Poison Ivy Update

It was brought to my attention that we were not targeting poison ivy, according to the pictures I had posted earlier. Our daughter-in-law, Molly, is highly alergic to it, so knows what to look for. We walked through the yard and found the culprits.

We just wanted to clarify this...the main thing we want to look for are the "leaves of three".  For my benefit, Molly quoted the ditty that helps us remember. Only line 2  is legitimate. The additional lines are provided by Molly, purely for our intertainment!

Leaves of two...good for you
Leaves of three let them be,
Leaves of four eat some more
Leaves of five let them thrive
Leaves of six pick up sticks
Leaves of seven, you have died and gone to heaven.

Poison Ivy

                   It alll started when I got a bad, itchy rash on both wrists that wouldn't go away.

After going to the dermatologist and learning it was, in fact, poison ivy, we went home to identify it in our yard. A friend helped us spot the stuff, and we were amazed at how much of it was all over the front, back and side yards.

    Good Grief! We were shocked. So Johnny took off for the store to buy Round Up

          to spray on our poison ivy.

Hopefully we will have killed most of the stuff. But we do live in fertile East Texas with woods creeping up on all sides of our little home. We will have to be more aggressive about spotting this intruder and get rid of it pronto. It is no fun!



Visiting Family

We drove from East Texas to Topeka, Kansas to visit our daughter, April, and her family.

It's a long trip, so we decided to go by way of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, to visit long-time friends, Jo and Bobby Jones from our Indonesia days. We had a great visit with them, then drove on to Topeka.

     Kansas is farm country.

It is the location of The Little House on the Prairie fame. There are huge expanses of prairies everywhere and long, long highways.

But Topeka is a big city with interesting things to see and do. We took a break from playing games to go to Orange Leaf to enjoy frozen yoghurt.

Then on to the Rose Garden, which was just beginning to bloom.

Johnny did some training with the young people of First Southern Baptist Church who are making a mission trip to Quito, Ecuador soon. Shelby will be going. Johnny also intertained Kayla's Sunday School department at their party with his String Man act.

We also made time to run by the Asian Grocery Store (Mabuhay), to pick up a few favorite items. While there, the proprietor, a Filipina, talked with us about our 9 years of living in the Philippines. She asked our favorite food from there and we said "Adobo". She said she'd brought some that day, that she had made, and proceeded to sack it up for us to take home and eat. Yum!

Here is her recipe for Philippine Adobo:

1 Chicken (can use any kind of meat)

1c. vinegar

1/2 c. soy sauce

1 bay leaf

1 tsp. black pepper kenals

Set aside to marinade. Do not stir. When there is no vinegar smell, bake in a medium hot oven for 30 minutes.

    

 On our way back to Texas we traveled by way of Norman, Oklahoma, to visit more long-time friends, Marge and Von Worten and their dog, Daisy.

It was a good week of travel and being with family and friends.

But it was good to get back home, too.



ESL Closing Party

We met in the fellowship hall of Primera Iglesia, the host location for our ESL program.

These are the table decorations.

Various scenes around the room during our meal and program.

All our teachers

Teachers and the students with their certificates.

We had a good, successful semester!

We'll begin again in September.



ESL

(What is that?)

      For many years, I and my family were the foreigners, trying to learn the native language and customs in a very strange land. Our family of 5 were the only non-Indonesians in a wide area. We dealt with people pointing and laughing (later to learn this did not mean the same as it does in America); teenage girls cooing over our three blond and blue eyed children and pinching them on the cheeks, over and over; people standing at our open windows and doors, watching our every move. We were the best show in town.
     We tried our best to have an American home in the midst of this very strange Indonesian culture, trying to balance both cultures and enjoy the best of both. But first, "Where can I buy eggs?" "How do you know which slab of meat hanging on the hooks in the market are the best?" "Where do they sell brooms?" "And how do you say are these things?"
     Soon, we found the local people to be very patient and helpful to us, sharing all kinds of information with us, and being forgiving and gracious as we struggled to use the language as they did. In those early years, unless we made a trip to another town, the only people we had to speak English with were each other. Hence, we were forced to learn the language quickly.
     I determined in the years that passed, as we moved from that country to another and then later to yet another country, struggling each time with a new language and a new culture, that if ever we ended up back in America, I would love to work with foreigners who had come to live in America. NOW I could relate. NOW I understood a little about how they felt, perhaps. And besides all that, I just love being with internationals!
     As we settled into retirement and our new church home, finding places where we could plug in and serve, the Lord opened up a wonderful opportunity for me. I was asked to begin and English as a Second Language (ESL) ministry. Because I had never headed up such a program, or even worked in one, I was on a steep learning curve. I read, visited other programs, got trainings, asked questions everywhere. I made mistakes, I'm sure, but we learned as we went along. For each semester of classes, the Lord provided wonderful teachers from among our church membership. Our program is evolving and we are developing and improving as we go along. It is a wonderful ministry. Maybe you would like to find such a program near where you live. In your church or a sister church? Internationals are some of the most fun people around!
     This blog was to show you pictures of our semester's closing party. Our first such event. But I found I needed to share a few things with you first. Check our our next blog for pictures of the party, our teachers, and our students.

Remembering...

    
     Retirement seems to be a time to remember "back when...." 
     Someone sent this funny story, but I well remember this myself! Don't you?

Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?'

'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him. 'All the food was slow.' 'C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?' 'It was a place called 'at home,'' I explained! 'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.'

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.

Let's keep those memories alive. Our grandkids need to hear these! And we need to not forget.