Food for Thought

Last night our favorite daughter in law came to dinner and brought with her our favorite thirteen and eleven year olds. Their dad and little brother were returning from the Florida keys where they had gone for a fishing trip.

We looked at ASP photos on the computer, played checkers, romped with Pretty, the Dalmation who shares her house with us, had a really good dinner and then they were gone. They went home to greet their returning Dad and favorite eight year old.
It was great!
Ain't God good?

Shalom Y'all
Charlie

“praise Him with the harp and lyre, praise Him with tambourine and dancing, …………………..Praise the Lord.
Psalm 150:4 NIV

Sometimes, when the music is playing and my thoughts my lips and hands turn to Him, when, as one young lady expressed it, I'm in my "chill" zone, I just want to dance.
But I can’t.
My feet weigh a ton and I just don’t know how!
Other times, when I am so wretched, I wonder, "why would He choose me? Why would he be faithful to me?"
Like the late Rich Mullins was wont to say: “Our God is an awesome God.”

Shalom Y’all,
Charlie

Marty&Molly, Ally, Carter, Nick, The house, April & Aren, Rocky, Jared 

Our Host Family and some of the people who worked on the house.
The view of the house is from the rear, on the hill. The only flat place is where the house sits!

Shalom Y'all,
Poppy

“Where there is no vision”
Proverbs 29:18 reads; “Where there is no vision the people perish.” KJV

Marty is the lady whose house I worked on along with many other people during our ASP trip to Carter county Tennessee.
She had made a commitment she could not keep, as she later learned.
Marty is a single mother who has four children. Two of them are grown but still live with her. The youngest is a fifteen year old boy who likes to go hunting, fishing, and show pictures of the game he has “bagged” and the fish he has landed.
April is his seventeen-year-old sister, talented in art, who became instant friends with my favorite seventeen-year-old granddaughter, Aren. The two older brothers are off doing work for the summer elsewhere.
The commitment was to have the construction completed on her new house by a certain date (for financing purposes.)
The volunteer labor she had enlisted did not always perform as had been promised and Marty was in trouble.
The lumber came from the building lot where the house now stands, a trade with the sawmill guy. Some materials had come from other buildings, the roof cover was purchased from the manufacturer at incredible savings.
The house was so close to completion but so was the deadline!
Marty prayed.
Appalachia Service Project agreed to help!
Marty had not given up. When I talked to her she only discussed the future. No looking back for this lady. There were no complaints about a husband gone drinking never to return. No complaints about cold snowy winters……………just the vision.
The house is to be a bed and breakfast when the children are grown. She will build two cabins right over there, farther up the hill to include in her B&B. Marty has experience, she works at one now. The outbuilding behind the house is to be her upholstery shop.
She also works cleaning houses; she does upholstery…………whatever is needed to take care of her family.
God bless Marty and her children.
Shalom Y'all
Charlie

This is team Gang Green ASP JUly, 2005 

Gang Green is the name given to us by one of the girls and refers to the green bandanas, which identified our team.
We lived and worked together for one week while we added to the work already done on a house in Carter County Tennessee by the owner and previous ASP teams.
Three of the folks in the photo are the "host" family, upon whose house we did the work. The others are from Trinity United Methodist Church Gainesville, Florida except yours truly who joined them from Fort Myers Florida.

Shalom Y'all

I shall be off line for more than one week!
My favorite 17 year old and my favorite 15 year old grandaughters are embarking on an adventure to the Appalacian mountains and have asked me to join them.
This will be a work project where we will be doing.........something on houses in the mountains of Tennessee.
Since I live several hours away from point of departure and have not been able to attend any planning meetings I can only load the requested tools and trust those who organized, and the Lord as I leave tonite after work.
Shalom Y'all
Charlie

My favorite oldest 
FAVORITE OLDEST DAUGHTER

This photo “surfaced” the other day when Memaw was sorting through some old boxes. It is difficult to believe it was thirty years ago when she had cancer and, in order to rid her of the cancer the doctor also rid her of most of her left leg.
Her “window to the world” was an old CB radio I got for her.
This is a candid photo of her as she talked with someone.
She is now the mother of three of our favorite grandchildren, Aren, Larissa, and Jonathan, works as a physician’s assistant, and rides her bicycle forty miles in Lance Armstrong’s “Ride for the Roses.”
I am so proud of her I can hardly stand it.

Replace ment theology?
"And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed and after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting posession; and I will be their God." Genesis 17:7-8

If God has not kept this covenant, what is the point?

"And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."

Shalom Y'all