Generous

 

For the next two weeks, I'm going to be hiding out in the back yard, resting, praying, reading, refilling.  And staying off social media.  But I've scheduled some posts to go ahead while I soak in the quiet... 

God keeps providing people to help us along in the adventure we call life.  If you grabbed your dictionary and looked up the word "generous", I think a picture of our friends, the Conards, would be smiling out from the page.  They are the kind of people whose left hand doesn't tell the right hand what it is doing, and you would never know just how many people are on the receiving end of Conard generosity.

 

They drove all day last Thursday just to come help us whip the yard and the house back into shape.  And to bring sweet Sarah a dependable little first car to get her off to college.

Aaron estimated that the two families put in more than 80 man hours on Friday alone.

We took time to play, too.  The one thing I really wanted to do for my birthday was pick strawberries.

 

 

"We need a message big enough to overcome our natural human instinct to live for our own glory, pursue our own happiness, and forget that our lives are much, much bigger than this little moment of life."  ~Paul David Tripp  "Instrument in the Redeemer's Hands"

 

Our friends are keenly aware that God's message is big, and they live out that belief every day.

 

We had to stop the kids after just a few minutes of picking because the buckets were filling up quickly!

 The kids knew that as soon as we weighed and paid for the strawberries, they could eat as many berries as they wanted.

 

Sarah made an Oreo cheesecake to help us celebrate the three May birthdays.  Whenever we can, we try to get together to revel in the three really neat people that God made and how He knit our hearts together.

 

Saturday morning, we worked hard again, both inside and outside the house. 

 

But in the afternoon, we played.  I love watching these ten kids (ranging from 4-17) get along so very well together.

My kids are already begging me to add more children to our family.  I think it's because they had such a good time with the Conard kids.

After church on Sunday, we had time for a quick lunch and some hugs before our friends needed to hit the road for their long drive back home.

Their generosity in time, money, energy, and encouragement left us feeling refreshed.  We are inching closer and closer to being ready to jump back into life in America.