Spanish by April 1, 2014

I've always been one to be interested in learning a foreign language. I've spent countless hours studying whether it be Italian, Russian, Hebrew, Japanese, or Spanish. The problem is really can't speak any of them and that's really starting to bother me.

Italian has always been my favorite choice but if you had asked me a few month ago I would have just said "oh well, one of these days I'll get back into learning Italian... maybe if I go to Italy". So it's kind of a funny twist that got me on this kick to learn Spanish and not Italian. It began that I was browsing Google earth one day and looking at the "street view" feature when I suddenly realized that I could take a drive through my grandfather's hometown in Italy without ever leaving my chair. I drove all up and down northern Italy to my heart's content. When I was done I really really REALLY wanted to go to Italy for real! Knowing that a trip like that for me would take some planning ahead I decided to focus my energy elsewhere. I got back into our family genealogy project for a few weeks to see if I could learn a little more about our family history. When I go to Italy I would want to see the local church records and see if I can discover some new and interesting family history while I am there. While I was doing some online searches I learned that the best way to research Italian records is by learning Italian. So, next day I pulled out all my study materials lined up some pen pals, Skype pals, ect. I think I studied for a whole 2 days when I sat back and realized that I had a more immediate need to learn Spanish and if I would only set my mind to it that I could learn that too. After thinking it over I thought better of learning two languages at once. It was a difficult decision to set aside Italian. I reasoned that, why should I spread myself thin, I'm pretty sure I won't be going to Italy in the next 10 months. I have a need for Spanish here at home within 3 or 4 months. So that's how it all got started....I have set myself the goal of learning as much as I can before April 1st, 2014.

I came across this great website fluentin3months.com He blogs many topics pertaining to learning foreign languages. His number one tip seems to be to speak in the new language from day one. Knowing that I cannot possible immerse myself into Spanish fully, I have set out to surround myself with as much Spanish as I can. The possibilities are endless here. I have a piano student(hi Cynthia!) who has helped me learn some Spanish and now has agree to only speaking Spanish during her piano lesson. First lesson down and I think it went OK. Also I met up with another friend, originally from Argentina, who I was surprised enjoys teaching Spanish and has already given me my first lesson(hi Mariana!) Then to make things even better, my former piano teacher is originally from Venezuelan (hi Gracie!), she has been able to supply me with many useful phrases to say while teaching. This list could keep going, there are a lot of great friends out there who are willing to help me and I believe I can accomplish this!

Until next time...hasta luego!

Busy Life On the Farm

It's been some time since I've paid attention to this poor little blog. Life has been busy. I'm looking forward to a quieter year in the future. For now though, I thought I'd post a few photos.  Here is my mega-garden. When I set out to grow a garden this year I intended for it to be much smaller but we quickly ran out of space. Dad offered to roto-till the back field with the spring tooth which he attached to the back of the pick-up. Unfortunately he couldn't turn the truck around in a small space so he was forced to till an area much larger than we thought we needed. It only took me a matter of days to decide I could plant the whole thing. I even dared to call it a small garden once the plants were in place....after all I did run out of room before I ran out of plants. Just for perspective, those fence posts are approximately 10 feet apart.

We did eventually grow weeds for those of you who are wondering. :)

Of course we can't have a blog about the farm without photos of the animals.
Curious goats Pansy and Checkers.

Isn't Flavia the cat SO ADORABLE! We call it taco cat. :)

And Bina(pronounced Bee-nah) the bad, it's an old photo but...she hasn't changed.

Next on to the project of the year. Root Cellar! Yay! I'll line up a few photos of the process but we are not finished yet so I'll post the finished project when it's done. Enjoy!

Day 1 Dug the hole.

Day 2 Laid a footing

Day 3 Started the walls.

Day 4 Decided we needed a porch.

Day 5 Getting closer.

Day 6... I'll keep y'all posted, we've got to get this done before winter hits. 

When is it going to snow?

When you walk out our front door this is what you see to the left.

and this is to the right.

It has been a very snow-less winter and rain-less for that matter.

But if you turn the corner and head to the back of the house...what is THAT!? It can't be snow...can it? :)

Fake snow?

Yes, even when I'm 50 I'll still sled...unless I break a leg.

Weeee!

The pile is not big enough yet, let it snow, let it snow...testing for the correct temperature.

Snow angels...oooh that was cold AND wet!

6 feet high and growing!

A testimony

I was raised in a Christian home where a belief in Yahweh (we then called Him God), prayer, and spiritual growth were all held high, we attended church most Sundays. We were not caught up in any one denomination. I remember attending the Baptist church, charismatic churches, etc. In my teens we felt called out of the church to a home gathering where we had prayer, fellowship, and singing. After 8 or so years our home fellowship broke up. We didn’t really feel like we were supposed to go back to church even though we desired fellowship so we ended up waiting for direction.

During this time we began discussing the Sabbath and a few other spiritual topics. I don’t think I had a clue what we believed, if you can imagine a cloudy haze with Yahweh, the ten commandments tucked in there, with some personal convictions such as not having a tree at Christmas, or dressing modestly most of the time, not getting drunk, and so on and so forth. Of course it was always the safe thing to say that I believed anything the Bible taught. We had a pretty good life, nothing too tragic up to that point, and nothing that challenged us to think too deeply about our beliefs. Our discussions about the Sabbath led us to try keeping it. What I remember was going out to pull weeds on the Sabbath with the justification that “I like pulling weeds, so it must be OK”, this attitude showed through all of us as we pretty much continued with our normal living on Sabbath especially if we really wanted to do whatever it was that seemed to get in the way.

Our family’s journey into the truth of the scriptures probably began way back when I was too young to remember. I sometimes wonder how Yahweh can put up with such slow learners as we have been. I can say that our learning was greatly accelerated in 2006 when someone asked our family for approval for something that we weren’t sure was right but that is very prolific in today’s church and all over the world. We were somewhat hesitant to give approval and began to study the scriptures. Everything we read pointed us away from approving the action. We didn’t readily accept the truth we had discovered in our studies because it was not what we had been taught by the church yet there it was in the Bibles. It’s not easy to go against the flow but our only other option was to lie to ourselves, our friends, and our family, as well as disobey Yahweh. The Bible continued to be our teacher and we gathered from our studies that we could not give our approval. We admonished the person who asked for the approval to reconsider their action and take the path of truth.

At this time we came to a turning point in our spiritual walk. I feel that when you obey something difficult from the Bible that it makes obeying many other things seem so much easier. Your priorities change and there becomes a commitment to the truth. Suddenly everything that Yahweh had to say seemed so much more important. We began seeking His word in search of truth. It seemed that we instinctively knew that we were missing out on some big things.

The following year we began keeping Sabbath with more commitment and abstaining from unclean “food”. We were introduced to the idea of calling Yahweh and Yahshua by their actual names rather than using the title God or the Grecian name Jesus. We also stopped celebrating Christmas and Easter and began to study and think about whether or not we should keep Yahweh’s feasts. We really didn’t know what the feasts were or how you keep them. I remember the first time we attempted to acknowledge the Feast of Trumpets; mom was out of town and I fixed some food for dad and I which we enjoyed and then returned to our work as usual without a clue. Some of our first Passovers ended up in a big disagreement of how one should keep the feast. Through much study and guidance of believers who have gone before us we have learned a great deal in a short amount of time. Though there is probably no perfect assembly, we have found comfort and fellowship with Yahweh’s Restoration Ministry with whom we were re-baptized this year at Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles).


In no way have we found that keeping the Sabbath, Feasts, and clean food laws lessen our spiritual walk rather it has been enhanced! Not only that but it is a most wonderful gift that we have seen blessings abound since we had begun keeping them. Our lives have not been "perfect" since seeking the truth, tragedy has struck a few times over. Life has been more ordered as we strive to be prepared for Yahweh’s days of rest and worship, our family is living in a unity that we had not before experienced, and our spiritual walk is continually growing as we seek truth and guidance from the whole of Yahweh’s word.

Trust

I’d like to apologize in advance for the extreme length of this blog post. I tried my best to say it in as few words as possible…L.O.L.

I would like to share my Sukkot 2011 planning experience and how Yahweh has been teaching me to trust Him. It’s easy to say “yes, I trust Yahweh” when life goes according to your own plans. What about when He withholds your desires from you or puts off answering your prayers till the very last minute?

When our family plans a trip or feast we generally began planning many months in advance. Often if a plan is presented at the last minute we scrap the entire idea as we probably don’t have the funds or time set aside, sometimes we need a house sitter or animal sitter, so all that to say we don’t feel prepared unless we really are prepared.

We had been planning to keep Sukkot 2011 in Indiana with YRM assemblies after keeping it there in 2010 and having a good time. We spent the months of October, November, and December basking in the good memories of the past feast and realizing that we really wanted to return there for 2011. In January we called to make reservations on the lodging we rented the previous feast and were surprised to hear that it was not available with such advanced noticed. The fact that someone beat us to the reservation by one day would later play a big part in our willingness to doubt Yahweh’s plans for us this feast.

We weren’t worried that we didn’t have “set in stone” plans just yet. We still had months to research and find other lodging. Instead we planned as well as we could and searched for other lodging that would be suitable. Last year when we planned our Sukkot trip we learned about a month ahead of time that everything we needed was in place for us to attend the feast so we figured something similar would happen.

We had a few worries about other details: Sukkot was falling later in Autumn this year meaning that we would have to drive over mountain passes that could be prone to winter conditions. Also, gas prices had increased causing our feast budget to be several hundred dollars short. Then there were fears that plagued us: what if a national disaster happened while we are 2000 miles from home base, stranding us. We talked about our fears and worries all year long.

By August we began to wonder if our hopes of driving to Indiana were realistic. We believed that if Yahweh wanted us somewhere else then He would let us know with enough time to prepare. At this point, in our minds, that meant a month ahead. We began asking Yahweh if He wanted us to go somewhere else.

It had been a LONG time since we had the much desired ‘in person’ fellowship with like-minded believers. We were willing to consider a change if it was going to be for the best and if it meant building relationships with nearby believers. In August we made a special trip to a nearby NW state to visit a family we had only spoken to by phone and email. We had been meaning to meet them last year but it just kept getting put off till here a year later we were finally going to meet them. We spent most of a Sabbath with them and really enjoyed our time with them. I began formulating an idea that perhaps they would be a good family with whom to keep the feast, it seemed as though we had some good things in common. We also had a few other feast sites in mind as possibilities but that we didn’t know a lot about. Weeks passed and we didn’t have any plans. Mom and I made a pros and cons list and it seemed that staying close to home had all the pros this year. After a family meeting we were all very excited about staying near home and networking with others in the Northwest. We had called the aforementioned family to see if they would like to gather with us if they didn’t have plans already. They would get back to us later, so the waiting and trusting continued.

Meanwhile we were still searching the internet daily for evidence of suitable lodging in Indiana and also looking for ways to make the trip less of a financial strain in case that is what Yahweh was still asking us to do. As time got closer I began feeling the pull to go to Indiana. It didn’t really make much sense, after all I still had that pros and cons list which proved that staying in the NW was better. I began to feel really uneasy as the time closed in to less than two weeks from our leaving date and we didn’t have an answer from anywhere. I just felt so helpless. One evening I asked my mom to help me make a new list, not “pros vs. cons’ rather “the wonderful blessings of being able to keep the feast at all”. For all I knew we’d be keeping the feast at the park a block away. I knew that no matter what happened I had to praise Yahweh where He sends me and if it ends up being somewhere I don’t want to go, that doesn’t matter as much as being obedient to Him.

I prayed every day and sometimes several times per day that Yahweh would direct us and help us to listen to His guidance. I also sent prayer requests to friends asking them to pray for Yahweh to open and close doors. I really began feeling that Indiana was where we should go and I knew that Yahweh had to be the one to do it because the facts looked really discouraging. A week from our departure date we still had no answers of any kind. I wondered if Yahweh even cared what we chose, maybe He didn’t…, perhaps we should just pick somewhere and just go…He didn’t seem to answer us either way.

There was a lot of prep work to be done before we could go anywhere so I was working very hard trying to clean out the gardens, build winter food storage, pick and preserve veggies, pack for the trip, prepare the animals and their food and someone to feed them while we would be gone. We just weren’t prepared to go anywhere let alone across the country.

Thinking about Sukkot was wearing me out, I didn’t even want to think about it anymore, I just wanted somebody to tell me when a decision had been made. Finally, five days left, a Tuesday: we received an email from our friends saying they would not be available to keep the feast with us this year but would like to fellowship sometime after Sukkot. You cannot imagine the joy I felt from reading that email! It was joy because I knew that even though it was a NO, it was an answer of some kind! I had a spring in my step for the rest of the day and the following day as well. I kept praying.

Dad mentioned that we should come to a decision on Thursday about where we would go. On Wednesday while getting some outside work done dad made it sound as if we had at least 3 options before us including Indiana. By the time Thursday got here he sounded much more skeptical about Indiana and I understood exactly why. Everything we did, all the effort and inquiries toward going to Indiana were fruitless. After discussing it at length we were all 99% convinced that Yahweh did not want us to go to Indiana and that we should stop asking and consider the other options. Thursday night we took a vote and there seemed to be one choice ahead of us. It wasn’t a bad choice but for some reason we could not make a decision at that time. I told dad that I didn’t want to go to bed until we had made a choice and he said “you are going to be up all night then”. I gave in and went to bed. Next morning, Friday: I wandered into Dad’s office after a few chores just to see what he was doing. After a few minutes he announced to me that in the night he received an email confirming that we could have an RV delivered to our feast location in Indiana and all for a very reasonable price. He seemed to be waiting for a response….I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Hadn’t we already decided that Yahweh said NO? I didn’t even know what to feel or say so instead I asked, “so, now what are we going to do?” He seemed hesitant to give an answer. I went back to my work which was still a list a mile long that had to be complete before we could leave on Sunday. I felt hopeful that Yahweh was just testing our trust, maybe it wasn’t so much that He was saying “no” as He was saying “wait”. Dad came out and found me in the garden to tell me that we would go to Indiana but we’d have to pack a lot of camping supplies for the RV. It wasn’t the ideal situation, traveling 4500 miles in a mini van with bedrolls, pots and pans, silverware, towels, and who knows what else we would need. But hey, how could we complain, we were going to Sukkot in Indiana! We postponed our leaving date from Sunday to Monday to give just a bit more prep time. Sunday’s activities were filled with everything from making food, to packing the van, to burying root crops in a cold storage pit. By 8:00 PM we were ready to hit the road. Once again Dad came and found me in the garden(yes, I was gardening by moonlight) and said we had to unpack the car. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, I figured he was joking as he likes to do. It turned out he had received and email in the last hour from a man who could rent us a fully furnished house for even less than we were going to pay for the RV. So, we did have to unpack most of the car, removing all the camping gear, kitchen supplies, and bedding. We were all kind of stunned by the provision that Yahweh had sent at the last minute. I never would have dreamed that anything like this could happen. Not only were we going to Indiana but Yahweh gave us a house!

Yahweh’s fingerprints were all over our feast plans and all over our feast! From the tears cried, the friends made, the sermons preached, it seemed to be custom fitted to our family. We had been worried about the finances, yet, thanks to Yahweh, we stayed within our budget, within $50. I really feel that Yahweh wanted me to trust Him, believing that He had a plan and had my best interest in mind from the start even though He waited until the very last minute to show me the plan. This lesson is not to be forgotten. Yahweh wants each of us to trust in more areas of our lives. This includes persisting in prayer. The last minute is what really stands out to me in the lesson Yahweh is trying to teach. If he gave us the answer back in January we would not have had to trust Him. So even though he used the feast to introduce a new level of trust to my weak human self, I see how He desires me to trust in much deeper areas of my life. I’m so thankful that He cares more about my life than even I do. Praise be to Yahweh!

Mud Pit!

The children had a blast yesterday when their cousins visited from out of town. They chose a classic homemade form of farm entertainment.

MUD!

Hannah the Amazon girl

Muddy girl trio

Muddy boy duo

Rachael trying not to get too muddy

Gianna the mud baby...

Vegetable creatures

The children made vegetable creatures for the fair.

Then again, maybe the children themselves are the vegetable creatures.