Oklahoma, Here We Come (Again)!

As some of you may know, we are moving back to Oklahoma in less than 2 weeks again! It seems like the same thing we did exactly one year ago, but there are a lot of changes. We have experienced so many new and exciting things in the last year and we thank the Lord for all that we have learned and all the blessings He has poured out on us.

The best way I can describe our journey over the past few months is by recollecting on the story of Abraham and Sarai in the Old Testament. God called them to leave their longtime home and led them to many different places where they experienced incredible tests and trials, including severe famine. I'm sure Abraham (and Sarai) were both questioning why God would make them leave their home to go to a place where there would be hardships that didn't seem to make sense, but Abraham is now remembered for his enduring faith in God. We have learned to stop asking God why He leads us around to different places and turn it into faith and trust since only God knows what's best for us. Like I say, "If we knew the answer to everything, there'd be no such thing as faith." He has proven so faithful to His promises and it has been so amazing to be in His loving care.

Our time here was such a blessing to us and while it's our home state, we can feel the familiar places and things from Oklahoma calling us back. Once again, God has worked His hand in our lives in miraculous ways to make it obvious we are to move back to Oklahoma. I can't say I'm going to miss the weather here! Here's a picture of our new home. Since we sold so much of our stuff, we were able to save money and get a much smaller home!

We'll be even closer to Route 66 this time so our blog name stands to remain. My favorite part is that we'll be closer than ever to our favorite dairy farm, Swan Dairy, where we enjoy getting farm fresh raw milk, cream, and cheese on a weekly basis!

Another story that a close friend of mine reminded me of was when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his one and only son, Isaac. This was the son Abraham waited for decades to have and was now following God's order to sacrifice him. Fortunately, it was only a test and Abraham proved faithful. When God called us to leave our home and most of our possessions a few months ago, we believe He was testing our faith to see if we would prove faithful. We proved that we love the Lord more than our things and now He is ready to give us the desires of our heart, which we realized one of which was not to live in an RV at this point in our children's lives! We look forward to many more blessings in the future which will most likely be a portion of our future postings. Thanks to so many of you in Minnesota who shared their homes with us. What a blessing it was to experience God's unconditional love through His servants!

"Money, Possessions, & Eternity"

I just finished reading the book "Money, Possessions, & Eternity" by Randy Alcorn. I thought I'd share some of what I learned, especially considering the gist of his book is exactly what God has revolved our ministry around.

I can't go into listing all or even some of the scriptures that Alcorn uses in his book because there are more verses on the topic of money in the Bible than there are on both prayer and faith combined! Essentially, though, the inevitable truth is that we are all going to have to give an account to God when we stand before His throne for every cent that He entrusted to us. Every penny we get is from Him and it is up to us as to how we use it. Whether you've given your heart to the Lord or not, you will have to answer whether you used His resources for your own gain or to further the kingdom of heaven.

After listing many scriptures and points, Alcorn says that in order to hear "Well done, good and faithful servant," we must be faithful with what He entrusts to us. After all, we are merely stewards of everything we are given. Do we hoard possessions, money, and resources for our own gain, making this world "comfortable" for us, only to find eternal discomfort? As the Bible states in the parable of the Rich Man, your life could be demanded from you tonight and you will be empty-handed before the Throne of God. As the saying goes, "You never see a U-Haul following a hearse." This is a tough truth and not one many people like to discuss. If people find it offensive, is that our heart's way of avoiding conviction? Considering the amount of scripture on this topic, it must be very important to God that we discuss it and encourage each other rather than wait until the day of judgment when it's too late. I'm choosing to stand before Him and say that I followed this truth and encouraged others towards it.

There's obviously a lot more to this book, but the majority of it centers around how our giving (or lack thereof) is the fruit that displays where our hearts are. Do we make our 80 or so years of life on this earth comfortable or strive to make our millions of years in heaven be filled with reward? The Bible is very clear that when we get to heaven (given that our hearts are dedicated to the Lord and we go there), we will be rewarded according to what we have done with what God has given us. Alcorn recommends choosing a specific standard of living that isn't at a level of luxury and then giving to the Lord's causes everything above and beyond that. For those who aren't "rich," he reminds us that we are in the top 15% of the world's wealthiest if we have two cars, electronics, and a home. Do we use our income to the fullest and maximize what kind of house we can have? These truths really hit home with me as this was our train of thought less than 2 years ago.

Anyway, this is a must-read for all of God's children. What you hear from God when you face Him on judgment could, and very well may, depend on it. I have put a link to his ministry on the links section-it's Eternal Perspectives Ministry.

With Hope for Eternal Rewards,
Sara

Before You Give Your Child a Flu Shot. . .

Thanksgiving

For those who homeschool or would like some extra fun ideas of Thanksgiving projects for their kids, I have updated my homeschooling blog page with some links and ideas that we have used so far this year. Just click on the link in my Favorite Links section to the right for Free Christian Homeschooling.

There are also many great books available at the library. Our family's favorite is called "A Turkey for Thanksgiving" by Eve Bunting. Bunting is an incredible author with many excellent books published. This book is a cute story about a group of woodland animals who go out to get a turkey for thanksgiving. In the end, the turkey is pleasantly surprised to find that he will be sitting in a chair for thanksgiving and not be on a platter. We don't just like it because we're vegetarians; we liked this book when we still enjoyed turkey for Thanksgiving. We've also found some great chapter books for older kids. As some of you may know, we are very particular about the books/movies, etc, that our kids read/watch. The books we've found were recommended by another Christian homeschooling group. If you're interested in some of the titles of these books, let me know and I can get them to you. Happy Thanksgiving!

Autumn Celebration Pics

We got out and enjoyed lots of different activities for our autumn field trips this year in brisk Minnesota! It's probably a good thing that we weren't in Oklahoma until after fall last year otherwise this fall in Minnesota would have felt a whole lot cooler! We know the winter will definitely throw us for a loop. This is the kids at the pumpkin patch for u-pick pumpkins. We've usually bought our pumpkins at greenhouse stores so this was a real treat. The little ones especially liked riding in the wagon.
They also had this huge straw tower for the kids to climb on. I like this picture (above) because it looks like the cover for a kids country album!

Gabie really liked climbing on it too but it was so tall that he needed a little boost. Of course, Mom was kind of afraid he was going to fall off so we made sure Vince was by him when he went up to the top.

Gabie had to decide which pumpkin he wanted by feeling and lifting them!

Here's us with our friends' boys that we're taking care of during the weekdays (whom we're also living with right now). I took them all to the corn pit at the 101 Market in Otsego. Having all six kids, especially during fun things like this, makes me wonder if we should have more kids of our own!

Here's Gabie as an autumn harvest mouse;

Faith as an autumn harvest mouse;

And of course Dylan!

The long awaited corn pit! We went last year for the first time and decided to make it an annual tradition. This year, we went early in the day on a weekday so we pretty much had it all to ourselves, which is just the way we homeschoolers become accustomed to having it! Vince hung out with the toddlers for a little while until I jumped in. . .

And Dylan did his favorite activity: filling up his shirt with the corn. We told him he needs to cut back on eating fast food!

Here's Dylan, Matthew, and Faith contemplating their next corn pit game idea. They had plenty of time, considering we stayed in the corn pit and played for over an hour and a half. They finally started getting rumblies in their tummies, so we went home for lunch. The next day, we carved our pumpkins and cooked a pie pumpkin for our homemade pumpkin pie. We read "The Pumpkin Parable" by Liz Curtis Higgs. It's my favorite book to read for this time of year. And now this week, we've started reading our thanksgiving books and started our thanksgiving projects. We're so thankful that God gave us such inquisitive minds to learn and we were definitely thankful for the opportunity to have so much fun! Finally, we're most thankful that we get to learn together as a family all the time, not just evenings and weekends. This stuff is way too fun to let somebody else do it with my kids!

About our Ministry

We've had a lot of people asking lately, so I thought I would summarize our road ministry for everyone. We're in transition between living a normal, work-to-pay-the-bills mode to work-for-Jesus-and-nothing-else mode. We're currently staying with friends after leaving our home and possessions behind, I'm doing full-time daycare for our friends' boys, and Pete's working out-of-state to raise funds for our ministry. We're hoping to have enough funds to buy our next home: an RV, by Christmas. Consequently, we have put a "Donate" link on the side of our blog. As soon as we have enough funds, we will pay cash for the RV and head out where God calls us. We're excited to get out there and do things such as:

1. Help families rebuild after floods, hurricanes, etc.;
2. Help build churches in order to reduce churches' debts;
3. Partner with ministries such as Compassion International and volunteer at their shows/events.

Last month, there was a desperate need for homeschooling families to come out and help the families in Iowa rebuild from the floods. Many opportunities like this come up and these are our opportunities to be God's hands and feet. We also know that there are many RVers out there that we will encounter that desperately need to be reminded of Jesus' love. A non-believing friend of ours from Oklahoma recently told us to keep on the path of our RV ministry, because he knew there was a serious need for people out there to hear our story and the freedom from being enslaved to debt that Jesus offers with the way the economy is going; a NON-BELIEVER said that!

If you would, please prayerfully consider donating to our ministry towards our RV fund. The link on our blog is secured through Paypal and all donations are tax-deductible. If you'd like, please leave your address or email it to me and I can send you one of our ministry brochures. Please also consider including our ministry and our family in your prayers; God is currently building us up in our faith and our strength in order to mold us into people who can minister for Him. Because of that, we have encountered many difficulties and tests. We know God is faithful and He promises to always provide a way out of temptation; we also know His plans will prosper and for that, we are so grateful!

Homemade Applesauce

Oh, what a wonderful way to start fall around here! We took the bags of apples from Grandpa's house and decided to make homemade applesauce for the first time ever. Dana borrowed an applesauce-making sieve from her mom and we gave it a shot. First, we filled up Dana's HUGE sink with apples to wash them.

Then came the process of coring and cutting out bad spots. This step was the most time consuming but with me, Dana, and Vince, it went a little faster. Surprisingly, the apples from Grandpa's were way better than we thought and only had a few bad ones. Since they were grown without chemicals, we left the peels on for extra nutritional value and color. This was mine and Dana's pile; we eventually gave up on the corer tools and just grabbed knives.

Vince, on the other hand, stuck with the Pampered Chef apple corer and wanted to display his work proudly.

We then cooked the apples; it took 2 stockpots and one regular large pot to cook all the apples in.

After the apples were mushy, we started putting them in the sieve. All the kids had to take turns and it was a really neat "school" project for them. Vince and Dana started to show the kids how it's done.

Here's Dylan taking his turn with Matthew next in line,Then Faith,And of course little Joshie. Gabie, as usual, had absolutely no interest in what we were doing and was off in Gabie-land.

Everyone's favorite part was watching the applesauce just ooze out of the sieve. This step was a lot easier than I expected.

After putting them in containers, we discovered that we ended up with about 10 pounds of homemade applesauce. (Not all of it is featured in the picture below!)I was so impressed with the color because when you leave the skins on when cooking, the applesauce comes out a really neat shade of pink. We made apple juice with the leftover juice in the pan by straining it through cheesecloth into pitchers; it looks like pink lemonade but tastes like apple juice! The kids have already eaten so much of the applesauce, we'll have to go back out to Grandpa's soon before the frost takes all the apples!

Visit with Grandpa

This past Tuesday, we drove out to Grandpa's house for a visit to see how he's holding up. We hoped our company would get rid of the loneliness that might be creeping up on him and it's always so much fun to see what Grandpa's growing. The apple trees were doing great and Grandpa helped us get a total of 4 big bags of apples to take home. (By the way, these pictures were not taken under the apple tree. The kids had already moved on to the butternut and black walnut trees to learn about those.)
(I like this picture because my grandpa, who normally doesn't smile much, especially considering the circumstances, is smiling at the kids.) Dylan ate at least 3 apples before we even left there and asked for another one on the way home! We're hoping to try our hand at homemade applesauce.
Grandpa then decided to bless us with more good food and showed the kids how to dig up potatoes. The kids thought it was pretty neat that you couldn't even tell anything was growing there (aside from the horseradish) and with the twist of a pitchfork, voila!
Grandpa invited us back next week because he said he'd be taking out the tractor to dig up the rest of the potatoes. Speaking of tractors, the kids (and Pete) had lots of fun trying out Grandpa's new John Deere's!
We had a really hard time getting Gabie off of the tractors, but there were so many things to do that he eventually just moved on. Grandpa sent us home with a total of 4 bags of apples, 1 big bag of potatoes, a bag of tomatoes (including his famous cherry tomatoes), zucchini and cukes. He blessed us so much that I just hope our visit was half as much a blessing to him. Thanks to everyone who has been keeping him in their prayers.

Sorrowful Weekend

This past Thursday morning, I received a phone call from my sister saying that my grandma had a massive heart attack and hadn't survived. If you remember from my July posting, you'll know that I was so glad to have seen my grandma during our visit up here then. (Check July posts for a picture too.) You can imagine how much more glad I am now for that visit. It's been a tough weekend but we are happy for Grandma that she can shed that sick, earthly body and start the beginning of her eternity. She gave me so many wonderful memories that I will cherish forever and I will miss her deeply.

I am mostly writing this post, though, to ask that prayers would go out for my grandpa. It's difficult to imagine how hard it would be to be married for almost 59 years and then be alone. My heart is heavy for him and I just pray for God to give him the strength and comfort that he needs. May God intimately comfort my grandpa and each one of their children and all of us grandchildren as we learn to live without her. Thanks for your prayers.

A Successful (and once again temporary) Move!

We said goodbye to Oklahoma and all of our new friends there. There were some great kids in the neighborhood and we'll miss them lots! Here's Vince's friends Jordan and Paul.

Vince and his friend Paul got confused a few times because of how much they look alike. Here's the view from the rear. Can you guess which one is Vince?In the three months that we were in Collinsville, these boys had a great time.
It was extremely hard to say goodbye to Mr. Brian and the karate classes we were so blessed by. We will keep our prayers going for Mr. Brian's karate ministry. Check out his website to see all the places he's used karate to bring the news of Jesus to people in other countries:

http://www.combatteam.com/.

Here's Faith and her friend from karate, one of the karate teachers.

When we came down to Oklahoma, we had a 26-foot truck stuffed to the MAX with our possessions. I was a bit disappointed, however, that after having a couple of mega garage sales, we still ended up with a 17-foot truck being almost filled upon returning to Minnesota. I was hoping we would have had even less than that, but it's definitely an improvement. We kept a few big things like our mattresses and our couch and dining room set for our stay at our friend's house.As always, it was a long, hard car ride back to Minnesota. We finally broke it up over two days and stayed in a hotel in Kansas City. The kids are definitely getting used to riding in the van for these drives and it was a huge improvement! It was our best drive ever considering that and the fact that the weather could not have been better! When we arrived in Minnesota, we pulled up at our friends' house to see the sign they made hanging on their front porch:

They have been so welcoming that I don't think I'll ever be able to show my gratitude. For those of you that don't know, here's as much of the painting/vision that God has given us:

From now until at least the end of the year, we will stay in our friend's basement for free in exchange for childcare/homeschooling of their two little boys. During that time, we are to pay off all of our debts in accordance with God's word in Romans 13:8: "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law." We decided that this would only be possible by relieving ourselves from the burden of a house payment/rent and all the utility bills that follow. Pete will continue to work in whatever states God calls him to and when our debts are paid, we will hopefully be able to pay cash for our next home. That next home, as God has revealed to us, will be the RV that He will use for us to begin our ministry and serve others across the country. Until then, we know we are exactly where God has placed us and will enjoy every minute of it. We are definitely going to miss all of our new friends in Oklahoma but will make sure to visit in God's time with the RV. We are looking forward to catching up with all of our friends and family in Minnesota while we're here!

Temporarily Signing Off. . .

Well, the house is pretty much packed up (or what's left) and we're getting ready to leave bright and early Sunday morning. While we absolutely love it down here and love the house we just got to move into, when God calls, you go! We cannot even say how pumped we are to come and see everyone and especially that we'll get to be around long enough to spend the holidays with our friends and family. So until we arrive in Minnesota, we're signing off. . .

Home Church

In preparation for being on the road, we have been having "home church." We did this occassionally in Minnesota when temps and road conditions got too bad to leave the house on Sundays, and the kids always loved it. On the road, we still plan on visiting lots of different churches. But because part of our mission is to spend as much time as possible growing closer to God, we'll have the benefit of being able to do "church" every day of the week, not just on Sundays.

Dylan loves opening up the worship set with his guitar solos. We just have to figure out a way to get him guitar lessons on the road so he can play "real" songs!

Next, Faith likes to go up on "stage" and sing either an improv song or one that we've learned. We have a memory verse CD where the kids learn entire chapters of the Bible through song, and today that is what Faith treated us with-Psalm 1.

Our reading today was the story of the rich man in Matthew 19. After this young rich man told Jesus that he had kept all of the commandments, he asked Jesus what he still lacked. "Jesus answered, 'If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.' When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth." When talking about this with His disciples, Jesus said, "Everyone who has left their house. . .for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life."

We thought this would be a good lesson as follow-up of our "living-estate sale." Our main prayer for our children (and ourselves, for that matter) is that they are not brought up to be "American Christians." We don't want them to go about their lives like everyone else, doing sports, shopping, building up possessions, and trying to fit God into those activities. Our mission is to let go of all those things and start over, with God first and let everything else fall into place. When Jesus told the rich man to sell everything, he said to do that first and then follow Him. Notice selling everything had to come before following Him.

In our society, it was easy to pass off this story for people in a situation like us. Who, in our country, would consider us rich? We had our electricity threatened to be shut off a couple of weeks ago. But based on the fact that we made almost $2,000 from selling over 2/3 of our stuff and still had an entire car load plus of stuff to drop off at Goodwill, I would say that the story of the rich man applies to virtually 90% of Americans.

The song on my playlist by Third Day, Offering, sums it up well. It says, "Who am I that you should suffer your very life to set me free? The only thing that I can give you is the life you gave to me." That's all I have that I can offer to Him, and that's what I want to do. (See the video above.)

Selling it All!

We've been running around like chickens with our heads cut off doing a garage sale, packing, cleaning the house, and closing up odds and ends down here. We had a garage sale last weekend and are having our last one this weekend, starting tomorrow. We sold about 2/3 of our possessions last weekend and are just trying to sell off the remaining things this weekend. What an experience it has been! As you're sitting in your house right now, look around you and imagine all the things you would have to sell in order to live in an RV! It's a little scary thinking about how much it would cost to restock an entire household, but we'll keep the bare essentials and that's all that's important. Some of the things were really hard to let go of though but were very well received by customers who really wanted to gain from this venture! Can't say I blame them! One of the favorite items that went with a little fighting on behalf of the customers was my pair of refinished chairs. I bought these at a church garage sale a few years ago for $5 together. They were an icky oak finish with nasty, stained fabric and wheels on the bottoms of the chair legs. I refinished them in red mahogany stain and reupholstered them in a french providential-style red and gold upholstery fabric. I found a matching footstool and they were definitely my personal favorite! I think in the future, if we ever live in a house again, I'd love to refinish furniture and resell it. Who knows!? For now, here's the vision from God that we posted on our garage sale fliers:

1. To let go of our material possessions and live in an RV with our four homeschooled children;

2. To travel across the country assisting in service projects wherever our help is needed; and

3. To grow closer to and learn more about our Lord and Savior each day who redeemed us from our old way of life and to share this truth with those we meet on the road, saved and unsaved alike.

Our prayer is that our lives will glorify the Lord and that we will make the most of every breath He gives us on this earth before calling us Home.

Recollecting on Oklahoma

Now that God has shown us a way back to Minnesota and called us back there, I find myself recollecting on our journey down here and the purpose of it all. As I think about it, I realize how important each one of us are to God. My brother Derek was so important to Him that He called us, a family of six, to move away from all that we've known and was important to us into a foreign land with many tears and sadness, just so Derek would come into a relationship with Him. Our salvation is so important to Him that while it may make Him sad, doing things like He did to our family is worth it for the salvation and promise of heaven for one soul.

I'm reading this book called "Heaven" by Randy Alcorn (thanks again Rachel!), and here's a section I'd like to share:

"For every American who believes he's going to Hell, there are 120 who believe they're going to Heaven. This optimism stands in stark contrast to Christ's words in Matthew 7:13-14: 'Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.'"

"No one goes [to heaven] automatically. Unless our sin problem is resolved, the only place we will go is our true default destination. . .Hell. We dare not 'wait and see' when it comes to what's on the other side of death. We shouldn't just cross our fingers and hope that our names are written in the Book of Life (Revelation 21:27). We can know, we should know, before we die. And because we may die at any time, we need to know NOW, not next month or next year. The voice that whispers , 'There's no hurry; you can think about this later,' is not God's voice."

Because it's of utmost importance, I would move across the country again if it meant one person's salvation and receipt of eternal life. Praise God for His love towards each one of us!!

It's Too Hot!

Okay, so we've spent almost every day playing in the sprinklers. But we can't even play outside until after dinner usually, because during the day it's too hot. I mean, like over 100 degrees hot! Right now, at 7pm, it's 101 degrees, so we won't even go outside tonight. The air is so thick, it makes it feel like you can't even breathe!
For the days where evening time finds itself in the 90's, we turn on the $10 sprinkler and the kids have a blast. Gabie cries and throws tantrums to play in the sprinkler, so we've concluded that it's virtually useless to spend tons of money on pools and trips to waterparks. If the kids can continue to have this much fun with a $10 sprinkler IN OKLAHOMA'S SUMMER, than kids anywhere don't need a ton of money either, right?!
Pray for us, that we won't need to spend another summer down here! I really hope it doesn't get any hotter than this, although I've heard rumors of 115! Tomorrow's high is supposed to be around 106, with a heat index of over 110 I think. Oh well! In the meantime, we'll be thankful for the blessings we have to get us through this weather, like air conditioning (in the house, unfortunately not in the vehicles!), water, homemade strawberry yogurt popsicles, and a yard to play in!

Washing Feet Part 2 (pause music on right before viewing)

Washing Feet

For our Bible topic the other day, we discussed the infamous "me first" mentality we all have. We discussed how the kids fight over who goes first on things, whether it's video games or bike rides, and then we read the story about when the disciples asked Jesus who was going to be first in heaven. For the Last Supper, Jesus, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, washed His disciples feet and said, "Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them." (John 13:14-17)
We talked about how Satan fills us with this "deserving" lie. We think we "deserve" this or that. We worked hard for it, or we're older, or we paid for it. Jesus earned everything we could ever give Him, but he doesn't "lord" it over us. Also, in the story of Abraham in Genesis, you'll see that same example. Abraham, who was Lot's uncle, let Lot choose which land he wanted. By all rights, Abraham was the one in a position to be choosing first. He was older, had received God's covenant and blessing, and had great wealth. Instead, he made peace and let Lot choose. Hopefully, the message went to the kids' hearts. God does say that His word will not return empty, so we are believing this lesson will rest in our children's hearts forever. As far as short-term benefits, the kids later fought about who would go first. Instead, this time, they argued that the other one should go first!!! What do you do?!