StillwatersIowa

 Sydnie and Jayden are cousins. They are both middle children in the sibling order of their families. They love to come to Grandma Jan's house. Their favorite character in the "Cars" movie is Mator, a rusty, trusty, tow truck who's voice is Larry the Cable Guy. They both love Ranger rides and helping their dads. At three years old their lives are ahead of them yet. Who and what will have an impact on them as they grow into young adults? Last Sunday morning our Family Leader group finished our retreat weekend with a worship service in this chapel at The Billy Graham Cove in Asheville, North Carolina. Thanks for the praise and worship music Darla. We shared that we would be open to what God's purpose is for us in our countries current atmosphere. And we prayed together that we would be an impact. Last Monday was our last day for the week in the field. It started snowing about mid afternoon. Later it turned to rain and we had around two inches. Since the tankers were...

 Burnt toast often happens when we least expect it. We get to choose how we handle it. We don't want this inconvenience at breakfast to ruin the rest of our day. Or the relationship of the loved one who fixed it for us. We have options. We can forget about toast for breakfast. We can get out more bread and try again. Or we can get the jelly out. If you can't read the writing on the jelly jar it's because it was purchased in Israel a year ago. That tells you how little we use jelly at our house.  Covid is much more serious than burnt toast. However we still have options in how we handle it. We don't want the consequences of battling Covid to be worse than the cause itself. Like burnt toast we don't want to lose relationships over differences and we need to respect others opinions. I hope others can respect mine as well. As a Christian I believe God put me here to run to a problem and not hide from one. I want to live an example of hope and not fear of the future. Esp...

Good morning friends. I'd like you to meet a new family member. Karl and Kristin welcomed Brynn Lucille into their lives Wednesday morning. Brynn joins older brother Malaki and big sister Sydnie. Along with her siblings she also joins 19 cousins. Life is truly a gift. My thoughts are random this morning. Another gift is being helpful. However sometimes we have limits. A gentleman was walking down the gravel road in sweat pants on a chilly day. I thought it would be appropriate to give him a lift so I asked him where he was heading. He said he was hoping to go to the Philippines. I took him to Caseys. Often I need to put my mind in neutral in order to relax at night. So Jan buys me secondhand books that take little to no thinking to read. Thanks for the picture and caring about me Jan. Mike, Suzanne, and Cody went to northwest Iowa this weekend for a college visit and to visit family. Wow. It's winter time up by you northern folks. Thanks for the picture Suzanne.    After an in...

  Holding power is what you hang on to when you need to finish strong or when life gets unsound or shaky. I'm often asked what it takes for a family or team to work together productively and cheerfully. The answer is not that complicated. It's to love and care for each other. And it's to put others ahead of oneself. As we wrapped up the 2020 harvest this week we had a few hurdles to cross together. One was finding a way to continue to combine and get rid of the corn at night while doing custom work. Since my bins were empty we offered them as holding capacity to deliver later. Also a huge thank you to Andy, Richard, Eugene, Layton, Brent, Jim, Pablo, Kasey, Jim, Matt, John, and Alex for helping our family with this crop. With other jobs and responsibilities overlapping harvest we were blessed to have our next generation step up. Thank you Ezra, Elijah, and John for working like grownups. I hope your teachers at school understand. The further north we went the more the derec...