Copper Falls

 I found this a little bit ago while looking through Lances pictures and it reminded me of yesterday when I was sitting at my desk and decided to write down all the things that I could remember doing this summer. I got a page of my little note book full and another one started before I finally gave up. And I did not even write down this trip to copper falls... Had momentarily forgotten about it. It was one of those gorgeous fall afternoons when the leaves are at their prime. Mom and Dad were gone camping and Lance told Amy, Brad and I that we were going to Copper Falls for the afternoon. Turned out Delvin's went too. We had lots of fun and looking back at the pictures I realized that it was one of my favorite memory's from this summer... I don't think Lance knows what a great guy he is! :) 

Bible School Picture

Okay, this is us. Somebody who is smarter than I is welcome to figure out how to get the sunlight glare off of our faces. But here we be. 

What I Learned

Fill Us with Your Love

Tom Colvin 

 "Jesu, Jesu, fill us with Your love, 

show us how to serve, the neighbors we have from You."

I really enjoyed everything I heard at Bible School, especially Cornelius Janzen's messages on Facing Reality.

But it was the last sermon I heard out there that had something in it that really stood out to me.

 John Ray Nolt preached a sermon on Who Our Opponents are in Life.

He had drawn up a base ball diamond on the board, with all the players on it and he would circle one of the players and say "now this player is such and such opponent". All of them where true but the one that I heard was: A non-disciplined life. 

Everyone has heard that saying "Live every day as if it was your last one." but I had never really thought about it before. It made me think about my everyday life and wonder what I am doing in it to make a difference in the world, every single day. I guess I came away with my favorite song from Bible School running through my head for more than one reason. It says perfectly what my prayer after going to Bible School has been.

                                                         

 Fill Us with Your Love

Tom Colvin 

Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love,
show us how to serve
 the neighbors we have from You.
 

Kneels at the feet of His friends,
silently washes their feet,
 Master who acts as a slave to them.

Neighbors are rich and poor,
varied in color and race,
neighbors are near and far away.

These are the ones we should serve,
these are the ones we should love;
all these are neighbors to us and you.

Loving puts us on our knees,
serving as though we are slaves;
this is the way we should live with you.

Kneel at the feet of our friends,
silently washing their feet;
this is the way we should live with you. 

 Refrain:
 Jesu, Jesu, fill us with Your love,
show us how to serve
 the neighbors we have from You.
 

Trip to PA

Okay so its Thanksgiving this week and I just got home from PA, how about a point by point post about "things I am thankful for that did.... Or did not!... Happen on the trip to PA and back. And just a few random things that happened.
*Okay the number one thing: Energy Drinks! :) They never did let me try drinking two at once though.
*A good trip out.
*The museum was REALLY REALLY neat. (We stopped and spent a day there on the way out).
*We got to stay with the Goods, it was SO fun to see them again, it had be I dunno how many years.
*I'm VERY thankful that we finally found Adam and Sana's place :)
*Adam and Sana were nice enough to open up their home for a bunch of crazy youth for a whole week.
*The boys did not get mad after having their light bulbs stolen I don't know how many times... I am innocent!... I think... Did I ever take them Abbey?
*I am, however, not so thankful that they found a place to get Vaseline to put big globs of on our door nob.
*That we got to go to the CAM open house long enough to look through their books and walk through the cannery. That place is HUGE!
*Monday Abbey went with us to Bible School, it was VERY nice to have her along to show us the way... It was rather overwhelming to walk into a room of around 275 people and be expected to be able to survive for a whole week when I did not know a soul there. I can't imagine what it would have been like with 600!!! Yikes!
*I can't very well write up anything about this trip without saying something about energy drinks, and the Prodigal Son skit and Occupation, I have no idea how many times we played Occupation. We learned that its kinda hard to play with only 4 people and that it does not work for everybody to put in two occupations. I also have no idea how many energy drinks we drank. I should ask on Sunday and add up all of them... Hm... Don't let me forget! And the skit... Well... Here, look for yourself: (When I can get this computer to work right I'll put a link in here).
*I'm also VERY thankful that Bible School went so well. About every one I talked to said that this was the best year they had ever been there. I really liked Cornelius Janzen's messages.
Someday... When I find my song book and stuff, I'll expound on this a little more. At the moment they are floating about in some odd place because I brought them down for Mom to look at and I have not seen them since.
*Chorus was REALLY fun, my favorite song was Fill Us With Your Love. The Songs of Faith and Praise book has it if you don't know it..
*Saturday we went to The Outhouse (a prankster store) in the morning and then went for chorus practice and testimony time at Bible School then we headed out  to the worlds largest Cabela's... That place was NEAT... Go sometime.
*Sunday night was the program. That was fun, and rather hard work, there is nothing quite like standing in the middle of a packed crowd of 250 and singing for an hour. Like I said before, I can not imagine it with 600 people and two hours!
* We headed out Monday and went to Austin and Melinda's place for supper and the evening, then we girls and Herb and Susan went over to some of Nellie's relations for the night. It was very nice to see Austin's again.They showed us around the chocolate shop, its a very nice place, every thing a chocolate shop should be. And then they took us through the back door into Thia Expression. There is some really neat stuff in there, its pretty much exactly what you would expect it to be.
*Tuesday morning after a late breakfast and an interesting conversation with our host's (we discovered that the grandmother worked for Gladys Martin's mother, I work for Gladys).
* Tuesday's ride was... Well... Imagen six youth who are very tired and have had energy drinks. A young couple, who is very tired, but probly not quite so much as the youth, with a small baby. And a middle aged couple.
 Now imagine a silly movie... called Up. Now it is getting later...8:00 o'clock, and the boys get thirsty, so they drink energy drinks because that is all that is in the van. Now the boys decide to quote Language in Context... The van was rather noisy for the last couple of hours! :)
*And now I'm home!!! And I get to stay home for a while!!! And when I'm home I have to do school work!!! Bye!!!

Of choppy posts and run-on sentences and bad punctuation.

I was reading over my last post the other day and it makes me feel a little sheepish... The way I put it together was rather sad, I don't think that anyone who read it would guess that I've done more than one writing course in the last few years. Why? Because I made myself sit down and write.
 My sister Amy enjoys drawing, when she feels like it. It's utterly impossible to get her to draw you a picture when she is not in the mood, and if you can convince her to try it looks awful when she is done. She simply can't draw a good picture when sat down and told to.
 Thats how I am when it comes to writing. If I force myself to sit down and write, when I'm done it looks choppy and has bad punctuation... And I'm in no mood to edit it so I hit the "Publish Post" and poof there's your new post. Like that last one.
The other two starts I talked about were both rather good:
 Hello from Wisconsin. I spent the majority of October in Nebraska helping Jenny repaint her kitchen and helping my aunt Amy after Matthias Jaymes arrived.  I keep trying to decide what all to post... The story about deer shining, the one about the "one suspender people", the one about David Burkey, or the one about... or... all of them!?  Okay, I'll tell all of them if that's what you really want.  But are you sure? It could take a while. Okay, well if you are positive...

 Once upon a time there was a girl... We'll call her Gertrude, no I wont tell you how she got her name because that is a different story, but it has something to do with a train game, and maybe a Holstein cow.   And this girl decided to go out to Nebraska to visit her friends and relations, but mostly the relations part. So she woke up one fine morning and after zipping her backpack closed and making sure that her wallet and phone were in her purse she headed out for the airport, in the passenger seat, beside her Mom, because Gertrude did not have her drivers license, no I will not tell you why she does not have her drivers license because that is a different story, but it has something to do with a silly drivers ed. program.  After going through security in the airport and sitting at her gate for a while, no it was not a farm, I don't know why they call it a gate, she boarded her plane, no I don't remember who she sat beside, when she told me the story she said that she can only remember who she sat beside on the second plane, this is still the first plane part, now stop interrupting!
After she arrived in Milwaukee she went and sat at another gate. 
 See it's better than the other one isn't it? It's in story form, not letter form, and I started it one day when I was in the mood, it's the raw thing, no editing, and I do realize that it needs some, but it's still better than that other thing.
 Another one of my problems is that I like run-on sentences. I know, shocking, but its true. Something about them seems so, um... comfortable. Like being told to eat the whole lemon meringue pie. The only problem is that when you are done and think back over it, or look back over it, you feel rather uncomfortable.
 So thats  my confession, about knowing that the last post was rather sad. Now for another confession: I'm NOT going to rewrite it. Why? Because I'm not in the mood! And as I've run out of inspiration for this post as well, I shall stop before it starts looking like the last one! -Frank

Good morning... No wait, This is the part that you put, "Dear Everyone" or something like that in, oh well, I feel like something different... "Good morning" will have to do this time!

Hello Everyone,
I keep thinking that I'm going to post and I get one started, actually I have two starts in my "Edit Posts" box, both of them rather good starts, but I always get discouraged after the first paragraph because so much has happened since I wrote last. I've been to NE twice, once for a quick weekend trip to pick up a kayak, which turned out to be rather eventful cuz we got a flat tire on the way out and the tranny went out on the way home. We ended up getting a tow to Minnie and then stayed at a hotel for the night... Which was not really in our plans but Abbey and I decided that the trip was one of the best we'd ever had. Oh, and Lance caught a nine pound cat fish while we were there. Its disgusting the way a person can catch fish in their stocked cow ponds out there! It's rather fun though, mostly, all but the fishing pole and worms part!
Then I came home for a few weeks, that I spent doing... I have no idea what I did! School probly.
 Mom and I were trying to figure out how to get me out there for the month of October to help Jenny repaint her kitchen and wash her windows (we got the kitchen done but not the windows) and my Aunt Amy who had a baby two weeks after I got there(a sweet little boy, Matthias Jaymes) then one day Mom told me "you fly out on this-particular-date (I have no idea what the date was) and you have a layover in Milwaukee".
Needless to say I was little surprised, but hey, it sounded good to me! It was too, had a marvelous time out there with all my friends and relations, mostly the relations part though, I did not go to any of the youth stuff while I was out there which got me a rather sound scolding from Marlesse Miller... And a "ha ha its your own fault", when I started moaning about it after I found out I was leaving a week earlier than I had thought.
 So now I'm home, for a week, I head out to PA next Wednesday morning for Charity Bible School, we are planning on stopping at the creation museum  and stay at various peoples places, all in all it promises to be a rather full, fun two weeks.
 And then I get to be HOME for a while, and catch up on my life again, and work for Gladys two weeks in a row, WOW! I did look through my school work yesterday and discovered that I'm not behind at all, which rather surprised me because I took quite a bit off while I was in NE. But hey, that was fine with me!
 The other thing that I'm looking forward to is getting back into NBCC again, its been kinda nice to pull out for a couple weeks and rethink the goal we have in mind, salvation for these kids. And how I can be an example and a witness to them when sometimes it seems like my role in kids club is so unimportant. I've been realizing again how important prayer is. It's His light we are trying to shine, not ours.
 That's all for now folks! ~Frank