SURGERY UPDATE
(warning:: if you have a weak stomach, don't read this post!)


Last week, I had to have a second surgery on my right ring finger from my accident with a ladder in June.  My bone wasn't healing, and we discovered that because it slipped out of place after the first surgery, tendons got caught in the bone, preventing it from healing properly and moving at all.  Dr. C. took some bone from my wrist to re-make my finger bone, and now the healing begins...again!  Long term outcome looks very positive at this point, but only time will tell.


I didn't get a picture of my post-surgery wrap, but this is what things look like 7 days post-op!  If nothing else, at least it is straight again!

PUMPKIN HARVEST!

This is my favorite time of the year, and while I love to grow other things in the garden, pumpkins are by far my favorite.  This year we picked over a hundred!  I have dreams of a future U-Pick pumpkin farm around here......

Aden helping out

Myah sitting on her favorite giant pumpkin

Kiana with her chosen pumpkin

Not sure where Joel was.  I think he was running around with his buddy, Samuel, so he missed out on a picture!

BEING REAL

Feeling attacked lately... in many ways.  I know in my head that my God is greater, stronger and more powerful than any yucky circumstance the enemy tries to throw at me.  I know that regardless what comes at us, God wants to use it for good.  I know that the enemy is doing his best to discourage, and I must confess, at times he is successful.  But my heart is screaming to press on!  I know what is real.  I know what my calling is.  My heart's desire is to bring Him glory in whatever circumstance I am in.  God does not promise us a care-free life when we come to Him, but He promises us to be right there with us through whatever storms may come our way.  Praise you, Lord!  Use me in this valley, and give me strength to face all the obstacles in it.

"Open my heart more deeply as to what it means to live and die without Christ and therefore enlarge my outlook to share the Gospel" wherever You have me, every single day....

our time here is but a vapor.

(Quote part summarized from Hudson Taylor)

AMAZING TESTIMONIES

Check out this website to hear why people like Brian Welch (formerly from the band Korn), actor Steven Baldwin, and Mike Huckabee along with many others have had dramatic changes in their lives. 

2 Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new." 

Is this true for you? 

AMY CARMICHAEL'S DREAM

Read this convicting dream that Amy Carmichael had about the responsibily we have as believers to reach the dying world....

“The tom-toms thumped straight on all night and the darkness shuddered round me like a living, feeling thing. I could not go to sleep, so I lay awake and looked; and I saw, as it seemed, this:



That I stood on a grassy sward, and at my feet a precipice broke sheer down into infinite space. I looked, but saw no bottom; only cloud shapes, black and furiously coiled, and great shadow-shrouded hollows, and unfathomable depths. Back I drew, dizzy at the depth.


Then I saw forms of people moving single file along the grass. They were making for the edge. There was a woman with a baby in her arms and another little child holding on to her dress. She was on the very verge. Then I saw that she was blind. She lifted her foot for the next step . . . it trod air. She was over, and the children over with her. Oh, the cry as they went over!


Then I saw more streams of people flowing from all quarters. All were blind, stone blind; all made straight for the precipice edge. There were shrieks, as they suddenly knew themselves falling, and a tossing up of helpless arms, catching, clutching at empty air. But some went over quietly, and fell without a sound.


Then I wondered, with a wonder that was simply agony, why no one stopped them at the edge. I could not. I was glued to the ground, and I could only call; though I strained and tried, only whisper would come.


Then I saw that along the edge there were sentries set at intervals. But the intervals were too great; there were wide, unguarded gaps between. And over these gaps the people fell in their blindness, quite unwarned; and the green grass seemed blood-red to me, and the gulf yawned like the mouth of hell.


Then I saw, like a little picture of peace, a group of people under some trees with their backs turned toward the gulf. They were making daisy chains. Sometimes when a piercing shriek cut the quiet air and reached them, it disturbed them and they thought it a rather vulgar noise. And if one of their number started up and wanted to go and do something to help, then all the others would pull that one down. “Why should you get so excited about it? You must wait for a definite call to go! You haven’t finished your daisy chain yet. It would be really selfish,” they said, “to leave us to finish the work alone.”


There was another group. It was made up of people whose great desire was to get more sentries out; but they found that very few wanted to go, and sometimes there were no sentries set for miles and miles of the edge.

Once a girl stood alone in her place, waving the people back; but her mother and other relations called and reminded her that her furlough was due; she must not break the rules. And being tired and needing a change, she had to go and rest for awhile; but no one was sent to guard her gap, and over and over the people fell, like a waterfall of souls.


Once a child caught at a tuft of grass that grew at the very brink of the gulf; it clung convulsively, and it called-but nobody seemed to hear. Then the roots of the grass gave way, and with a cry the child went over, its two little hands still holding tight to the torn-off bunch of grass. And the girl who longed to be back in her gap thought she heard the little one cry, and she sprang up and wanted to go; at which they reproved her, reminding her that no one is necessary anywhere; the gap would be well taken care of, they knew. And then they sang a hymn.


Then through the hymn came another sound like the pain of a million broken hearts wrung out in one full drop, one sob. And a horror of great darkness was upon me, for I knew what it was-the Cry of the Blood.


Then thundered a voice, the voice of the Lord. “And He said, ‘What hast thou done, The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.’”


The tom-toms still beat heavily, the darkness still shuddered and shivered about me; I heard the yells of the devil-dancers and weird, wild shriek of the devil-possessed just outside the gate.


What does it matter, after all? It has gone on for years; it will go on for years. Why make such a fuss about it?


God forgive us! God arouse us! Shame us out of our callousness! Shame us out of our sin!”

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As I read on another person's blog who posted this dream, "Are you rescuing people from plunging into the abyss or are you too busy making daisy chains?"