MP3 Conference Audio

Challenging and encouraging mp3 audio:

Desiring God National Conference 2007 on Perseverance.
Speakers include: John Piper, John MacArthur, Jerry Bridges and Randy Alcorn. I found these messages to be a very helpful in my daily struggle to fight the good fight till the end!

"God, Psychology, and the Christian Care of the Soul"
by David Powilson (3 parts) from the Bethlehem Conference for Pastors 2001. Among other things, Dr. Powilson challenges the church to take back the care of souls from the world, and encourages Christians (especially those in some sort of pastoral ministry) to engage in purposeful and significant conversation with others. For more on David Powilson and his work read this.

New Attitude 2007 Conference on Discernment.
Speakers include: Joshua Harris, Mark Dever, Al Mohler, C.J. Mahaney, Eric Simmons, and John Piper. I found C.J. Mahaney on "Discern Your Heart" and Eric Simmons on "Discern the Greymatters" to be especially insightful and helpful.

They are all free - download, listen, and grow!

Mrs. VanNoort

This morning we heard that dear Mrs. Van Noort's earthly pilgrimage ended early this morning, after a painful battle with cancer.
Praise God for His promise that our spirits return to Him
at death -- He brings believers to their eternal home!
"...And thus we shall always be with the Lord.
Therefore comfort one another with these words." 1 Thess. 4:17, 18.
We can rejoice even in these times of deep
sorrow, as Rachel beautifully describes.
This picture of Allison & her "adopted Oma" was taken one year ago.


For man goes to his eternal home,
And the mourners go about the streets.
Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed,
Or the golden bowl is broken,
Or the pitcher shattered at the fountain,
Or the wheel broken at the well.
Then the dust will return to the earth as it was,
And the spirit will return to God who gave it.
Ecclesiastes 12: 6-7

Grace Manor

On Friday afternoon, some of the homeschooled families from our church went to Grace Manor at H.C.H. to sing some Christmas hymns with the people there. The kids also sang the songs they had learned for the Christmas program, & recited Luke 2: 8-14 again together.
We were greatly blessed by our time there,
and thankful for this opportunity!


"...Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy
which will be to all people.
For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior,
who is Christ the Lord.
And this will be the sign to you:
You will find a Baby wrapped in swaddling cloths,
lying in a manger.”


And suddenly there was with the angel
a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:
“Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”


Beppe came too, & Jaden enjoyed sitting in her walker. :)




Thanks again for teaching them, Elsa!

Christmas Program!

Saturday afternoon was our church Christmas program,
followed by a delicious potluck dinner.
Thanks to everyone who helped make it such a special time!
(especially Wilf & Sharon and Bruce & Elsa!)

Zi Tynn playing the harp

These kids sang wholeheartedly!!
...unlike the Sunday School class. :) But they were so cute, & stole the show! They were just so fascinated with those flashlights...
This little light of mine,
I'm gonna let it shine...
Jesus wants me for a sunbeam
To shine for Him each day;
In every way try to please Him,
At home, at school, at play.

Mom says that they do sing great with her
every Sunday morning, though!
Christmas treats!
Christ is born, O sing Hallelujah;
Hope has come to the world tonight.
Word of God, dwelling among us,
Born to a dark world to give us light.
Glory to God,
All glory in the highest!




Plenty for all!
...with table decorations made by the young ladies of the church,
last Thursday evening.Here are some of them...





As you can see, the kids from the catechism choir were also quite excited about their bags of treats, put together with such care!

Graduation...

...from sitting with this pillow support:
...to sitting all by herself since last Tuesday, very steady at last!
Now Bethany can play with the kids much more easily,
& they all love it! Our baby's growing up...

More Visitors

This squirrel (& others) visit our apple tree daily,
and our rabbit gets his share as well --
so that few of these tasty but wormy apples go to waste!
Breakfast upside-down!?! Some of my kids sit in rather silly ways at our table (see Daniel below, who is watching the squirrel), but I haven't seen any of them try this yet!

Woodpecker

For science this year, we are studying birds,
using an amazing book called Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day.
So we've been keeping an eye out for visitors to our backyard,
like bluejays... we discovered they love corn. On Tuesday,
we enjoyed watching this woodpecker for about 15 minutes,
as he lunched in our cherry tree.Dr. Gary Parker explains some fascinating things
about woodpeckers in one of his articles:

The woodpecker is a marvel of interdependent parts or “compound traits”—traits that depend on one another for any to have functional value. When a woodpecker slams its head into a tree, the deceleration experienced is many times gravity. The nerve and muscle coordination must produce a dead-on hit; a slip to one side or the other could virtually wrench the cover off the brain! The eyelids snap shut when the beak strikes its target. Some scientists say that’s to keep wood chips out of the eyes; others say it’s to keep the eyeballs from popping out of their sockets! Both may be right!

For such drilling, a woodpecker obviously needs a tough bill, heavy-duty skull, and shock-absorbing tissue between the two. But if the woodpecker were put together by time and chance, without any planning ahead, which part came first? Suppose, just by chance, a baby bird is born with a tough bill. It decides to try it out. WHACK! It throws its head into a tree. The bill is just fine, but it squishes in the front of its face. One dead bird, end of evolutionary story!

But maybe I got it backwards. Maybe, just by chance, a baby bird was born with a heavy-duty skull. WHACK! It throws its head into a tree. This time its skull is okay, but its bill folds up like an accordion. There’s no evolutionary future in that either!

In fact, neither the tough bill nor the heavy-duty skull would have any functional survival value until both occurred together—along with the shock-absorbing tissue, nerve and muscle coordination, etc.! That’s no problem if the woodpecker were put together by plan, purpose, and a special act of creation. We expect drilling tools created by people to have interdependent parts that must all be completely assembled before the machine works. That’s just good sense, and good science. We would surely expect no less from the perfect devices created by God!

And there’s more. Since death entered the world, some woodpeckers are doing more than just drilling holes to store acorns. They’re looking for bark beetles. The beetles hear all this pounding, of course, so they just crawl further down their tunnels. To reach the beetles, the woodpecker needs more than just drilling tools; it needs a long, sticky tongue.

But if a bird gets a long, sticky tongue just by chance, what’s it going to do with it? Dangling out of the bill, the tongue gets bit or even stepped on. As the bird is flying over a twig, the tongue could wrap around the twig and hang the hapless “pre-woodpecker.” The answer for the woodpecker is to slip its tongue into a muscular sheath that wraps around the skull under the scalp and inserts into the right nostril! That makes good sense (and good science) if you’re planning ahead, but poses real problems if your faith is in time and chance, trial and error. (You don’t get another trial if the error is fatal!)

And today, the kids enjoyed the first real snowfall!

Sister & Brother

Check out this inspiring site:
VisionaryDaughters.com, "the website of Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin, authors of the book So Much More: The Remarkable Influence of Visionary Daughters on the Kingdom of God."

And while you're there, make sure you read the excellent article they posted, written by their "...friend Jamie Billings, about the beautiful testimony of her relationship with her brother. From the beginning, we were inspired by the unusually close relationship she had with her brother, Michael, to cherish and appreciate our own brothers more. Jamie just lost her only brother in a tragic car ."

Saturday

Bethany's 6 months old!
We thank God so much for our happy, easy baby!

Examining footprints at a conservation area nearby...


The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.
Isaiah 40:8