The Dastardly Dustin Deed

Is that a great title or what??? That alone makes me happy, but it can't begin to compare to how happy the deed itself made me. Of course, it may sound a little misleading. Brother Dustin isn't actually the one who performed the dastardly deed. He was more the victim of it. :-)

Most people who come to this blog (hi, Mom!) are aware that Brother Dustin was appointed as the new General VLB Coordinator for the Church this year. I have been helping proof read the Evening Light in recent months (forgive any mistakes I may have missed! Ha!) and have therefore had a "preview," if you will, of each issue before it goes to print. When I saw the centerfold of the October issue introducing the three new auxiliary coordinators and presenting a picture of each of them... well, let's just say I felt a rather impish grin spread across my face. How could you pass up an opportunity like that?!?!? So I talked it over with the right people and made the necessary arrangements to have a special edition printed up. Actually, two of them--one for me and one for Brother Dustin. :-) We had several options to choose from (Dustin wearing socks on his ears, riding a mechanical horse, or... well, worse), but we finally selected a pose that would tear his little world apart but still be somewhat believable.

This is the REAL version that all everybody else received.



And this is the special edition that arrived at Brother Dustin's house...



And a close up so you can get a true feel for the glory of the situation...



Now, I must confess that I never imagined this little prank could be half as successful as it actually turned out to be. I truly pictured Brother Dustin opening up his Evening Light, feeling a miserable surge of panic and agony, gasping for breath, and then saying, "No way... they wouldn't have really done that..." I thought he would then start calling around to see if anybody else had received their Evening Light and what theirs looked like. I was right about the miserable surge of panic and agony and the gasping for breath, but oh-so-gloriously wrong about the rest. As the story goes, the first words out of his mouth were something like, "I'm going to KILL Becki!!!" Although I'm certain he didn't really mean them. ~ahem~ You see, he was aware that I proof the paper and immediately (though I can't imagine why) placed me as the culprit. But contrary to my expectations, it never for one moment crossed his mind that he had received a special edition of the paper. I guess because it was a complete and official looking Evening Light he just assumed that it was the real deal and that everybody in The Church of God would be receiving the very same thing! I mean, that was the intention, but I really expected it to last only moments or perhaps a few minutes. But I received a phone call from Mr. Hays that lasted, oh, 30 or 40 minutes or so that morning. Because he is our new VLB leader and I feel somewhat compelled to not taint anybody's opinion of him, I must confess that he handled the whole situation amazingly well. By that I mean that he didn't actually threaten my life. No, wait... I'm pretty sure that he did, now that I think about it. In any case, he didn't yell or scream or otherwise display any actual anger or frustration. His words were very calm and calculated. Ha! No, he really was great considering the fact that his life had just been destroyed. He denies it, but a very reliable source tells me that he was so sick over it he couldn't even eat his breakfast that day! He was saying things like, "Jamey, I know I'm not supposed to be vain... but everybody in the whole Church of God is going to see that picture introducing me as the new VLB guy!!!" Ha! Ha! Ha! I'm dying!!! This is still just too funny, even weeks later!

Yes, it has been weeks. You see, when I learned that he really and truly thought that everybody's Evening Light looked like that, well, I just couldn't make myself tell him otherwise. I didn't lie to him, I just didn't straighten out what he had chosen to believe. ;-) I called Sister Jamey later that day to let her know that it was just a joke and not everybody's Evening Light looked like that. She laughed heartily and I think she said, "He deserves this--he is such a punk!" or something equally great. I was laughing so hard I couldn't contain myself and had to make a couple of phone calls to regional folks to tell them what we'd done and that Brother Dustin really thought it was the real thing. The response was the same across the board and pretty much agreed with Sister Jamey's statement--followed by lots of laughter. The only rebuke I got was from my Dad, but it wasn't stern enough to make me call and confess just yet. Ha! He actually just said that he couldn't believe I didn't TELL Dustin that it was just a joke--that I was just letting him go on and believe that ALL of the papers looked that way. That's only because he doesn't realize how cruel and merciless Brother Dustin is to ME--it's not a one way street here! Anyway, we decided to not say anything until Minister's Retreat... about a week and a half away. :-)

So at Retreat I confessed to Brother Dustin and showed him the REAL page from the Evening Light. He laughed a lot, but it was a rather nervous sort of a laugh, not sure if he should believe me or not. Can you imagine?! I can't begin to express the FUN that all of this was or the pleasure it gives me knowing that Brother Dustin would think that I would have the power and/or ability to pull off such a prank throughout the entire Church of God using our church paper. Just to know that he's on his toes, always looking over his shoulder, expecting that at any moment his life may come crashing down on him... ~aaaahhhhh~ What joy! HA!

Wow--two posts in one day! Look, Mom!!! ;-)

Take Two!

Okay, let's give this another try.

Our revival with Brother Ammons was excellent. He preached on sanctification most of the nights and I feel like I learned so much. On this particular night he used the boys to illustrate the struggle between the flesh and the spirit--each pulling at your human nature trying to influence your actions.



We headed to Minister's Retreat in Gallup, New Mexico, last Thursday. Our attendance was way down this year for various reasons, but God blessed us with a wonderful Retreat that I'm sure will prove to be life changing for many. We heard so much good and anointed teaching and preaching about travailing for lost souls (our theme was "When Zion Travails") and I know God spoke to hearts about our prayer lives and carrying a burden for souls, fasting and praying and working to see them won to the Lord and The Church of God. Good, good stuff.



Brother Ammons tends to preach a little long some times... Ha! I took the kids and let them play two or three times throughout the weekend to give them (and their parents) a break. It seemed to work well for this kind of function and the kids had a blast.



Aside from all of the spiritual things going on, we had some interesting exchanges with the campground staff. They had been cordial with us, but seemed very nervous about us and reserved toward us--it was really sort of awkward. After all of the leg work I did this Spring, we had really sort of settled on using this campground for our Family Camp next year... but when I mentioned that to the camp lady on Friday she seemed quite hesitant. She pulled out their statement of faith and said she just wasn't sure our group was compatible with what their campground supports and vice versa. I read through each point and said that I didn't see a problem. (It was all basic stuff--Jesus born of a virgin, the trinity, eternity in heaven for the saved and in hell for the unsaved, etc.) She handed it back to me and pointed to a statement at the bottom of the page about their group not supporting or condoning anything that would fit into the "charismatic movement" and the like. Then it occurred to me... Brother Chris had taught a very powerful class that morning in the room adjacent to the kitchen where the campground staff was preparing lunch. As is his nature, he was quite "involved," shall we say, and even screamed an "in labor" type scream in speaking of travailing for souls. Ha! There was also a great deal of shouting and stomping going on and I have no doubt the kitchen staff could hear everything on loud and clear and probably peeking to try to figure out just what was going on in there! I expressed that we are NOT charismatic and then asked if "speaking in tongues" fell into their definition of charismatic. I briefly shared with her from Acts, chapter 2, about WHY we believe what we believe and why it still applies to us in these days. She said she'd like to look through a statement of our doctrine and maybe our history as well, so I got one of Brother Ammons' nifty little calling cards and aimed her toward the Church website. :-)

That night they sent a spy to our service. :-) One of the guys attended from the pre-service prayer time until the dismissal prayer four hours later. He watched the Mission video with pictures and videos of church flags waving and being carried by brides from all over the world, then listened to Brother Ammons preach all night long on us raising the dead! Coupled with Brother Chris' "active" class on travailing earlier in the day I thought we were sunk for sure!!! HA! But we just prayed and put it in God's hands knowing that if this was the campground He had for us He would soften their hearts and they'd allow us to come back. If they didn't, God must have something else in mind for us. More importantly, a soul attended a Church of God service and saw and felt and experienced something that he never had before. :-)

And he mustn't have been too freaked out because the next morning the lady told me that they would be happy to have us back!!! WA-HOO!!! I was sooooo excited!!! Both because we really like these facilities (they will be so perfect for Family Camp!) and because it was just about the only option we could afford and I have exhausted all of my search efforts. And because I felt like it was a definite ANSWER TO PRAYER that God moved on their hearts to allow us back after all of the "weird" things that scared them in the beginning. In fact, I called the lady just this morning to confirm our Camp dates for next year (May 27-31, y'all--Memorial Day weekend, so it's only two days off of work... start making plans!) and she was sooooooo nice and said they are really looking forward to having us back. She apologized for things being a little awkward for a while, but they just weren't sure who we were, where we came from, or what we believed. But she seemed genuinely excited to work with us now and even willing to flex their own group's schedule to make things work better for us. Wow!!! THANK THE LORD!!!

Back to Retreat... as is customary at our functions around here, we were sure to include lots of late night laughter and games. :-) Here is the Pictionary crowd (minus me, of course). We played guys against girls. Except there were more guys than girls so Daniel Wantulok was on our team. We called him Danielle. ;-)

The guys did their best, but as you can see by their position on the game board (that's the "Start" square in case you can't tell) they just don't excel at this game! ;-)

I was able to capture Brother Dustin doing his best Brother Ammons impersonation... for Brother Ammons. I failed, however, to capture Brother Ammons following it up with an impromptu and impressive Dustin Hays impersonation! Ha!



I was able to capture Brother Ammons' impersonation of Brother Ard though. Brother Ard stories are always a big hit around here. ;-)



And that's it for now. More to come later though! (Hopefully sooner than later...) I have some great pictures from our Texas trip and the Pumpkin Farm this past week.

Tried to blog

Got started...

Tried to upload pictures...

Started uploading a video clip to YouTube...

Blogger started flurbing out on me...

Got tired...

Gave up...

Going to bed...

Hope to have a chance to try again tomorrow.

(There's way much excitement to report to NOT blog--I've GOT to find time this week before we head to Colorado on Friday!)

Trying to Blog...

But there's just no time! And when there are so many grand things to blog about--Minister's Retreat, Revival in Texas, ruining Dustin Hays' life for a whole week and a half... ~sigh~ I've got to try to find time in the next few days before I forget all the good stuff!

We just got home from Texas last night, James took Brother Ammons to the airport this morning, and we've spend a long and not-so-productive day TRYING to get unpacked and get the laundry done. There is, of course, another mountain of ironing to be done and I am determined to get it done tonight (instead of "really" blogging, sadly) because one week from now I'll be at Ladies' Retreat in Colorado (wa-hoo!!!) and there are sooooo many things that must be accomplished between now and then! It's 7:45 and two of my children have already been sent to bed due to tears and attitudes that I could deal with no more. (I hate days like this!!!) The one good kid is sitting next to me reveling in the privilege of being "the good one" and savoring every bite of a chocolate pudding cup. Wanna guess which one it is??? Sam! Wa-Hoo! Way to go, Sambo!!! Perhaps the glory of this night for him will be some sort of incentive to be good more often. Of course, he'll probably only think of being really good after the others have been really bad. It stands out more then and he's more likely to be rewarded. Ha! Oh, how complicated to be a kid. Anyway, I must go. I just thought I'd check in to say HOWDY and let you know that I'm doin' the work! I'm not a slacker! I'll blog as soon as I can. :-)

Just so Ya' Know...

We're leaving, so I'll be away from the blogs for a little while. Quick update...

Good revival service with Brother Ammons on Sunday morning, sped down to Hatch and enjoyed another great service there and then some equally great fellowship at the Banuelos house (one of my very favorite places to visit--always so blessed and have so much fun with what feels like "my brown family," I love them so dearly! Ha!), then drove home and got here at about 1:00am.

Monday... Hhmmm... Thinking, thinking. We got a late start because of our late night on Sunday, but we were able to get in a full day of laundry, sheet changing, and school, with roast, potatoes and carrots for dinner. Stayed up late working on the Regional Planning Guide.

Yesterday was spent in LOTS of phone calls and Retreat arrangements as well as further working on the Planning Guide... and who knows what else. Chris & Haley Thompson drove down from Colorado and got here at about 1:00am, so it was another late night.

We have had a good and productive day today. The reason the Thompsons had come down early (other than to fellowship, of course) was so Brother Chris could run heating ducts and install vents in the den and the boys' room. He took care of that job easily enough while we finished up on lots of the details for Retreat, getting the Planning Guide proofed AGAIN (thanks, Haley!), printed it and got it assembled, did some packing, and enjoyed the fellowship of our company over some really great homecooked meals... cereal for breakfast, canned soup and grilled sandwiches for lunch, and poppy seed chicken casserole with no poppy seeds for dinner. My Mom made cinnamon rolls once and forgot the cinnamon. That still seems worse to me than my mistake today. Good thing James also made up his green chili chicken enchilda. ;-)

Haley found out today that she'll be teaching a class because my loser brother is bailing on the Retreat. Okay, so actually he's been really, really sick all week long and still hasn't been able to shake it. He's so seldom sick and when he is he's usually over it in a day or two, but whatever he has this time has really put him out of commission. So he called today and asked Haley to teach his class at Retreat since he won't be able to make it. I got our final after-all-cancellations-and-changes-of-plans numbers to the campground today, so we should be all set. We've been swarming all over the house in last minute preparations for Minister's Retreat, but we did take time tonight to play one game of I Buy. Haley won, Chris & I tied for second, and James lost. I can live with that, I guess. Afterwards Haley went to study for her class and I went to do some proof reading for Mom. Just finished that up and now it's off to bed.

Tomorrow Sam & Tammy fly in (James was kind enough to offer to go pick them up early in the morning since I had to stay up late to proof read... and blog. ~ahem~), they'll be here for a couple of hours, then we'll all load up and head to Retreat! Wa-Hoo! I'm really excited about this Retreat and feel like the Lord is really going to bless us. I will be missing parts of it since I've offered to "babysit" on three occasions throughout the weekend. We'll have 11 kids there ages 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8 and 8 years old and it's awfully hard on them (and the parents) to have nothing geared toward them, especially during the times of sharing and prayer and stuff like that. So I've packed up some games and craft stuff and will try to help them have a good and enjoyable time and maybe even learn something in the mix. :-) It'll be fun.

Anyway, that's what's going on around here and why you won't be hearing from me for a few days! (It's great that I have an excuse this time! Ha!) Have a great weekend, everybody!!!

37 Pictures!

I thought that might lure some lookers. :-) Blogger was just slapping 'em right up there tonight so I just kept a-clickin'. We'll start with the Balloon Fiesta pictures that I took last Sunday. You know, Sunday. The day I lost my cell phone. (Still hasn't shown up. I'm fearing that perhaps it was in my lap one time when I jumped out of the van to take pictures... We may never know!)

Anyway, the first slew of pictures I got weren't very good because it was pretty cloudy to begin with that morning. The balloons aren't really pretty until the sun hits them straight on and really lights them up and sometimes all you can get is a silhouette. But after looking at the pictures I decided the clouds and mountains were pretty cool, too. :-)

There are LOTS of shaped balloons that come to the Fiesta. There was a beer mug, a Pepsi can, Nemo, and a whole bunch of others that I didn't get pictures of, but here's... hhmmm. Who is this??? I almost said Sylvester, but that ain't right!

I really like the cow pasture shots. Cows and balloons--who would've thunk it? And the clouds are great. These were taken while driving past the pasture.


We found a place to park not too far from where the balloons lifted and they were all going right over the top of us with all of the lunatic people inside of them leaning over the already too perilously insecure baskets, waving to us. Crazy.




Here are some random pictures from this past week.

We thought we had bamboo growing in our yard... but does bamboo bloom???

And here's a picture of James' office. You can't really see the sides that he painted (!), but you can see the green door and trim. And if you look close you can see the little "Regional Outpost" sign he made for the window. Ha! Cute.
And here's the big jerk. Soda jerk, that is. We took this picture for him to put on his Facebook page (yes, JAMES does Facebook--what is this world coming to?!), but I don't think he's posted it yet.
Here is little Sambo READING to his Dad! Wa-Hoo!!!! :-)
Let's see... our revival has been great. We haven't had any visitors yet, but I know a whole lot of people have been invited--even though we JUST got a place to finally invite them to. Our pastor even stepped out in the middle of song service tonight because he felt led to go find somebody else to invite to come and join us! Ha! He walked down the alley and spoke with several people. None of them came tonight, but who knows--maybe they'll show up tomorrow. :-) And they did give him a steak and a cheese filled chili they'd just roasted. (He was good enough to wait until after church to eat it--he would've been in big trouble if we would have caught him outside gnawing on a chili! HA!) Anyway, there's been such a good spirit in our revival and I've been so blessed by the messages. Brother Ammons has preached the past two nights on sanctification and it's just been sooooo good. I feel like I have a deeper scriptural understanding of it than ever before. The compilation of scriptures has just amazed me--things that illustrate sanctification so beautifully that I never even knew related to the subject! Ha! Brother Ammons confessed that he's never been forgiven of Adam's sin. We are saved from our own SINS (plural) in salvation, and then we are CLEANSED (not forgiven) of SIN (singular) in sanctification. It's so interesting when you look at the difference between SIN and SINS in, say, 1 John chapter one. (You'll have to go look it up now.) He talked about Paul writing and saying "My little children" implying they were already saved, then said, "of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you." He said we ought to travail over seeing our people sanctified with the same urgency we should travail over seeing souls saved. And he talked about the Greek word for "formed" in that verse and how it is not a slow process, but an instantaneous work--'til Christ be FORMED (in a definite, instantaneous work) in you. How cool is that?! Tonight he preached from John 15 about the abiding in the vine. If you're a branch, you're already saved and bearing fruit and if you don't bear the fruit you'll be cut off. But then Jesus talked about being PURGED--also means cleansed, purified, clean, to make pure and lots of other redundant terms :-)--that we might bring forth MORE fruit. And that he's spoken these things to us that our joy might be full, as can only happen in sanctification! Wow!!! So many good things to keep feasting on and learning from.

This morning we all got up early and took Brother Ammons to see the balloons. Tomorrow is the last day of the Balloon Fiesta, so it worked out great and he really seemed to enjoy himself. And I think it was a better day for pictures, too. :-)

This is what it looks like as you're nearing the field where the balloons launch. Is that cool or what?! I can imagine how crazy it must seem to people who might not know anything about the Fiesta and just happen to be driving through town! Ha! This was taken before all of the balloons had lifted. I think we heard there were over 600 of them here this year. They come from all over the world and people come from all over the world to see them. Not something I would do... but since we live here I wouldn't miss it! And I think it's just pretty sad that the Washburns missed it. Tsk, tsk, tsk. We thought of you, Sister Tammy... sitting in a dirty, musty, half-fixed basement. ;-)

I'm not sure how this balloon works. How do the legs stay inflated???
Here's Brother Ammons with the kids at the great location we found to park at and watch the balloons waft over us. The one in the field behind them must've landed just before we got there.
I think these pictures are so cool because of the great blue sky and the bright half moon up there. :-)

The ladybug. I didn't get any good pictures of them, but there are two bumble bee balloons that are pretty popular. When they take off they try to keep them as close as they can to each other so it looks like they're holding hands.
The shaped balloons are fun, but my favorites are always the really bright colored traditional looking ones.
The guys enjoying the show... while the children sat in the van waiting on us! Ha! It was COLD out there this morning!
This is one of my very favorite pictures. So bright and cheery and colorful!
James was so excited to finally see the Darth Vader balloon since we missed it last week. I wasn't sure we'd be in position to see the front of it the way it was passing us, but this one seems to illustrate the whole "dark side" thing. ;-)
This balloon landed in the field right next to us. That was cool to watch. It was AMAZING to see how they use the different wind currents. There's no real way to steer a balloon, you know, so they're at the mercy of the wind. They would lift off and catch the higher current and sail west, then some of them would drop down lower and ride a different current back toward the lift site before raising and heading west again. Amazing!
We were able to see the front of Vader, so I was sure to get a picture for James. I'm not a fan (he isn't either really), but still... it's COOL! James says the folks who own this one come all the way from Belgium for this. Wild.
This seems to be the only view of Humpty Dumpty I got. Hhmmm.
And somehow I posted it twice! Ha! Wonder which picture was SUPPOSED to be here... ?
This one was COOL with the whole globe thing going on and the flags hanging down from it. Brother Ammons wanted to know if there's some way we can photo shop it to put Brother Ard's face there where the basket is... We'll have to see about that. ;-)
The pirate balloon...
The scarecrow balloon...
And the Smokey the Bear balloon.
There were lots more, but I didn't get good pictures of all of them. You get the general idea anyway. It was lots of fun and I'm really glad we were able to go see the balloons twice this year.

We had planned to stop by Dunkin Donuts afterward, but apparently every other balloon chaser in town had the same idea (the line was all the way out the door--and Dunkin Donuts is just NOT worth that kind of a wait!), so we ended up at McDonalds for breakfast. We headed back up the mountain and decided to take Brother Ammons up to the crest before going home. Here he is with the city of Albuquerque behind him. It was SOOOOOO COLD up on top! It's always windy up there and it just seems to cut right through you.
Brother Ammons got a little chilled, too. :-) When we got in the van he grabbed his coffee cup and held it up to his ear, cupping his hand around it to try to warm his ear up! Ha! I'd never seen that particular approach to warming up and he said he'd never tried it before today. ;-)

And that's about it. Not a whole lot of new news. Just a great revival and a whole lot of balloons!

PRAISE THE LORD!!!

What great news I have!!! The short, short version is: WE HAVE A PLACE TO WORSHIP!!! Wa-Hoo! The not so short version is...

We've been worshipping in homes or renting a small room at a motel for the past year+ since the CoGoP sued us for the church building. The ladies here just didn't feel like fighting it out in court, so we walked away. We've been feeling increasingly desperate to find a place that we could call ours, whether renting or buying, but things are sooooo expensive here and it seemed like the doors just weren't opening for us. About a week and a half ago our members started talking and discussing how urgently we were feeling the need to have a PLACE to invite people instead of just worshipping in homes. We started praying real hard again and James and the Clarksons starting looking high and low for possible locations. They checked into several places, but most wanted $900 or more per month (LOTS more sometimes) for a little space.

On Monday Brother Chris went to look at a little office space that was advertized at $550. The meeting room was a little smaller than we would have liked, but it would work. It's nice and has fresh paint, has a nice little room for Sunday School in the back, and we would be the only people there on Sundays and in the evenings as all of the other suites are rented by daytime businesses. After lots more prayer and discussion with the members here, Brother Chris called yesterday and offered them $400 per month and we all just prayed that God's will would be done. And they accepted!!! Wa-Hoo!!! AND...

We couldn't move in and start using the place until we had insurance, but God worked enough miracles that we were able to find insurance and move in TODAY...

In time for our first night of Revival!!! Is that great, or what?! God's timing is sooooo perfect!!! Brother Chris signed the rental agreement this morning, spent some time working through all of the insurance kinks, then rented a U-Haul and headed up the mountain to the storage facility that contained the chairs, piano and pulpit that the church had invested in over the past several months in anticipation of getting our own place. Our family met the Clarkson clan there and we got everything loaded up, drove to town, MOVED IN (wa-hoo!!!!!), then we all zoomed back to our houses and got ready for church, sped back and made it just a few minutes early. :-)

And God TRULY BLESSED our first service in the new building. Such a wonderful spirit of worship and thankfulness for what God has done for us--and how quickly all of this happened once it was the right time. :-) We really felt the Lord in our prayers and singing and then he really used Brother Ammons to minister to us. Brother Ammons felt led to anoint the pulpit that the word of God would be preached from, the floor that people would kneel on and receive salvation on, the door that souls would walk through, etc. God really blessed and we just feel so excited about what God is going to do in The Church of God right here. He is moving and preparing us for something great. We don't have quite as much room to grow as we'd like to have in this building, but we will find a way to pack 'em in when the Lord brings 'em. ;-) And we are only in a 6 month lease, so who knows what the Lord may have for our future!

So that's our great big news from around here. I'M SO EXCITED!!! So thrilled to finally have a place and so sure that this is God's perfect timing--and so touched by how He instantly flooded into our new place tonight and anointed our very first service. God is so good!!!

That's the good news. The bad news is...

I've lost my cell phone. Maybe for real. It's been two days now and I can't find it ANYWHERE. I have been so much better about things like that (being married to a Choleric necessitates improving, or certain death will come--either physically or maritally! Ha!), but I'm really beginning to wonder if I'll ever find it. I've looked in all of the usual places several times and all of the unusual places I can think of, too. I've spent HOURS searching and re-searching high and low, on my knees, under tables and beds and dressers, in the gravel out where we park the van, drawers, bags, shelves--you name it. James was none to pleased about it, but still handled it much better than he would have a few years ago. Within 20 minutes or so he reached a cold, stiff hand over and patted mine, then said through gritted teeth, "It'll be okay." I had to laugh. I told him that I truly appreciated his empty words, knowing that he didn't really mean them (I KNOW what was really going on in his mind, but he was kind enough to not verbalize it), but he loved me enough to TRY to mean them. Or even if he wasn't trying to mean them, he SAID them because he loves me and is trying to be kind and patient and understanding and all of the things a good husband should be. That makes it almost worth losing the phone for! What a great guy to put forth such effort when it goes completely against one's nature. That must be what true love is for a Choleric. And I appreciate it soooooo much more than he knows!

I'm still looking for my phone, but hope is beginning to fade...

Umm... what else? Been a busy week around here, thus my failure to blog. I've been spending a lot more time with the kids' school now that Joe is into his new books. He requires more attention than I wish he did. Katie is doing well with her school and hasn't been cheating anymore, so that's good. ;-) OH!!!

I know!!! VERY EXCITING NEWS AROUND HERE!!! I knew there was something else! SAM IS READING!!! I think I've written that before. But he's doing it again!!! Ha! We've had moments where he's been able to sound out a word here and there, but we always seem to run into a wall. For the past few months, the only "school" I've had him do is letter stuff. He copies the alphabet over and over again and I have him arrange the letters on the fridge in the right order. My only goal was for him to become completely familiar with EVERY letter AND with the sounds they made. He's not totally there yet, but he's getting close.

So yesterday (or the day before?) once I got Katie and Joe settled in with their school, I grabbed the Hooked on Phonics workbook (we found the boxed set for $.75 at a yard sale a few years ago) and sat down with Sam. I was surprised to find that he actually knew nearly all of the lower case letters and then amazed to discover that suddenly he seems to know what sound almost ALL of the letters make! Wa-Hoo! Before we've just worked with the 5 or 6 that he was most comfortable with. We went through all of the letters and sounds, then the first 10 words (bat, cat, fat, hat...) and he was able--with some work--to read them. Then he used those words to read his very first comic strip on the next page. Something about THAT made the difference. For the first time he read something that made SENSE and I think for the first time HE really felt like he was reading. He was sooooo excited! We worked on things again today and although it's not something that comes easily to him, now that he feels like he's actually starting to read (he never really believed it before, even if he could sound out a word) he is showing some actual interest in it. He keeps walking around with the little books that came with the set and trying to read them. He climbed up in James' lap yesterday to show Dad that he can read! How exciting is that?!?!? It's just sooooo cool. And although it's exhausting to try to teach the kid to read, it's so rewarding. I've never taught a kid to read before (Katie and Joe just READ, I didn't teach them--they just DID it) and it's pretty fulfilling for me, too! Ha! I feel like if we can be consistent in working on it that maybe this is the real deal. Maybe he'll actually be able to READ for himself in the next few weeks or months! Wa-Hoo!!!!

Lots of good news. The other really great thing this week is that we went to the Balloon Fiesta on Sunday and actually saw some balloons!!! Last year we waited until the last day, drug the kids out of bed at 6:00, drove all the way into town and spent an hour or two looking in vain for balloons, then finally turned the radio on and discovered that it had been cancelled that day! Ha! So this year was much, much better. :-) I took lots of pictures and lost my cell phone (that's the last time I remember having it, not that it has anything to do with the pictures I took or what I'm talking about at the moment, it just popped into my head), but I'm too tired to post them. I'll get some up here one of these days though. If for nothing else, to show Sister Tammy W. what she COULD be seeing right now instead of a grungy basement remodel job. ;-)

As I mentioned earlier, we are in Revival this week. Brother Ammons flew in last night and will be here through Sunday. He's staying with us since the Clarksons aren't set up very well for lots of company and Sister Clarkson will be coming to stay with them, too. (Shhhhhh! Don't tell the Clarkson kids--they don't know that Grands is supposed to be coming tomorrow or the next day!) It means I get company, so I'm glad they don't have a guest room. :-) Is that selfish? Probably. Nah, not really 'cuz Sister Shanda's not a big company person like I am, so God probably arranged things like this so it would make both of us happy! Ha!

Anyway, we look forward to the next two nights of Revival with Brother Ammons. He'll preach here again Sunday morning, then we'll drive him down to Hatch where the Revival will start that night. He'll stay there for a few days, then be the guest speaker at our Minister's Retreat next weekend before preaching his final Revival in Andrews, Texas. Busy guy! We're so glad to have him.

Wa-a-a-a-a-ay too long of a post, especially with no pictures. I just had to write and publicly testify to what the Lord has done in providing a place for our local church. Then one thing led to another and we have a long, drawn-out post. But I'm done now. I'll try to post some pictures next time. Brother Ammons is wanting to go see the balloons with us, so we'll do that on Saturday morning, probably. I'll try to get some more pictures then. But between now and then, if anybody finds a pink cell phone... :-S