Last Week of Vacation

I can't believe that summer vacation is already coming to an end! Where did it go! Andrew will be starting school next Wednesday and we will be starting home school sometime shortly after that. We've been playing inside because of the scorching temperatures outside lately. (around 100 each day) So we're having lots of fun inside, playing while we can.
Gave "haircuts" before school starts. Notice Matt's technique while cutting with his finger scissors. He's been paying close attention to Mr. Kraft! (his barber)
Made frozen banana treats. Yummy and not so unhealthy!
Played super heroes. Don't ask me which super hero Matt's supposed to be. He marches to the beat of a different drum. I love how their super weapons are down the back of their shirts so they can have ready access at any point. :)

More Bugs

This morning Peter was met with sounds of sporadic screaming noises from the backyard. Turned out it was the sound of me battling THE LARGEST caterpillar I have ever seen in my life! I was trimming the tomato plant and as I snipped away some branches, low and behold, there he was. Green, spotted, and right in the middle of breakfast. I once told a friend that giant crazy scary bugs that one imagines to only live in places like the Amazon jungle actually reside right here in KS! This was one of them. See it above my finger? He was about as thick as my pinky finger and maybe a little longer.
I went in to tell the kids to come out knowing that they would LOVE to see it. Andrew's first comment was, "I would never eat that!" Good to know. The next thought was to capture it and keep it until it became a moth or butterfly. The kids have been asking to make bug habitats all summer and now we had the perfect specimen to make one for. So he grabbed an old strawberry container and I proceeded to capture the caterpillar. He put up quite the fight and that's where the screams came from. I had a pair of chopsticks and was trying to pull him off the branch but he was not about to give up. He gripped that branch with all his might and every time I'd try to grab him with the chopsticks he would quickly attack the chopstick and try to bite it! That's where the screaming came in. Every time he'd attack my chopstick I would start screaming. Andrew said, "Mom, calm down!" Matthew and Emery were giggling watching their mom duke it out with a bug. And Peter is laughing his head off watching from the bedroom window. In the end, I did manage to prevail. We now have a pet caterpillar that will hopefully make for a neat science experiment in the weeks to come.This is also another creature that is common here that I HATE. I don't know what it called but it is REALLY noisy at night and they molt throughout the season leaving their disgusting carcasses around the yard. This picture does not do justice to how creepy this thing is.

Fatherly pride

So last Sunday, I finished teaching a class at church. It just so happens to be a parenting class. I was talking to some folks after the class when my wife walked in to advise me that our first born, pride and joy, had just eaten a bug.When I asked him why he ate the bug, he said, "We found some dead bugs in the church. We had made a dead bug club so I just decided to do it. I was going to eat the spider, but he was yellow and looked poisonous. So I got a beetle instead because it wasn't poisonous. I washed it. Then I put it in my mouth and it didn't taste that good so I drank some water with it."

He told Sandy earlier that, "It didn't taste like anything, but it didn't feel good in between my teeth."

Thank God he washed the bug before he ate it! See, now that's some good parenting right there. I am here to answer any and all parenting questions...and some day you too, could learn the parenting secrets to having your children cleaning their bugs before they eat them.

#17 - Spurgeon by Arnold Dallimore

Charles Haddon Spurgeon has got to be one of the most well known and well respected men of Christian history.

After finishing Arnold Dallimore's biography of Spurgeon, I am beginning to understand why. Spurgeon appears to be one of the most incredible men of God the world has ever known. As a young boy, he began to read by reading Puritan works. John Owen, Richard Baxter, you name it - as a child, he was reading them. Can you believe that?!

Spurgeon became a preacher and a pastor as a teenager. And not just any preacher or pastor, the boy could PREACH! But despite his incredible abilities, he was absolutely dependent on the Lord in prayer. The kind of prayer that was not just words from your lips, but passionate, whole hearted, putting all his energy into communicating with God prayer.

Spurgeon also produced a prolific breadth of ministry. His church grew to some 4,000 to 5,000 members, he started a pastor's college, Sunday schools, orphanages, almshouses, kept up a magazine, planted churches, preached 10 times a week, was heavily involved with missions, started a colpeurter's ministry - sending out workers to sell tracts/books as an evangelistic ministry, just to name a few. In total, he started and was responsible for 66 ministries.

I guess this explains Spurgeon's very poor health. He physically suffered greatly. Ministry is hard. He regularly had to take breaks and was sent to southern France to recuperate for months at a time typically every winter. He literally gave his life for Christ.

This book was not very quotable as you will read below. But the book as a whole was inspiring. I recommend it to all. Here are some quotes:

• A spiritual experience which is thoroughly flavored with a deep and bitter sense of sin is of great value to him that hath it. It is terrible in the drinking, but it is most wholesome in the bowels, and in the whole of the after life. Possibly, much of the flimsy piety of the present day arises from the ease with which men attain to peace and joy in these evangelistic days. We would not judge modern converts, but we certainly prefer that form of spiritual exercise which leads the soul by the way of the Weeping-cross, and makes it see its blackness before assuring it that it is 'clean every whit.' Too many think lightly of sin, and therefore think lightly of the Saviour. He who has stood before his God, convicted and condemned, with the rope about his neck, is the man to weep for joy when he is pardoned, to hate the evil which has been forgiven him, and to live to the honour of the Redeemer by whose blood he has been cleansed.
• When someone once asked Spurgeon the secret of his success, he replied, 'My people pray for me.' He meant not prayer in the usual formal and unexpectant manner but wrestling with God in living faith that He would answer.
• The [Metropolitan] Tabernacle [his church] was a place of almost constant activity. On each of the 7 days of the week the doors were open at 7:00 in the morning and did not close till 11:00 at night, and there were persons coming and going all the time.
• Spurgeon required that everything in the Lord's work be done well, and he allowed nothing to be let go in a careless manner.
• All manner of reasons were given for this sad condition [the decline and closing of churches due to a "New Theology" that proposed that the Bible is not inerrant among other false doctrines], but the prime cause was the lack of the gospel in the pulpit. All attempted substitutes failed to attract the people. Where there is no acceptance of the Bible as inerrant and a belief in the great fundamentals of the faith, there is no true Christianity, the preaching is powerless and what Spurgeon declared to his generation a hundred years ago is the outcome.
• During the 1880's a group of American ministers visited England, prompted especially by a desire to hear some of the celebrated preachers of the land...[after visiting Joseph Parker's church, the City Temple] the Americans came away saying, 'What a wonderful preacher is Joseph Parker!' In the evening they went to hear Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. The building was much larger than the City Temple, and the congregation was twice the size. Spurgeon's voice was much more expressive and moving and his oratory noticeably superior. But they soon forgot all about the great building, the immense congregation, and the magnificent voice. They even overlooked their intention to compare the various features of the two preachers, and when the service was over they found themselves saying, 'What a wonderful Savior is Jesus Christ!'

When I lead praise on Sunday mornings, I regularly tell our praise team the same thing - hopefully, after we are done on Sunday mornings, people will NOT say how great praise was today but will instead say, 'How great is our God and Savior!'

For Grandma Lee

Last week when Peter's parents were visiting, grandma bought this outfit for Emery. Emery, like all girls, LOVES getting new clothes and could not wait to wear to wear it to church on Sunday. Grandma was not here to see her wear it so I thought I'd put a picture up for her to see just how thrilled Emery was to get to wear her "butterfly shirt." Of course, she needed the sunglasses as the final accessory to complete the outfit! Thank you Grandma! We miss you!

Col 3:12-14 and Rom 12:10

It's hard to keep up with Andrew these days in so many ways.

But this is one of the best ways. He memorizes verses faster than I can upload them! And he makes it so much fun for the little ones too.

Proverbs 10:1

Hearing your kids recite Scripture is truly one of the sweetest things in life, don't you think?

Assuming of course that they not only recite but eventually obey Scripture from the heart. This father is glad...most of the time.