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!