It Was a Very Good Week!

I found my car keys today, so now I finally feel settled back into our home. It was very UNsettling to not know where I had left them before we moved to Norway, but now, I can stop looking and life can go back to normal and hopefully this will end the sleepless nights. I finally sent an e-mail to our house sitters asking if they had ever seen them in the house while they lived here (as Kory was certain I wouldn’t have left them behind), and sure enough – they had relocated them from the key rack where I THOUGHT I had left them to the coat closet, in a little pouch on the inside of the door meant for gloves and hats and scarves. I’m sure I would have NEVER found them there so I was extremely relieved they remembered where they had put them. I thought I was going to lose my mind over this last little detail in our adjustment back to American life. And just in time too, as Kory is making big improvements and is almost back to normal so we’ll be needing two cars here pretty soon and we won’t have to share our only set of keys. Hallelujah!

Kory was very encouraged this week by his lack of pain and increased mobility and especially that he was able to find a few projects to do that kept him busy. Our Asian pear trees are dripping in fruit so he picked the pear trees clean (and the apple trees), washed them, sliced them and dried them in the dehydrator. They taste just like candy they are so sweet. He’s quite proud he was able to do something helpful and now he’s eyeing bigger projects. Woo hoo. He even had his first big outing today as we all went to the Fall Festival in downtown Mount Vernon, the Pumpkin Toss in Burlington, and to Costco to buy some wood flooring for our upstairs kitchen. I want to cash in on his new found enthusiasm for home projects as I’ve been waiting ten years for a new floor up there!

This has been a good week on many levels. Monday, our friends the Roberts (see photo), came for a visit and stayed on all week. We wouldn’t let them leave. They used us as a home base while they visited all their friends they left behind in Anacortes when they moved to Montana last year. It was so good to spend a little extra time with them and to stay up late every night filling in all the details of our lives. They have four kids so Kaleb was well occupied and it was hard to believe he got any schoolwork done at all, but he did. We cut his days a little short so he had extra play time, but he did very well in all his subjects.

Friday School, the once a week homeschool co-op we attend, started yesterday. Kory normally teaches woodshop there, but that wasn’t possible this fall so I am now the teacher – not of woodshop – but of a money management class for 4th-8th graders I call “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” I limited it to twelve students and I’m making up the curriculum as I go (and as the Spirit leads). I’m not a teacher and I’m not all that thrilled about kids in general, so this is WAY out of my comfort zone, but I feel so strongly about the subject of money management that I’m going for it. So far, so good. I got all the kids’ attention by giving quarters for each good answer to my questions. I even brought a crisp one hundred dollar bill and asked them to write down what they would do with it if I gave it to them. One kid wanted to buy an MP3 player, most would save all or part of it, but one little sweetheart of a boy (not mine) said he would give it to someone in need. I gave him the hundred bucks and told him to report back next week who he gave it to and how they reacted. It’s all part of the plan I have for the eight week course. I also sent them each home with a five dollar bill of MY money. I had them write down the serial number so I was sure to get my money back. I asked them to put it somewhere safe and watch over it because it’s not theirs – it’s mine. That’s the lesson this week – that we are just the caretakers of all God trusts us with and if we prove faithful and trustworthy – he trusts us with more. It will be interesting next week to see if they bring the money back. This class will cost me a bit, but I’m not sure I could buy anything that would be more fun or hopefully, make more of an impact. I’ve only heard good reports so far, so that’s encouraging.

Our pastor called me this week and asked if I would deliver the sermon at Bethany Covenant Church the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I was honored he thought of me as he wants me to speak on TRUST, “Because,” he said, “you kind of live there.” Good thing my trust is in God and not in my own abilities as I couldn’t even find my own car keys.