As you’re reading, I’ll be wheels up for Wisconsin, with a couple of cohorts for a ladies day in Spencer. I’m excited because it’s been a while since someone requested the topic of “Home” or any of those lessons about the importance of keeping the home and shining His reflected light from our homes (although every spiritual topic is related to this foundational aspect of our Christian lives). . I’ll be talking this weekend about hospitality, organization, motherhood and evangelism. All of these are topics I can get pretty “worked-up” about, because all are fundamental commands for Christian women and all have such obvious eternal ramifications. Did you know that the New Testament prescribes a place of priority for God’s women and that place is home? SO excited to get to talk about this from the Word!
It will be a themed trip because I’m also planning to take Colleyanna to Pepin, Wisconsin, to see one of the “Little House on the Prairie” Museums, on the day prior to the ladies event. (It’s her very first time to fly! She is hoping for a window seat.) I think this particular museum is a tribute to “The Little House in the Big Woods”. We are reading these books together and we have progressed now to “Farmer Boy.” We are learning a lot together. (Yesterday was a comparison of the economic disparity between childhood in New York (Almanzo) in the 1800’s and growing up all over the sparsely populated plains and prairies (Laura and Mary) in the same era.)
Coincidentally, I discovered that the annual “celebration” of Laura Ingall’s Wilder is happening in Pepin on the Friday we will be there, so we will get to watch the home-making skills of the late 1800’s come alive in various recreations on that day. We recently spoke in Branson, Missouri and went through the museum and homes in Mansfield that commemorate the author, herself. God is so good to be in the tiny things and seemingly co-ordinate our “book-learning” with travels on so many adventures. I’ve been watching this providence for three generations of learning now and it astounds me.
It will also be (right on theme) Mother’s Day while we are in Wisconsin. We’re planning to celebrate a week late because we all want to be together. In keeping with the travel theme, Colleyanna is finishing up a hand-sewn gift project for her mom. We have ripped out a few seams that went crooked or that tucked an extra layer under the foot (and I also think a treadle sewing machine sews faster than Colleyanna does on this Bernina). “Whatsoever you sew, you shall also rip!” But this little gift is going to be finished before we leave on this trip! (Don’t tell her mama!) Colleyanna is way excited about this.
Also right on theme, are the demands in this house today. 100 percent of next year’s Digging Deep got to the designer yesterday! When that happens, I feel like I’ve torn a ribbon at the finish of a long marathon, lots while lots of other things have been blown by and left in the dust (literally.) I’m not sure about the quality of the study. I had no second eyes, this time, to peruse the contents. But I am sure about the quality of its primary reference work! I hope you’re planning to join us next September. I cannot wait!
Today I want to say thanks to every VBS promoter, teacher, transportation provider, ice cream churner, learning center participant, craft artisan, and hoarse Booster belter in our great fellowship. I’ve been to VBS somewhere for at least 60 years, excepting one COVID year, and most years, to multiple ones. I’d say I’ve been a booster. I’d say, in all of that time, I’ve had hundreds of people encourage me through the various Bible schools in ways that I can never even fully know. Here’s to all of the people that made some great VBSes happen this summer.
A friend, Bob, told me a true story a few years ago, about the power of one invitation to VBS. Bob was visiting in another area of the country and was eating supper with the local preacher, Dan.
But Sara said “Where would we even go? I don’t even know where to start. Church seems like a big thing to do if you have no clue.”
Dan: The people were kind. The preacher there and his wife became our friends. They helped us immensely.They studied with us and he baptized us. They modeled a good marriage. A lot of people did. Christianity saved our marriage. We kept learning and growing and one day, a couple of years later, we decided to go to a preaching school and here we are.
Wouldn’t it be so great if some marriage is blessed, some soul is baptized one day, or some little boy grows up to be a gospel preacher because Colleyanna or someone else who brought visitors to Bible School, took the time to invite?…And then all that army of people took on the massive effort to build, craft, churn, teach, sing and be a Booster?
Today is Colleyanna Mae’s fifth birthday. She’s Covid-quarantined, so I will not get to see her today, but I cannot wait to get to celebrate with her. She’s bright-eyed and her smile’s possibly the most infectious of the family. She loves tiny things that sparkle (Right now I have to make a trip to the church building because she thinks she left her red crystal there. She’s hoping it is in the lost-and-found. I think it is probably in the “lost-and-trashed” because that’s what any finder [or vacuum] would do with that teeny piece of plastic, but I bet she gets another crystal. She even called to ask if I’d checked lost-and-found.) She loves the Lord, too, and she prays for Baxter, her cat, faithfully.
So, start digging into my favorite study, so far. (It’s always the one I’m doing right now! His Word is so good like that!) What He did, on purpose, for me is what I need to be thinking about these days. It will keep us going in challenging times and add to our joy in the times when faith is soaring. So get going, get inviting, and get excited with me. The eleventh year is about the eleventh hour of the life of my Lord. It’s riveting to any spiritually-minded person. I hope you can get some friends who need the Lord to do it with us!
A Paw Patrol cup.
I was the teacher for the ladies Bible class. I proceeded to try and get there early, so I could put a chart on the board comparing Melchizedek with Christ. I dropped off Colleyanna, my sweet two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, who’s staying with me this week, in her classroom and hurried to room 119. I was a minute early, but there were lots of girlfriends in there already and they were chatting about potty-training…all about the stress you go through when your kids are first out of diapers—You have about ten seconds to find the bathroom when they tell you they’ve got to go. There was advice about not rushing it…”My Joy’s only been potty trained for a couple of weeks and she just turned three.”
They got their food to go. The parents, for the first time ever, let the three-year-old hold his sister’s hand on the way across the parking lot to the car. Ezra took that job very seriously and talked with her gently about being careful to watch for cars. He never let go of that sweet little hand till they reached the car and climbed into their car seats. The little family distributed the chicken nuggets and asked Ezra to say the prayer before they ate their food. This is what he prayed from that back seat where hearts are really pretty fresh from God, Himself: