Thursday Thankfulness-"Jesus The Light of the World"

 Good Thursday Morning! This will have to be quick because I have my six week post-surgery checkup with the surgeon this morning at 10:00 a.m., and it is an hour's drive...so don't let me ramble on too long here!  I may have to finish this later, but at least I'll get started!  

First off, I need to "promote" Lily Grace's latest "ADVENT-ure" over in the "little town of Bethlehem". She wanted to tell you that she loves it when you folks come over and visit her at her place, and she promises you will enjoy this little Advent journey with her.

That being said, let me move on to my own ADVENT-ures.  Yesterday was our church ladies' UMW Christmas luncheon, also known as a "Birthday Party for Jesus".  We always have a special cake made for the occasion, and we gather around and sing Happy Birthday to Jesus.  Here is the cake:

The beautiful star is like the star of Bethlehem, guiding us to the Christ-child, Jesus, 

The Light of the World!

We had such a lovely group of ladies joined together for good food, fellowship, and also a gift exchange. Some ladies participate in a Secret Sister gift exchange throughout the year, so they reveal who they are at this gathering with their Christmas gift to their "secret sister". For those of us who do not wish to participate in the year-long secret sister idea, we each bring a gift and then we swap gifts with others who aren't in the secret sister program. That way, everyone gets a little gift. It's all very lovely and fun and a happy time.

Here's my "gift" to the ladies. I am kind of the unofficial photographer and I go around and make sure I take a picture of every woman present. Then I make this collage to share on our Church Facebook page, and send copies via email of the individual pictures to each lady. 

One of our ladies did a special little presentation which included a gift for everyone present. She read this poem to us and then told us that there would be a cup and saucer for every lady to take home with her after the meeting:

Here's my little cup and saucer (the white set), with the poem attached:

That was such a sweet idea!!

Another dear lady, who could not be present at our party due to health concerns, sent this little gift to me via another friend who is her neighbor:

It's a little lapel "Colonial Teapot Pin", and actually, she sent me two of them! She said she found them in her mother's things as she has been cleaning out her home following her passing last year, and when she saw them, she thought of me! I was so surprised and blessed by this very thoughtful gift. I may have to pass one of them on to another friend since I don't really need two of them.

Here's some of the good food we had, which was pot luck "finger foods".  

And here are the lovely gifts before we opened them. We have this party at our church "Parsonage", which is the house designated for the Pastor and his family to live in, but our Pastor already has his own home, so we use the parsonage for our ladies' UMW meetings, our Ladies' Bible study, and other smaller gatherings. We pretty much had the house full to overflowing yesterday, but it was a warm, happy time together.

Just some of the decor in the house:

Some of you will remember that my hubby and I stayed in this house for about 6 weeks the summer we moved to this town, while we waited for the closing on our new house and made some repairs on it before we could move in. It was a wonderful blessing to us to be able to live in this beautiful home temporarily.  God is so good to us.

Oh, and this gorgeous camellia bush is blooming outside the parsonage right now!

Another fun thing! You might have noticed this picture in the collage of the ladies above, and wondered why we three ladies were standing together. Well, we now have three Pamela's in our church!  Can you imagine, three of us????  We called ourselves "Three Peas in a Pod".  First there was me, (I'm in the middle), and then Pamela #2 (on the left) came down for the winter last year and we became good friends...she even made some clothes for Lily Grace you might remember and had a special Valentine's party for her... and we became the "Two Peas in a Pod"

And now there is a new "Pamela"  (on the right) who has recently started coming to our church, so now we are "Three Peas in a Pod".  No telling where this will lead!! But I look forward to getting better acquainted with our new "Pamela #3" and hope she will decide to stay with us at our church. I hope we other two Pamela's don't scare her off! LOL.

Well, friends, it's getting late, and I need to get a move on or I'll be late to my Dr. appointment.

I hope you enjoyed this little Christmas Adventure.

And always remember,

"Jesus is the reason for the season"

Jesus, The Light of the World

 Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, 

“I am the light of the world. 

He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, 

but have the light of life.”

John 8:12

P.S. I almost forgot! The gift I got from the gift swap was something I needed very much! Since this was a random "pick your gift from the gifts not designated with any name on them", the person giving the gift had no clue who would get it.  Here is what I got:

Believe it or not, I've been saying to myself quite often lately that I need a new hairbrush, and I also need a new hand mirror, with a magnifying mirror on one side and a regular mirror on the other. Well, that is exactly what I got! I was so surprised! It was like God must have told somebody (I still don't know who gave this gift as there was no name on it) to buy this gift because there would be someone at that party who really needed this exact thing!  All I can say is, "Ain't God good???"  He knows the thoughts of our hearts, He knows what we need, He knows how to provide even in the most mysterious of ways.  Our God is an awesome God!! Amen?

Friday Foto Friends

Good Friday Morning everyone! Hope it is a beautiful day in your neighborhood, wherever you may be!

I took this picture yesterday morning for Veteran's Day, thinking I would write a post, but never got around to it yesterday...but it's always a good thing to share pictures of our great American Flag and to honor those who have given so much for our freedoms. May we never take that for granted.

Freedom is never free! Someone has paid the price for us, so let us be thankful and always mindful of that fact. May God bless our veterans everywhere. We appreciate the sacrifices you have made on our behalf.

Yesterday was also another very special day...the 4th anniversary of our "kids" wedding day!

I took this picture of them yesterday morning when they stopped by our house on their way to a day filled with some fun and adventure. They took the day off from their work at the store, well, with the exception of making one big delivery of some furniture to a customer near Jacksonville, and also shopping for some things for their special "Sip and Shop" sales day coming up this Saturday at their store in St. Augustine, Dixie Cottage, well...anyway, they tried to take the day off...

And they made it to the beach and out to lunch at some nice little seafood place.  They sent us this picture to show they did get to have some fun!  One thing they are learning, when you are self-employed you gotta grab the moments when you can. Thankfully they have a couple of vendor helpers who can "man" the store for them occasionally so they can get away for a day. 

We are so thankful for this precious couple and especially for our sweet "daughter in love" that God has brought into our family.

Here they were 4 years ago:

Click HERE For the Story from Four Years Ago

May God bless them with many many more happy years together.

Now on to other things!  

In my wanderings around our yard I noticed that this variegated philodendron plant is growing wild all over our wooded lot.  It is lovely, BUT it is a bit invasive and is not good for the trees. 

I looked it up online and discovered that there are Etsy sites who are selling this stuff for hundreds and thousands of dollars! Yikes!! I may have a gold mine here! 

However, I would like to just get rid of it before it destroys our trees! 

So, if you happen to be in the area and would like to come and get some of this for your own houseplants, please come help yourself! If I were a very enterprising person, I might start putting it in pots and selling it...but that sounds too much like work to me. I'd rather just give it away.

So come and get it!

It probably all started with someone throwing out a houseplant that they thought was dead...and this is what happened here in our tropical woods!!

It is quite pretty...and grows quite large!

Okay, enough of that! 

Now, this past year our ladies' group at our church, the UMW, and our Ladies' Bible Study group, have been meeting in our church parsonage house for our meetings because it is empty, (our pastor has his own home), and it is a lovely big house with plenty of room. You may recall that we actually lived in that house for a couple of months when we were in transition from our previous home to this present home.

Anyway, one of the issues we have faced with using this house was that we have several ladies who some physical disabilities and must use a walker or a wheelchair to get around.  This house was not equipped with a handicapped accessible bathroom, so it was becoming an issue for them to participate in our activities at this house.  Finally, a member of our church who is also a builder/handyman, was able to install a wider door to the bathroom (32" wide) and add a grab bar by the toilet, (which was already high enough to meet ADA standards), so that now no one should have any difficulty being able to access the facilities!  Our ladies are all VERY thankful for this much needed improvement!

One of the projects our ladies work on is buying and wrapping Christmas gifts for the children of our community. Our little church (which averages about 60-70 people each week at this time) , manages to buy enough toys, underwear, socks, and school supplies each year to give to the 500+ students at our elementary school! Yes, you heard that right! We have done this consistently for many years!  They start collecting new toys for Christmas back in January and then start gift wrapping in August or September. Here is the current stack of gifts that have been wrapped by our ladies:

And it is still growing. However, we found out just this past week that the school really doesn't want the toys, etc., gift wrapped anymore, so they can make sure everyone gets equal gifts, etc., but they said we don't have to unwrap what we've done...just don't wrap any more!  That's nice to know...just too bad they didn't tell us sooner! LOL.

I am amazed at what these faithful ladies have been able to accomplish, with God's help. 

Okay, back to nature for a minute.

I noticed some different looking birds on Still Waters Pond yesterday afternoon, sitting out on a little sand bar in the water:

I had to zoom in to figure out that they were a couple of buzzards, sitting there enjoying life on the pond for a spell! Never saw that before...

This "Anhinga" was keeping a close watch on them from his perch in the water while he dried his wings.

And then these two crows were having a little tea party at the birdbath, visiting with Bobby the Squirrel.

One crow flew away, leaving this crow as the "king of the mountain", or the conqueror of Bobby the Squirrel...or maybe Bobby was just giving him a "piggy back ride". LOL.

One day I watched these Sand Hill Cranes out on the little sand bar playing with a discarded tire that some inconsiderate person threw onto the pond from the highway on the other side of those trees. I have not been happy about that, but the cranes seem to think this is their own little playground and they enjoy playing on it like it is their personal tire swing or something like that...

Glad they are enjoying it, because I personally would like to go get rid of it, but I can't get to it. 

Oh well, such is life. I just wish people were more considerate of our nature and land...

Okay, that's all I've got in the way of pictures for today.  

I do have some prayer requests:

  

Please remember our blogging friend Mildred Nalley from her blog that was called "Laurel Wood" (but it has recently been removed).  She is in Hospice care and is in the final stages of her earthly life. I know she would appreciate your thoughts and prayers on her behalf at this time.

And my friend Jimmy that I told you about last week will be having surgery next week to remove the brain tumor, followed by radiation. Then following that he will also be having colon surgery and further treatment, but the oncologists have assured him that his condition is very treatable and they have high hopes. I know he and his family will also appreciate your thoughts and prayers. 

And a praise report for me! I am feeling better and better with each new day. I was having some difficulty with swallowing, as a side-effect of the surgery...but finally this week that has improved greatly and hopefully I'll be able to eat a good Thanksgiving dinner when the time comes!  Praise God for His healing power!! And thank you for your prayers!

I like this message from the little devotional book, "Choose Grace"...

Perhaps some of us are having some "shaky knees" this week and needed this word of encouragement. I know God's Word always helps me when I am feeling shaky or discouraged...it's always like a strong hand that comes alongside to lift me up and help me keep going.  

Praise God!

Have a blessed and beautiful day, my friends!!