Personality Test

You Are An INFP

The Idealist You are creative with a great imagination, living in your own inner world.Open minded and accepting, you strive for harmony in your important relationships.It takes a long time for people to get to know you. You are hesitant to let people get close.But once you care for someone, you do everything you can to help them grow and develop. You would make an excellent writer, psychologist, or artist.

What's" Your Personality Type?

HopiQ posted the link to this.

New phone

At the beginning of November I got a new phone with a camera. I just figured out how to mobile blog (as you can see!), so I'm sending all the pictures I took through the month! I'm pretty impressed with their quality. It was hard to tell on the tiny phone viewing screen.

Accident

I got into an accident on the way to work on November 7th. I was pulling to a stop behind a pickup. The car behind me rear-ended me. I swerved to avoid the pickup and scraped the front passenger side. Here are photos of the damage. Mirror is hanging down, as is muffler, and the trunk can't open.

I haven't heard back yet from the insurance company on what they're paying. Hopefully enough for a new-to-me car, and then some!

Trip to the zoo

I took the little boys I take care of to the zoo November 9th. I was a gorgeous day!

Trek Reward Party

Our first reward party for Trek - junior high AWANA, back in October.

Daniel, DJ, and Roger are on the bottom, Merc and Jocob in the middle, and Julia on top!

Story out of China

I recieved this true story out of China from a friend today.

"'Little Red' met for prayer several times each week with her mother and other Christian women of their rural village. They would pray for the gospel in China, and when Little Red went to the city for college, they prayed that she would meet some American missionaries. Almost immediately, she found the couple who told me this story, and began spending time at their house, learning and also reading fairy tales such as "The Ugly Duckling" and Max Lucado's You Are Special.

"One day as Little Red sat at the front door of the home, 'June' walked by. June held a high office in the Communist Party, and prided herself in the fact that she was able to get any religious people (including Christians) to renounce their faith in order to work at the companies she controlled. That day June happened to drop her wallet, and Little Red, in an act of honesty rarely seen in China, picked it up and returned it. June, surprised by this barely-literate country girl's actions, began talking with her, and eventually befriended her, taking her around in her chauffeured vehicle. However, when June offered Little Red a high-paying position with the usual compromise, Little Red declined, and instead shared her testimony and the gospel with June.

"Over the next weeks, June kept talking to Little Red, and re-offered the job several times, always with the same response. This had never happened before, and June could barely believe that such character could be found in a poor country girl. June began to tell her business and Party contacts of this incredible young woman. Skeptical, her friends arranged a meeting where they offered Little Red a briefcase full of U.S. currency to say she didn't believe in Jesus Christ. To all but June's amazement, she turned it down, and again shared the reason for her faith.

"June has not yet trusted in Little Red's God, but has gone so far as to conference with movie producers about filming her story. They decided it could not be done because of the political problems it would bring them. Similarly, June's position and the financial and political consequences hold her from surrendering to the sovereign God of the universe. But at the current rate, Little Red's unwavering faith, backed by her mother's prayers, could convince June yet."

Please pray for "Little Red" and "June".

Suffering - A Choice?

I finished reading Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist by John Piper today. It is one of the most life-changing/attitude-changing books I've ever read.

The final chapter is called "Suffering: The Sacrifice of Christian Hedonism." He begins by telling of a Cistercian abbot who was interviewed by Italian TV.

[The interviewer] asked the abbot, "And what if you were to realize at the end of your life that atheism is true, that there is no God? Tell me, what if it were true?"

The Abbot replied, "Holiness, silence, and sacrifice are beautiful in themselves, even without promise of reward. I still will have used my life well." ...

Paul's answer to the interviewer's question was utterly contrary to the abbot's answer. The interviewer had asked, "What if your way of life turns out to be based on a falsehood, and there is no God?" The abbot's answer in essence was, "It was a good and noble life anyway." Paul gave his answer in 1 Corinthians 15:19, "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied." This is the exact opposite of the abbot's answer...

Why didn't Paul say, "Even if Christ is not raised from the dead, and even if there is no God, a life of love and labor and sacrifice and suffering is a good life"?...

It seems that most Christians in the prosperous West describe the benefits of Christianity in terms that would make it a good life, even if there were no God and no resurrection... So if we get love, joy, and peace from believing these things, then is it not a good life to live, even if it turns out to be based on a falsehood?...

Paul tells us the best way to maximize our pleasures in this life [if this is all there is]. "If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrrow we die" (1 Corinthians 15:32). He does not mean something so naive as sheer epicureanism and debauchery. That is not the best way to maximize your pleasures, as anyone knows who has followed the path of alcoholism and gluttony...

But what he does mean by the phrase, "Let us eat and drink," is that, without the hope of resurrection, one should pursue ordinary pleasure and avoid extraordinary suffering...

When Paul says, "If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink," he does not mean, "Let's all become lechers." He means, there is a normal, simple, comfortable, ordinary life of human delights that we may enjoy with no troubling thoughts of heaven or hell or sin or holiness or God--if there is no resurrection from the dead. And what stunned me about this train of throught is that many professing Christians seem to aim at just this, and call it Christianity.

Paul did not see his relation to Christ as the key to maximizing his physical comforts and pleasures in this life. No, Paul's relation to Christ was a call to choose suffering--a suffering that was beyond what would make atheism "meaningful" or "beautiful" or "heroic." It was a suffering that would have been utterly foolish and pitiable to choose if there is no resurrection into the joyful presence of Christ.

This was the astonishing thing I finally saw in pondering Wurmbrand's story about the Cistercian abbot. In Paul's radically different viewpoint I saw an almost unbelievable indictment of Western Christianity. Am I overstating this? Judge for yourself. How many Christians do you know who could say, "The lifestyle I have chosen as a Christian would be utterly foolish and pitiable if there is no resurrection"? How many Christians are there who could say, "The suffering I have freely chosen to embrace for the cause of Christ would be a pitiable life if there is no resurrection"? As I see it, these are shocking questions.

And I would agree. I've been in the process of re-evaluating my life for a while, and here is another call...somewhere...but where? How do I choose suffering - in my life, now?

Extreme Weekend Adventure

September 29th through October 1st was Extreme Weekend at MTYC. Here is a link to an Emmaus student who blogged about it.

The weekend was fun. I had a terrible adventure!:-) On Saturday I was still fighting a cold and could feel that I was reacting slow to everything. However, it was my one yearly chance to go rappelling, so I grabbed it. About eight or ten feet down I slipped and ended up sitting on the cliff face with my feet above my head. That was not my adventure!

I was sliding my feet around to get them under me again, when my left braid got caught and pulled into the figure 8 ring with the rope! I was stuck! There was no wide enough ledge to pull myself onto so I could take weight of the rope. Philip and Luke were my heroes! They had to perform a whole rescue operation to try and help me, while dangling 50 or 60 feet (pure guess) above solid ground. Matt and Rachel helped from above, too.

I thought they would have to chop the braid off. It happened before to another girl who was there! Five or ten minutes into the whole thing I was saying, "Just chop it off and get me out of here!" But eventually, since I was close enough to the top, they were able to haul me up on the rope hand over hand.

When I got to the top and my hair was released, (sitting rather than trying to stand on shaky knees!) Philip asked me if I wanted to go back down. I gave a very emphatic, "No!" I'll have to wait for my next yearly chance to get up courage again!

I felt shaky for a couple hours, but I must have scared the cold out of my body and dropped it down the cliff, because I didn't have another sneeze or runny nose after that.

Catch up some more

After we returned from Sioux Falls I spent a week down at Mountain Top Youth Camp cooking, a long weekend over the Fourth at Uncle Bud's in Illinois, and another week at MTYC cooking again. Unfortunately I have no photos to display.

The rest of the summer was normal life, nannying and working on my garden.

This fall I joined the Community Choir at LCCC again. We're singing Ritter's Gloria for our Christmas concert, along with some selections from the Messiah and some carols.

Catch Up - Sioux Falls

From Colorado we drove up past Mt. Rushmore, on to Sioux Falls, South Dakota for an outreach that the Good News on the Move team was doing, hosted by Larry and Natalie Sax. About 200 people from across North America arrived to help. I spent my morning in prayer for what was going on, and my afternoons helping Mike Fitzhugh with a music ministry in one of the parks. The evenings were given to gospel meeting by Jabe Nicholson. Check out the photo gallery and the reports of the trip at Uplook.

The Sax family is continuing to do follow up and praying for fellow workers to come join them in Sioux Falls. The results have been wonderful there.


Mike singing at the park.


Talking about the Lord to some kids who came to listen to the music.


A music group (including me) singing some hymns.


The courthouse where the first three gospel meetings took place.


Jabe preaching in the courthouse.

Catch Up - Colorado

Well... finally time to start catching up on the events of the past six months in my life. Starting with Memorial Day weekend at the end of May. Dad, Mom, Dan, and I drove Grandma Morris to Uncle Bud's house in Illinois, then headed out to Colorado to visit Grandma and Grandpa Weeks. Good trip - we saw all the Colorado cousins except Danielle in Brazil.

Hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park with Cousin Ed.

More hiking.

Elk shedding their winter fur.

And more pictures will have to wait until Blogger decides to cooperate!

If you're feeling ignored...

Click here!

(Yeah, I know it's been a while since I posted. I'll catch y'all u on my crazy summer later!)

Our house

Here are the photos I promised several months ago of the outside of our house! I'll have to take more in the woods now that it's green. (Can you tell I downloaded all the photos of the past few months off the camera today?)

Front

Back

Backyard

Bridge across the ditch to the woods

Path through the woods

Snowy Sunrise

Here's a picture I meant to upload and share a while back.

Useful plants

The woods behind our house are fascinating to me. Watching them turn green (and purple and white and orange) and come alive over the past couple of weeks has been my favorite pasttime. I know so few of the plants I found that I decided to start researching them. Today I checked Peterson's Guides to Edible Wild Plants and Medicinal Plants and Herbs and started working on identifying what is out there.

American Brooklime. You can eat the leaves as salad greens.

Spring Beauty. You can boil the corm, or root, and eat it as a potato.

Crabapple. I think. I plan to make jam from the fruits, Lord willing.

Plantain. Ugly weed, I know, but a great healer for sores, an anti-inflammatory and antibiotic.

There is so much more out there, but these were some of the more interesting or beautiful.

Been a while

Yeah, so I've been busy! It's springtime's fault!

I've gotten my garden up and almost running in the past couple weeks. When the plants started to pop, I suddenly realized that I really did want one. So I pulled out the plans I made last December and started working. I made a raised bed, no dig garden based on a plan I found in an ebook at Sustainable-Gardening-Tips.com. Plants aren't in yet but I have some ready to go.

I've been pounding nails, shoveling compost, spreading soil additives, shaking out straw with all my available energy over the past week!

I've built three 4 by 13 foot beds. Here is one with newsprint spread on the bottom. It blocks weeds.



Here is another with the first load of compost spread in it.



I've really built muscles loading, pulling, and spreading compost. At least it was all free from the township. I need to take another couple photos now that the beds are finished and covered with straw, then again once some plants are in. I'll post more later.

Springtime

I love spring! I've been doing work in the yard for the past couple of weeks. (For about the first time in my life!) And watching the green things begin to grow. I feel a little like Mary in The Secret Garden when she finds the way in and and begins discovering all the green things growing in the rich soil.

Since we're in a new house we don't, or didn't, know what was planted in the yard. I've been enchanted finding all the new things coming up. There are all sorts of bulbs all around the perimeter of the yard, crocuses, and some blue and white bell shaped flowers, and others that look like they'll probably be daffodils and tulips.

All the new green reminded me last week that I wanted to garden this year, so I pulled out the garden plans that I made last December and started working on them. I'm making a raised bed, no-dig garden. While I'm waiting for Dad to cut the wood so that I can build the sides, I started some seeds in peat pots on Tuesday night, and already some sprouts are starting to come up: broccoli, romaine, and cucumbers! Exciting! I spent half an hour today just hovering over them, examining!

I also saw yesterday that a green mist has formed in the lower part of the woods behind our house. The leaves of the small bushes and underbrush are all starting to push out of their buds. Green is beginning it's creeping takeover!

Long live Spring!

Hello, my name is Becki and I'm a sugarholic

But I'm 10 days straight and counting! Actually, Jen told me that a treat every ten days would not be a big deal, so I indulged last night at the Ladies' Time Apart. It was good but I'm glad to be back to a normal diet.

Actually, having no refined sugar was a lot easier than I expected considering how much I had been eating. It's just a matter of a change of attitude... a change of belief, I guess. If I see chocolate, I can't look at it and think how good it would be. If it enters my consciousness I can't more than glance, and think, "I don't eat that anymore."

Kind of like sin actually. If you dwell on some temptation, it becomes almost impossible to pull away. You have to turn away immediately.

Robin Williams' plan for world peace

Check out Paul's blog on The Plan. Very amusing and satirical!

Up and Away...

I picked up Uncle Jim and Aunt Fina from the airport today. The sights and smells set me off daydreaming about just leaving for China. I really could just do it. I don't have huge responsibilities here. I don't have the money for a ticket, but I could obtain it with not too much difficulty. I wouldn't have to worry about getting a new car! I could stay with friends when I got there until I could get a job teaching English somewhere. It could really happen!

(sigh) But it won't. I do feel like the Lord has me here for a reason. He's teaching me a lot. And money is probably a bigger drawback than what I let it be in my imagination. But the imagining is sure fun!

(Don't think that this means I'm not happy here at home. I am. I just don't want everything to become "business as usual." There's a whole beautiful world out there and I don't want to become so focused on my little circle that I don't see the bigger picture. Part of that is dreaming of the possibilities.)