Stories from Ruth # 31

 

This week was wonderful! Sister Strate from germany is amazing! We talk endlessly.
The Lord is truly blessing us. Sister Georgieva stopped this guy Chris a couple weeks ago. He had incestigated the church 25 years ago, but gave up because he did not want to stop smoking and drinking. Now he told us that his worst mistake was ever leaving the teachings of the church. We met with him the first day and gave him the Book of Mormon again. Two days later he had read Ether 12 and from the beginning to 1 Nephi 11. And he remembered everything!

On Sunday he came to church and afterwards stayed to see this eight-year-old girl be baptized. After that tears welled in his eyes as he told us that this church was as the scripture in Isaiah, as the lillies of the field. It was not arrayed in worldly splendor but it was beautiful. He wants to give up alcohol and smoking and to be baptized! He truly felt regret for leaving the gospel of Jesus Christ and it truly touched me! The spirit was so strong and I felt so blessed to see this in anyone. Truly the Lord blesses us and softens our hearts. We are never to old to repent and to change and to turn unto God without restraint.     

We saw Denise and she is a blessing! She is so sweet and always focused on others! She was so excited to receive a Book of Mormon.

We have a friend Abdalla who accepted to read a chapter of the Book of Mormon, Alma 7, because he knows that it means so much to us. He then told us it was wonderful to meet people so dedicated to their religion who truly beleive in God.

This Week at Our House # 14 Spring Break and a Birthday

We had a nice spring break with warm weather all week. We went to the beach on Monday, had Rachel's birthday on Tuesday, did house projects on Wednesday, yard projects on Thursday, and free days Friday and Saturday.

1. The 30 hour project that John did for a possible job has turned into a phone interview which he will have Tuesday afternoon for approximately an hour. John continues to work very hard on his own things. He stays up all night most nights working. Goes to bed around 7am, sleeps 6 hours, gets to work again, spends about an hour doing scripture study with the family and gets back to work. 
2. I finished reading the 8 book Anne of Green Gables Series for the fourth time. I love them so much. I am always sad when I finish those books. They are like family to me. Actually,my great grandparents lived just a few miles from Prince Edward Island and left the area not too long after the time period the last book was written, so while these are all fictional characters, I feel like I can claim some kinship to the area. I went through all of our clothes storage. I haven't done this seriously since we unpacked from our move from Utah. It took me several hours. I got the kids their spring and summer clothes out. That is probably my least favorite project. I got some things planted in the garden. I have one row of potatoes that have come up well, and I had several more potatoes that we were going to eat, sprout, so instead of eating them, I planted them in the row of potatoes that did not seem to grow. I have a lot of tomato, pepper, and butternut squash seedlings all sprouted from seeds that I harvested from our store bought food. I will get those planted in the garden in about two weeks.
3. Ruth is such a good girl. I worry about her, but I know that the Lord will bless her with the appropriate inspiration to deal with whatever she needs to because she is doing all she can to be right and good and to know God. 
4. Kate loves the Anne of Green Gables books like I do, and even had me wait to finish the last one so I could read it to her. That is why while I was feeling sad that the books had ended, I remembered that I had gotten a free kindle book called, the Story Girl from the same author and started reading it to Kate. I had read it years ago and loved it and now Kate is loving it.
5. Johnny is making a game for an android phone too, and while he had spring break, he still made progress on his game. We are hoping that he will be able to earn some mission money from this.
6. On our yard work day, I had Johnny and Adam dig about a 2 foot deep trench the width of my garden to bury our leftover food and kitchen scraps in as a slow release fertilizer. Adam quite liked the trench and got the kids going on a game of world war 1. We have these trees that have dropped a lot of woody spike balls, so those are their ammunition. I love my kids playing like this. 
7. All day Monday, Rachel was very excited for her Birthday on Tuesday. I think she enjoyed her birthday and was very grateful with her very small gifts. She got Kate to play with her for hours over the whole week as a sort of birthday present too, but could never feel satisfied that it was enough.
8. I don't really have a story to tell about Anya. She is my sweet, quiet girl. She loves to play with Rachel and Joseph and is very obedient when I tell her to do any chores. She's always a delight.
9. Joseph got to play outside all week and and so our house was less bouncy and since we did not do any school, Joseph and I got along better.
10. Joshua and Susan both like to claim Arwen as a playmate. Joshua often gets Arwen because he is older and that makes Susan cry and tattle that Josh is hurting her.
11. Arwen has decided that no one can call her anything but beautiful and pretty. If you say she is smart or cute, she corrects you.
12. Susan kept walking up to Rachel randomly and saying, "you're cute!" We moved the toys from the hallway that connects the 3 kid bedrooms and bathroom to Susan's room because each night she is sent to bed, Susan would get up and dump out all the toys and block the entrance to the bathroom. Now she leaves them alone because she does not like staying in her room.
13. All the boys were out in the yard having a stick/sword fight using pvc pipe they found in the woods. Sam stood in my window watching them, grabbed a plastic sword pointed it at his brothers and said, "yay! yay! yay!" Then the boys took him out and he joined in their sword fight. The boys all came in and reported how cute Sam was taking his sword and hitting theirs.

Pictures

Happy Birthday, Rachel

It's hard to believe this tiny girl is 12!!! I just had her weigh herself. She is weighing in at 49 pounds. We thought maybe we should try again after she eats, so that number bumps back up to 50. Two weeks ago, Kate measured her and she is 4'4.5". That half an inch counts a lot when you are as tiny as Rachel. Kate also looked up her 12 year old statistics on this blog. Kate was 60 pounds and 4'5". So Rachel weighs 10 pounds less than Kate did, but is only a half inch shorter. That gives me hope that Rachel will grow up to be a normal-sized short person. Years ago we took her to the doctors because she didn't gain any weight between the ages 3 and 5. But the endocrinologist only checked to see if she was getting taller. He said weight does not matter. If Rachel is always this naturally thin, she will be happy, though.

Rachel has grown up a lot, though she is still very innocent and child-like. For example, Rachel cried today during our story club tea party because she wasn't given the spoon she wanted. However, Rachel loves to read and she is very often considerate of the feelings of others. These accomplishments have come in time. The love of reading took a few years to develop, but now Rachel reads three to four books a week. She reads some children's books and some more adult literature. She can tackle a 300 page book in 3 days. Along with that, Rachel has begun to develop her mind. She is learning to study and memorizes things very well. I can give her some complicated concepts, set her down to learn and she will come back with an understanding. I think in time, she will be as good at academics as Kate.

Rachel loves to draw and she is a very good artist. She spends time at it. She has also been pouring over books and reading about drawing to help her improve.

I am worried about sending Rachel to young women's. She is both innocent and social. I want her to be able to have friends and be social like she was in Utah, but I want her to have friends with the highest of moral standards. She's entering a critical time in her life and a critical time in the history of the world. A strong family is the most important, but who one's friends are shapes that person as well. Rachel needs to be around young women who will lift her up and she needs to be lifting them up. I pray that she can have this.

I didn't have the same worries 8 years ago when Ruth turned 12 or 6.5 years ago when Kate turned 12. I often think that we have moved into an age very much like the days of Noah. I want all my kids to know what is necessary and be who they should be to go against what is seen even as rational if it is not what is the desire of God. In Noah's day, only his wife and sons had enough faith to enter onto the ark. I wonder if there were more people who thought about it but were persuaded by their friends or family that it was too extreme to do something like go aboard an ark in the middle of dry land. The parable of the 10 virgins is a warning to us. Only 5 had enough oil to get to last until the bride groom came. I want Rachel to have that extra oil. I want her to be one of the 5.

Stories from Ruth #30

We met Chris when we walked outside a library and he accidentally blew out while smoking onto

Sister Georgieva. He apologized and Sister Georgieva immediately started speaking to him. He told us that his wife had been investigating the church when they were having a divorce. After she left him she was baptized and their two daughters are heavily involved in the church. He said he loved the Book of Mormon, the nephites and the lamanites and had read it twice, but struggled with the word of wisdom. He believed it was good but was struggling to quit smoking. He happily agreed to meet with us and we went through the rest of our day. That night we felt like we needed to walk into town, there Chris approached us and told us that he had been thinking a lot and said that the biggest mistake he had ever made in life was leaving the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He had gone to and researched many other churches Christian and even nonchristian, but he knew that ours was true. We invited him to conference ans he told us that long ago he had seen it. He had heard Spencer W Kimball speak and said that he was a powerful man. It is true. He is and was a prophet of God. Chris kept repeating that he was excited to see us again and to hear more about the gospel again.

 

We felt impressed one Sunday to go to this suburb. Nothing happened then, but we felt like we would need to come back another time. Well we did. And while tracting we stopped at this house I had thought was cute the last time we past. There was a woman and her daughter there. The woman said that she had a mormon friend that had told her some about the Book of Mormon but she did not know much. We taught her more and showed her the scriptures and although we did not have a copy to give her at the time (we gave all of them away already) we set a date to return and bring her one. Then we found the Bulgarians. Thwn we felt like we had to walk home a specific way, so we did. We got lost trying to get there and I saw this girl in her twenties carrying to giant bags. I felt strongly impressed to offer to help her carry them home. We offered and strange enough she accepted. No one accepts help in England. Her name was Denise and she told us she worked as a nurse and was attending the uni. She is very big on taking care of herself physically and spiritually. She said that she knew she did not meet us by coincidence and started asking us about what we do. We told her. Then the conversation changed and as girls we talked about clothes and she told us that she likes to dress modest that she believed that it wrong not to cover up more. She is not as modest as a mormon but she does not wear very sleezy clothes. Then she asked us about the Book of Mormon and taught her the restoration and she wants the Book of Mormon. She was going to come to general conference, but she got called into work, but she wants to watch it on her own time.