I would like to take a moment this morning to invite you and your children to participate in a very special event that is going on this week - something your family is just going to love to be a part of!
Many of you are familiar with our company publishing company Remembrance Press, home of the The Gift of Family Writing and The Girlhood Home Companion. This summer we began a new chapter in our lives with the founding of Hopeful Farm, a non-profit organization based in Kentucky that ministers to families impacted by special needs.
The vision for Hopeful Farm was planted in our hearts ten years ago, after the birth and death of their fourth child, Nicholas, who was born with a genetic syndrome. Now, Hopeful Farm is finally becoming a reality.
The mission of Hopeful Farm is truly unique and much needed as it seeks to provide an all-access environment in which families impacted by special needs may find time to focus on each other, build relationships, and gain refreshment and renewal in an escape from the exhausting grind of everyday life.
This is the first time Hopeful Farm has held a benefit of this magnitude, and you will not believe the resources that are being donated as a thank you for your participation. If you have been wanting some of my writing or drawing products to enrich your home school curriculum, not to mention our resources for mothers and daughters, this is something you have to see! www.hopefulfarmfoundation.org/benefit.htm
Not only that, but my publishing friends have donated some incredible resources as well, as a way to bless you for becoming involved in this very important work. Your family can have a direct impact on families with children with special needs - and in return, your own family will receive a blessing from all of the wonderful companies that have offered their products in support of Hopeful Farm.
If you would like to hear what Hopeful Farm is all about, you can access an online interview by Cindy Rushton with my daughter Claire and I at www.hopefulfarmfoundation.org/interview.html
This benefit will run for one week only until Thursday, October 30th, so take a look now...and please tell a friend or three or four about it!
We at Blogger Friend School wish to offer our deepest condolences to a former friend and participant here at Blogger Friend School, Chrissy–MamaSmurf. She not only touched everyone’s hearts with some beautiful posts, but always made it around to offer encouragement to many blogger classmates and friends despite her ailing frailness as she battled cancer.
We offer our prayers for the family during this time and we would really encourage all of her classmates to leave a comment on her blog for her family extending our love and friendship. We know that she is at peace and rejoicing from above.
Heidi is having a great contest for a $50 gift certificate for Tiny Prints Holiday Cards. I've entered and hope to win. If you go to Heidi's you might want to enter and take a chance to win also. Go check it out!
In the Nook...A few mornings ago I was helping my hubby with some of his school work at his computer and my daughter decided she needed a rest, IN MY LAP! I love it when she gets all cuddly and lovable all over me. It's so wonderful knowing that God trusted me enough to be her mom!
This rare spectacle - which curves up rather than down - was caught on camera at the weekend by an astronomer near her home in Cambridge.
The "smiling" band of brilliant colours is known as a circumzenithal arc. It occurs when sunlight bounces off ice crystals high in the atmosphere, sending the light rays back up towards the sky.
It differs from a normal rainbow where light penetrates raindrops and re-emerges on the other side heading towards earth, causing a drooping effect.
Upside down rainbows are rarely seen outside the polar regions and need a particular set of atmospheric conditions in order to occur.
Dr. Mitton, a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society who has written astronomy books for children, spotted the phenomenon near her home.
"I've never seen anything like it before - and I'm 60," she said. "The conditions have to be just right: you need the right sort of ice crystals and the sky has to be clear.
"It's quite surprising for this to occur somewhere like Cambridge, usually it is in places that are colder.
"We're not sure how big an area it was visible over, but it was certainly very impressive. It was just an amazing combination of factors that happened at the right time."
The colours in the inverted rainbow appear all the more intense because of the position of the sun, which was at its optimum point of 22º above the horizon.
Dr. Mitton's husband Simon, 62, a fellow astronomer with a degree in physics, said the curve was pointing towards the setting sun.
"The 'rainbow' is much brighter and more concentrated than a rainfall rainbow," he said.
The colours in the inverted curve run from red nearer the horizon, through yellow and green, to blue near the zenith.
A spokeswoman for the Met Office said upside down rainbows were an unusual sight in British skies.
She said: "It is convex to the sun and is formed by refraction in suitably-oriented ice crystals and may show vivid rainbow colouring, as this one does."
Memory Verse: Psalms 26:2 NIV Test me, O LORD, and try me, examine my heart and my mind.
Intro: Try it, you’ll like it! (Life Cereal)
When everyone else was afraid to try Life Cereal, they called on Mikey. Sometimes stepping out of our comfort zone is just too scary. Have you felt God gently (or maybe not so gently) nudging you to do something for someone else? You know that it needs to be done, but you keep putting it off because it is outside of your comfort zone? Well ladies, this week we are taking a step outside of our comfort zones.
Assignment: This week I want you to do something for someone else. Do you have a neighbor that needs you? Do you know an elderly person or single mom that could use you? What about the homeless? Pack even one single sack lunch and give it to someone in need. Do you know someone in blogland that is struggling right now and could use a note from you about how much you care? Pray about this. Let God put on your heart the perfect thing for you to do for another. Now, here is the kicker…I DO NOT want you to post about what you do. Whatever you choose to do is between you and God. Our rewards are in heaven, not here on earth, Mathew 6:1. I want you to post about how doing this “act” made you feel. Was stepping out of your comfort zone in this area as hard as you thought it might be? Could you see the gratefulness in their eyes? Hear it in their voice? Tell it from their typing? Do you think you might make doing things like this a more regular part of your time? If this is an area that you are already active in, tell us how you feel this has impacted your life.
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I love this assignment and I have to be honest about the person I am. I love doing things for other people and have prayed for years for God to let me find the Servant's Heart within me. I always kind of knew it was in me but the biggest thing I had to learn about being a Servant of God is being one without expectations and without desiring to have control over whatever the outcome of the gift entailed. I can say I've succeeded in doing that. I've never felt out of my comfort zone when the order comes from God and if the time ever came that I felt nervous or uncomfortable then I just wouldn't do it...and that's happened many times to me. Thank you Mrs. Kerri for this assignment, it's wonderful that you thought of doing this slogan in such a Godly and uplifting way. I appreciate that very much. It's such a blessing to feel God's presence so strongly that I'm walking blindly in faith!
My verse is: 1 Kings 8:23 - And he (Solomon) said, Lord God of Israel, there is no God like thee, in heaven above or on eath beneath who keepest covenant and mercy with they servants that walk before thee with all their heart;
I made a little change with my Friends List. It's on the left side and to open it just click on the word "Friends" and it pops out! Neat, huh! To close it click on it again! Thank you
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Seven Steps to Raising Godly Children
Principle - Impart God's word on your children and live in a way that you are their greatest example of what a Christ-abiding parent should be.
Pattern - Teach your children a pattern of prayer; when to pray, how to pray, and why prayer is important.
Persistence - Don't ever give up...teach your children to always have faith and not to give up when things get hard.
Participation - Our children crave our attention! The way our children see us is the way they'll see God in thier lives.
Praise - Encourage children, praise them when they do something right and help them when they have a hard time.
Prayer - Teach your children to pray and then to TRUST God for the outcome.
Priority - Make God the Head and Heart of your home and let them live with God's desire coming first in your lives.
