Ministry Update
The Lord has blessed us with meetings right now. What a blessing to be daily seeking the mind of God for His will in what to preach. Thank you for your prayers as we continue to endeavor to make full proof of our ministry.
Family Update
It is really good to be in meetings again, and we are all making the adjustment quite well. The kids are still asking each day, “Do we go to church today?” which question will hopefully subside after another few weeks in meetings. We are well into the school year, and Josiah just received his first official report card (all A’s, in case you were wondering). He still struggles with math, but we are seeing almost daily progress now, which comes as a great relief to me.
Abigail has done remarkably well this week with her potty training. It is a good thing, because I had just about given up and was looking through the Yellow Pages to see if I could hire it out and just pick her up in a few weeks when she was completely trained. We have had a few accidents, not counting the time she (and her brother) decided to fertilize the church playground in broad daylight, but on the whole things are much improved.
Esther is beginning to talk and understand more. The child really is too smart for her own good. Last time we wrote an update, she added nearly a page of her own notes while the computer was sitting within reach. Paul came back to line after line of characters that read something like this: %^*(&^%$^&*()(*&^%$#$%^&*()(*&^%#$%^&*())(*&. I guess being an evangelist’s kid isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
I am happy to announce that we now have a new washer! Hooray! Now I can start climbing Mount Neverest in the bedroom and whittle it down to the size of a smaller mountain range, comparable to, say, the Rockies. The Lord used Maranatha Baptist Church in Short Pump, VA, to supply this need, and we are truly grateful!
Recently, as some of you know, the hunting season began, and Paul is dreaming again of “the big one.” This has colored his conversation with innumerable references to wildlife of all varieties. It has also come to the attention of our very curious son. Lately, every time we take a trip in the truck, Josiah starts what I have dubbed, “the wildlife quiz.” The object of this game is to ask as many questions as possible about a particular animal before the truck stops moving. It usually begins as a harmless conversation between Josiah and Abigail. He will be enumerating the great powers and fearsome tactics of, for instance, a moose. Although he knows relatively nothing about moose, he will blather on for about five minutes before he comes to a scenario in the monologue that he cannot determine. Then the quiz begins. “Do moose eat trees? Fish? Grass? Birds? Snakes? Blah, blah, blah…Little boys? Cars? Lions? Potato chips? Moose are really strong – can they pick up a truck? What about a house – can they pick up a house? What about our trailer?” On and on it goes, until he asks something that we cannot answer or reasonably conjecture. Then Mama suggests that, instead of playing another round of the wildlife quiz, we should play quiet moose, er, mouse. Last time we played the quiz, he came up with this stumper: “Do bears eat electricity?” Now, tell me, how in the world are we supposed to answer that?
Josiah also enjoys telling Abigail all about everything. Last week, I got a real kick out of a conversation that I overheard between them in a restaurant. They were discussing a picture on the wall that was evidently a blowup of a comic book from days gone by. The frame showed a “happy ending” complete with a teary-eyed heroine being kissed by the main character. Abigail asked Josiah why the lady was crying. “Oh,” he said. “It’s just because he is biting her!” I don’t know where he comes up with this stuff!
