James Cooks

Well, James has showed an interest in cooking the last few weeks so I decided to let him start cooking a couple meals a week. So today was his first one. He got a cook book and picked out a recipe.

Mixing up the batter for the chicken.

Making mashed potatoes to go with. . .

What about some green beans?

Chickens done!

It was REALLY good James! You'll make a great cook!

P.S Oh! Two kids got saved at club today! Ben got to lead a little girl to the Lord so he's REALLY excited!

5 Day Clubs

This week we are meeting at an apartment complex for club. Yesterday we had 5 kids and one got saved! Praise the Lord! It's kinda funny, when it's not very hot outside, we get to do club in an air conditioned building! :) Here are some pics. of the last two weeks clubs. Please be praying that more kids will come and MANY more will get saved. Thank you for all your prayers already! Praying you all have a VERY blessed day!

Girls making a 5 Day Club sign.

Talking over the days schedual.

Ben doing tic-tac-know game.

Jenny telling the Bible lesson.


P.S James made lunch today, so more of that later! Stay tuned! ;>

Snowpeas?

Hey, does anyone have any good recipes for Snowpeas?

5 Day Club Report

Today was our last day to do Bible Club for this week. We hadn't had any kids all week so we were getting kind of discouraged but we were still trusting the Lord that He knew what was best. So prasie the Lord He sent two kids from another town that came to play baseball at the park. They stopped and finished the club with us. And the little boy, about age 10, got saved!!!!!!!! That made it worth the whole week. Please pray that he will come to church and grow in the Lord. His name is Jalin.

Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. Luke 15:10

Sing unto the Lord

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.~

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdaom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

Colossians 3:16

Praise the Lord

For thou art great, and doest wondrous things: thou art God alone.

Teach me thy way, O LORD; I will walk in thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name.

I will praise thee, O LORD my God, with all my heart: and I will glorify thy name for evermore.

Psalm 86:10-12

New Salem

Today we volunteered at Lincoln's New Salem in Petersburg, IL. This is our second year doing it and we really enjoy it. You feel like you step right back in time.

They had a lot of quilters there today so there were tons of BEAUTIFUL quilts.

This is a picture of a wagon wheel in the making. Ben volunteered at this house, which is Mr. Johnson the wheel wright's shop.

This is a carding machine. In New Salem they have one of the few working carding mills in the world. They only run it a few times a year and it is SO COOL to watch and it's WAY faster than carding by hand.

JP, the cutest 10 year old in the world!

Ben worked on making a tool box.

Here's mom passing the time with some friends.

I worked in the Johnson home spinning. In the picture I'm winding the yarn off of the walking wheel onto a weasel.

Well, I have another prayer request... The group of us that went to SMITE are doing a Bible Club this week at a park near our church from 1:00-2:00. The neighbourhood we are going to be canvassing is pretty cold so please be praying that a lot of kids will come and be open to the Gospel. Thanks for your prayers! Hope you all have a good Sun.! God Bless!

Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.~

Friends & Cola War

Today was a very busy day. This morning we went over to some good friends of ours to play. Jordan got to help round up cows and load them into a truck. Which was a lot of fun.

James enjoyed playing "guns" - one of his favorite things to do.

Don't shoot!

Is this some kind of new war tactic?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This week at our church they had a teen activity called Cola Wars. A team came in and canvased our area and got teens to come from all around! So Wed. - Thurs. they had games, snacks and the plan of salvation presented to over 100 teens! We haven't gotten the count yet but many got saved. So please be praying that the enemy won't snatch the seed that has been planted and that those that made a profession of faith would grow.

Each night they had REALLY fun games. Tonight they played human foosball, pictured above, and tug-of-war, below. Ben was the only one in our family who participated and he was on the Coke team and his team was victorious which he is VERY excited about. ;>

Gardening Questions

Wow! Gardens sure are hard work! Being gone at SMITE and then taking Caleb to TN sure got me REALLY behind on weeding. :( I'm still learning all the tricks of the trade so I thought I'd take this blog post to ask all of you if you all have any garden tips or secrets to share on how you grow certain things, keep weeds under control, keep pests away, etc... I'd love to glean from your wisdom. Just leave a comment or e-mail me! (This is Jordan by the way.) I would also love it if you all would share some of your favorite recipes. We are growing a lot of tomatoes and I'd like to make some salsa and spaghetti sauce if any of you have some good recipes for that. We are also growing peppers, okra, green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, and egg plant. I'd love to hear from you!

For those of you who are growing onions I have a tip that someone just passed on to me that we are really enjoying. A friend's mom cuts off all but one or two of the greens on her onion plants and chops them up to use in dishes! It doesn't hurt the onions at all they just grow right back! She also has freezed them! I cut up some yesterday and measured them up into bags and froze them and found that they freeze individually so you don't have to worry about them freezing in clumps! I used some of them in salad dressing and it REALLY added a lot of flavor.
Have fun gardening!

Caleb & TN

Well, Caleb is officially in TN. Thank you all for your prayers. We had a safe and uncomplicated trip.

For those of you that don't know, Caleb is staying with some friends in TN. Clint B., who is about Calebs age, offered him a job helping him construct metal buildings, roof houses, and whatever else the Lord brings along. So please pray they have a lot of work.

The B.'s have 4 children, Max (22), Clint (19), Erin (16), and Alesha (14). They live on a farm with two BIG gardens and animals.

They also play instruments! So Caleb took his bass down to play along. They play guitar, violin, harmonica, mandolin, and piano.

Ben had a fun time riding their horses. The other animals they have around are cows, chickens, sheep, goats, and dogs.

It was hard to leave Caleb but it was encouraging to know that he is were God wants him and in a good environment. Please continue to keep him in your prayers and us as well as we go through the summer without him. :{

Prayer

Hi all! just a quick post to ask for prayer. We are taking Caleb down to TN where he's going to be working this summer with a friend of his. Please be praying that we will have a safe drive down and back and also for his safety while he is away from us. Thanks for your prayers! Hope you all have a blessed weekend!

S.M.I.T.E

Well, thank you all for your prayers this week. We had an AWESOME time down at SMITE camp. For those of you who don't know SMITE stands for Summer Missionary Institute of Training and Evangelism. Uncle Jerry Purtell is the founder and head man at SMITE and one you don't want to cross. He keeps a VERY strict camp which is one of the reasons we like it so much.
The schedule goes something like this... Wake up time is at 6:00 every morning. You go to breakfast then everyone goes to their level classes. At SMITE you learn how to do 5 Day Club's, like VBS, in peoples backyards or parks. There are 4 levels you go through before you graduate. In level one, which Benjamin was in this year, they teach you how to lead children to the Lord using the Wordless Book. Level 2, that was Caleb's class, they teach you how to do the Missionary story. Level 3, Jordan's level, was on teaching the Bible story with a clear salvation message in it and also writing your own Bible story outline. And I think 4th Level is on prayer.

So in the morning til lunch everyone is in their respective class. Then after lunch everyone goes with their team to their 5 day club in town to practice what they have learned. Jordan was in a Day Care which is where most of the girl teams go. The boys are usually sent to the inner city neighbourhoods. After we get back from clubs it's time to have dinner and get ready for the evening service.

The evening services are AWESOME!!!!!! They start out with about a half an hour of TERRIFIC singing followed by two preachers that are allowed to preach as long as the Lord leads them. We went to bed at midnight most of the week. :)

Above is Uncle Jerry. He'll set you straight if your not.

This is Dan Carr, one of the main speakers this year, one of our personal favorites. As you can see below he really gets into his messages. The other main speaker was Bro. Sooter, (sorry can't remember his first name). He is an expert in spiritual warfare, which was amazing to hear about.

Again thank you for your prayers and please continue to pray as we plan 5 Day Clubs here in IL throughout the summer.

(Sorry about some of the pics. being blurry.)