better than that."

"Oh," said the neighbor girl, "Well, the police are coming because they want to see the brand new baby!"

---

My camera was in the hands of one of the neighbor girls as they were playing...Link to Pictures Coming Soon! They are too funny to miss!

On Being a Christian

"The question should not be 'How much can I be like the world and still call myself a Christian?' but rather, 'How much can I be like Christ and effectively reach the world.'"

Today in Chapel (I join the students occasionally for their daily chapel time), Dr. Dougherty talked about Christian living as it relates to worship of a holy, righteous God; an all-consuming fire. He made the above statement, which I thought was well-said, simple and yet very profound.

Thanks for your ministry, Doc.