Marsha's Blog

 Greetings, we’ve arrived in London, taken in some of the sights, met up with old friends and hopefully, as you’re reading this, are in Cardiff, Wales.  We will be staying with a nice guy we met in our Australian church who said, “You should come see me!”  and so we did!  Better be careful about throwing around invites. And then next Tuesday, we’re boarding yet another cruise, this one not as luxurious, that gets us around the Baltic and gives us a chance to see some cities and friends that have been left unattended by us.    But on this last cruise, I decided, “When I grow up, I want to be a luminary!"  If you're like me, you don't even know what that means, so let me 'enlighten' you. Webster says a 'luminary' is a person who inspires or influences others, especially one prominent in a particular sphere." So there you are, I'm sure I'm speaking to a large group of 'luminaries' now. This cruise, in its aspiration of being a 'high en...

 Tony and I were reading our favourite devotional author, Oswald Chambers, and on May 30th, he says, (based on Luke 9:61), “Lord I will follow thee; but……). Oswald’s poses the question, “Supposing God tells you to do something which is an enormous test to your common sense …… what are you going to do?” We had to stop and think.  We haven’t  EVER thought we did something on the Lord's instructions that was contrary to common sense, but we laughed when we agreed that a lot of you might agree that THIS trip might be just that.  I’ll have to say that we’ve had a fair few ‘adventures’ lately that might have been avoided by us staying home. But again, we feel the warmth of His Hand, guiding us thru the days. But then, as we continued talking, we remembered an escapade what might be called “against all reason”.  In 1977 we went to Africa a second time, after leaving Zambia in 1975. It may have been against ‘common sense’ but I don’t think it ever felt that way to us....

 Hi Ya’ll, I’m writing this from our cruise ship.  This has certainly been a very long cruise, as this is our third Sunday. Sadly, until yesterday I had not even met one Christian on board.  We crossed the Atlantic with only 1/3 of the guests they can accommodate, which was nice, but since the Canary Islands, we’ve been almost at capacity.  I met the Christian as we were touring a mosque in Casa Blanca, Morocco.  The guide said this mosque allows “non Muslim’s”, otherwise known to them as ‘infidels” to come inside, but we aren’t allowed to PRAYi The lady next to me said, more or less under her breath and in a Southern drawl, “I’d like to see them try to stop me!” And I grabbed her arm and said, “Finally I find a Christian!”  Fun to find like minds. But what I need you to do today is PRAY.  The guide told us, as we were passing stock yards full of bleating sheep, that tomorrow (Monday) is the annual feast of Abraham. Yes, we share a common Jewish father...

Greetings From the Middle of Nowhere, If you’re reading this, we are still afloat, somewhere in the eastern   side of the Atlantic. (during hurricane season, I might add). When and if this goes out, we will have been at sea for eight days. With any luck, in a couple of days Tony and I will be snorkelling in St John.  Everyone says it’s beautiful, but have they seen the Great Barrier Reef?  Who knows, I’ll let you know. There is a little codicil that you need to be able to swim, which may be a challenge for me, but hopefully…… But thinking about things nautical reminded me of an old story that came from Buddy, Tony’s Dad.  You probably know that his folks lived many years in Taiwan and so beach combing was a favourite pastime. In fact, many of the missionaries there enjoyed this exciting hobby.  As proof of their success, several families displayed the old glass balls that were used in fishing nets. They’re obviously very old, since nowadays everyone uses pl...

  Awhile back, I mentioned that we didn’t feel that we had ever experienced ‘Self Sacrifice’.  The Sunday school lesson in a little church we visited a couple of weeks ago talked about the Blessing of Giving.  As I sat there listening, I really was convicted that, not only had we not sacrificed for the Kingdom, but I wondered if we’ve even given enough over the years.   In reply, Tony offered a comment from the “History of the Bible” course he’s been teaching in Hawaii. It was about a guy named Polycarp, and his attitude is one we might take to heart. Rather than try to paraphrase the story, let me just give it to you as it was written, which I believe was a quote from another source:   “Warned that his arrest was impending, elderly Bishop Polycarp left his home in Smyrna and hid in a farmhouse. Smyrnans had recently executed several Christians for their faith, and now a mob was demanding the bishop’s life. “Kill the church leader,” they reasoned, “and h...

So after all the fun frolics with the cows and the Texas cousins, Tony had an ‘interesting’ dream.  But first let me catch you up on the travel blog. From Texas, it was off to Colorado and yet another happy family reunion, this time with my sister’s family and extended associates.  It was fun and crazy for three days, whereupon we hugged them all goodbye, drove to Tony’s paternal cousins that we hadn't seen in 20 years, and had a really good, insightful visit.  (Am I boring you yet?) then we had lunch with some people who used to be listed on our will to raise our kids (Come to think of it, I guess they’re still listed, but the kids might have something to say about that today).  Again, we hadn’t seen them for years. They’re professional counsellors for the Navigators, so we did some ‘housecleaning’ of our minds with them and hopefully came away better people.  Then, because we had some time, we took our rental car and headed out across the Great Plains. I had c...

 Hello Everyone,  Wow, what a week we've had!  I can't remember when I've had so much fun and inspiration.   Tony's cousins (sorry to my cousins who got neglected; we WILL catch you next time); anyway, we all took part in a three-day “Cow Processing Event.”  I'm sure there’s a better name for it, something like, “The Great Roundup”.  It was a pretty big learning curve for me, even watching from a distance.  Tony was able to contribute a little, although not as much as he would have liked to, due to a recovering knee. (which is doing great), It was a sight to behold, starting with cutting horses who got all the cattle in one place, separated calves from moms, then roped the appropriate ones around their back legs and drug them over for branding, snipping,vaccinating and ear tagging. We had a 9 yr old great nephew out there, as well as a 13 yr old of the same generation, who absolutely astounded us with their strength and enthusiasm, as well as “cow...