Thanksgiving At Our House

‘Tis the season, y’all!  The season to be thankful for our blessings.  And we do have so many blessings to be thankful for.  When I reflect upon the past year, I am reminded once again how things could have been so different for my family right now. 

Beginning at this time last year, we were tremendously blessed and totally immersed in chaos and desperation at the same time. 

On November 14, our precious grandbaby, Adelaide, was born.  Such joy was ours as we witnessed the beginning of this new life.  Births in this family are always suspenseful and exciting, because the parents choose not to reveal the gender or the name of the child until he/she comes into the world.  It was fun three years ago on Christmas Eve when our first grandchild was born and we discovered he was a boy and his name was Isaac Sage.  Perfect! 

This time, it was a girl.  Perfect again!  (Just what I wanted, y’all. No one else would say that but me.  lol)  She was beautiful and healthy.  She looked just like her mommy.   Everything went well; they got out of the hospital and mom was recuperating at home.  After a few days, it became apparent that something was wrong with mom.  She went to the doctor, who immediately sent her to the hospital where she stayed for two weeks, literally fighting for her life. 

How could something so wonderful turn into such a nightmare?  Things went from bad to worse to horrible in just a few hours.  By the second night, she was in ICU and we were holding a special prayer meeting begging God to spare her life.  The outpouring of love and support from our friends was truly amazing.  People everywhere were praying for her and for us.  God is good, all the time, and He did answer prayer and she began the slow road to recovery the next day.

In the meantime, Gralyn and I were at their house helping to care for Addy.  She was so precious (and still is).  Such a good baby.  At first we were trying to feed her with a syringe so that she could continue breastfeeding when mom got out of the hospital.  When it became evident that it would be a longer hospital stay than we expected, we switched to a bottle.  Either way, she cooperated like a little champ and didn’t skip a beat. 

It’s been a long time since I was that involved in baby-care.  It was sweet, although tiring.  However, with the three of us taking shifts, we got the job done.  Adam would take the first night shift up until about midnight then bring her to my room and I would take the wee hours of the morning feeding.  When she woke up in the early morning, Gralyn would take her and let me sleep awhile longer.  That worked pretty well.

Although we were all weary after a few days, it was hardest on our son.  He was spending as much time as he could at the hospital with his wife as well as making sure that his two children were cared for and taking care of his business at the same time.  Only God could have given him the strength to do all that he did with so little sleep.

Thanksgiving Day was in the middle of all this turmoil.  Unfortunately, on Thanksgiving Eve I had to come home because I was sick.  It had started with chills the day before and when I also got a fever and vomiting, I knew I had to leave even though I really tried to stay.  We could not risk the babies getting sick.  It turned out to be strep throat.  On Thanksgiving Day I was sicker than I have ever been, I believe.  I was in bed all day not knowing much about what was going on.  No Thanksgiving turkey for us this year!  With our daughter-in-law in the hospital, me sick in bed, two kids to care for, and my husband and son trying to take care of all of us, we didn’t think much about Thanksgiving turkey.  We were just thankful for all of us to still be alivc!

I stayed home for three days before I could go back to help out with the children.  We finally had some turkey and dressing provided by a good friend of ours - and it was good! 

Three weeks later we were able to see some normalcy returning to our lives.  Jane had a long recovery period even after the hospital stay.  Praise the Lord, she pulled through the crisis and is still alive and well to see her children grow up. 

We have so much to be thankful for this year as we look back and realize that last year could have turned out differently.  I shudder to think what could have happened and how our lives could be so different today.  I praise the Lord that He saw fit to allow our precious loved one to pull through and stay with us. 

Last week we celebrated the first birthday of our precious granddaughter with our entire family present, including our daughter and son-in-law who just moved here from Washington State - another blessing!  God has been so good to us this past year in so many ways. 

“Lord, help us not to take a single day for granted but to love and care for those around us while we have the opportunity.  We know that none of us are guaranteed another day on this earth, but the days of our lives are in your hands.  Help us to be thankful for each day that you allow us to live and to take full advantage of the time we have to serve you.  Amen.”

Mission Trip to Nicaragua

(To read the entire article, be sure to click "Read More" at the end.)

We just returned from a mission trip to Corinto, Nicaragua - an adventure that I have looked forward to for a long time.  It was one of my post-retirement goals that I thought I would accomplish before now.  It was such a joy to be able to finally participate in such an inspirational event.  You can see all my photos documenting the trip on my Facebook page.

Gralyn and I were on a team consisting mainly of members from Milton First Assembly of God, Billory Baptist Church and Wallace Baptist Church, led by Cheyenne Bodie who is a missionary with International Gospel Outreach  and leads Light and Life Missions.  

It was a God-orchestrated team, each one fulfilling a specific ministry.  Different ones participated in construction, home visitation and prayer, Pastor's conference and Pastors' wives conference as well as regular church services at Luz y Vida Church (Light and Life Church). 

The barrels are the foundation columns for the future new roof.

The construction consisted of pouring concrete for foundation columns for a new roof structure that will be erected on the next trip to Corinto.

This is a view of the rear of the building.  The new structure will extend
out to the last blue barrels on the right side of the photo.

While there, our team experienced two funerals, five weddings and ten people baptized in the Pacific Ocean.  We visited many local homes to pray for the sick.  I personally participated in two people giving their hearts to the Lord and prayed over many more. 


View of the beach from the conference room.

One of the main activities of this trip was a Pastors and Wives Conference. Men on our team ministered to the pastors and myself, Molly Maxwell and Debra Gilmore spoke to the ladies. The conference was awesome! We had around 25 ladies and it was a beautiful setting in an open-air second floor building. We had a view of the volcanoes on one side and the Pacific Ocean beach on the other side. The ladies were so receptive. My topics were "A Woman and Her Identify" and "A Woman and Her Struggles." You can hear a recording of them here if you like. At the end of the conference each pastor was given a bicycle and a large bag of staple food. You should have seen the joy on their faces. They were obviously blessed.


Volcano view from the conference room.




The ladies praying for us Americans.

At the women's conferences, Molly Maxwell and I prayed for each individual lady and especially Molly was greatly used in the gifts of the spirit to give them words from the Lord. But the biggest blessing of all was when they prayed for us Americans. Oh, the spirit of the Lord was there, you could tell that they are praying women.






Gralyn putting together the bicycles.

Some of the pastors with their bicycles and pink bag of food
given to them at the end of the conference by Light and Life Missions

The funniest thing that happened to me there was when I was beginning the second session I said something like "In this session we are going to talk about sex." My interpreter (a young single lady) looked at me and said, "Are you sure?" I cracked up. Evidently she had not read the notes! But, yes, we did talk about sex and other types of intimacy. The topics were chosen by the Luz y Vida pastor's wife and her daughter (Arellys Bodie). 

On Monday, the lady pastor of Rivers of Living Water Church came by the mission house and asked if we could come to her church to have a Women's Conference.  On Tuesday afternoon at 2:00 we went to Rios de Aqua Vida and 21 women were there for the conference.  It's amazing how they get the word out so quickly about events.  We had a great time with them. 

Serving queque to the newly married couples.

Another funny thing that happened was on Sunday night after we had had a full church service and 5 weddings, we went back to the mission house with the married couples and I was helping to serve them cake.  After everyone was served I asked if anyone wanted "mas caca."  I didn't know that I had said it wrong until I heard Cheyenne laughingly say "She just said 'caca'!  I found out later that there is a lot of difference between the meaning of  "caca" (poop) and "queque" (cake).  That'll teach me to try to speak Spanish! 




Helping to baptize the oldest baptism candidate.

It was very humbling to be asked to minister to the people in Corinto.  It was indeed a pleasure to get to know them.  One lady we prayed with in her home was hooked up to an IV for fluid because she was very weak due to a bad heart.  On Sunday, she walked out into the Pacific Ocean to be baptized.  She refused to sit on the beach and let us bring the water to her.  She came up out of that water with such a smile on her face! 



One of the quilts we made was given to this beautiful baby.

One of houses, beachfront property.