~Playing myself out of a job. =)~

I LOVE playing the piano!!! And I love playing the piano at church. But since I cannot always be here in Colombia I figured it would be good experience if Kimberly and Nataly (Bro. Jimmy's oldest daughter) start playing a hymn in church every Thursday. (Our prayer meeting night.)

So, for 3 weeks now they have been playing a new hymn every week, usually during Congregational. The Lord is helping them. On the 4th Thursday (which is tomorrow night), I have asked them to play all 3 songs they have learned.

If you think of it, please pray for them. I want them both to be able to help in God's kingdom and use their talents for HIM! Thank You!

~YUMMY butter cookie recipe~

Thank you for all of your nice comments and prayers! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to mislead you into thinking that we were getting a car. Like I mentioned in my post...We feel it is BEST for us NOT to have a car here. (We have lots of good reasons, but I won't go into them.)
So, I was just meaning to please pray that God will continue to give us the GRACE we need to do lots of walking and use public transportation.
(But walking is good for I'm the same weight I was before we got married...5 kids later. =)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
My sister made these cookies at Christmas and they are DELICIOUS! They melt in your mouth. They may not be the prettiest cookies that you have ever seen, but just try them and see if you don't agree with me. They use 3 ingredients that we all keep on hands. And did I mention...EASY?
(Laura gave me permission to post the recipe...and said that years ago she got it from some magazine like "Quick Cooking" or "Taste of Home". =)
Here it is!

Brown Sugar Shortbread (Laura's butter cookies)

1 cup butter only, softened
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2-1/4 cups all purpose flour

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Stir in the flour. Turn onto a lightly floured surface. Pat / roll into a 1/3in.-thick rectangle measuring 11 in.x 8in. Cut into 2 in.x 1in. strips. Place 1 in. apart on ungreased baking sheets. Prick with fork. Bake at 300 degrees for 25 min. or until bottom begins to brown. cool for 5 min.; remove to a wire rack to coll completely. Yield: 3-1/2 dozen
Warning: They are ADDICTING!! =D
~Your cookies may turn out prettier...for I have nearly 10,000 feet elevation to deal with here in Bogota'. (Which does strange things to cookies and cakes!!) I wasn't stressing about making them pretty, for I didn't know if the recipe would even work here, but I'm GLAD it did! YUM! YUM! ~
~ E-N-J-O-Y!!!!!~

~Have you hugged your car today?~

This post isn't to make you feel sorry for us...just rather to help you know how to pray for us! =) Our lives would be sooooo much easier if we had a car!!!!!!!!! But, we feel since most people use public transportation here, it's best for us to do so too. If you are like us (when we had our own car back in 2004) our van was our 2nd HOME! It's where you keep extra diapers, wipes, clothes for the kids, stroller, etc. When it looks like it will rain, you just get into your own car and go shopping, instead of walking a mile or so hauling your groceries in a cart, and hoping and praying that you make it home before it rains. (But you don't always make it! =) And when it IS raining you don't have to stand on a street corner gettig SOAKED (all 7 of you) PRAYING that a kind-hearted taxi driver will stop and pick y'all up. AND...If you forget anything in your car...you just walk out to the garage and get it! But, that isn't so easy when you accidently forget something in a taxi...one of the THOUSANDS of yellow taxis in the huge city of Bogota'!!!
Last week was my first time to take the trip from the church back to our new home, and I was by myself. We had quite the trip trying to tell the taxi driver how to get to our home. I was a little stressed because I had our only set of keys, and I knew that Phillip and our company was going to arrive before us, because everything I tried to tell the taxi driver, he would go a different way. We finally arrived, and greeted Phillip and our company, collected our things, paid the taxi driver and left to take our company to our home for dinner. It wasn't until MANY HOURS LATER that Kimberly realized that she had left her violin in the back window of the taxi!!!!! UGH! We prayed HARD that the driver would be honest and bring her violin back to the office of our houses, but he never did. Thank the Lord, God was already working in her behalf. I told her violin teacher about it, and when she came to teach Kimberly this past Friday, she brought a violin. She said that it is a used violin, but was never (or hardly ever) played. The rosin hadn't even been used. She said that it just arrived at a store where she shops THIS WEEK! It is a better sounding instrument than Kimberly had and is easier to play! We got it for a great deal! Thank the Lord!
(The Monday that Elijah got sooo sick, my cellphone must have fallen out of my coat pocket in a taxi, and I never got it back!) (Trust me, we always try to LOOK around and make sure we haven't forgotten anything...but it's EASY to miss something!)
~Here's Kimberly trying out the new violin, and Elijah with his "Violin and bow" (his toy guitar and a yard stick! =) ~
~Here's a funny picture that I took of Mary. I was trying to get a picture of her sporting her cute boots that Sis. Fulton got her, and her sweet outfit that the Jowers got her.~
~Aren't these boots so cute?~
~Our company and us.~
~My sweetheart helping lift my load by washing some dishes, with Elijah helping. =) He doesn't wash dishes too often, so I had to snap a picture. =) (He helps in other ways, but dishes aren't his favorite thing to do!)~
~Elijah wants to be "Just Like His Daddy!" He took a drink of his juice and said, "Look at my beard." (mustache =)
~My Phillip left to visit our Cartagena church (24 hours away) and Medellin church (11 or 12 hours away) last week. With alllll he had to do before he left one day he got me some pretty red roses. When they started dipping their little heads, I took off the rose petals and made this little arrangement!~

~When Elijah eats "Skyline chili"...he E-A-T-S Skyline chili! (It was even in his hair!) The whole house needs a bath when he gets done! =)~
~I'm trying to get caught up in my diary. (For some reason, I don't have a lot of time to just sit around sipping tea and writing....But I'm loving my life anyways! =)
I was writing furiously and Mary was starting to get fussy. So, I called Sarah and asked her to entertain Mary for a little while. She promptly propped her up and read her a story. It was cute! =D~
Please pray for Phillip while he is gone ministering to our churches and pastors. He plans on coming home next Thursday, Lord willing. We can't wait to have him home!

~Our Open House in our USA home...part 1~

Wouldn't you know that the day our Open house was planned it snowed several inches. I didn't know if anyone was going to get to come or not...but we were HAPPY that there were 46 of us that evening! =)
Remember, we still have LOTS of work to do in our home...but we wanted to at least show our progress.
~Since I was SWAMPED with trying to get settled in our home, and decorating some...several dear friends of mine helped provide the food that we served at our open house. We served Pepperment punch, sweetened iced tea, and coffee, 3 kinds of soups, hard breads, veggies and dip, and lots of yummy desserts. We had a wonderful evening!!~
~One day in November our b-i-l Daryl happend upon 3 of these antique ice boxes along the side of a road. He called Phillip and had him come and pick one up, and let us have one, and their family got one too. We were thrilled! We love old things!! On the back is a sticker from the cabinet shop where it was made with the date of 1913...the same year our house was built!
I love this cute red Christmas sign that asks, "Is it too late to be good?" =)
(Excuse the plastic cup on top of the ice box! =)
~Our good friend Sherri Patton gave us this adorable antique gas stove! We love it! This stove was still in use when Sherri moved into her neat old house in Monroe, Ohio.
We served our hard bread in a basket on the opened stove door.~
~Fun Christmasy red and white decorations on top of the antique gas stove.~
~Several dear young people came to our rescue the night of our open house! They came early and helped in every way possible! (Most of these pics I'm posting were taken by the Wegener young people or with my camera AFTER our open house! I was tooo busy during our open house to have my camera out so we don't have pics of Corrie, Sarah W., and Natasha!) One of the jobs that Will did was to make a slide show on our computer so people could see "before and after" pics of our house! He also took lots of pics that evening. Thanks tons, Will!~
~Brittany will shoot me, for this picture makes it look like she just stood around . But she, her sister Natasha and her Mother were a HUGE help to me both before and during our open house. That evening they helped me serve the food while I got to give tours of my house. THANKS Bunches!!~
~Kimberly and Rebekah helped in every way possible. So did Corrie and Sarah, but like I said, we failed to get their pictures. =(
(Our Sarah, and Noah, and their cousins Bryan and Darla were a huge help too!)~
~Katrina also was a big help!~

~We were so happy that several of our friends "slip slided" their way to our Open house. =)~



~This was our "Guest Book"! I had wanted to find a real guest book, but with the snow coming and allllllll I had to do, I didn't make it happen! But, it will work out just fine...for I will just scrapbook this page! ~
~A fun picture of the lights on our Christmas tree!~
~We made Mary's nursery in what will become our master bathroom. It turned out soooo cute! It was one of my favorite rooms of our house! I love the letters that spell "Mary" tied to her bed!
(When some of these pictures were taken, I didn't realize that there were blankets covering up the neat antique stroller by her baby bed.)~
~My sweet Moma made her pink bed ruffle and pretty pink curtain.
This is our miracle window! It was broken out when we got the house. It was a "strange size" and to order a special order window would have cost A LOT of money that we didn't have. We didn't know if we would get to replace the window while we were in the USA this time or not. But, one day Phillip was in a store and found this special order window for a GREAT price. He looked up the measurements for our window and JUST LIKE GOD... it was a PERFECT FIT!~

~When we had this picture taken of our 4 kids feet in 2008, JCPennys asked permission to print one off and hang it on their walls. I gave them permission, and then a year or so later, I got to buy it. We never dreamed that we'd have another baby. So, when Jesus sent us precious little Mary... we took a picture of her feet in her Daddy's hands to hang with our kids' feet picture.
(I left the pic in color because Phillip loved her "pink new-born feet". =) ~

~I love her initial "M" at the top of this picture.~

~I got tears in my eyes when I first saw this adorable picture frame that says,
"My Prince did come...his name is Daddy".

~This picture turned out really light...but at least you can see the stroller in this picture.~

~Will took this picture of our family on our stairs in our home.~
Part 2 of our Open house pics coming up!

~"I wish our lives were more adventurous!"

Guess what? Today I was laying in our bed for a Sunday afternoon rest, and I looked up on our ceiling...and what do you think I saw? A wet spot on our ceiling right above our bed! =) I then saw some drips of water driping onto our bed. Talk about having "deja vu". =) It had just POURED the rain, and somehow had leaked in. Thankfully it was just a little bit. Unlike our last owner, our new owner told us to let him know if we saw any leaks that he wants to get them fixed right away, so as not to ruin his house. (Here nearly all houses are made out of concrete. Sometimes concrete can be hard to seal, thus the leaking roofs.) We plan to tell our landlord about it soon.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
One day...
after dividing our earthly possessions 6 ways (To sell or give away, to store in AZ, to store with my parents, to take on deputation, to take to Costa Rica, and to take to Colombia) then traveling on deputation for 8 months with 3 small children, spending a year studying Spanish in Costa Rica, then moving to Colombia (facing lots of danger because our churches were in the scary areas!!) and living with a Colombian lady for 2 months (during which our children got the chicken pox, had lice and were COVERED with flea bites) our Kimberly who was 6 years old said the following to me.
"Mommy, I wish our lives were MORE ADVENTUROUS like some people's!"
I was agast and asked, "Kimberly, WHO has a more adventurous life than we do?"
To which she replied, "Winnie the Pooh!" =D
I smiled and sighed and told her that I thought that if our life got any more adventurous, that I would just go on to Heaven. HA!

~PRAYER CHANGES THINGS!~

Hello! And Thank you for all your sweet comments about Mary Grace's 5 month pictures! =)
We've hesitated to request prayer again...for we don't want to be asking prayer unless it's necessary, and we know that each of you have trials in your lives too! However, we are still fighting problems with mold. Last Monday Elijah had another attack similiar to the first one, but not as severe. Our doctor has him back on antibiotics, steriods to strengthen his lungs, and breathing treatments. He hasn't been able to go out of our house for several days, due to the cold rainy weather we are having! His little body cannot live on these strong medicines forever. Little Mary is so stuffed up she can hardly breathe. The rest of us have cold like symtoms that don't want to leave and we are sooooo tired! (One of the known symptoms of mold!) We are asking for prayer for only God can help us de-mold our house. We have 2 different "de-molding machines" running in our house. We have sorted and THROWN AWAY TONS of our nice things, we are spraying a mold-killer everywhere to try to kill mold spores growing on our wooden furniture, etc. We have had to purchase a new vaccuum so we can keep our carpet clean! We are trying to take lots of vitamins to build up our immune system. Phillip lacks unpacking 8 or 9 boxes of His treasured books that he needs to study for sermons and teaching, for he knows that they have mold on them. He doesn't want to add more mold to the air in our home! God knows that we are TRYING hard to get rid of mold everywhere we can. Could you please help us PRAY that God will help us conquer the mold problem, and help our bodies heal! Thank you for your prayers...we DO NOT take them for granted! We appreciate you standing behind us!
~Luke 1:37 For with God NOTHING shall be impossible!~

~Our Mary's 5 month pictures~

~I haven't been able to post the pics from our USA open house yet, but wanted to at least post this cute pic that Will took of our baby Mary in our kitchen. This was Jan. 11th, and she was 4 months. Will's family got her this adorable outfit!~
~Jesus did it again! He helped us take some nice pictures of our baby...without JCPenny's help. =) Mary has her Daddy's color hair, but is a mixture of her Aunt Laura and her Mommy when we were babies!~




~Our silly baby was ASLEEP and was supposed to STAY THAT WAY for these pictures...but woke up and sucked on her finger and cooed and laughed for us. =)~