I have to make this a priority!

I can get busy doing so many things that I forget to update my blog. And the reason for doing one is to keep people posted as to what is happening with me.

Well, I have two women that I am helping to learn English. On woman is my age and wants to go to Israel to work in a guest house. She has moderately good English, but know that she needs to get better, since she will be working with many English speaking people. She is such a delight to work with. This morning she forgot her book that she is studying, so we read our of the Bible - or I should say she read. Then we discussed the words she didn't understand. It was so good and rewarding. Not only to study English but to get some added Bible reading in also. Then she asked me to read and she would listen and see if she understood what was being read. She had more of an issue understanding. So we went through more words for understanding. Then she handed me the same translation that we had read, only in German, and asked me to read it to her. Well, I read the whole 37th chapter of Psalms in German. Yes...she had to correct my pronunciation many times, but I was amazed at how much I could read with out her help. She was very encouraging to me about my German. Oh...it is so hard. I wish I could have met her a few years ago, I think we could have been very good friends.

The other woman is a student at our Bible school. She had English in school, but that has been many years ago, and she has forgotten much of her English. She was doing better by the time our lesson time was up yesterday afternoon. She has to search for words (Oh I understand that) but she was communicating so that I understood all that she was saying. So, I think it will be fun working with both of these women. They both come to my home, so that helps me also.

Last weekend I spent my time doing a Scrapbook Crop. It was fun for me, since my dear husband got all of the meals for the weekend. And I had some wonderful meals. (At least I cleaned up after he fixed the meals - which is sometimes a pretty big task. heehee. ) I have so many pictures that I don't know if I will ever get caught up on the scrapping. But I am getting many layout done of our cruise during the summer. You can see some of my layouts on my creative blog. It... margueritescreativity.blogspot.com

Tomorrow we leave for a weekend of ministry. Richard will do a mens seminar on Sat. morning and I will do one on Sat. afternoon for the women. Then on Sunday morning Richard will preach for the Sunday service and we will also have the privilege of doing a baby dedication. The pastor and his wife have a 5 month old girl - after having 3 sons, and another couple are dedicating a little boy. These are always such fun time for us. The pastor and his wife are from South America - but of German decent. They were students of the Bible school for two years before he started to pastor the church. So its a joy to be able to go visit them.

Well, as many of you know, our oldest grandson got married in August. So, I want to share a layout about them. Its their first dance as husband and wife. The pictures were so cute that I wanted to share them with all of you. Thanks for stopping by. Please come back.

I just finished a wonderful supper the my darling husband fixed. He is so sweet. This afternoon he started looking for a different recipe for fixing chicken. He settled on a cream sauce with Leeks and onions in it, with the chicken simmered in it also, over rice. It was so good.

In the last couple of years he has started getting interested in cooking. We started out doing a lot of cooking together. Now, he will do the whole meal. He is always asking if he is taking over my territory. Well, the answer in no. If he enjoys it, I don't mind having him do it. I do still cook, and I am a pretty good cook. I think this is an outlet for him so I don't mind at all.

Yesterday was a pretty sad day. We were both pretty emotional. I got up to an e-mail that my favorite Aunt was in the hospital. She will be 81 on the 28th of this month. They don't know exactly what is wrong with her, but its been pretty difficult what ever she is going through. I just pray that she recovers from what ever she is going through.

There were several other situations of people we know and love that are dealing with life threatening issues - it was pretty heavy. So, we do have many people on our prayer list that need a lot of help and hope.

So, when I have days like this I think of my family and how thankful I am for them. As many of you know, we have 11 - sorry, its 12 wonderful grandchildren. Our oldest grandson just got married in August, so I keep forgetting that there are 12 now. They range in age from 22 to 2.
Since we live in Germany we don't get to see them as often as we would like. So I rely on pictures being sent to keep up with what is going on with them, how they are growing. You know, big events in their lives - sports - music - college - high school -elementary school - to pre school.

So yesterday I made a layout of our youngest son and his oldest son walking on an Oregon Beach. I just love looking at the picture, so though I would get it in my scrapbook, so I could see it better than looking on the computer of the picture. My creative outlet.

This picture also happens to fit the challenge #2 for a scrapbook site called Scrap Whispers. So I got two things in one accomplished. It helped me get out of the blues, and I got a challenge done. Hope you enjoy the layout.

Reid and Connor on an Oregon Beach in August 08.

ANOTHER ADVENTURE IN MY LIFE

I decided to start a blog. This way I can post pictures and keep you updated as to what is going on in my life. Sounds simple, but for someone that might be just a little "technically challenged" I have spent several hours trying to understand everything. So...for me to have gotten this far is a good thing.

Some of the things that I have been doing lately:
Having many guest in our home for meals. We are part of a staff group at the Bible School where we are. So last Monday evening we had our group for supper. I fixed soup, salad and hot rolls. For dessert I fixed American Apple Pie, with ice cream and/or cheddar cheese. American desserts are interesting for Germans to try. Much sweeter than they are used to and very different.

On Wednesday we had the 3rd year Bible School class that Richard leads here. There is only 9 in the class - which is a good size. Its called the Leadership School - students that feel they have a calling to be in a leadership position. They were getting ready for a 3 week mission trip to Turkey and Bulgaria. They came at 2:30 for a tour of the farm we live on. We live in a building that was built in 1127 as a Monastery. After the reformation it became a private dwelling - but the church building on the end of the building is still used for services every Sunday. There is much history surrounding this place, so our landlord gave the students a tour and told them all about the place. After the tour we had coffee and Texas Sheet Cake and visited. At 6:00 I gave them jobs to do to prepare the evening meal. We had Taco's (which several had never experienced eating before) and Corn Chips and a warm dip. It was fun watching them do as I had asked them. Setting the table - cooking, chopping, cleaning up. They did well.

Friday Oct. 3rd the team left at 11:30 to start their own adventure. We got to pray with them and see them on their way.

We went back to the school at 12:30 for a special lunch and program. Friday was German reunification day. The program started with those students that were from the former East Germany and other Eastern countries behind the "Wall" running through a paper wall that had been made, to give us a look at the excitement of being free to come and go within their own country. I was amazed at how emotional I got watching it. These people had lived behind the wall.


This is the "paper wall" that was placed over the doorway.











The "wall" coming down.













The people are FREE!!!!!












What an exciting program and great meal we had.

This past week was meetings, 4 young men from the 2nd year program at the Bible school came on Tuesday evening to have coffee and cookies and talk. It was fun to get to know these students better.

Between helping Richard, keeping up with regular house work, etc., I have been involved in some scrapbooking things.

During the summer I was in a contest at Scrapbook Playground. the contest was called the "Scrapbooking Olympics." They gave prizes for gold, silver and bronze places. I got the gold. I have received several wonderful prizes for this accomplishment. Wonderful scrapbooking supplies that I am using now.

One of them is on the YMBD web site. They are having a contest called "So You Think You Can Scrap". There were 53 entries and I made the first cut. The next voting is 18 & 19th, which I will put on this blog so you can see all of the wonderful entries. I cannot ask for people to vote for my layout, but I can invite people to go to the site and see all of the wonderful layouts and vote for their favorite one. They are numbered and you just vote for the number of your favorite layout. Pretty exciting.

On another site called "Scrap Whispers" they are doing a really fun thing. Like the old game of gossip we used to play as kids (at least that is what it was called when I was a kid) where you tell someone something and then the next person tells what they heard, etc. until the last person has to tell what they heard. Most times it was nothing like what it started out to be. Any way, this is where one person gets a scrapbook layout, and then has to make a layout of that layout. At the end of 6 or 7 weeks, we will see all of the layouts and the original and see how they look from beginning to end. There are 6 teams and they only do the layout one time per team member.

I just loved these pictures of Cason and Ali Hill. So this is one of the last layouts I have done. You will see lots of my grandkids in my layouts.

















Thanks for reading the first post in my blog. Hope you come often and leave me a note.