Church and more

The cat has great Christian wisdom - she knows she can't open the door herself. She doesn't have hands, or the know-how. She *does* know the door will be opened. It's her job to sit there, patiently, staring up, until -tada- the door is opened and out she goes. After a few minutes outside she then repeats the process on the OTHER side of the door. I wish I had Sugar's patience and faith when it comes to the doors in my life that God will open them - it's my job to pray and trust.

On our visiting churches quest we visited a smalltown church around 10 minutes away (taking 55mph back country roads, not another vehicle to be seen!). I found the church through http://www.founders.org/ and emailed briefly with the Pastor. We're in a strange spot for seeking a church. We want a conservative church that still encourages studies in Hebrew/Greek and not just the King James Version of the Bible. Plus, we want to be able to worship with our children. Many people say young kids can't sit for an hour or more in a service. Personally, I think that's selling ourselves short. Shouldn't parents be able to teach their children to sit for at least one hour per week? We've found the perfect arrangement for us is this:

Mommy with Naomi, James, Charlotte, Joseph, Bethany, Noah and Daddy.

Basically.. Parent,girl, boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, Parent. James is usually helpful near me with holding the hymnal or smiling at Naomi. The older girls are generally not a problem at all. Joseph and Noah need a sister between them or else they get the wiggles, pokes, and googly-eyed faces at each other. hehe. Noah fell asleep on Jim and Naomi slept through the service on me. She look so sweet in her frilly pink dress, shiny black church shoes, and frilly white bonnet. The original outfit I picked didn't pass Charlotte's inspection, so she changed her!

The sermon was wonderful. The Pastor was speaking from Judges and mentioned how one defeated 600 men with an ox-poke. He brought in a huge stick he had whittled sharp on one end to demonstrate. That caught the boys' attention. He also spoke of Daniel and later Goliath, two stories that James enjoys. A decent amount of history was added in, along with some examples of how the Hebrew was done (which is right up Jim's ally).

The church has a small congregation, but there were other families with their babies and little ones there. A lot of grandparents sitting with young families. It was really nice to see the diversity. Plus, it was nice to sit in an old-fashioned church, sing some hymns, and worship the Lord as a family. We hit a few roadblocks on the way up there.. mapquest's directions included, literally, a dead end. Not sure if that's where we were supposed to get out on foot and HIKE! I even used google maps and watched the roads go up.. Oh, well, we did make it even though we were a few minutes late.

They have a children's time during the service where kids are encouraged to do scripture memorization. James and Bethany are racing to memorize theirs.. hopefully Joseph will too!

Some things for this week..

Park day (at a small local park) on Monday.. Craft/Sewing time on Thursday.. Park day (at a large downtown park) on Friday. That'll be the end of our busy stuff til after vacation. Speaking of which, I made oodles of bags to use with the http://www.cornhole-game.org/ my Dad made :) THAT should be a lot of fun with all of the kiddoes.

If I get my camera battery charged I will take pictures of our quilts in progress. I have 7 of the Quilting Bee squares done. Bethany is making a 9-patch quilt and I think she has 3 done so far. Tomorrow will be a sewing day here as we try to get things done before vacation.

Talk I enjoyed this weekend: "Southern Baptists At Sardis" - its all about honesty in church membership, what a church SHOULD be about, and so on. Its on the right hand side of the page under Features.