A World of Learning Opportunities

Since I haven't posted anything about what we've been up to for a while, I thought I'd show y'all a little bit of it. One of the all-time favorite things homeschooling does is allows us to learn in the most natural, inspiring, and interesting ways. We learn about reptiles by finding turtles and getting books all about them from the library. . .

(This time it's a three-toed box turtle similar to what we had last year.)

. . .We learn about being good stewards of the planet God has put us on. . .
(This is our newly designed recycling center--curbside recycling is hard to come by down here so we bring it to a local recycling collection center.)

. . .We're learning more and more spelling. . . (We still haven't discovered whether it was Faith or Dylan who wrote this on the end of the hand-made bed I bought and spent hours sanding and painting a couple of years ago, but we know it was definitely after one of them was put in time out by, you guessed it, Dad!)
. . .And we're learning how things grow and what the stuff on our dinner table looks like before it's even at the store or farmers' market. At the farm where we volunteer, they have a wonderful garden with herbs, vegetables, and a strawberry patch. After today's work, we were sent home with a large variety of starter herbs to begin our own herb garden. (They're all a little wilted from being transported/transplanted in almost 90-degree weather.) Since we're renting our home, we decided we had better keep our herbs in pots and not till up the yard. We also have a lot of stray critters like rabbits, cats, mice, etc., so we'll have to figure out how to keep these out of their reach.

But today's best experience was seeing ONE-DAY OLD baby goats (kids)!!! One of the farm's goats had given birth yesterday to a boy and a girl kid. (Sorry--didn't have my camera with.) It was amazing to see how well they could walk already and how they knew right where to go for their milk! God's creation is so wonderful and intricate, and we just keep seeing more and more of it everyday!

The Meatrix

Even though this video was made over two years ago, it has gotten recent attention due to the swine flu outbreak, since factory farming is believed to be at least part of the cause. This video discusses the implications of factory farming in a cartoony-but-true way. Factory farming proves 1 Timothy 6:10: "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil."

The Treasure Principle

This video, as featured on Randy Alcorn's blog page, asks "How Should Christians Live in This Economic Crisis?" In response, Alcorn refers to his book, "The Treasure Principle." If, after watching this video, you would like a FREE copy of his book, please let me know. Alcorn's ministry has generously donated many new copies of this book to our family for the benefit of those around us. We'd be happy to send you one!

Working on the Farm

In an effort to both fulfill our desire to serve and our desire to live on a farm, our family has had the pleasure of volunteering at a local working farm and ministry. Shepherds Cross Farms has sheep, chicken, a Bible garden, and a few other miscellaneous things. They use their sheep to teach others about our Great Shepherd Jesus through many different events. Although the farm is their main ministry, they also participate in a number of other ministry efforts, including missionary work to other countries.

Yesterday, our volunteer work include loading rocks into the farm truck and unloading them to build a rock wall under an existing fence in order to prevent coyotes from getting at the sheep. The kids had a blast riding around the farm in the farm truck, seeing the guard donkeys, and finding various kinds of snakes underneath the rocks. (Thankfully, we didn't encounter any poisonous ones!)

Our kids are learning to spin wool, how yarn is dyed, how to make yarn into balls, and all about all the different old tools and machines sheep farmers use. Next week, we'll get to see chicken eggs incubated. As part of our treat for helping, Dr. Diane sent us home with some fresh farm eggs. As you can see from the picture, these are very different from the eggs you buy at the store. Not only are they different sizes and colors (sometimes they have green/blue eggs!), but these had to be candled to make sure they weren't fertilized! We are having a blast and even though it's so much fun, the kids are learning the value of hard work on the farm! It has also brought back some wonderful memories from my childhood at my grandparents' own little farm with chickens and vegetable gardens. What a blessing this opportunity has been for us!

No Better Time. . .

Last night, our family was blessed to be a part of a talent show at a nursing facility. One of my friends is a hospice care coordinator and is very active in this field of their family's ministry. Before going, however, we had a feeling that the experience would end up being more of a blessing to us than us being a blessing to them. We were right. We saw elderly and disabled people who were aching so badly for just five minutes of attention that it tore my heart apart. I remembered how my grandma was in a place like this just months ago and how she is no longer in this world. That will hold true for those people we saw last night.

After the show, I started talking to one lady there. She grabbed my hand with her wrinkled, soft, frail hands and held on until she felt we had to go. They would give anything just to have someone come and show them that their life is worth something to someone before they leave this world. I realize, too, that it's not just about us going there and helping them "get saved." It's about us finding our purpose and place in God's plan by serving "the least of these."

When we look at the world around us, we all question whether or not the last days are here. For good reason, too. Many theologians suspect that Jesus will be coming back anytime. Whether or not that's true, the Bible tells us to live as though it is. We are warned not to have him come back only to find us living like he's not coming back anytime soon. It's hard not to, though. We find so much "comfort" in going on, buying and shopping, going on expensive vacations, investing more money into the homes we have. . . I don't want to say anything's wrong with that. When we were homeless, I ached for those kinds of traditions. I just want to point out that the harvest is still very plentiful and the workers are few.

Can I just encourage some of you to reach out to this part of our community? Our society devalues human life so much that these people are left to live out their last days as a number in a cold, sterilized environment. Go there once and you'll see what I mean. Bring your favorite card game, your favorite photo album, or just your listening ear and see what a difference it makes in your life and theirs. When you involve your children, it'll make the biggest difference in the way they perceive life and our mission in this life.

Another issue along these lines I hope some of you come to be aware of is homelessness. We see videos of people curled up on the street with ragged clothes and dirty, matted hair, and think, "What can I do?" To begin with, you can understand that that is not what all homeless people look like. You may have sat next to one, or even a whole family, last week in church. Many people did around us just months ago and only few knew we were homeless.

Some of you remember when I did the Padilla benefit dinner at church years back. It wasn't until a newspaper reported their situation that we knew our closest neighbors, a family of 8, were going to be homeless. How could they have lived next to us for over a year and we never knew this? Honestly, we didn't take the time to know. Thankfully, God gave us an opportunity to make up for that fact and has given us the blessing of going through that with them and seeing His deliverance.

Please, consider praying about this. Is there somewhere God wants you to invest your time and/or money? Could there be people right in your town that would love your attention? Are there people in your church that are facing homelessness? I guarantee that if you heart desires to face these needs, God will show them to you. Our Tulsa area Meals-on-Wheels is just one example of an organization committed to helping people that, in a country full of "Christians," can't get enough volunteer help.

You can also check out this website about a man who experienced homelessness and is now helping show people what the homeless look like, what their stories are, and what they need. The "about" page has very good but graphic videos of homelessness at its worst. There is too much going on out there for us to live like Jesus isn't coming back soon. Here's the link: http://invisiblepeople.tv/blog.

I would also like to thank the people who were such a huge blessing to us last Christmas. In the midst of a declining economy, our friends from POCC and ROL sacrificially gave to us and provided a way for us to get to a home in Oklahoma. Without that, we would not have made it. Thank you for answering God's call to help us. We're forever grateful!

I pray you're encouraged to get out and start working the harvest.

Culinary Adventures

Since I haven't posted some of my latest culinary adventures in a while, I thought now would be a good time. I've really gone out of my normal box and leaped into completely homemade, from scratch items. Here's an example:

I made my normal veggie burgers, but this time I made homemade maple baked beans and baked onion rings. From scratch, I mean that I bought dried beans (much cheaper) and cooked and froze them ahead of time for later use. The onion rings were still a little greasy but baked is still better than fried! The best part: this whole meal, to feed our family of six plus Papa AND have leftovers, cost around $10 total! (Oh-that's some homemade honey mustard on the side.)

Because of the summer-like weather we've had, I thought it would be a good time to make homemade frozen fruit pops. No objections from the kids here!

(Dylan's facial expression in this picture is hilarious! And now it is also obvious that we need the Lord to provide a few bucks for new pants for Dylan!)

Toasted cinnamon raisin bread is our family's Sunday morning tradition. It's a special but quick breakfast to have before church. Unfortunately, it can get expensive, especially when you want the whole wheat stuff without high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils! After a few different recipes, I finally found one that we liked the best. It's a whole wheat cinnamon raisin swirl bread. For mine and Pete's loaf (the recipe makes two loaves), I add sunflower nuts.

Here's my favorite dessert though: homemade angel food cake with fresh, sliced strawberries and homemade whipped cream made with fresh (as in from a milked cow in the last day or two) raw cream from the dairy farm! It makes much better whipped cream and it whips so much easier. This was my first time making homemade angel food cake, and it proved to be a bit of a science. I didn't read the directions exactly right and had to throw out the first batch. 20 eggs later and we have a delicious dessert!Hopefully, your mouth is watering at this point!

Tulsa Zoo!

This last Sunday, we had the wonderful pleasure of visiting the Tulsa Zoo. It was even better because Papa (my dad) came with! The weather was pretty nice and this zoo is huge! (Can you see the elephants in the background?)
This tiger gave us quite a show. It was only laying down for a minute. Papa started making some weird, low, growling sounds and it seemed to trigger a really strange reaction with the tiger. Every time Papa would make his sound, the tiger would start walking straight towards us, glaring at Papa, and would do his own low growl. It was almost scary the way Papa's growl triggered such a reaction.
This HUGE iguana also acted really strange towards us. The sign said that when threatened, they bob their head up and down. When we came up to him, he came as close to us as he could and laid completely on his belly as if in total submission. The kids thought he would make a good pet, except for the fact that he's about 4 or 5 feet long!
And of course, the boys' favorite attraction. In the rainforest attraction, they have an exhibit where the poison dart frogs are hopping around in a rocky soil area without any glass or wall separating the viewer from the frogs. They've occasionally hopped out but there are workers there to watch. Of course, you're not supposed to touch them because they're "poison" dart frogs. (Although, being the homeschoolers that we are, we know that these frogs wouldn't be poisonous. It's only the ones living in their native environment because their natural, native diet is what makes them poisonous! Mom also scored bonus points for knowing the name of certain monkeys' tails-"prehensile." That goes to show that the best teachers are the ones learning along with the kids, learning the things they forget or never learned in their own school days!)