As you probably have noticed--this picture has nothing to do with the title of the blog! I promised a long time ago to share the "Ruby Slipper Incident" with you. But it is a long story and so I will do it in chapters, starting today. It's a "miracle" story--the kind you hear about at Christmas time. It's the kind of heartwarming story that will increase your faith and hope in God! I trust He will minister to you as you read the chapters! As well, I will continue to post pics and daily events that are unrelated!
Now about the picture: yesterday we were making homemade noodles and that's what you see on my counter--the first stages of noodle dough! I cooked two chickens in the pressure cooker the day before and left the cooker out in the very cold garage to chill the birds. Yesterday we picked all the meat off the bone and started noodles. This is one of the "food projects" that we do as a gift to my son and daughter-in-law. (Hope they're not reading this today!) They love to receive ready-made frozen meals for a gift. Today we made burritos, and the day before yesterday it was lasagna. With a new baby coming, the pre-prepared food is a welcome gift!
I also wanted to mention homeschooling today. Rhiannon and I were talking about how we miss the old days of homeschooling. While we were out shopping we met up with a few of our old homeschool friends and caught up on all the news! I want to include on my blog a few "homeschool" tips for the next while. I hope you who are not homeschoolers will bear with me. But first, our homeschooling testimony:
We homeschooled for most of elementary and all of junior high and high school. I guess you could call us "career" homeschoolers. We started out of necessity when Clint and I pulled up stakes and moved to Ohio for a year of Bible school. We were making a 4-hour trip home every 3rd and 7th weekend and that necessitated leaving on Friday afternoons. He was preaching at our home congregation and we would often stay 10 days at the end of our six week school terms. There was no way we could keep the kids out of school for that long on a repeated basis. But what started as a necessity became a conviction. A wise friend warned me that that would happen and she was right! It did not happen right away, but there's something about having your children under your instruction that kind of grows on you. We put them back in school a year later when we moved back home and began pastoring, but other factors led us to homeschool only two years later as our hearts were drawn to home. I'll share more on that on the next post!
The Ruby Slipper Incident, Chapter One--I told this story on Sunday at our church and people were weeping and gasps were heard when the story ended with a huge surprise! I hope you will enjoy it too and that the Lord will minister to you by the experience I had. It all began in 2003 when our church decided to sponsor a trip to Africa to held build a church building for a local congregation we had been helping. Our relationship with the pastor there dated from our days at Bible school. A man in our church took an interest in the project and he and his wife organized a trip that ended up including 17 people from at least three congregations. We were dubbed, "The OPEX TEAM" by the Africans. That was short for "OPERATION EXODUS," meaning we were helping them make an exodus from their crowded downtown location to a new piece of land where an expanding church could grow.
At first, I did not want to go along and made no plans for doing so. Clint, being the pastor, was definitely planning to make the trip. He had been there once before with another pastor. I knew what conditions I would face there--or I thought I did--and I was not eager to make the trip. But the Lord began convicting me that I ought to go. I am even now, 5 years later, still seeing the fruits of that trip we made in February 2004. I realized that ladies from other churches were making the trek and it would be just a shame for me as pastor's wife not to go. So I began making preparations rather late in the game. I had to get a passport and several supplies around in order to go. MORE ON THE NEXT POST!Blessings, LORI
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