Cactus Flower

"It'll All Come Out in the Wash"  We've all heard the saying but have you ever really seen something fall apart after washing?  Imagine how you would feel after working for days and days on a sewing project just to have it "come apart at the seams" after a test washing!  At first I found myself literally coming apart at the seams.  But I've been through a lot over the past three years, so what's a little spilled milk!  I took a deep breathe after I pulled the little pirate quilt out of the washing machine and found many of the seams on the sailboat blocks open and coming apart.  It was distressing but I could fix it.  I looked for some advice here and there.  I prayed a little.  I got busy.   I could have thrown it in a corner and given up.  I could have ripped it all apart and started over, but sadly the some of the fabrics had shrunk from the washing experience and there just would have not been anything left.  So I h...

October 12 in Brazil is holiday called Children's Day.  It typically means that kids get out of school and get gifts from family and friends.  Teachers usually host a party or event at their schools beforehand or close to and frequently take classes on special fun field trips.  Our church hadn't done anything special on a grand scale for quite some time.  Our young people were interested and so they got to work. They organized a brand new to them skit based on the Wordless Book colors that someone had seen on Youtube!  The puppet people came up with a new story.  Several young ladies made some new song posters. One on the Sunday School classes sang a special song and some of our flute recorder students did a special presentation.  Prize bags were made ready and a snack was arranged.  Invitations were given out by door to door visits around the church and near areas where we have hosted neighborhood Bible clubs over the past year. Byron a...

The photo above has been on my refrigerator for the past three years.  It's Dalton and I ringing the old farm bell that had been at my Grandma Beckner's house for years and now stands at my mom and dad's.  It was my reminder to never give up hope.  It's slightly fading in the middle but there was always a ray of sunshine coming down from the top to the bottom. This past Sunday, September 25 at around 10:30 a.m.,  I received one of the most important calls of my life, and I almost missed it.  It was a FaceTime call and I didn't recognize the little bling bling sound.  I was in the process of putting my laptop to sleep to get to the kitchen.  Just as I was closing the lid, there was this little message line over the window that was opened to Facebook - message from Dalton... I opened the window and saw another message - missed call... We exchanged a couple of quick messages and he called back. Are you at home? Are you sitting down? I...

Not too long ago the ladies at church hosted a surprise baby shower for the young lady that was married just before Christmas.  She's not well off and doesn't have much.  She lives in a small house not much bigger than my living room.  As I considered what sort of message I wanted to pass on to her as this important moment, I began to think of what a mother really has to have before that baby comes home from the hospital. Byron and I didn't have too much when little William came home from the hospital in December of 1995.  We had been in Brazil for a year and had come with four Rubbermaid action packer boxes between us.  I had in those boxes the baby quilt I had made back in the States and two maternity dresses (just in case). My mother had been sending shoebox sized packages with onesies and assorted baby clothes all through my pregnancy.  The other missionary ladies had a baby shower for me.  We had a sturdy wooden crib donated that quite a f...

Years and years ago I took a quilting class at a quaint little specialty cloth store in a ritzy part of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  I was around 25 and teaching at a small Christian school.  Another teacher had found out about the class and wanted someone to go along.  I thought it would be cool as both my grandmothers had been a quilters - one perhaps more fancy than the other.  The fancy quilter had just passed away and somehow it felt like a homage to her. My teacher friend and I had to leave school a little early missing a weekly teacher's meeting for several weeks.  Every time the principal saw us leaving he would say silly things about why would a girl going to a tropical country soon to be a missionary need to know how to make quilts? I made a baby quilt mostly because it was less expensive and less time consuming.  Around that same time I went through the grief of two miscarriages.  Babies didn't seem to be on the agenda for my husba...

Once a few years ago I read about a family that got lost on a remote mountain road, stuck in high snow drifts, and froze to death!  It seems their GPS routed them on a mountain short cut that was only open during summer months.  Once they were stuck they were too far from any help and their cell phones were out of the range of any towers. Can you imagine?  I couldn't believe it.  But apparently people blindly follow the directions of their GPS's quite often - even intelligent people like your Aunt Michele!  Sometimes it takes more than once to learn a lesson!  Read on... The first time I remember getting really lost because of a goofy GPS was when we were first back in the States on a furlough in 2014.  We hadn't been in the States but for a few weeks when we went to visit Uncle Randy and Aunt Renee near Walnut Cove, NC.  We were to meet them at their church and then go to their house for lunch.  We headed out of Reidsville towards US Highway...

First of all let me say that I've had some great doctors in Brazil whom I appreciated and who really work hard to treat the patients with kindness and respect.  They are few and far between, rarities in a land of public hospitals that often have no bandages or medicine.  They are fine jewels in a place where even private, paid clinics where patients get no respect. Thursday I went in to get a sonogram at a paid clinic where I have been seen before. This time was a little different.  Each of the other visits where arranged by the doctor I had seen.  My doctor called the chief of operations at the sonogram/mammogram clinic and said basically, Put this person in line.  I'm sending them over right now and I want special treatment.  This time I was on my own and oh woe was me! I know how these things work in Brazil.  I've stood in many a line and jumped places in a few - yes, when in Rome sometimes you have to know how to fight like a Greek wrestler to ...