The Harris' Visit Vandalia and Other Summer Stuff

This is the busiest summer we've had in a long time! 

We are settling into our town and church and enjoying life with people.

Harrison did swim lessons last week. He and another boy were the oldest ones there, so I thought for a minute that they wouldn't learn much. The first day they seemed to just be diving for toys. But the second day...... The second day they were supposed to jump off the diving board and then off the high dive. 

This was a major nerve-wracking experience for both older boys. And I noticed Harrison did a lot of sitting by the side of the pool. So after some talking and lots of encouragement from everyone at home and some talks about courage and "You can't just sit out. You have to at least try, even if you fail....", he did it. The third day he did an actual dive off the diving board and then jumped off the high dive. And the fourth day he passed the swim test to be able to "be in the deep end." 

We were proud of him for getting back up there while afraid. 

That last day he made a keen observation: "The scariest time is right before you do the thing. When you actually do the thing, it's not scary."

The church had a picnic and pool party last Sunday night. These kids were playing Go Fishing after supper. Adorable. One of the boys is in my Sunday school class this summer. It's been a great way for me to get to know some families at church.

Paul and Elayne dropping in to say 'Hi.' (I love it when they do!)

I think Papa was telling Jon something about growing up in this house or farming. I love all those family stories.

We have seen kittens from our cat Abigail! 

There are four: two gray with white paws and two gray tabbies. They come out to play but are pretty skittish. Abigail has gotten friendlier though and will let us pet her and such. She's very awkward at affection, so it's funny to watch her try. But she's trying. 

Some kids helping out for VBS workday. 

We wrapped a bunch of boxes and the kids painted them to look like suitcases.

We had a gorgeous lightening storm the other night. 

The storm did damage to a nearby town though. 

One of the library programs was a lady from town who just had a middle school fiction book published by Harper-Collins. She read a chapter and talked to us about getting published and such. It was a fun time, especially for us adults. Harrison was one of the kids who won one of her books though, so he's working on reading it right now.

Look at this monstrous thing in our backyard. Those tires are taller than I am! I think that's a sprayer.

The field of beans to the east of us. 

This has been a very wet year; the wettest Papa remembers having seen. I don't know what that means for crops. Every time Phillip steps outside he says, "Yep, it's just a swamp out here." We've had a lot of standing water around our place. 

And we just finished having Cody Harris and his kids over for the weekend. Emmey was going to attend a friend's wedding an hour from us, so they stayed here while she attended the wedding and came back. 

And Cody's birthday was this past week, so we decided it was time to acknowledge his birthday somewhere adjacent to the actual day. 

There's an ongoing joke with Phillip and Cody because Phillip never remembers his birthday and Cody always calls or texts for Phillip's. We didn't even have Cody's birthday on our calendar till last year. So since he was going to be here, Phillip decided to get 28 cards (that's how many years he's known Cody) and sign them and date them for all the past birthdays. 

And then Cody had 28 cards to open and read in front of all of us. 

It was a lot of fun on our part. Now if we can just keep it up and remember next year.....

Happy Birthday, Cody!

This pie was a joint Harris-Gore effort. 

I made pie crust, Cody provided cherries from his Aunt's (?) cherry tree. And Emmey rolled out the dough to make a cherry pie and some cute little tarts.

Chris Harley came to visit us since he lives not too far away. He's good friends with Cody too. 

We had good visiting time ~ talking about ministry, reminiscing about college days. It was a lot of fun to have them all here.

Cody, Chris and the older kids shooting guns in the backyard. 

Jonathan enjoys this a lot, and I think he's fairly good at it.

We played our traditional Scrabble game. 

Emmey won, Jon was second, and Phoebe and I were somewhere down the line. 

Liz just texted me this picture of her and Nana. Apparently my parents stopped today to take her to lunch in Joplin as they make their way down to Louisiana with their moving truck. My parents are moving back down south. 

Whew! What a week of activity! I'm so grateful to be living here.

 

July Doings

 

It's been a wonderful relaxing-busy summer so far. I'm doing a lot of reading, which I love. A favorite reading time is right before bed ~ I am reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time, and I listen to the movie music while I read. It's an awesome multi-sensory experience. :-) Really though, I was telling Phillip that I miss it when I don't have that time. I look forward to it like a relaxing visit with an old friend. 

Speaking of old friends, we got to see several this past week. My college roommate Jessica and I got together with our younger boys at Falls Creek. She says she tells people, "When Lanaya left me for her husband....." Sorry, Jess. I did do that that one time. But she still meets up with me, so she must forgive me. 

I'm so sorry to make you suffer through my selfies. But we have happy faces, so here it is.

We met three snakes at the Falls. This one might be a Kirtland's snake. Harmless. But startling when you glance back to find him staring at you.

Another little guy of unknown name. 

And another one not pictured swimming not far from the huge spider skittering on top of the water.

Harrison had a good time. 

He is sore today from swinging on that swing. Good boy-time at this place.

For Independence Day we went to visit Cody's family. Now that our families are both in the Midwest, we'll get to see each other more. All the kids are together here except for Liz who was actually visiting Texas at the time. Tear. Things change when your kids grow up.

We haven't seen Ling in 10 years or more! I had quite an enjoyable time visiting with her. If our memories are correct, Phillip and I have been to (stayed in?) every home they've lived in. There are a lot of good memories of our kids together too ~ zoos and Halloweens and so many delicious meals.

I did not get any actual pictures of Cody. But he made us the best brisket we've ever eaten!

Ling's mom made a Chinese meal for us. 

She showed me how to make some of the dishes and allowed me to help her a bit. She doesn't speak English but we made it work.

Presentation is her speciality. I especially enjoyed all the vegetables.

And Phillip read the Declaration of Independence to us on the 4th.

We're listening. We really are.

Harrison was inspired by the loud fireworks, so we found him some paper to draw a battle comic strip.

The people in this town enjoy their fireworks! I thought San Antonio did a lot of fireworks..... but these people did fireworks from daylight until midnight both nights we were there. We saw quite the show from Cody's balcony. 

Ping-pong was a big hit for all of us. Ling is the reigning champion.

It's such a blessing to be in the Midwest and be able to see so many people we know. It truly feels like home.

I saw this paper at the store and had to get a picture of that headline. I'm glad he survived.

We planted wildflowers outside our kitchen window and the flowers are now blooming! I was hoping. I've planted those seed packets before and didn't get anything. Jon asked me if we could get rid of those "weeds" just a couple of weeks ago. But now we have purple and orange and white flowers. And butterflies have found them.

Queen Anne's lace (Wild Carrot) grows by the roadside! Anne of Green Gables talks about Queen Anne's lace, and I've been fascinated by it since watching the movie. Now it grows beside me.

Little jeweled bugs congregate on the wildflower stems.

Our Dining Table and Chairs Debacle

We painted our dining table and chairs an ice blue color a few years ago to freshen them up a bit. It was a pretty color that went well in our kitchen. 

When we moved a few months ago, we decided we needed them to match our living room better since they were right next to it. The ice blue looked great by itself but not when next to the oranges and turquoise of the living room.

We thought we could do a yellow color pulled from a painting on the living room wall.

Here they are getting ready for yellow.

Well, the paint was thin. When we did the first coat, it looked green and not at all pretty. We thought if we just painted enough coats, the pretty yellow would work fine. 

After six coats of paint (did you all hear that? Six.) and several weeks of work, Phillip put it all back together. And he hated it. I didn't notice anything wrong for a while, but the more we looked at the yellow, the more we realized it did not work at all. The table top is stained a reddish color, and the two colors were awful together. 

Jonathan sat down for lunch one day with his red shirt on and said, "Welcome to McDonald's. May I take your order?" And that was the end of that. We were getting rid of the yellow.

Phillip works full time during the day and I was done with schooling, so I went over to Mimi and Papa's garage for several days and stripped the chairs down to wood. The kids took some turns coming over to help a bit. But it took 7-8 hours per chair. Phillip wanted to trash it all and just buy something new. I decided after all the work, that if the new color didn't work, we would indeed do that.

We decided to spray paint instead of brush. The colors are limited with spray paint, but we played it very safe and went with Almond. I have to say that spray paint was the best decision we made throughout this whole process. It went on quick, it dried very fast, we only had to do two coats.....

So that has been our Dining Table Saga. 

We can now eat all together and start inviting company over for meals. 

Thank goodness!

 

Kie Hebert's Legacy

I just finished reading this book my parents gave me about a man who had a huge impact on my mom's life even though she never met him. I remember much admirable talk about him as I grew up, so I wanted to share a little bit about him here.

The Cajuns (Acadians) were kicked out of Canada in the 1700's, and some of them were dropped off on the shores of Louisiana. Many of my grandparent's generation were still Cajun-French only speaking peoples. They kept their culture and language and their Catholic religion well preserved. Brother Kie Hebert (pronounced A-Bear) is the first Cajun, to his knowledge, who gave up his Catholic faith and was immersed into Christ.

He was preparing to become a Catholic priest when he had to give that up to help support his family. But he had the preaching bug and asked his Bishop for permission to be a lay missionary, which they allowed. In his first week of teaching, a Methodist in the crowd stood up and demanded that he prove from the Bible his propositions about Communion. There was a bit of a back and forth. As the Methodist man was leaving, he said, "I will pray for you." Brother Hebert shot back, "I don't want your prayers."

But Kie was troubled by the fact that he could not prove his teachings from the Bible. He had never read a Bible. He went to his priest who told him that only the Pope could understand the Bible. His priest finally sold his Bible to Kie for $4 even though he kept telling him he would not be able to understand it.

Kie studied the Bible and prayed and asked questions of his Catholic leaders for 6 months. He then made his way around the 13 Protestant preachers in Crowley and asked them what they believed. He had been told that the Protestants all had different and contradictory Bibles, so he asked to buy Bibles from them. All of them gave him a Bible and he went home and compared them. He found they did not contradict one another at all. But he was confused by all the different ways the denominations did things and their differing beliefs. 

He finally fell on his knees before God and prayed, 

"God, I have found out that I was a deceived man for twenty-eight years. If you will have mercy and help me see through all this confusion and save my soul, I will never let anyone deceive me again. If I am deceived again it will be by your own Word."

He wanted to be immersed into Christ. The Baptist preacher would not baptize him unless he was joining the Baptist church. The Methodist guy would only sprinkle. By God's Providence, a Church of Christ preacher was holding a revival nearby and heard about Kie Hebert's search. He came over and they spent several hours going over Scripture together. The man finally said he must be leaving to go preach the revival that night, but Brother Hebert asked if he would baptize him first. They drove to water and Brother W.J. Johnson baptized Kie Hebert.

Being used to asking permission, Kie told Johnson that he wanted to tell all his friends about the way to God.  Brother Johnson said he was free in Christ to do so. On Friday night, July 16th, 1915 Kie preached his first sermon after being baptized.  Forty-eight people came forward to be baptized. More followed as he continued preaching that weekend. Among those baptized is the lovely lady in the blue chair below: 

Momo Mouton.

Everyone at our church called her Momo Mouton even though she was only grandma to some of them. Right next to Momo is her daughter Mrs. Fae. Mrs. Fae was good friends with my mother in high school.

From left to right: Lanaya Clouse, Carrie Pemberton, Redessa LeBlanc, Tonya Clouse, Lillie Pemberton. I believe we were at a Singspiration.

Above is a picture of myself (purple sweater, extreme left) and Lillie (brown dress, extreme right). Lillie is Mrs. Fae's daughter and she and I were very close as children.

So Momo Mouton raised her kids up in the Lord after being baptized by Kie Hebert. And Mrs. Fae invited my mom to church. My mother was raised Catholic and in high school was going to Catholic services on her own. She remembers attending mass in the morning and then going to the Church of Christ with Mrs. Fae in the evenings and on Wednesday nights. 

It was mini-skirt times and my mother's mom would order my mom dresses and then hem them up higher. My mom always had a lot of books in high school, and she would ask Mrs. Fae to pick them up for her so she wouldn't have to bend down. Mrs. Fae (very blunt, but endearingly so) would say, "Nuh, uh! You wanna wear those short skirts, you pick up your own books!" 

My mom enjoyed going to the Church of Christ, but she was not a quick convert. They showed her the Jules Miller film strips. She did not know her Bible, so she learned a lot from them, but it was also overwhelming. She had by then started at a college in Lake Charles to get a teaching degree. But she hated dorm life. It was loud and she couldn't study. One night when they guys had a 'panty raid,' she freaked out and decided to quit. She had only been there a few months. 

That week there was a revival going on at Robert's Cove Church of Christ and she was attending. Many people were trying to persuade her to get baptized, but she did not want to be pushed into it. The last night of the revival someone came up to her and asked if she wanted to attend the Bible College in Ottumwa, IA (Midwestern School of Evangelism). Mrs. Fae was attending and so were a few others my mom knew. If she wanted to go, the Praters were going to start heading there that evening and would let her ride with them. She went home and packed. Her mother asked if she would be taking any of her short dresses with her. She said, "No, Momma, I can't wear those at Bible college." Her mother had spent a lot of hard earned money on them. It was a little bit of sore spot between them that was mended in time. 

Her mother was crying and begging her not to leave as they walked out to the car. Iowa seemed like a million miles away. My mom would not look back. If she did, she would have stayed home. She loved her mom.

As they drove to Iowa, the Praters asked Mom if she knew her books of the Bible. She did not. They said it might be a good idea to memorize those. So she learned the New Testament names by the time she got there. 

She was not a baptized believer. She did not know her Bible. She was several months behind everyone else when she arrived at Ottumwa. She did have longer dresses though. Mom remembers Mrs. Vicky Mouton staying up all night with her to sew dresses that she would not be embarrassed to wear. 

Mom is in the long pink dress in the middle.  

We think this picture was taken near the dorms at MSE in Ottumwa. The girls with Mom are from the college, at any rate.

Mom eventually came around to making a decision to follow Christ. She was baptized shortly before she turned 19.

Kie Hebert ended up preaching and starting churches all over Acadiana. He and his team baptized close to 10,000 people over the years. I spent my childhood in the very first church he started - Robert's Cove Church of Christ. One year our preacher (Brother Bob Miller, pictured below at camp) had the idea of doing a Kie Hebert day to commemorate the work he had done. I barely remember this day, but it is there in my memory. A crowded building. The women cooking in the tin building next door. Brother Bob preaching. 

Kie Hebert studied his Bible and baptized Momo Mouton. 

Momo raised Mrs. Fae in the Lord. 

Mrs. Fae invited my mom to church. 

And my mom met Dad at MSE in Ottumwa. 

They raised us kids in the Lord. 

I have children now brought up in the same way. 

And so I was reminded of a wonderful legacy that began with Kie Hebert.

Mom with some of her grandkids in Florida.

 

Spring Leads to Summer

Today is one of the first days I have felt I could be a little lazy. It's summer, so I don't have daily school to do. I am doing a little yard work and house work every day, but there's nothing pressing for my time. Self, let me enjoy this! I tend to want to add activity when I get bored instead of just enjoying the down time.

Harrison made this handicraft for school. Well, I helped a little. 

But he does know how to crochet now.

We have found so many dead baby birds around here! This poor little guy fell out of the auger and survived for three days. He was a fighter. I was hoping he would make it, but he finally gave out. We think he's a starling.

On Memorial Day we went to the community service at the graveyard. Papa was there to tell us about family graves. I really should have taken notes. But we will do it again. 

It was chilly!

And can I say that I love being in a place that has a community Memorial Day service? In a city that you didn't grow up in, there's really not that kind of thing to be a part of. There may have been multiple services somewhere in the large city, but why would we hear about them? And which one would we care about going to? And who would be there that we would connect with? And whose graves would we look at to know our history? 

Every day I am amazed that we get to live here. 

This is Ashford Gore's grave marker. 

He was the first Gore who came from Tennessee or thereabouts and settled in this area.

Harrison turned 11! 

He wanted pound cake with whipped cream and strawberries.

Brothers putting together birthday gifts.

He wanted to go to the pool for his birthday. Vandalia has an awesome pool.

Turns out the big downpour after the fields around us were planted did wreak a little havoc. The rain pounded the ground and made it hard so that the seedlings would snap when they tried to come up. So they rolled the dirt and then did some replanting. But I think they are done now. They said that last year they finished planting on July 2, so mid-June isn't too shabby. 

(I'm probably getting lots of terminology wrong; forgive me, those of you in-the-know.)

Liz came for the weekend. Her previous job in Joplin did not pan out, so she's been applying around and just got another job at a dry cleaners. She gets to live with a friend and family ~ she's in a house full of girls and it sounds like they have a good time.

Jon invited friends over for a game day. 

I really enjoyed having them in our home. They are so fun to listen in on!

Harrison is at his first week of camp. A sponsor got a picture of him talking to another kid. 

I just love this picture so much. He comes home tomorrow. He was very nervous about camp, so we're eager to hear all about how it went.

 

The Land Around Our House

 

I've never lived in the country. The smallest town I've lived in was 9,000. Our kids have never lived in the country. 

Jonathan does wish that he lived in town right now. Since he's there at least three times a day, he would rather not have the 7 minute drive. (He can deal. I'm glad he drives! He's been up at 6 am every weekday this summer to go to the YMCA and work out with buddies.)

Phoebe said today that she is thankful to be in the country. She was remembering her window view in San Antonio which was a faded fence, several duplexes, the Organics waste can, and, most of the year, straggly sticky-burred grass and weeds. She remembers walking outside and wishing it was grass beneath her feet instead of concrete. I'm glad she can now have a much better view and lots of soft grass beneath her feet. 

We are on the highest point in Ralls county, so we have an awesome panoramic view of the sky. We had a nice storm today right after Mr. R finished planting the field around our house. Phillip said this was a good thing. I thought maybe the rain would wash away the seeds, but apparently it's okay.

It's been a cold, rainy spring, so the farmers are planting later than they would like. Mr. R was able to get into our field this weekend (do you see that red tractor in the distance?), so now all the fields around our house are planted. It's soybeans this year. 

This field to the east of us was planted before all the rain, so it's got a nice green sheen to it.

It looks just like our styrofoam cup bean plants that we did in Kindergarten! 

Beans are beans. I just love it.

Before the fields were plowed, I walked the field north of us from our house to the main Highway. I found out later that it's a mile in distance. A pretty good walk! It was rough and stubbly, but I imagine that gives me a better workout.

It smelled damp and a little ocean-like. There's the house and bins in the distance.

I was trying to get home before sunset. It gave me great "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" vibes. (Great Tolstoy short story if you've never read it.)