Eating of the Bread

As I opened my Bible to the book of John today, to continue my read through the New Testament, I stopped and prayed the usual prayer, before reading what is a very familiar passage, "Lord, please show me what you want me to see and learn today...please help me to find the contentment that I'm looking for.  Help me to have a better attitude today."

When I got to John chapter 6, I again came to the story of the feeding of the 5,000.  This time the story is told from the perspective of John.  I love how the gospels are like hearing the same story from 4 different friends.  They were all there (well, 3 of them were anyway, Luke was a doctor/historian who wrote after the fact), they were all inspired by God to write their version and perspective of the story of Christ's life down for us to read; but, they all tell it a bit differently and make us see different aspects of the same events.  It's just like when I talk to my friends, that were all at the same event and yet what sticks out to them, or the view that they saw the story from, it's all just a bit different...not wrong, or contradictory, just a different spin on the same thing.

Today, I got more about the contentment that I'm seeking from John, that I didn't see while reading the story in Luke (Chapter 9.)  That's because John continues the story of the feeding of the 5,000 by talking about what Jesus said to the disciples the next day, after the boat excursion.  In John, Jesus tells the disciples that they are seeking Him because they ate of the bread the previous day and were filled up, they were impressed with the miracle.  What He wants them to see is that they're hungry again...they didn't really get "full," did they?

He then points out that He is the "Bread of Life," that God the Father gave Him to the people, just like they were given manna in the desert from heaven and were provided for; but, just like there, they were still hungry each day for the manna, and they were now also hungry again for the bread.  If we eat of Jesus, if we come to Him, again and again, we won't be hungry anymore.

I know this story, I've heard it many a time...but, what I'm reminding myself of today, is that when I feel the discontent start to rise, I need to ask myself if I am trying to fill my life with earthly bread, 'cause it won't satisfy me...I'm just going to keep getting discontent.  I need to keep turning to the one that will fill me up and I won't be hungry anymore.  It's easy to say; but, can I do it?  I have 3 kids, a house, many outside ministry commitments, friends and family to keep in contact with...how much time do I really give to "filling" myself up with Jesus, so that I won't be hungry anymore, so that I won't feel discontent?  Not enough, obviously.  Filling up can be reading my Bible, it can be praying, it can be praise and worship music...do I give these things enough place in my life, so that I'm "full?"  It's definitely something for me to think about, to strive for, and when I feel the discontent start to come back in, I need to re-evaluate my time commitments to be sure I'm giving enough of myself to "filling" up on the Bread of Life, Jesus.

Struggling with Contentment

I'm just being honest here, telling you how I've been feeling lately.

I've had a really hard time being happy with where I'm at, what's going on, and what I've got...

Our local church here is doing a read through the New Testament in 30 days challenge.  It has been a challenge for me, for sure.  My usual "Read through the Bible" group that I'm a part of has had to take a back burner, I just haven't been able to keep up with both.  This week though, as I've been reading through Luke, and seeing the gospel story again, for the 3rd time in 10 days, and hearing the parables again, for the 3rd time in 10 days, I am struggling with my very real feelings.

When they fed all those people on the hill (Ch.9), and then took up baskets of leftovers and it says the people were "full"...I wonder, why can't I be "full" when I feel like I'm lacking in supplies?  Don't I trust that God will multiply what I'm asking for and "fill" me up?

When Jesus tells the disciples how to pray (Ch. 11), and He reminds them that we give our own children and families good gifts, how much more will our Heavenly Father give us, then why am I not content to wait for that gift?

Or, what about the story to the crowd about not worrying about what others have (Ch. 12) and reminding us that the Lord takes care of the animals, the flowers, why wouldn't He provide for us?

And I can't leave out the tale of the persistent widow (Ch. 18) who kept nagging, and asking, and pleading for her share and protection, and just so she would leave him alone, the judge gave her what she wanted.  The moral being, of course, God loves us, and we aren't nagging Him when we continually pray for the same thing over and over again, and He wants to hear from us and He will not delay in bringing about justice...

SO, then why do we feel discontent?

Why do I feel the need to list all the things that aren't fair in my life?

Why do I sit and tell my husband (and my friends) about all my perceived woes?

I did get an answer to prayer and "supply" today...very quickly followed by the opposite happening.

Let me tell you my story ..... We've been having trouble with our truck starting, it's been getting harder and harder to get the car to turn over.  We had a fundi scheduled to come out today, and on the way home from HOPAC music lessons with the kids (where it took me 4 times to get the car to start), I was praying "Lord, just let me get home, just one more time, so we can get the car fixed.  Please Lord, don't let it be too expensive, we can't do one more big bill right now.  Please Lord, have mercy and cover this situation, let it be a simple fix!"  I was concerned, truly I was.  Imagine my gratitude and surprise when the fundi, in about 15 minutes, said the connection to the battery had been loose and that it wasn't charging the battery; but, it was good now.  I asked him what I could pay him for his time, and he said 15,000 tsh, that's about $10.  Wow!  Thank you Lord!  I went in the house on Cloud 9, thankful, joyful, praying in gratitude.

Not an hour later, Indy is home and the Dawasco (water company) bill shows up.  I had just been talking to a friend about water bills and wouldn't you know it...our bill this month is more than 4 times what it usually is.  Ahhh!  This was so not what I was expecting.  I started praying "Lord, please, let this be a mistake. Let Indy be able to handle this if he goes up the main office....."

I was frustrated again!  I was not happy with what is going on, again!

I'm tired of my rattling off my whole long list of things that I wish I could do with my kids for fun, cheap (free) dates before moving here.  I'm tired of feeling like I haven't been making the right kind of friendship connections here...and wondering, what did I do?  I'm tired of being discontent and making mental lists of what I don't have and want to get when we return to the US next summer.  And the list goes on....

I keep berating myself and saying "You need to just make an attitude change, what is wrong with you?  You have plenty of nice things, you have a healthy family, food to eat, a nice house...what are you complaining about...look at your neighbors. Get over this!"

This isn't about being a missionary...this is about being human...about dealing with our very human nature that tends to complain, always looking to have more than what we have or need, and just not being happy with where we're at.  Do we all deal with this, at some point...YES!  I'm sure of it.  If we are truly honest, we've all gone through this, or maybe are going through this now.  What I wonder is why we can't be more open to talk about our struggles, and our real life issues.  Why do we cover them up and pretend like we're all just fine and all is well?!  THAT is what I'm struggling with as well...wanting to find that "realness" in people.

Review - Writing with Ease

Everyone knows that I love Tapestry of Grace, and they do have a writing program.  I am using it with my 4th grader this year; but, I had trouble incorporating it in the lower levels.  I wanted something that was a bit more structured, more open-and-go.  Could I figure out a segment of our literature to use for narration and dictation...yes; but, this was definitely an easier way for me to proceed.

I am also a big fan of Susan Wise Bauer, the author of Writing With Ease.  Her book, "The Well Trained Mind" is the book that convinced me that I could homeschool, in a classical, Christian way, and be truly successful at it!

Writing With Ease is a 4 level program.  It uses Classic Children's literature as samples for the parent to read out loud and then use in narration, dictation, and copywork exercises.  Bauer's idea is that a child cannot truly become a great writer if they have not seen and read and copied examples of good writing over and over again.  She incorporates grammar lessons into her writing as well, a great review technique that has been very helpful to my students.

We've certainly enjoyed finding new gems to read as well.  Often times, after a week of samples from a book, my children will be begging me to try and find it at the library.  We've read the Little House series because of this, Time Cat, Rascal, biographies of Alexander the Great, The Reluctant Dragon, Alice in Wonderland, and the list could continue indefinitely.

The book contains all of the sample texts, a dialogue script for you to use with your student, and also all of the worksheets that you need for your child's writing.  Now that I'm on my 2nd round through the book, I just had to buy the replacement worksheets for Gwangi.  The teacher part of the book is still good to go.

A sample from our work this week.  We were reading excerpts from "The Reluctant Dragon."  In this exercise, we read an excerpt, talked through it for comprehension, and then asked what was one thing he (Gwangi) remembered from the sample.  He told me what it was, I wrote it down, and he is now copying it down.

Here is the website to learn more about this program or to buy replacement worksheets - http://www.welltrainedmind.com/store/

Fish Tacos

This is a staple, and family favorite, recipe in this house.  We pretty much have some version of this every week.

Fish Tacos!

Seriously, it's pretty easy to fill up these homemade tortillas with just about anything you have on hand.

This week's version...beans, mchicha (the local spinach that we cook up with carrots, onions, tomatoes, and garlic), tilapia (I cooked it in some olive oil, balsamic vinegar, butter, garlic, and lemon juice), chunks of avocado, diced tomatoes, and topped off with some shredded cheddar cheese.  Always follow it with a chaser of cool water, and your tummy will be full, and satisfied.

Any meat will do, I've used leftover ground beef, chicken, and shrimp...or just leave the meat out.  We often put rice in these, too.  Feel free to "toy" with it and make it your own.  Be careful though, these WILL become addictive :).

Enjoy!

Review - Sequential Spelling

We've been using Sequential Spelling for about a year and a half.  We found it after we had gone through two other spelling programs and I would notice that words that had been on the spelling list, weeks ago, would be correct for the test; but wrong in later writing assignments.  I didn't want my children to just memorize words, I wanted them to see the patterns of word families, to let it really sink in and to remember their spelling words when it came time to use them in a document.

I spent several nights reading reviews of spelling curricula, "looking" through sample pages that were available on websites, and just thinking through the whole "how does my child learn" process.

There are 7 books in the Sequential Spelling series. For the most part, they recommend that any new student should start with Book 1, though they do give ideas for how to "double up" so that an older student can get though the books at a quicker rate.

Here is their website for more information - http://avko.org/sequentialspelling.html

Here is Gwangi doing his spelling.  We just started him on Sequential Spelling, Level 1, this year.  He was still struggling with his reading last year, and I have found that waiting until their reading is on a more solid footing, really makes the spelling stick.  Otherwise, it's just a bunch of random letters.  You can see, that after just 5 days, he's spelling words like beginning.  It starts with 'be' and 'in' and they see the patterns of adding prefixes and suffixes.  The "days" are spread throughout the book so that a child can't copy the previous day's words on his new list.

Krypto is about a quarter of the way through Sequential Spelling, Level 2.

A look at the lists that Krypto was working on this past week.  The book has notes at the bottom that explain the "starred" or darkened words.  Those have to do with homophones and homonyms.  You can explain those to your children as you go...the different spellings and meanings of words.  I always give each word in a made up sentence, to give it context.

A Week of Mostly New Recipes

I thought that for this past week, I would try some new recipes.  I get a daily email from http://allrecipes.com/ and if something looks good, I save it in my "recipes" folder in my email account.  Every once in a while, I go and take a look, and get some new ideas.  Here is what we had to eat this past week.

Monday - Penne and 'Vodka' Sauce with steamed broccoli (though, obviously, I left out the vodka :))  I also replaced the special meat with some average, easier to find around here, bacon.  Very good dish, everyone enjoyed it.

Tuesday - Tilapia Fish Tacos - a favorite, so I left it in this week.  Recipe to follow next Monday.

Wednesday - Chicken Pesto with roasted potatoes

Thursday - Slow Cooker Beef Vegetable Soup - I made this in my pressure cooker, since I didn't bring a slow cooker to Tanzania.

Friday - Garlic Alfredo Tilapia with a salad.  This was a great homemade alfredo sauce.  I'll be using it in other dishes.

Saturday - Grilled Lemon Chicken Stir Fry for "Saturday at the Stamps"

Leftovers on Sunday

I hope that one of these recipes will give you a new idea, or that you go and check out allrecipes.com  It's really a very good site, and it's free!  Enjoy cooking this week.

A few pictures from our school week - 24 Aug, 2012

We're studying "The Human Body" this fall.  We do science on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  The kids make a picture of what we read about and then write a sentence or two to "sum it up"....a bit like notebooking or journaling.

Sissi really enjoys her drawing.  She was working on an ice skater this time.

Geography with Tapestry of Grace.  At the beginning of each school year, there is a review built in.  Here we are covering the oceans and continents.  I printed out the labels for Gwangi and he is cutting and pasting them onto his map.

Krypto doesn't mind the writing now, so he labeled on his own and colored in the continents.

Math U See, this is one of the "systematic review worksheets" after the 5th lesson in Beta.  Gwangi is moving right along doing inequalities, solving for an unknown, and working through story problems.  Based on the blocks he's using, I would say he is doing problem number 11...figuring out that the unknown is 7.

After Sissi finishes up her Kindergarten work, she has a "grab bag" where I wrote little slips of paper with a bunch of activities on them...Leap Pad, Play Doh, Dolls, Stickers, Magnet Board, Felt Board, Cutting and Pasting, Starfall.com, Free Choice, Lace Cards, etc.  She picks out 3 a day, so she can have some fun time while I'm still working on school with the boys.  I don't put the slips back in the bag each day either...I wait and put them all back in at the end of the week, so she gets different stuff to do each day.

While Sissi is doing her "grab bag" activities, and I finish up Reading, Spelling, Grammar, and Writing with Gwangi, Krypto is doing his Literature Upper Grammar (UG) reading and worksheet.  This week, he was finishing up "A Diary of an Early American Boy."

...and this is what our dog does during school time...poor Smokey, so bored :)

We were finishing up our study of Napoleon and learning about the Industrial Revolution this week...Lowell, Whitney, Fulton, etc.  One of the Fine Arts Activities was to build something.  Gwangi of course built a robot, with a grabber hand, a little shooter gun, and a shelf coming out of his chest to hold things for you.

Then, they had to make an advertisement for their creation.  I left him alone for this one...I just told him, when he asked, "What's an advertisement" (remember, we don't have tv), that "An advertisement is what people make to get you to want to see and buy their product."  So, this is what he came up with, "See Nathan's Robot"...Perfect!

Our artist this week was Norman Rockwell.  We were trying to copy his famous piece "Triple Self-Portrait" here.  We have "mirrorized" windows in the house, so each child was trying to do their own self-portrait.

Krypto working on his self-portrait.

Gwangi and his self-portrait.  It was actually very good!