I completed my prayer journal last week. I was so excited to be finished with that little book! Actually, the last journal I had was given to me and I wasn’t delighted with it - I just didn’t find the style of it appealing, but the frugal part of me, just couldn’t bear the thought of not using a perfectly good blank book. So, I reluctantly filled its pages with prayers, but I wasn’t thrilled each morning as I picked it up and I used it not everyday, but off and on.

So, the day I finished the last page, I went to Wal-Mart to see if they had any pretty books for not too expensive. I was so excited when I found a beautiful leather journal for only $8.00 and it was “me.” I was so excited about the new book, that I couldn’t wait to for morning to begin my journaling. I sat down and began to write. In times past and in my prayer journals past, I simply wrote out my prayers and praises to God. This time, I decided to use the book as a prayer journal but to also include my thoughts, special occassions, memories of the day or week, or simply to add in my comments about the events of the day. I have written a lot in the book already and I am enjoying it so much. I want to leave a legacy of writing about our family, my dreams, my petitions to God, the woes and the joys of my life to my children. I know that when I am gone, someone will sit down and read the pages I have written. If I had not pages to be read, there would be nothing personal - nothing of my thoughts, nothing from my heart for my children and grandchildren to know me by.

If you are doing the From Chaos to Calm challenge with me, I hope you will find a journal for your prayers and other thoughts that makes you happy to look at, hold, and write in. A plain spiral notebook for 10 cents at Wal-Mart will work - but will you be delighted each time you open it? Will it last the test of time and be passed down as a legacy of your faith to your children and grandchildren? Of course, you may not want anyone to ever read your thoughts and that is okay too!

I encourage your write whether your heart is filled with peace, joy, or even frustration, it will allow you to see God’s hand in your life in a real and tangible way!

I was so happy to see the sunshine this morning. It has rained all week. I did appreciate the rain. We needed it. However, it was nice to see the sun. One of my favorite household chores is hanging up the laundry on the line outside. And of course, that is hard to do when it is raining!

I am loving my new Purex Linens and Lilies scented laundry detergent. Oh, how good it smells!

Also, on of my new favorite songs is Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) by Christ Tomlin. Absolutely beautiful.

We are working on putting together our VBS program at our church here in Harlan. We are using the same theme, Out of Egypt that I wrote for our Primaries at Campmeeting. I also wrote a program for ages 0 - 4 for our VBS called Baby Moses. We spent the day decorating for that yesterday. So much fun! I will have to share some photos later.

And finally, if you have not visited A Virtuous Woman lately, you should! There are so many new features - I know you will love them!

I am so excited about this coming school year! I pretty much have most of my curriculum picked out … just need to start purchasing!

Here is my plan so far…

- Tapestry of Grace - If you are interested you can download the first three weeks of year one here: Go to Egypt.

From their website: Tapestry covers the humanities: history, church history, literature, geography, fine arts, government, philosophy, and writing & composition. Tapestry does not include a phonics program, science, math, grammar, spelling, or foreign language. Lampstand Press does, however, recommend and sell complementary logic, spelling, and grammar programs.

- Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day - from Apologia. We LOVED the Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day this past year!

- Math U See - You couldn’t ask for a better math curriculum for homeschoolers!

- A Reason for Spelling

I am a big fan of the Charlotte Mason Method… So, we will continue our nature study journals and nature walks. We will continue to do copywork and notebooking with our science and Tapestry of Grace.

And we will incorporate some of the resources from Ambleside Online:

Composer Study
Art Appreciation
Nature Study
FolkSongs
Hymns

From other sources:

Poetry
Home Economics from Pearables

I am currently taking piano lessons and will continue to teach my own children with:

Alfred’s Basic Piano Library

We use the Sibley Bird Field Guide and the National Geographic Bird Field Guide - wonderful resources! We do a lot of bird watching and are working on creating a Bird Friendly yard with feeders and bird houses. We are doing some of the projects from: Pojects for the Birder’s Garden - a wonderful book!

We will incorporate lapbooking into our studies as well - and something I like to call “folderbooking” kind of like lapbooking and notebooking all rolled into one.

Anyway, there is my plan - now to just get all those books ordered! I can’t wait for them to come in the mail!

I am so excited I can hardly wait for this school year.

When I heard this song and watched the video tonight, I just had to share.

We arrived home from Campmeeting late Sunday night. It was a bittersweet homecoming. I could live at campmeeting forever. I simply LOVE campmeeting. But it was nice to be home again. We had so much fun at campmeeting that we were all exhausted and it was so nice to be able to sleep in late yesterday morning. I was sooo tired and ended up taking a long afternoon nap. I slept in again this morning, and am feeling quite refreshed.

Our Out of Egypt Program went very well. In fact, it went better than I had imagined it would. The kids had a blast and so did the leaders! It was amazing to me how attached I became to the kids. They were fantastic. And there were a few who really needed love and I felt so honored to be able to hug them each day and talk with them. I wish you could have been there! It was really wonderful. I can’t wait for next year. While I was getting things ready for our class I came up with a new idea for our theme for next year and can hardly wait to plan the program! But first, I have two back to back VBS programs to plan. We had planned to go with Castles and Crowns, but after our success with Out of Egypt, we decided to just do that for our VBS programs instead. I want to provide a VBS program for not only 4 - 12 year olds, but also ages 0 - 3. So I am writing a program called Baby Moses especially for that age group. I am so excited! The programs will eventually be available in book form and for download for those of you who are interested in it for your own church groups.

I will share some photos (we took lots and lots of photos) with you later. Right now, I need to get back to catching up on chores and finish unpacking!

This year, Mykal and I are leading the Primary Class (7 - 9 year olds) at campmeeting. I wrote a program called “Out of Egypt” and we will be going through the entire book of Exodus. The class has 21 lessons over a 10 day period and we will be setting up for four days before it begins. However, I have spent the last week preparing and will spend everyday until we go to Campmeeting on the 18th preparing! And we are expecting 120 children on weekends and around 60 during the week.

I want the kids to walk in a say “WOW!”

I am making 12 palm trees. To do this, I purchased 13 yards of kelly green felt and cut out 144 palm leaves that are about 24″ x 8″. I am sewing a pocket down the back center by folding each leaf in half. This will give me a pocket to slide a heavy gage wire into which will then be inserted into a PVC end cap that I have drilled holes in and painted brown to match the trunk of the tree. The tree trunks are made from donated (recycled) cardboard carpet rolls that we spent the whole afternoon yesterday rounding up. My son used a saw to cut the long rolls in half. I want to cover the trunks in brown felt, but may end up painting them to save on costs. We will then build a base from 2 x 4s that will hold the trees in place.

My idea is to have a large tent resembling an Israeli tent from Bible times in the room. I am hoping to be able to get a funeral home tent or something like it for the the frame of the tent. I spent the whole morning today calling all the hotels I could find in our area requesting donations of old bed sheets which I will paint or stain and sew together for the tent. We will also use the bed sheets to paint murals of pyramids and Bible time villages. These will be hung along the wall to make the back drop. The floor of the tent will be covered in colorful fabrics and rugs, and there will be floor pillows and a fire pit (not lit) in the center for cooking. We will also have a river scene with water and tall grasses and more.

The leaders will all be dressed up in costumes. One of the pastors will be dressed as an Egyptian and as the children come to the door off the bus, he will say something like, “Halt! The Pharaoh has ordered that all Hebrew children be registered and make a mud bricks!” The children will then go to the registration table, receive an Israeli costume to wear, register, receive their name badges, and then move to a bucket of mud and straw and make a mud brick, wash their hands and move to a sand box where they can search for buried treasure before sitting down. We will bake the small mud bricks and give them back to the children.

Oh, and Little Debbie has agreed to donate 400 snacks to our group! I am looking around for more donations if you know of someone to ask, let me know! Or if you have any great ideas, I am all ears!

I am sooo excited about the classes! I have been so blessed by this and just pray that children have a lot of fun!

I discovered this video of Darrell Scott singing one of my favorite songs last night. It is called You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive. Darrell Scott was the one who actually wrote this song from what I understand. Patty Loveless and Brad Paisley have both recorded this song as well. However, after listening to this original version, I think I like this one the best!

I know I have mentioned before that my MIL was born here in Harlan and my five year old was born here in our home in Harlan. This is my home now. I love it here. This song speaks volumes about the life here in Harlan County - past and present. Everyone it seems is touched by the poverty and coal mining somehow. My son-in-law is a coal miner. We have church members who spent their lives in the mines. You see men covered in black coal dust cashing their checks at the bank or walking through Wal-Mart - their white eyes shining back at you.

In the song, he sings, “where the sun comes up at 10 in the morning” and it is true! One morning as I was washing dishes, I looked out my big kitchen window with the view of Harlan below, I saw the shadow of the mountain moving across the town as the sun came up and I looked at the clock. It was almost 10 am! The reason is that the mountains are so steep. Back in the hollers are in the shadows much of the day. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video.

… was a beautiful Sabbath day. We had a good church service - my husband preached on hypocrisy and it was an excellent sermon. Really, one of the best I have ever heard him preach. I wish I had recorded it! It was our week to be at our church in Belcher, KY.
After church, there was potluck - soooo much food this week! Wonderful. After potluck, Mykal and I and our four girls went out in search of people to invite to our Bible Prophecy Seminar later in the evening. Our head elder had asked us to drive up one particular holler and invite a man he had recently met. So, off we were.

I love going door to door witnessing. It is always exciting to me. We drove up this steep hill and back into the holler (in case you aren’t sure what a holler is - it is an often steep, narrow road where between the mountains where people live. Here in Southeast Kentucky, these hollers are filled with poverty.) Anyway, we found the house - we had been warned out the dog - and Mykal told me to get out and go next door to talk to a lady sitting on her front porch while he spoke to this man. So, I got out and walked down to talk to this woman and invite her to the meetings.

After speaking with her for a couple of minutes, I walked away and headed over to the other house. Now, this other house was up the hill somewhat and when I got to the house I couldn’t find the van. I was already scared because I had been told there was a vicious dog. And I didn’t know where my husband had gone. And then I saw him at the end of the holler, 1/2 a mile away trying to turn around. The roads in a holler are so narrow it is often very difficult to find a place to turn around. Well, moments later he pulls the van out and parks in this man’s driveway just as the man comes out to see who we are. I went to get in the van and the dog - a HUGE rottweiler jumps up, growling, and rushes toward me.

I just knew I was going to get bit! The man made a noise and the dog stopped but was still looking at me (plastered to the side of the van). The man says, “He’ll bite ya. He hates women.” I opened the door and jumped in the van as quickly as possible. My husband during this whole 15 sec event was walking around the van and was no where near me to save me. My heart was pounding! But thank God nothing bad happened!

After that, we drove out to another neighborhood and split up - my husband took the youngest children and I took the older girls and we agreed to meet in the middle. My two daughters, Sarah and Emily, went from door to door - about 35 in all and my husband went to four and ended up talking to one person for a long time which was good because she wanted Bible Studies. All in all it was a wonderful day - the meeting went well an we were all blessed by the events of the day. However, I am not sure I will ever go back in a holler by myself again!

“[Jesus] left Judea, and departed again into Galilee. And he must needs go through Samaria. Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there, Jesus therefore, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, ‘Give me to drink.’” John 4:3-7

It was the hottest part of the day. This Samaritan woman had come to the well when most other women would have been inside taking care of their homes. She needed water to drink, but she didn’t want to be ridiculed by others. This woman felt shame and she knew that others looked down upon her. She was not well liked by the other women in her community.

Have you ever felt alone like this woman did? Have you ever felt shame - even secretly?

Well, for this Samaritan woman, it was a surprise when she found a man sitting on the well. She had wanted to be alone. When he asked her for a drink, she was also surprised because he was a Jew and the Jewish people looked down upon the Samaritan people. I believe that Jesus was expecting her. He didn’t just “happen” to come upon the well. Jesus knew she would be there. And he was waiting for her.

Jesus was waiting for this woman to come to the well. And like the Samaritan woman, you are filled with shame and guilt and sin. But, that doesn’t stop Jesus from sitting by the well waiting for you to approach him. He is waiting - ever so patiently - for you to come to him.

 Jesus was never concerned with what was socially acceptable. It did not matter to him that she was considered “unclean.” To him, she was a beautiful woman who had lost her way and he was going to bring her home. He had compassion on her. He wanted to give her something that she was longing for, but had yet to find.

Jesus wants to give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4). He wants to show you how you to can have everlasting life through him. But it is not just ever lasting life that he is offering. He is offering something else. Jesus is offering you and me a cup filled with living water, that when we drink of it, we will be filled with peace and joy right now. Just like the woman at the well, Jesus has compassion for you and me. He longs to get to know us. He wants to talk to you. He wants to talk to me.

Even though you have sinned and are unclean, Jesus, the King of Kings, is waiting for you to come and visit with him right now. He doesn’t care about how others look at you. He doesn’t care how you even look at yourself. He is not put off by your messed up life. He is not put off by your feelings of inadequacy or turmoil. He is not put off by the fact that you feel like you will never get it right. He is simply sitting at the well waiting for you to come. And when you do, your life is going to change for ever.

Our little eggs hatched today and we have a number of teeny tiny inch worms! They are so cute, as you can imagine newborn inch worms would be.

We looked up inch worms on Wiki Answers and found out that inch worms come from the Geometridae family of moths so we deduced which one of the moths that we caught laid the eggs because it just so happened we took a picture of her.

The Girls are having a blast watching the babies with their magnifying glass. We immediately gave the worms some leaves to feast upon.