What I Thanksgive..

God, for saving me from certain death!
For my husband, being the incredible loving, providing, awesome man he is!
For my son, being the smart, loving, sweet boy he is!
For my daughter, being the floofy, caring, lovely little princess she is!
For my family, for still loving me through all the junk I put them through!
For my friends, for loving me and being so encouraging and amazing!

My son told me this morning:

"We have to thanks give Candy Land, and Pom (thats what he calls my dad) and cards and food and thanks give Jesus for all the parts that I just said. And the chairs game. Because its Thanksgiving and it makes our hearts happy!"

I am thankful for a Savior that even my not-yet-five year old can love and accept and understand!

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Walk to Beautiful

I just finished watching "A Walk to Beautiful" (aired by PBS.) I'm nearly beyond words. It is about women who develop fistulas (a hole in the birth canal either to the bladder or rectum caused from extremely long hard labors [they said up to 10 days of hard labor] causing incontinence) These women are shunned by their communities, families, abandoned by their husbands. They cannot even live in their family's homes, they have to live in a hut out back.

There are hospitals (the one they focused on in particular is in Adis Ababa, Ethiopia) that specialize in this issue but they said there are something like 70,000 women with this problem and only 146 obgyns. (Don't quote me on those figures..)

My heart broke hearing the stories of these women. Many, after days of labor, lost their babies and then were cut off from society.

I always think of ways to serve as a missionary like teaching people about Jesus, teaching them to read, write, farm. Even being a doctor or nurse and treating them for disease or malnourishment. But what an incredible honor would it be to be able to basically give these women their very life!? There are so many practical ways to serve God's people, His children, but this is one way that by helping cure one person, you'd be affecting so many; their families, their children.

So many of the women in the hospital said that if this surgery didn't work, their only other option would be suicide. They cannot go back to their villages for fear of being shunned. One girl was 17 years old and had been married off at 9 or 10 years old and kept running away and her father would beat her and send her off with another husband and with the fourth husband she ended up getting pregnant and was in labor for 5 days, causing the fistula and I think she was one who ended up losing her child. Her mother had died I think when this girl was a child so she didn't want to go back because her father would just beat her and marry her off again (or try, no man would probably consider taking her.)

I think part of the reason it touched me so much is that our compassion child, Biruk, lives in (or near) Adis Ababa and to think that his family could very well be affected by this issue (he is an orphan, so maybe his mother died in child birth or from some sort of complication) and to be able to go there and make a difference, such an incredible, life changing difference, and that in the name of the Lord..

It just gives you (me) a new perspective on the petty 'problems' in my life!

Recent Projects

I haven't posted in quite awhile so I thought I'd share some projects I've done since my last post.



My sister and I made some pumpkin & gourd candle holders. You just cut a hole big enough for a tea light and then scoop out all the guts. The candles sat a little low so we put those glass beads (like flattened marbles) in the bottom. We used some of the funky shaped gourds and they looked so great!



This is on a bookshelf at our church. It was antique white which looked good, but just didn't quite fit with the season so I grabbed a bottle of golden something-or-other acrylic paint and used my crackle and chocolate brown acrylic paints to make this beautiful thing!



Again, my sister and I did this one. Friends of ours recently bought their first house and don't have much for it as far as decor so we decided to help them out! We just used a board our dad had laying around (part of a 2x4), sanded it smooth and rounded the edges/corners (with the sander)and painted it with acrylics (the kind in the little bottles in the craft section) We started with a coat of chocolate brown, then used a wispy brush and did a coat of white (leaving some brown showing through) and then a coat of crackle medium, then a coat of antique white (with the wispy brush) then painted the words with black and once it dried, outlined the words with a black permanent marker to make the edges smooth. We scuffed the edges a bit with sand paper for the antique-y look. SO easy (and fun!!) and really cheap!

I just love making cards! I used some scraps of scrapbook paper and the flower and black portion I painted with acrylics on Bristol board. The 'Home' card was for my friends who bought the house.

And there you have it, this is what my life consists of when I'm bored! I love making things and doing little home-y projects and I LOVE not spending money on decor and cards and such..it's a beautiful thing!