Marsha's Blog

I figure it’s never too late to start family traditions, so lately, we’ve begun cooking one meal a week together with three of our grandsons (and their parents of course). We’re finding that it’s a great time to connect with all the kids, in spite of their being so incredibly busy. And to sweeten the kitty a bit, we close up the mealtime with a story from our upcoming book. We’re calling it, “Stop Me If You’ve Heard This”, and it’s a collection of ALL the stories we’ve ever told over the years. I recommend the exercise for everyone. It’s a great way to step back and see the tapestry that God has made of your lives, all woven together by stories. Oh, and while I have your attention, that other book we told you about a couple of years ago is finally headed for the printer! The star of that one is our other grandboy, Jeremiah. "Letters to Schnicklefritz" is made up of 27 small chapters, each one representing a week of development in the womb. In the next few weeks it should be a

I have a friend whose father (now deceased) was a teenager during the holocaust.  Somehow, he avoided being sent to the gas chamber and was freed by the Allies.  He made his way to America where he found Christ, married a lovely girl and became a missionary to Japan.  His daughter, my friend, grew up in Japan, married another missionary kid and they were great missionaries, and still are. For some reason known only to God, besides having healthy children, this couple had one boy who had some sort of extremely rare syndrome and spent almost all of his 40+ years as a 6-month-old child. It was obvious that he felt love, could be happy or upset, laughing, crying, responding and generally living his life in his reality.  But make no mistake, it was never easy.   I can never forget my friend sharing this tidbit of wisdom one day as we worked together, "My dad taught us kids that if the Nazi's are not at your door, you are NOT having a bad day." I had to think about that a few t

 Good Morning and Happy Mothers Day! But did you know that there are over 2 billion mothers on the earth, and about 150 countries will celebrate today, on the second Sunday of May! Also, many of those mothers will be in church, making it the third most attended Sunday of the year. Another bit of  interesting trivia I found is that the average mother will have changed 7300 diapers (nappies) by the time the child is two.........whew. I knew I'd lost my sense of smell somewhere. There are a lot of other reasons why mothers are so great, and so tired as well, but as I look back on my life as a mother, I both chuckle and feel sad at the same time. It seemed a challenge at the time, but now that for many of us, it's over, we really miss some of those days.  I'm sure you moms remember the stuff like we've all experienced. Like: The first night they slept thru and you thought they were dead. The messes they could make with almost any substance, always at the wrong time and plac

 Many of you might remember that Tony and I were in chilly Edinburgh last September when the Queen of England died.  Immediately the Australian side of who we are kicked in and we mourned with the many for her passing.   As you probably know, Britain has 56 'Sovereign' countries that it rules over. This is called the 'Commonwealth'.  We don't feel reigned upon much here in Australia, but the British monarchy is ours.  We pay stamp duty, which is as irritating as the Boston settlers found it, but still we carry on.     Why did we mourn her you wonder.?   I'm not sure, but it seems that quite a few people have a sense that she might be the last monarch with integrity, work ethic, finesse ........ you name it, all those characteristics that should come with the role.  We liked her for many reasons, namely, she showed up for work two days before she died and was never ever known to complain about the job that had been given her (without her consent but only because