The SOLID Rock.

My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;

I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

Refrain:
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand!

His oath, His covenant, His blood

Support me in the whelming flood;

When all around my soul gives way,

He then is all my hope and stay.

When He shall come with trumpet sound,

Oh, may I then in Him be found;

Dressed in His righteousness alone,

Faultless to stand before the throne.

Refrain:

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;

All other ground is sinking sand,

All other ground is sinking sand!

(Story behind the song here)

My Big Brother.

I talked to my brother Tom last night for a little bit and for those of you who know him in "real life", you'll know he works for Mr. N doing roofing, basements, and stuff along those lines. Tom moved out of our house about 2 1/2 years ago, about a couple of months before he got married. So because he doesn't live at home anymore, I've missed hearing his daily "stories" about co-workers, funny sightings and .... injuries.

It's not like he does it intentionally, but I do believe he's injured every major part of his body. (There's also the time I dropped a car hood on his head, causing his nose to be slammed into the car with a hood sitting on top of his head, but we won't go into that!) So it would never be a surprise to my mom and I to hear, "Well I went to the Emergicenter today" or see a mark on his arm or a bandage on a finger. So last night Tom was telling me the "latest" and he prefaced it by saying that before everything happened, he mentioned that it had been quite a while since he had gotten hurt:o).

Tom was working on something which required him to have a hammer in his hand when he somehow hurt his ring finger, and at the same time a wasp stung him in his arm. So now he had a hurt ring finger, a stung arm, and then he puffed up from the sting on the other arm. I do remember him saying he also hurt his thumb somehow too! So my other brother came over to him and was trying to make the swelling/hive go down, so he put on a "soothing" ointment which turned out to be NOT soothing! Now he has a hurt thumb, hurt ring finger, a stung arm, swelling on the other arm, and then non-soothing ointment poured on to the hive.

Wait! It gets better:o).

Later that day, he was working alone on the roof, which was very breeze-less, when a gust of wind came along, flapped under the ONE shingle that hadn't been nailed down, and that shingle flew into Tom's nose.

Oh, the irony!

Ever since I dropped the car hood on his nose, he thinks it got broken and was never set properly. But there IS good news in this story! He's had breathing problems since the hood incident, but since the shingle's hit him in the nose, he can breathe better:o).

After this week, he's never going to say again, "it's been a while since I've gotten hurt!" Ah yes... never a dull moment, huh?!?! Love ya, big brother!

~Tom with Andrew and Ethan at a family reunion in August~

WFMW.

Shannon does Works-For-Me-Wednesday (are you ready for this moment of genius??!?!) each Wednesday and I thought of something I would like to share that has helped me out on several occasions. I like to do gifts as inexpensively as possible (*Note: I'm not cheap, I'm frugal; big difference!) and that includes what the gift is wrapped in!

Every year at Christmas time when we were younger, we would take turns opening gifts and then each gift was carefully unwrapped in order to use the paper again, if possible. So over the years I've saved gift bags and wrapping paper. Within the past couple of years I've begun to save tissue paper as well. Tissue paper makes for wonderful "gift wrap" and tying some pretty ribbon around the package adds to the end product. It might sound like a very simple idea, but tissue paper is so much cheaper than gift bags or wrapping paper (the Dollar Store sells all different colors) and it's so nice to see all the gifts carrying their own personality (I lost a few of you there, I'm sure!) once everything has been wrapped!

So there you have it... that's what works for me! Go check out the rest of the ideas and see if anything helps you out:o).

Situations And Scenarios.

I found this link (courtesy of Shannon over at Rocks In My Dryer) the other day. This could have been a bad situation, but thankfully it was not. I had this story neatly filed away in the back of my mind, but it was quickly brought to the forefront tonight. My friend and I were on Visitation, doing door-to-door in a relatively "new" subdivision. (When I say "new", I mean within the past 5-10 years it was built and is probably filled with all sorts of ethnic groups and the average family probably has two kids, three dogs, and some fish... and I just did what Rachel talks about here!)

Anyway:-).

We went from house to house, happily engaging people in conversation and left quite a few What Standard DVDs behind for people to watch later. We then came to a home that had the garage door slightly cracked opened and most of the lights in the house off. My friend and I were whispering quietly when the door slowly opened and a little girl of about 9 looked up at us. My friend asked the little girl if her parents were home and the little girl said no. She then told us that they left to go pick up her younger sister from someplace I didn't quite catch. So we left behind the DVD and a tract and as I turned away, the post written by Melanie popped into my mind and I said, "Oh, if anyone else rings the doorbell, please don't answer it."

Twice more on this street the door was answered by a child and this bothered both of us greatly.

Now thankfully my friend and I were just out on Visitation. But what if someone with less than "honorable" intentions rang the doorbell and these children answered the doors? I don't even want to think about the scenarios.

One Last Time...

My plan of not doing too much today was pleasantly interrupted with my sister and brother calling me to say that everyone was meeting at our house and then heading to a park to play volleyball.

Ok... count me in!

"Peppering" the ball in our driveway

Of course there's always time for a picture with my nephew Andrew!

As I mentioned before, volleyball seems to run in the family's blood! And apparently we start 'em young...:o)

Not quite volleyball, but I thought it was pretty!

The last time I was at this park was for an end-of-the-year school picnic and it was so hot! Autumn is beginning to make her mark on the area with the cooler weather and shorter evenings. I haven't seen too many tree leaves change colors yet, but I'm sure it will be soon!

I'm not really "sad" to see summer end because each of the seasons last long enough here in Pennsylvania. Just when I'm ready for a change, the season switch! Now it's time for a nip in the cold air, jackets, crunchy leaves, hiking, apple cider, and Thanksgiving. Yes, I think it's time to change the seasons...

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:"

~Ecclesiastes 3:1~

Why?

My one question to this newsflash is why??? What do you think about it?

Remembering...

Remembering September 11th...

"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."

~ II Chronicles 7:14~

From The Court...

Today my volleyball team played their first game, and as the sets were even (we won two and the other team won two), I called a time out with the score 14-9. I was trying to break the other team's serve so that the game could be over and we all go home. I knew my girls were ready to be done and the score was oh so close. As the team huddled around, I encouraged them to do three hits and to nail the third hit into a hole on the other team's side and just end the game! As we talked and I gave pointers to the girls, one senior piped up: "You know, it would be funny if she served the ball in the net!" I laughed and replied, "Well, God has a sense of humor!"



Would you believe it, that's exactly what happened!!! After all of the planning, scheming, and plotting, in the end it had nothing to do with our team strength for that last point... the other team just had a bad serve. We ended up winning the game, but the Lord taught me a lesson, even in the midst of coaching a game. It doesn't matter how much planning I do to make things "just right"; God's plan is so much bigger and all the scheming in the world won't make up for His perfect plan. It's funny, but I don't often consider the volleyball court as a place to learn a lesson. Today I did though!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For all of you former EBAers, I think you would be impressed that the EBA volleyball team is having a winning season!!!!

*Ahem*

Never mind the fact we've only played one game. We play Valley Forge on Monday, so we shall see if it continues on... yay Knights!

Just Passing Along The Thought...

I may be a little biased, but I happen to think Pastor Hammett is one of the best preachers I've ever sat under... good thing since he's my pastor, huh?!? As he preached on "Personal Evangelism" in church tonight (it's a Bible Institute class but the congregation gets to get in on it too! Very practical...), one of his points was simply obedience, meaning the soul winner has to obey the Holy Spirit's leading. He then made this point....

God's leading is one step at a time. He doesn't reveal His whole plan at the very first step. As we obey Him, step by step, we can look back and say, "Ah! I can see the Lord leading me the whole way!"

Go ahead and think on it for a while...

An Enjoyable Day:o).

What a lovely weekend! LVBC had "Dinner on the Grounds" on Sunday, so that meant morning service, lunch, afternoon service, and outdoor activities all tumbled one after another:o). I have no pictures to post since I was happily play about 10 games of volleyball! I was just catching up from the volleyball-less summer;o). After we finished the last game, several of us went over to a friends' house where we ate some more and played some more games too:o). Let's just say it was a looong day.

I had plans to go to work today, but then the thought occurred to me that today is Labor Day (girl talk has a good post on that!), so I decided to go for a nice drive. Have you ever taken those polls that said, "If you have a free day, what would you do?". Without fail, I'll answer that with "take a nice long drive!":o)... so that's what I did. My first thought was to go to Gettysburg and combine a nice long drive with another one of my favorite things to do (yeah, I'm the type of person that jumps at an opportunity to do something educational on a trip... strange, I know!), but I woke up too late. Then I thought about going to Ricketts Glen State Park, but decided I just didn't want to go hiking today... that's more of a "fall" activity to do anyway! So in the end, I chose to go out to Lancaster County and enjoy the ride, the peace and quiet, and God's Creation!

The first place I stopped was a flea market... I hadn't been to this particular one in years (my dad used to take us kids to flea markets all the time when we were younger:D). Even though it was a holiday, there were still some goodies I found!

Next I stopped at a yard sale and while I didn't find anything here, I did discover a gorgeous stone house that must've been built in the 1800s! So the extra stop was worth it;o).

Right about the time I heard my stomach rumble was the same time I saw a sign for a county park! One very enjoyable lunch later, and I continued on with my day!

Tiffany and I had been out to Lancaster County last year and stopped here, and amazingly enough I found this place again! It has a petting zoo, a beautiful pond, and of course a country store:o).



A common sight in Lancaster...

An Amish house to the left and the country store to the right... isn't it pretty?!?

What a beautiful resting stop!

Two floors of country stuff! Thankfully I had a budget for the day and spent one dollar here... on homemade ice cream;o).

Another unexpected find... country stores seem to abound in this part!

I've been wanting to stop in to visit Kitchen Kettle Village for some time now and today was the day I finally did it! Personally I thought it was just one big tourist trap... I can understand people from PA visiting, but to drive there from New Jersey, Ohio, or Connecticut probably wouldn't be worth it:o).

My final stop of the day was here at Ritas! Someone had given me a gift certificate for Ritas as a welcome home gift, and today I got to use it:o). What a delightful way to end an enjoyable day!