Day 217

So if you consistently read my blog you know that I along with other who work with this man have been able to get a man his dying wish to visit his homeland.  Today I got to tell that man that he is going home.  I know you probably are thinking that this must have been such an emotional moment.  It wasn't.  In his own way he showed excitement and told us a poem in his language of origin.  However there was still a feeling in the room.  A feeling of accomplishment and anticipation.  Thank you God for all of the things you have done to be able to get this man his dying wish.

Day 216

I had a meeting today with a family at work that can be a bit contenscious at the best of times and it went very smoothly.  Thanks God for just bringing peace into the room and allowing everyone to be heard and not feel belittled or uncomfortable.  I know that this peace in the room was directly from you.

Day 215

Jacob is starting to be more and more inquisitive about God, God's book, Jesus and all of that.  I'm so thankful that he seems to be understanding it and the importance of God and Jesus in our lives.  He knows so much more about all of it than I did at his age already.  Today in church he was holding my cross and said, "Jesus cross, Jesus died on the cross."  Yes he did and he died for us to be saved and live eternally.  I'm so proud of this little boy understanding it already and that already he is starting to build a relationship with God and Jesus.  Thank you God.

Day 214

I got a nice little unexpected surprise of my mom asking to take Jacob overnight for a visit.  Whenever this happens I'm grateful and take it as a miracle because it is a gift.  So thanks God and thanks for my mom as well!

Day 213

I belong to a group of women who together raise money for families in need in our local community.  We found that we would like to have one more person join our group.  We agonize on who would be a good fit with our personalities because there is a lot of fun that we have and not all people might get our humor.  Last year we were approached by a local home business who wanted to help us out and donate a cake to our big event.  Through this donation we got to know the family of the home business and the woman really seemed like she might be a good fit for our group and so we discussed it amongst us and decided to invite her to join us.  She is an amazing fit and I actually foresee her becoming the next  chairperson one day which is great news for me because I don't want to be chairperson for many more years.  So thanks God for blessing our group with this woman but also thank you for bringing her to me so that she may one day take my place in the group and we will all feel comfortable with it.

Day 212

This morning we were both up early and ready to go so I thought I'd treat us and go to McDonald's for breakfast.  We arrived, got our meal and sat to enjoy our breakfast.  Jacob chattered away to me, quite the little personality he is developing into.  I'm just amazed at how quickly he's becoming a little person. 
Back to breakfast.  Another mom had the same idea as us and she brought her daughter to enjoy McDonald's this morning.  Their breakfast did not go as smoothly as ours.  Soon enough there were the typical threats to send the young one to go and sit in the car, which you know never happens.  Then coaxing her to eat, then crying, then a fall, then swearing and cursing and it just went from bad to worse.  As I watched and heard this situation going on I was so thankful for the little boy sitting across from me chatting away to me, eating his breakfast, sitting nicely on his chair.  Thankful that I've never felt the need to lose my cool and resort to swearing and yelling at my son and thankful that  Jacob is just such a mild mannered easy child to parent.  Thank you God again for blessing me with this wonderful little boy that I get to be a mom to.

Day 211

I have been trying to get an elderly man his dying wish for about 4 years now.  He has a request to go back to his home country and then pass away there.  Well to figure out how to get an incapacitated man, with no friends or family to take him to a different country is a difficult feat.  A few years ago I was able to find a man who was willing to be hired to take him.  This ended up not happening because the elderly man became paranoid that the companion was going to steal all his money.  So we had to start from scratch all over again.
Well the elderly fellow said that he still had family in his home country so we were able to miraculously locate a nephew and thought that it was going to work for him to go and live with the nephew.  That is until in the 4th phone conversation the nephew asked for $50,000 cash to take his uncle.  So that was no longer going to be a viable option. 
So the man does have a friend who spends a lot of time with him but the issue was that the trustee wouldn't allow the man to pay for someone else to accompany him to go and the friend isn't well off enough to pay for a trip "just because".  So yet another roadblock to getting this man his dying wish.  Well a few months ago his file was transferred and he was assigned a new trustee, whose.............family originates from this man's home country and has visited that country numerous times.  This trustee is willing to allow this man to go back to his home country, take his companion and enjoy his money while he's still alive.  What a miracle!  After so man roadblocks we finally are all working together to get this man his dying wish.  Now you can't tell me that any of this isn't a miracle.  It all is, every single step of the way has been a miracle.  Thanks God, and thank you for allowing me to do your work.

Day 210

I don't often pray and have a request in which I want an immediate answer but today I did.  I was at the farm with Daniel and he had to pull a calf.  I've seen this happen numerous times before and have been fine with witnessing it happening.  Today though was different.  For whatever reason as I was watching the miracle of birth I started to feel light headed, then I started to see spots, and then everything started to get blurry.  I was going to pass out!  SO I said a prayer to God asking him to help me through this and to not let me faint in front of Daniel and his grandpa, what a sight I would have been falling down and fainting during my first calf experience with them!  I started breathing deep and praying more.  His grandpa was talking to me and I just answered with yes or no and kept praying.  God answered me and I didn't pass out and was fine.  Then later I did chores with Daniel and I wondered if I should tell him or not.  I bit the bullet and told him.  Well it could have gone either way; he could have been sympathetic or he could have laughed at me.  He was very humble and didn't make fun of me but rather told me of a story of when he was skinning a calf, yes I said skinning, and he all of a sudden woke up and was getting trampled by a cow.  So he didn't fare as well as I did in not passing out.  So thanks God for answering me right then and there. 
An aside.  When a calf dies they skin it and then if there is an orphan calf they put the skin on the orphan calf and re-introduce it to the cow that lost her calf.  It's 99% successful; and also known as adoption on the farm!!

Easter Monday; doing chores with Daniel.  Not passing out with the calf being born.

Day 209

It's Easter!!!!  Today is a huge miracle.  Jesus came alive today and did what he said he was going to do.  Rise from the dead 3 days later and open the gates of heaven.  Open the gates to everlasting life.  Thank you God!!!
So this is one miracle of the day that truly is a miracle every day after it happened.  The other miracle is that Jacob did get the meaning of today.  We were at my parents and his cousin asked him what the easter bunny brought Jacob and I quickly said, "oh the easter bunny actually didn't bring Jacob any presents.  Jacob can you tell M why you got a present today?"  To which he shouted, " Jesus is alive!"  The enthusiasm was just priceless.  Thanks God for having my son already start to know you and build a relationship with you.

Day 208

I wanted to somehow still incorporate the fun that Easter can be be but not lose sight of the fact that it is about Jesus, and not a fake bunny.  I've avoided the entire conversation about "guess who's coming the easter bunny...." This morning our town hosted an easter egg hunt and there was a bunny there.  It was easy though to not make a big deal of the bunny because it was a local bear mascot with bunny ears.  So we participated in the egg hunt and Jacob did find an egg he was more interested in playing in the park though rather than looking for eggs.  So really did I need to have worry about how to teach my son about what this holiday is about; not really.  As long as he's having fun it really doesn't matter.  So thanks God for making it easy to teach Jacob about the true meaning and he not getting wrapped up in societies beliefs about a fake bunny.

Day 207

I've been reading the bible everyday now and have read it cover to cover.  Something I have to say I never thought that I would do but now that I've done it once I will just continue to read it everyday for the remainder of my life.  It really is a good book.  I enjoy the little nuggets of goodness that I get from God to apply to my life but I also enjoy the historical content of it.  Can you imagine a little teenager coming out and saying he would defeat a giant and then doing it??  He did, and reading the actual story of how it transpired is interesting. 
With reading the bible though I do have questions about what is written sometimes and my pastor is so wonderful in that he encourages us to have questions and ask them, don't put them off or aside and think any question is a dumb question.  Today I had some questions and Norm was more than willing to sit down and answer them all.  The beautiful thing about this is that he uses the bible to answer all the time, he doesn't use his own interpretation.  Thanks God for this leader and friend.

Pastor Norm

Day 206

Today the dreadful happened.  I realized that my iPhone was missing.  At first glance I thought it was in the bottom of my purse, as it tends to be a lot of the time.  I didn’t worry at first thinking, ‘oh maybe it fell on the seat of my jeep’.  After several minutes of checking the seat, under the seat, in the backseat, in any cubbyhole possible I realized “MY iPhone is MISSING!!!!” 

Now what?  Okay, retrace my steps, call all the stores I went to; go back to the stores as well to double check for myself.  Nope, it was lost, gone, along with my world…….  When I realized it was missing I realized how much I rely on this little device.  It’s my address book; I don’t write numbers down anymore, I store them electronically.  It’s my agenda, alarm clock, grocery list, balance book, calculator, and the list goes on and on. 

I dreadfully went to the local TELUS store and explained that I lost my phone.  I wasn’t able to get a new phone right then because the computers were being touchy and so it was recommended that I wait until the next day.  So I went home, head hung low, disappointed with myself for losing such a key piece of my life.  I know some are thinking, ‘this gal relies too much on her iPhone’, but I’m sure there are others out there like me that has their phone within reach at any and all times. 

So the plan was to go to the TELUS store first thing in the morning to be reconnected with the technological world again.  I called and suspended my current number and tried to keep busy doing life things, I went for an ice cream with my son, went and visited some friends, complained about losing my phone and being lost. 

Went home and there was a message on my answering machine.  The RCMP had my iPhone!!!!!  A perfect stranger had found it, I don’t know where they found it but they had taken it to the RCMP.  I shouldn’t be so shocked that there are honest people in the world but I am.  I try to teach my son good values and to do random acts of kindness and here I am the recipient of one.  I thought my phone was gone forever and I would be out a few hundred dollars with the purchase of another phone.  Instead though someone who I don’t even know and probably never will completely made my day/week/month by their good values and honesty and returning my phone.  Thank you to this person and for renewing my faith in human nature.  Your honesty and kindness is greatly appreciated and you can rest assured that I will pay this favor forward many times over.

Day 205

A long time ago I realized that I should be getting Jacob to say sorry to me when he is disrespectful or hurtful to me.  I realized this when I began to think of when you are out somewhere and your child is disrespectful or hurtful and then all of a sudden you expect them to say sorry and they look at you like your crazy, well they've never learned that when you are hurtful you need to be remorseful and apologize.  Tonight Jacob didn't want to eat, he sat at the table and screamed at me and said he didn't want to pray.  I told him that he needed to eat and that I was going to pray anyways and I did and then proceeded to eat and ignore him.  Soon enough he was quiet and on his own he said, "sorry".  He's getting it and I am thankful that he's understanding it at home first.

Day 204

If your a regular reader of my blog you would probably think that I've forgotten to blog and forgotten to keep track of a miracle a day but I haven't.  Rest assured I have 14 days of unposted blogs that all need editing.  I just do a one liner and save it for myself to write another time so that I don't forget and get too far behind and am making up miracles.
Okay, on to what the miracle of this day was.  At first I was upset about this miracle but after some time I realized that this was a gift from God and that qualifies as a miracle to me.  I even blogged about this on my other blog.  If you read that one it was written in a different frame of mind and you probably didn't think I'd recognize it as a miracle but it really is.
Years ago when I started my hunt for a church I wanted to find a church where I felt like I belonged, like I was part of a family.  Well that is exactly where I am now.  Our church is always referring to the "church family" and I feel very blessed to be part of this family.  We are all close in varying degrees much like some parts of a family are closer than others.  I feel like I'm really close to my brothers but I don't know everything that is going on in their lives all the time but I know that they would be there for me in a heartbeat if I needed and this is how parts of our church family are.  Now the good with the bad is that sometimes family say things that you know are true but you don't want to hear.  One friend in my church family did this.  They said some things that I was upset at first but then as I read the words over I knew what was said was only out of love and concern and how thankful I am that I do belong to part of a church like I longed for that would treat me like a sister and tell me when they were concerned for me.  So even when I don't want to hear somethings I'm thankful that someone feels close enough to me to say them.  Thanks God!