Changed By Love

Giveaway of Discovery Channel's Planet Earth

Nov.12,2009

Go to the Homeschool Toolbar blog and find out more about this fantastic giveaway of Discovery Channel’s Planet Earth, an $80 value. I have been saving up Swagbucks to try to earn enough to get this as a prize there. I love the footage that I’ve seen of this series. The cinematography is exceptional. I love the baby bird falling out of the nest into a bed of leaves. It didn’t get hurt, and it looked so cute as it fell through the air. There were lots of amazing scenes in the preview I saw. I’m sure it will be a wonderful DVD series to own. Go to the Homeschool Toolbar blog and check it out.

Homeschooling vs Christian school or homeschool co-op

Oct.15,2009

I would choose homeschooling over any other option for the education of my children. I wouldn’t send my children away from me or from my home for long periods of time for any kind of education. Even if I had lots of money to afford Christian school or any type of education outside of the home, I wouldn’t send my children to it. I believe the very best life for a Christian mother and her children is to live and learn together.

And these are my reasons:

1. God has called me to it. My main goal in life is to obey God. Above all else, I want to do God’s will. I know that my ministry for this season of my life is to disciple my children. It took several years for the Lord to convince me that this was enough; this was plenty; this was it!

2. Quantity time is more effective than quality time. We should intentionally use our time with our children to teach, train and disciple them, but some time just hanging out with them is important, too. We don’t know what they’re picking up from us just by being around us all day. Of course, we don’t want to be grumpy or irritable with them. We should treat them better than we treat our best friend or a stranger that we automatically act courteously toward.

Now wouldn't you want to hang around people you feel this comfortable with?

3. Children are influenced by the people with whom they spend the most time. I want my children to be with mature people who believe the way I do. I want to be the main influencer in the life of my children. I believe the Holy Spirit directs me each day to teach them what He wants them to learn and to love them with His love. I teach the older children in the ways of the Lord, and then they help me teach the younger children how to live a life that is pleasing to the Lord.

4. I believe the Bible and spiritual training are the most important things for children to learn. We spend a lot of time praying and reading the Bible together. We have many discussions about spiritual subjects that we wouldn’t have time for if my children were gone most of the day each day. I get to know my children very well, and I know better how to pray for them, because I’m with them so much of the time.

5. I can raise my children to feel secure and confident and content with who they are. Children feel secure knowing that their mother is home. They know that home is a safe place where they are loved and protected. They learn how to make their future homes secure, safe, happy places. They know who they are in Christ because I have taught them the Word and I have treated them with dignity and respect. They have been shielded from attacks on their self-image that often happen in groups of children. They have been protected from conflicting teachings that could confuse them as they are learning the basic foundations of the biblical worldview.

6. We can build our family into a close-knit unit to glorify God. Our children are taught to honor their father and mother, and we model for them, to the best of our ability, the love of the Father for them. We pass onto them the importance of family and the roles of father and mother and each member of the family. The family is a microcosm of the Body of Christ, the Church. As we learn how to get along with each other and handle conflict within our family, we prepare them for dealing with other people, especially fellow believers with whom they may fellowship and work together in ministry.

7. There is no real need for socialized education. Children do not need to be surrounded by other children while they are learning. A classroom situation is not the optimal learning environment. One-on-one is more efficient and makes it easier to track the progress of each child. Children who are more sociable can find opportunities to interact with other children in a much more meaningful way outside of a public school classroom.

8. Individualized education has many benefits. The children are able to study subjects that they are really interested in and are gifted in. They learn to be responsible and to take charge of their own education. The learning really sticks because it is something they are really interested in and want to know more about. They don’t just study for the test and promptly forget everything after the test is over. My children are able to immerse themselves in a subject that they want to learn more about. I make resources available to them and encourage them to explore them. The learning is so thorough that they remember what they’ve learned long after they studied it. They have good retention and good understanding, not just a surface knowledge that would enable them to do well on a multiple-choice test. They would do well on an essay test! I have to ask my children many things because I know they remember it even though I’ve forgotten or never really understood it.

These are my thoughts about homeschooling and the reasons I do what I do. For me and my family, homeschooling is the very best form of education and the one that is our calling.

Translating the Gospel for an Unreached People Group We Don't Normally Think About – Americans!

Sep.17,2009

I’ve always been very interested in missions. While I was in college, I went to Mexico as a summer missionary and worked with a team that used puppet shows and clown skits to share the Gospel with Mexican children. It was one of the best experiences of my life. I learned so much about myself and saw the unselfishness of some of the poorest people in Mexico City, which put me to shame. I came back a changed person. No matter what has happened to us, even homelessness and doing without things that everyone around us considers necessities, nothing has ever seemed so bad to me because of what I saw when I was in Mexico. I know how well we have it in America, compared to most of the rest of the world, and I know how spoiled most Americans are. I also know how unappreciative most of us are of the blessings God has bestowed on us.

Our new mission field - a subdivision in the U.S.

But I digress… the purpose of this post is to talk about my new mission field – America! I live in America, but it feels like a foreign country. I feel like a stranger and an alien here among regular American families who live their lives according to cultural norms. We are politically and culturally incorrect, and we feel it every day. The kids in this neighborhood ask my kids every day why they don’t go to “regular” school. They ask, “Have you ever even tried public school?” as if my kids just don’t know what they’re missing. It seems like they’re trying to evangelize my kids and convince them that public school is better than homeschool.

Well, my kids want to share their faith with them, and I came across a tool tonight that I think will really help these neighborhood kids to understand the Bible. My blogger friend, Kristi, has written a brief summary of the Bible in terms that biblically illiterate people should be able to understand and relate to – not just children, but adults. I think she did a fantastic job. She’s sharing it freely, generous person that she is. If you would like to read it and print it out, go to her blog here and read “God’s Big Story”. I bet you’ll enjoy reading “the Bible in a nutshell” yourself and want to share it with others.

God's Provision is Unstoppable, We Now Have Beds that are Unpoppable!

Sep.13,2009

We have real beds now! We have been sleeping on air beds for about a year now. We left all of our old, decrepit mattresses in Kansas City when we moved to Belleville. And we knew that we would only be staying in the house in Belleville for a short time, so we just bought air beds rather than mattresses and beds. We wanted to save money, and we wanted to have less stuff to move when the time came to go somewhere else.

But we’re feeling more settled here. We have a longer lease here. So we’re getting some real furniture. Gary and I got a mattress and box springs last week from Weekends Only, which is only open on the weekends and has great prices. Check it out at www.weekendsonly.com. As I type this, Gary is putting together bunk beds we bought there for the younger boys. Yesterday, we rented a truck to haul the bunk beds and to pick up furniture from our friend, Carolyn, in St. Louis. While we were at Weekends Only, our friend, Marc, called about white metal bunk beds he just bought at a garage sale for $35. We went over and got them and loaded them with the ones we had just bought. Now we had bunk beds for two of the boys and bunk beds for two of the girls. When we go to pick up Carolyn’s furniture, we will have a whole bedroom set for the big boys. Anna got a new (to her) bedroom set last week and painted it herself (pink, of course!). We just need a couple more beds and everyone will have a real bed.

Anna's new bed and night stand - more pics to come as she finishes painting

No more beds that leak air or get popped when the overzealous young ones get too rowdy and treat our beds like trampolines. We went through about 20 air beds during that year. That got pretty expensive, not to mention the trouble we had getting out of bed in the mornings when the middle of the bed sank down to the floor! And the twins were in the doghouse more than they were out of it while we had air beds.

Thank you, Lord, for Your abundant provision!

I’ll post more pics after we get our haul tonight from our friend in St. Louis.

God's Timing: Man Says, "Too Late", God Says, "Just Wait"

Sep.3,2009

I was so upset about not being out of the house by the time the owners returned. I was stressing out in a big way, lots more than I usually do. The kids wondered what my problem was. They know that God always takes care of us, so they couldn’t understand why I was so upset.

Well, part of my problem was that I had actually made a plan in my mind for how we would get out of the house early enough to come back and clean the house after all the kids were out and nobody would be there to mess it up right after I cleaned. We actually found a house and got the keys by the 15th of July, so it looked like everything was going according to plan. But then the management group didn’t clean the house like they said they would. It was going to be a step down from the quality of living we had gotten used to. We would have had lots of space, but the appliances were older and didn’t even work, in some cases. The house still smelled like dog, and there was still dog hair in the carpet. The rental management group, Strano and Associates, said they would get everything cleaned and in working order, but they didn’t do it. They told us it had already been cleaned, and when I found dog hair in the corners and in the middle of the room, it didn’t seem to faze Linda Linder, who runs the property management group. She still insisted that the carpets had already been professionally cleaned. She had told me that the dishwasher was being replaced because it didn’t work. But then my husband got a call from a repairman who said that he was supposed to go fix the dishwasher.

There were so many things that we didn’t really like about the house that I went straight back to the rental management office after getting the keys and told her that we couldn’t live there. Linda told me that I couldn’t get out of the contract. We held our ground until they finally let us out of the contract about 2 weeks later. We would have hated living in that dark and dirty house. That kitchen was not a happy place, and I spend too much time in the kitchen to have one that is dark and dreary.

We went through all of that and then we had to try to find a house in less than a week and get out of the house we were in by August 1. All of that stress was just too much!

I went to the park with Emma one evening and met a woman named Crystal who told me about her church that met just across the road from our subdivision in the Elks building. At first, I wasn’t interested because “churchy” church is a real turn-off to us. But she told me a little bit about it, and I realized that I needed someone to pray for me and we needed someone to come alongside us and pray for us to find the right house at the right time.

So we went to the church that Sunday. They greeted us at the door and told us that the pastor was out with a kidney stone and the lady I had met at the park wouldn’t be coming, because her husband had a kidney stone and she was taking him to the hospital. The worship leader was gone. The service was not going to be typical, so we shouldn’t judge the church by what we saw that day. Well, the people were very friendly, and we enjoyed the fellowship, so I went back to the Tuesday prayer meeting. I met the pastor and his wife that night. They were very nice and genuine. I really liked their views of the purpose of Christian people gathering together. Not church as usual, but coming together like the New Testament church, working to help the poor and needy. They want to buy the Elks building they rent, but it will cost lots more money than they have. They are trying to raise the faith level of the people so that they can all pray and believe for the amount of money they need. They understand the power of agreement and the laws of sowing and reaping and other principles of faith that we learned along our journey. The building has a kitchen and lots of other amenities that would work well for feeding people and helping people in the ways they have in mind. The sermons have been about faith, and they have been so confirming and uplifting. I say “amen” a lot throughout the sermons. And our heart is to help poor and oppressed people, too.

The church prayed for us that first Sunday. I started calming down and getting my faith back in order. I stopped yelling and getting upset about every little thing. The kids were thankful, I’m sure. Not to mention Gary. It was nice to know that people were praying for us. I knew that God was at work, but I didn’t know what He was doing.

I really wanted to be out of the house by Aug. 1, but it was impossible. We couldn’t find a house to move into, thanks to occupancy limits in neighboring towns that were unfriendly to large families – discriminatory, if you ask me. (We have encountered lots of injustice along the way.) On Aug. 2, the owners came to our door and rang the doorbell. It was one of those dreaded moments when your worst nightmare is about to come true. I’ve had a few of those in the last several years. I immediately told them that I had tried to get us out of there, but I just wasn’t able to. They assured me that everything was okay. Their stuff was still in Israel and they were staying with a brother-in-law. So it was okay that we were still in their house. They gave us 2 more weeks to find a place to move to. They understood our situation and were not upset at us. OH, heavy sigh and lots of happy dancing, and even a hug or two!

We finally found a house that we would be allowed to occupy and got the final word of the owners’ approval on Aug. 13. We rented a truck the next day, loaded it all day long, took the first load to the new house at midnight and went back to pick up the rest of the kids and the rest of the big stuff after midnight. We were out of the house in 2 weeks, just like they wanted. But there was still some stuff in the house that we couldn’t get because of lack of time and manpower. At 9:00 that Friday night, I knew we were going to need help. I called the pastor and asked if he could get some people and trucks together to help us move the rest of our stuff the next morning. He said he would do that. Gary and I had to take the moving truck back by morning, so we did all we could do that night and then returned the truck at 5:00 AM. We then went back to the house and did some more. We didn’t get in bed until 7:00 AM. We knew we couldn’t get up and get back over to the house by 10:00, the time I had told the pastor we would meet him. So we texted him and told him to cancel that time, and I called him later and asked if we could possibly do it Sunday instead. He said he would announce it, and we would do it after church at about 2:00. He was so nice about it and very willing, actually anxious to help us. We walked into the service just as he was announcing that they needed people to help a family move. He said, “Oh, here they are now” and everybody looked back at us. It was perfect timing. Nobody really knew us yet, but now they knew who he was talking about.

At 2:00, we were at the house, and several pickup trucks and a trailer pulled up and lots of people hopped out to help us finish our move. The pastor took charge and organized an assembly line to get our boxes packed into the trailer and then each pickup truck. They worked so fast and efficiently that everything was loaded in no time. We saw how the Body can work together to make things easier and less stressful when they have leadership that encourages such things. After all of that, they told me that they would come back and help me clean whenever I wanted to do that. We set the day for Tuesday. They came and cleaned the whole house just the way I had envisioned being able to do it with the house empty. But they did it in 3 hours. It would have taken me several days. And I couldn’t have gotten it as clean as they did even if I had a couple of weeks. (Cleaning is not my forte.)

I needed to do some laundry and asked the owners if I could use their washing machine and dryer a little bit longer. I used it Tuesday night for the last time, and we were out of the house for good. We never could have accomplished it without the church’s help. We have had a bad taste in our mouths about “churches” because of the way we’ve been treated in the past, but this group of believers has been better than family to us.

The owners started getting picky about things that were broken and saying that we needed to fix things ourselves. We had already offered half of the deposit because we knew there were some repairs that would have to be made. They kept insisting that we make the repairs or hire someone to do it. We kept telling them to take it out of the deposit. We were able to get an estimate from the pastor who helped us clean, since he was a carpenter with 26 years of experience, that showed that the repairs would cost far less than half of the deposit. We were being generous in our offer, which is what we wanted to be. It put my mind at ease, knowing that we were being more than fair in offering half of the deposit.

If we had gotten out of the house by Aug. 1, I would never have visited that church. I wouldn’t have met Crystal. I wouldn’t have had anybody to call for help when we just couldn’t do everything ourselves. I wouldn’t have had peace of mind about what’s happening with the owners and their demands. I wouldn’t have had the prayers of the saints that have carried me through another uncertain time of accusation and expectations that are impossible to fulfill.

I keep facing these fears, and I would so much rather not have to go through them. But the Lord keeps making me go head to head with people opposing us and falsely accusing us and expecting more from us than we owe them. People seem to think that we’re naive and gullible because we’re kind and compassionate. They try to take advantage of us and take from us what God has blessed us with. But God always helps us to see what is going on and defends us from their schemes. We are still in the middle of the conflict with Strano and the owners of our former house. Strano kept $822 of what we paid them for the house that we never occupied for even a moment. We never moved one thing into that house. We barely spent one hour in that house, but they made us pay $822 rent for the last half of August. And we don’t have our half of the security deposit yet. We are waiting, again, but God is always faithful. His timing is perfect. You just have to wait for it.