Happy Thanksgiving

For the first time in I think, forever, we will be by ourselves for Thanksgiving. It seems kind of wierd but I am going to do my best to make it a special day. It would be easy to treat it just like any other day, but I want it to be a memorable day for the kids.

So we cleaned house today, just as if we were having family over, and I went to the library and checked out a couple of movies. We also got Wall-E from Netflix so we will watch that tomorrow night. And of course The Sound of Music. Probably be just me and Becca for that one:)

The table is set and the turkey and ham are ready to go in the oven tomorrow. The kids got to help plan the menu and the only thing we don't have figured out is dessert! We have a whole pumpkin pie left from the church dinner on Sunday but none of us are real crazy about pumpkin pie. I figure I have flour, sugar and cocoa, and today I bought a jar of caramel just in case I need it, so I will come up with something.

If you get a moment check out Jeanette Lynton's blog here. She is the founder of Close to My Heart and has been posting her "27 Things I am Thankful For", one for each day of November until Thanksgiving. It has inspired me to really sit down and think of 27 things I am thankful for. So much so that when I spoke at our Ladies Luncheon this month I shared a few of those things. Some are obvious, like faith and family. But I have also been reminded to thank God for the trying times this past year. Those times make us stronger and God has been teaching both Butch and I many things during the past year. Even though we have had a tough year, our faith in God is strong and we are keeping our eyes fixed on Him.

I challenge you to think of 27 things you are thankful for and share them with someone else. You may be an encouragement to someone and not even realize it.

Happy Thanksgiving

FFA Dinner

Well last night was our FFA fundraiser dinner. Initially we have been helping to raise money to get the FFA Chapter started. Part of this is also to get textbooks since the school district doesn't seem to think we need Ag Science and wood shop books way out here in the middle of nowhere. When the Advisor went to the school board meeting to ask for start-up money, they basically said no. The problem is that to have an Ag Science class, they have to have an FFA Chapter.

So we are on our way. We had a Prime Dinner/Dessert Auction last night. Most of the kids in the classes helped out. After it was all said and done we brought in over $2000. In addition to that, one of the teachers has found $1500 in funds from other sources. I have to admit I was a little surprised that we brought in that much money, but then we live in a community that really supports the kids. And while our school may not have a lot of things to offer, things are improving.

Praise the Lord for his provision for FFA, to give our kids a chance to gain some leadership skills and learn valuable skills for their future.

What a Blessing

It is such a blessing to have help from people in the church when things need to get done. We have reached the point where if it needs to get done but no one wants to do it, well, it will sit until we have a chance to do it or someone else gets tired of seeing the "problem".

Today we had someone show up to help Butch with the church roof. They replaced the screws along the seam that was leaking the most and they are going to sno-coat the roof. He also got the swamp cooler taken care of for winter.

We also had another couple show up that helped clean out the "storage room" aka "the room where everything gets dumped because we don't know what to do with it!" We got it cleaned out, shelves put up, and ALL the food put away for the food pantry. We even got to give some food away tonight and it was nice that I didn't have to get way down on the floor to see what is in the bottom and back of the cabinet.

We had a bunch of stuff for the thrift store so we went with the couple who helped clean out the room and they treated us to lunch as well.

We so appreciate their help in getting things done around the church. We just can't be the crae taker of the church and the congregation too. When we begin feeling the pressure of having to do everything around the church, our ministry begins to suffer.

So please say a quick prayer of thanks that people are stepping up and helping out. Pray that more people would be aware of the need to do this.

I was thinking I should check in...

but not much has been going on the past few days. We did go for a drive Tuesday. We went through Bishop, CA to Lone Pine where there is a place called Alabama Hills. A lot of old westerns were filmed here. We should have stopped at the visitor's center in Lone Pine and got better maps of where different movies were filmed, I just had a map form the internet. It was pretty cool though. I'll try to get some pic's up in a couple of days.

We then drove to Death Valley, got to the bottom at sunset, that was pretty cool, but we drove out the other side into Beatty in the dark. It was nice to get out of town although I don't think the kids were real excited about getting out of bed on their day off from school.

Other than that we haven't been doing much. Just trying to get stuff done around here. We're having a work day tomorrow, if anyone shows. We discovered some roof leaks in the church last Sunday when we had our sloppy snow/rain. It rained, then snowed for a little bit, then turned back to rain and was nice and sunny by the afternoon! Life in the desert:)

Anyway, Butch will be replacing screws in the roof tomorrow and we have a room that we need to clean out in the Annex beacause our food pantry just got a bunch of food donated and we have no place to put it. We're going to turn one of the storage rooms into the food pantry.

So, at least this week, it has been a quiet life. Trying to get lots of scrapping done while I can:)

2 New Pages for my Faithbook

I am trying to stay ahead of the gals in the Faithbook class but have already fallen behind a little bit. Oh well, they didn't get as much done as I thought at the first class. I think I might have to add a class in December so everyone can get caught up!

Anyway here are the next 2 pages.... (all products are Close to My Heart)

The theme for this one is "Gladness For Many Things" I wanted to focus on something that makes me happy. Since the beach is in my blood and I love going there so much, I thought this picture captured that. I love seeing my kids loving the beach!

This page theme is "My Life Verse" I chose Deuteronomy 30:19 - Choose Life. This verse reminds me that every day I have a choice to make. I need to choose life the minute I wake up. Choosing to live for God each day.

A Few New Ones

We went out on the kids half day last week and took some new family pic's. There was still a lot of fall color down the valley. I turned these to black and white for my Acrylic Album. Pictures of that will come soon. I know, the fall color doesn't matter if I turn the pictures to black and white:) I plan to make a couple of Fall pages and will use them in color for those!

Youth Group and other stuff!

We had 3 new ones last night for youth group. WooHoo!!! 1 comes to church but just has never come to youth group. The other two were here for the Youth Game Night on Halloween. Now we just have to keep em' coming back:)

Round Mountain Football made it to the play-off's. I don't know if it is a first for them but it is a first since we have been here. They had an awesome season. They play their first play-off game Saturday. We are hoping for later in the day so that we can go since we have the craft fair that day. Serving Taco's again. We don't have a lot of help so may be shutting down early anyway.

Today is supposed to be our day off but the kids are out of school tomorrow so we may take a day trip just to get them out of the valley. (After we vote) They haven't been anywhere other than Fallon since school started. So today will probably be a working day. We have to make a run into Tonopah to go to the bank. That'll take at least half the day. I'm trying to to do a better job of preparing for Sunday, before Saturday! So I will probably work on music today too.

I would rather spend the day scrapbooking, that's what I usually do on our day off when we don't go anywhere. I am in the middle of an acrylic album and really would like to finish it. Maybe if I get everything else done.....

Have a blessed day.

Slime Time Fun Fest & Youth Party

Slime Time Fun fest was a hit! We had over 50 kids come. A lot of the kids who came hadn't been to Power Lab so we were able to reach that many more kids with the Gospel.

The ones who did come to Power Lab asked about Professor Wilma. I was dressed as Professor Gizmo and had to explain that Wilma couldn't make it out from CA so she sent me, her cousin Gizmo. It was a lot of fun. They got to play a few games and of course we had slime. I'm am glad we didn't use this particular slime when the VBS kids slimed us. This batch came with the Slime Time materials and it literally felt like it came out of someone's nose, we tinted it green. I'll leave the rest up to your imagination:)

I, (Gizmo,) also did a couple of experiments in the Lab to share the gospel with the kids. We had some who stayed pretty much the whole time and came to Gizmo's Lab every time I did the presentation.

After Slime Time we had a youth Game Night until midnight. We had about 25 teens come, less than half of those come to youth group. Again I would say it was a success. When we can get these teens off the street and away from causing trouble, one of our goals has been met. Also being able to show them that church is a fun place to be will hopefully bring some of them to youth group. Especially as the kids get to know us more. That's the main reason we wanted to help with concessions at the games this year. Kids are starting to recognize us out in town and hopefully that will open doors for us to share Christ with them and draw them into youth group.

We are averaging 13 - 15 kids every week at youth group. I just hope that the lessons are sticking with the kids. The last few weeks I have really felt that we should stay in Romans and dig a little deeper into that book of the Bible. Last week we focused on worship and I had them look up verses on the W's (who, what, why, where, and how) of worship. I was trying to not only teach them about worship but also how to use their concordance. I don't think they even realized they were learning that!

We'll see if we have any new ones tomorrow night.

Overall it was a great night for outreach last night. Now if we can just keep up the momentum and get more adults helping at events like this... I am so thankful for the ones I did have, and the teens who helped with Slime Time were a lifesaver.

Continue to pray for us, it's been a rough year. Pray for community within the church so that we can reach out to the community beyond the walls of our church.