“The RoseBouquet”

A bit earlier than we are used to, so we all feel pleasantly surprised, but it is welcome. In the last week we have had a lot of snow and ice disappear. The most used roads are clear and where residents have cleared the sidewalks in front of their properties, there the sidewalks are fine too.

Despite all that, yesterday morning walking to my office here I had countless “near falls” on little patches of ice here and there, even where the sidewalk looked clear. Early in the morning the temperatures are still hovering too close to the freezing point, 0 Celsius, and over night the slushy snowy patches have frozen. So there it is like walking on icy rocks.

By the afternoon, when I walked home at 5 pm, many more spots had cleared and dried off - even though the sun was hiding and the skies were grey and overcast. Where there was still snow it was slushy or sometimes like dry sand. (That means the warm air must have drawn all the moisture out).

When I got home yesterday I saw that a neighbour had cleared the slush and snow off the sidewalk in front of my place, so I decided to get some exercise by doing it in front of my other neighbour’s house. This morning that sidewalk looked clear, but it has a thin glaze over it, and I had to watch my steps. When I get home, I hope it will have dried off.

Even the snow on my garden is disappearing and I can see strips of black dirt beside the path! However, there is a big puddle under my car. And the old wall plaster I had knocked out of the stairwell and dumped behind the car has become a clay-goop.

Oh well, spring is here. We’ll tolerate all these things. The problem is - we may get spoiled and have a downer when a big spring snowstorm blows in! So those of us older and wiser are bracing ourselves for another dose of winter yet.

I called my sister Elsie last week for her birthday, and she said they had all kinds of flowers out in B.C. but she was worried the blueberries would start blooming too soon, and would die if another blast of winter should hit there.

But hey, compared to the people who are experiencing earthquakes - do we have anything to complain about? Do we?

I did finally get my first video lesson last Wednesday afternoon. However, my young geek-teacher has no training in teaching, so after we had downloaded and installed two programs, he took the mouse and swirled it around on my screen and told me that this is for that, and that is for this…. and I was soon lost. I decided that I would have to take some my education into my own hands here.

So I gave up my Thursday and Friday mornings to go look online for tutorials and to learn to understand at least the one program better. I did try to follow the steps given, but ran into questions, so tomorrow when my guru friend shows up, I will be able to steer the lesson with some intelligent questions. Hopefully we’ll make some progress forward.

Computer art done in a vector program is really terrific, now that I see the potential. You can draw most anything starting with a few basic shapes, then with shading and 3-D effects you can make even a snowman come to life. But that’s not all, You can grab an elbow, say, lift it, and all the rest of the body changes appropriately to create a new pose image for your animation. Clever, eh?

I think this is goin’a be great fun!

I spent the weekend (Friday night and all day Saturday) at a Heritage event by the Mennonite Historical Society of Saskatchewan (MHSS). I had to give a report on the website which I am responsible for, and I also took a small part in the honouring of Rev. John D. Friesen, who was my cousin-uncle. (Mom’s first cousin). A number of new jobs for things to put on the site were given to me, so I’ll be busy on that for a few months.

Besides that, one women lent me her Friesen book to study for a while, and another man gave me a photo and asked for help to identify the Friesen woman in there. One of his Walde-Wiebe great-grandfathers had married a widow Friesen and he had no way of identifying her.

Four more friendship articles after today’s and then we’ll start something new. A virtual writer’s workshop. I’m using these weeks to prepare and if I get the participation I’m hoping for it should be loads of inter-active fun.

As you may recall, MyPowerMall went under at the end of January. I found some other places that help you find discounts and get rebates for your online shopping, so the other week when I was ready to place another order for supplements at Puritan’s Pride, I went to BigCrumb to see if I could get there from there. Sure enough. No problem.

Last week i got an email telling me exactly what my rebate will be. $10.04. They don’t make us wait until we’ve got $25 coming to us before we receive it, but they do make us wait until the month after it arrives in their bookkeeping, so now I know that in April I will receive this money in my PayPal account. Suddenly shopping online looks more appealing again.

Would you like to Follow me to BigCrumbs! to check it out?

There is a lovely passage on friendship in the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. It is attributed to King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, short of the Lord Jesus Himself, the Son of God. It reads;

Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their work:
If one falls down, his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.”
(Ecclesiastes 4:7-12 NIV)

Such basic and key thoughts about friendship!

Friends are meant to help one another when we fail, and we all do fail at various times in different ways. So a person without a friend is truly at a huge disadvantage.

The image of being able to lie down and keep each other warm can be seen in more ways than just a marriage bed for a couple. Emotionally and spiritually as well as physically, when friends are mutually bonded in love and respect, they will warm or encourage and strengthen one another. Each is ready to go on because of the support from the other.

Courage is greatly increased too if friends stand together. Opponents cannot so easily defeat a united unit of two as one standing all alone.

These are perhaps the best reasons for forming any friendship bond. We all want someone to help us when in trouble, to warm and encourage us, and stand with us against our enemies.

Just think back to any friendship or even a small alliance you have had since you were a toddler. If you were to analyze them, you would find that you were attracted to and bonded with those who were willing to help you out, or who encouraged and praised you, or who joined sides with you in any conflict with someone else. There were no long ceremonies, you just became friends – whether instantly or gradually doesn’t matter.

In your primary years you learned to call these people your friends. Young girls particularly, tend to grade and include or exclude friends all according to their various definitions. The girls are refining their senses and standards regarding relationships. By the time they are in their teens they are often quite intuitive about who makes a good friend and who does not, and once they have latched onto one male friend, they close themselves off to most others.

However, there are always some who don’t reach out. Even as adults, some loners never quite get the art of winning and keeping friends. I wonder if that is because they are too self-absorbed?

Notice that Solomon says in this Ecclesiastes passage, that a friend helps a friend up, and they warm one another when lying down together, and they stand together in battle. Obviously then, to have a friend you must do these things for another. You must help someone falling down, be warm and encouraging to someone alone, and join someone in a battle against a common enemy. If you initiate these towards someone else, I think it will be hard for that person
not to gratefully claim you as a friend.

On the other hand, if you already have friends who do these things for you, be sure to return the favours and be a friend to them too. Don’t just soak up friendship without helping, encouraging and fighting alongside your friends too.

[Note: if you missed any articles in this series of article on Friendships in the Bible, and want to read them, you’ll find them all linked from this index which is about Friendship

When you are part of a poor family you learn to make do with simple things, and focus on living well spiritually. Since Snowflake is part of my family or household he has had to make do with cardboard boxes for his nests to curl up in. He has never complained, but has eagerly investigated any boxes or containers he found.

Well, on Sunday, Shirley, a friend of mine who is very fond of animals and admires Snowflake a lot, came over with not just one, but two new carpeted cat houses for Snowflake!

The one is a simple, one-story bungalow, with a sunning roof. It has a streamlined circular architecture, made of sturdy plywood and lined inside and out with a thick new carpeting that is both warm to curl up in, and great for exercising one’s claws.

The other one is a two-story townhouse, also with a sunning roof, and designed by the same architect, with matching decor to the bungalow.

But how would Snowflake like these new houses? While Shirley was around he merely sniffed them over carefully and politely peeked inside. Seemed clean enough, no scent of previous residents.

After she left, while I was making myself a light supper in the kitchen, I turned around to find Snowflake was inside the first story of the townhouse which I’d placed in his sunny south window, right in the room where he spends most of his days. I ran for my camera and took a snapshot. (When I’d finished supper I emailed it to Shirley).

The bungalow was parked under my desk, and I’d turned it so that I would be able to have eye-contact with Snowflake when he was in it. About 7 pm I glanced down and found that he had managed to move in, and curl up snug as a bug in a rug. His face looked up at me from the round door-window. Satisfied, I thought. So I grabbed the camera and took another click.

Later, when I was ready to go to bed, I didn’t have the heart to pull him out, as I usually did with the cardboard boxes. Instead, I picked up Snowflake, bungalow and all, and carried him to his room for the night. Wow, no need to wake up the sleepy pussycat!

I’ve left the boxes around in case he missed them, but I think he has fully moved into his new homes, so I can clean up the shabby boxes - as soon as I have time.

By the way, Carol, whom I haven’t seen in several years, phoned up last week to ask if I knew someone who would be willing to board her cat for 6 weeks while she is moving. If you live in the Saskatoon and northward area and would like to do this, do get in touch. I can’t see myself doing that, but said I’d ask around in case I heard of someone else.

My video-making lessons still have not started. Jondalar has been too busy or sick each week, but maybe it will come to pass this week.

Meantime, I’ve been busy going through the Action Guide videos with my new SBI site, and whoa, have I been astonished at the new things I’ve learned. Either they have added a lot of new stuff, or I missed it the first time I went through it for my aloe-vera-and-handy-herbs.com site. It looks like I’ve got a winner here that should turn into a very handsome stream of income.

The training videos are truly excellent, and although it is true that after about Day 4 you need access to the features that are explained there, you could pick up a lot of information for free by watching them thoughtfully and making notes. Apply the principles to the site you have right now and see if you don’t improve by several notches. Wanna go see? ActionGuide.sitesell.com

Yesterday I finished Day 6, (a phase or stage) so now I’m going to buckle down to finalize my template and start producing pages according to the blueprint I have drafted. I’m guessing this next stage will take about 10 weeks. Then I might be able to cut back the hours on that one, and apply some of these neat principles to my other sites.

Also, I’m planning a virtual writers’ retreat to which I want to invite you, dear reader! Yep. You.

There are five more articles on friendships in the Bible. Those are ready, so that gives me just five weeks to prepare this virtual writers’ retreat and make sure that will be both fun and beneficial for us all.

This week’s article is about Job and his friends in calamity. I’ve tried to super-condense their conversation and put it into more current vernacular, so we can easier learn how to treat our friends in trouble. However, it’s still rather longish so you’ll have to finish reading it on the website.

We all know or should if we haven’t closed our eyes to it, that it is not right to help ourselves to the photos or graphics of others. That’s stealing. I try to be careful not to do that.

However, sometimes I’ve found some sites on the internet that are willing to share their graphics for free. Naturally I bookmark them, and when I need something, I head back to those sites to see if they might have what I need. Just yesterday I followed a lead in my SBI training materials and found a pretty special stock photo/graphics site that offers free access and use of the graphics as long as you sign up to become a member of the site.

Doing some more browsing there at sxc.hu/, I am finding more and more really lovely graphics there. It seems a shame to keep this discovery to myself.

When we are in misery we dearly want friends to confide in, and we want them to empathize or at least sympathize with us. Sometimes we’ll settle for just having others in the same predicament so we don’t have to suffer alone.

When Job, a rich and godly patriarch in the Bible was suddenly hit by one calamity after another, including the sudden death of all ten of his children, four of his friends showed up to sit with him in the ash heap, where he was scraping his painful boils with pieces of broken pottery. (Ashes were considered clean and useful for healing at some point in the past, so this might have been a medical procedure).

Somewhat like when you are in the Intensive Care Ward in a hospital, people come to stare and whisper to each other about your chances of surviving, I suspect Job’s friends sat in awe and silence. They were speechless for seven days and seven nights. The Bible says they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. All but the death wail, it would appear, so they must have really thought he was dying.

But then Job spoke up and wished he had never been born, expressing his great grief.

At that his friend Eliphaz, the Temanite, spoke up, saying in effect, “Wow! How the mighty have fallen. You must have sinned big! If I were in your sandals I’d confess it to God.”

These were very wordy conversations, I’m paraphrasing, but in essence Job replied, “Don’t you see my anguish, and NO, I have not denied God. Can you prove I have sinned?”

Then Bildad jumps in with, “You’re blustering. Where there is smoke there is a fire. Confess your sin to God, and soon you’ll be laughing again.”

Job replied, “I know all that, but consider how great and awesome God is; who can really do frank business with Him?”

Then he turns to God and does ask a lot of frank questions about things he can’t understand. In all of this Job shows that he grasped the greatness, the mystery and the power of God.

Now Zophar the Naamanthite can’t resist accusing Job of mocking God. “You are talking way-way too intimately with God. Get back into your submissive role, and get rid of the sin in your life. Then you can forget all your troubles and lie down secure and unafraid.”

Joe retorts sarcastically, “Sure, all wisdom is going to die with you! Well, I have a mind too, and eyes to see how people are laughing at me. Just look at nature though. There’s all kinds of evidence that God is a wise and thoughtful Being, besides being powerful. I’d rather dwell on His sovereignty.”

He addresses God again, “I know You are profoundly great. I just wish I could talk things over with You and find out what’s going on here in my life, and why! I do believe there is no point in life aside from Your intervention and authority. Is there life after death? I think so…”

Friend Eliphaz the Temanite cuts Job off with, “Oh, you think you are so smart! You’re condemning yourself with your own words. Stop venting your rage against God. Listen, I’ll tell you how it really is–”

Read the rest of the article at Job’s Friends in Calamity

[Note: if you missed any articles in this series of article on Friendships in the Bible, and want to read them, you'll find them all linked from this index which is about Friendship]

My video-making lesson did not materialize last Thursday, but we another another appointment for tomorrow morning to start. Here’s hoping it comes off. Meantime, I’ve been going through the ActionGuide videos at SiteSell, following the research and brainstorming sessions as guided. Whoa, did I have a fine surprise on Friday when I got a glimpse of the monetizing opportunities ahead! I’ve been smiling to myself ever since. The future looks fairly rosy. Naturally, I’ll have to put in time to make it happen.

Last night I got a year’s worth of post-dated checks from a missionary support group, so I know I can allow myself enough groceries this year. God is so faithful to meet my needs.

I’ve been making some progress in short spells on my friend Betty’s site, which I am re-building after she lost her original domain name.

We don’t all cope the same way, but if you want to try my principle, it is simply to assign a specific block of time to do certain things, and then stick to that schedule. Little by little you can get many projects done.

Guess what, sometimes I don’t even notice when I’ve completed a big project because I have my eye trained on the next step. I tell you, things don’t look nearly as scary that way.

In my research I’ve followed some interesting links and found some serendipitous fun. Here’s a couple of videos I saw yesterday that really tickled me. Both of these are about giving the customer more than they expect in good service, but the way these stories are told is quite novel.

GiveEmthePickle.com This one is about giving customers that extra touch, going the second mile. Bob calls it ‘giving them the pickle.’

CatchtheFishPhilosophy.com This one is about creating a fun place for customers to shop. The example used is a fish shop where the employees play catch with fish and sometimes involve their in-store customers too. It’s about giving undivided attention to clients and customers. Be ALL there with them!

I really like that philosophy.