“The RoseBouquet”

Well, no watermelon garden - yet. But we’ve had a few days of rain, so our garden is looking blest. We should be eating radishes and lettuce soon. We already use the sorrel, onion greens and chives that come up naturally every year. The rhubarb is ready to use too.

But hey, what really absorbs our attention today is that we’re going to the city this afternoon to buy a digital camera! We went shopping last week Thursday and cased them out at six stores. One of them has a deal on which includes an HP Photo printer with the camera. Hopefully they haven’t sold out by the time we get there.

Friday morning we’ll have an early breakfast, and try to be on our way by 8 am, heading to a Bible Camp in southern Alberta, where there is to be a reunion of Dad’s Friesen cousins and their descendants. The last one was held in June 2003. At least one of the cousins has died, plus one in-law. Dad will be the oldest surviving cousin there.

Not only that, but all his surviving siblings will be there; Aunt Jessie, Aunt Helena, Uncle Bill and his wife, Aunt Eunice, and Aunt Jean. It’s an opportunity for a reunion between them - okay, us, if I may include myself.

Besides exploring and learning to use our new camera, I’ll be busy packing for the 8 hour trip, and an exciting weekend. I’m thinking of taking along my older genealogy computer, so I can do lookups for people right on the spot. I want to update some of my charts in preparation for a new revision of my “Grandpa’s Stories” family history book.

Site-wise, I’ve been fighting off s*p*a*m attacks on my business site. First through floods of comments from po-r-n and dr-ug sites on my eAction blog. It took two days to get my software updated, and new patches installed to stop that! Now I’m getting the some of the same through my contact forms on that site. I can, of course, and DO block their IP addresses, but it is a crying shame!

I’ve more or less completed my renovational work there, and am working on a site I built last year for a missionary friend.

On the Ruthes-SecretRoses.com site I should be done with the articles in the Sharing Library early next week. I do not know how long I’ll be on the cards and resources areas, but it feels like my 18 month make-over project has an end in sight.

Did you get your copy of Angel Encounters? Click here to download; Angel-Encounters.pdf.zip

I’ve begun on another one using my personal devotional Bible studies in the book of Matthew. It will be much bigger. I’m also weighing the pros and cons of providing those short daily pages as a daily blog or RSS feed. I wonder how much interest there would be in that? An ezine means I have to look after a subscriber list, and I’m trying to see how this could be set up to be a very quick daily posting chore. Maybe you could reply and let me know, what you think?

My working title at present is, The Kingdom of Jesus. As I read the Bible I stop every few verses or at each story and try to determine what personal application or lesson I can learn from them. I always find a lesson! Then I add a short, one paragraph prayer to apply it. This isn’t going to appeal to everyone, but if you need to get something meaningful out of your Bible readings, - then this might be useful to you.

Today I’m sharing not just one, but two older articles about reunions from my Sharing Library. They seem so fresh and appropriate for this week, there’s no point in writing another.

My Aunt Jean and I were talking on the phone about the best way to get to this reunion camp site. She had taken a poor, gravel road the last time and it had seemed to take forever. So I suggested she go online and print out a map of the route I recommended, which was paved except for the last bit to the camp.

Just to prepare for our own driving I’ve gone to check out several map options available online. It seems to work best for a street address in a city, but I found I could print out a map of the highways I plan to take too, when I used MultiMap. The way it works on most of these is that you click on an area of the map to zoom in, and then again and again, until you are right up close. Or, you use the east, west, north, south arrows. On Google’s maps you can click on satelite and see how the area looks from way above the earth.

In case it helps you, here are the map sites I tried out;
www.us.map24.com
www.mapquest.com
www.multimap.com
maps.yahoo.com
www.google.ca/maphp?hl=en&tab=wl&q=

© Ruth Marlene Friesen

Do you DO Reunions? I have a sister and an aunt who have always said that they don’t “do” family reunions. But they are coming to one this weekend. That tickles me with delight. Because I’m going to see to it that they enjoy this one.

Why don’t some people care for family gatherings?

Very often the first reason is that they don’t feel close or connected to the extended family, and are afraid they’ll feel like outsiders.

Perhaps they remember unhappy scenes from their own family life, and fear such tensions will be present at the reunion too. Or they expect someone to be there who has hurt them in the past. Once wounded - twice shy, right?

I see several important values in having and attending family reunions, even if there is a chance of seeing someone who stirs up painful memories.

For rest of article see: How to Enjoy a Family Reunion

2nd article: Reunions R-EZee

© Ruth Marlene Friesen

Anyone can set up a reunion, even at next to zero-cost. If Dad’s cousin Pat can do it, you and I can too.

Pat has a ranch, loosely speaking, with her 13 horses at her son’s place next to hers, and huge patches of nettle and weeds growing there. But it is a serene and quiet place, with an untamed natural beauty.

Pat is not the world’s tidiest housekeeper, but she has a heart as huge as her whole ranch, and she knows a lot of relatives, and when she invites them, they come. Never mind if they have to be on the road for a week, as Bert did, driving up from Georgia, or several days as did Catheryn and her daughter Kelly from Washington. Anita and Henry brought their girls and Anita’s parents in their RV from Winnipeg… and so on.

Pat called it a Come N’ Go Reunion.

She had no real activities ready, but the half dozen children there on the Sunday, enjoyed a batch of kittens that they cuddled and traded between themselves. She jumped on a truck with some young guys and went to pick up a crate with young piglets for the kids to play with too. (I’m afraid they were a bit too big to cuddle).

Those of us who are genealogists and outgoing, just got right into making acquaintance, or renewing contacts with the relatives there, and sharing information. We had to hang on to our papers in the wind, or weigh them down with stones on the picnic tables, but we managed.

Since we got home, I’ve been thinking, how a reunion would look if I organized one? I don’t have all the space Pat does, but alternatives do exist. She makes it look so easy.

For rest of article see: Reunions-R-EZee

To read sample chapters of my first novel online, start at the novel’s index

To order the e-book to download and read on your computer; Order page (or if you email me, we can make a deal and I’ll send it to you on CD).
To order the softcover paperback from Booklocker use; Booklocker

We’re having a lovely, softly falling rain this morning. If I stand still in the garden I can almost watch the rows of little green plants growing bigger above the dark black soil!

Dad’s friend Jona, on the other hand, who lives on the acreage where we used to live years ago on the other side of the tracks, has a garden that is on a lower level. On Monday he said he’d finally gone through it with a rotortiller, but it had still been very mucky and wet. Jona cringes at any news of rain, so he will not be very happy today. In fact, he gave up the idea of having a garden, so he offered the plot to a Ukrainian couple who have often been generous to him. They were thinking about it.

I told Jona that his garden would be perfect for growing watermelon this year. Especially if it gets to be a very hot summer yet, as they like a wet soil, but lots of heat. It happens that I have a couple of cups worth of my Uncle Johnny’s watermelon seeds. He used to grow them to market from his VW van. It would make extra work for me to go check and weed them, but if the other couple declines his offer, I might just end up growing a patch of watermelons there. Jona says he’ll let me know.

The worst that can happen, I suppose, is that in the fall I’ll have to start marketing those Sugar Babies. Hmmm!

Being able to spend a few days at home, and done with the translation job, means I’ve been back in full swing with the renovations on my web sites. Yesterday I finished on the BouquetofEnterprises.biz site. I’ll move on to re-do a small one I’m maintaining for missionary friends, and then that hour will shift into high marketing gear.

I’m making faster progress now with the re-doing of the articles in my Sharing Library site, and when I have those done I’ll have to stop to change all the author photos of myself to a new one. After that there is still the resources section and the greeting cards section to work over.

Speaking of the author photo - remember the chance I gave you last week to vote on which one you thought I should use? A big “Thank you” to all those who took the time to reply on this. I do appreciate your comments.

Almost every single person who responded took the #1 photo as their first choice. Now that makes me smile!

I may appear to have less grey hair there, and it’s a younger-looking shot perhaps, but I happen to know that I had flipped the photo so I could have one where I was facing to the right. Thus, it now looks backwards to me. It’s also taken from above me, which is a currently vogue way of taking advertising shots, but I wonder if folks will perceive me to be shorter for that. At any rate, I take those votes as compliments. Thanks

I had thought I would go with # 4 (It has to fit into the top of the right column), but last night I was printing out some photos, and I began to like # 11 or #12 better. When I printed out those from # 2- 4 and 5, I began to like that shot better again. So? I’m still not fully decided. I should work with # 1 some more and see if that might do…

On the other hand, Dad is now seriously considering buying a digital camera in time for the Friesens Cousins Reunion weekend after next, and I might just wait and have another go at these photos with the new digital, keeping in mind the pros and cons I’ve seen here. Maybe we could get around those shadows too!

Do you happen to know where the best bargain prices are on digital cameras?

(excerpted from Web Evangelism Bulletin) “People often ask, ‘How much of The Da Vinci Code is true?’ I wearily answer that Paris is in France, London is in England, and Leonardo da Vinci painted pictures. Let’s look at four areas where Dan Brown’s history is bunk,” says Sandra Miesel, medieval historian and co-author of The Da Vinci Hoax: www.tothesource.org/5_3_2006/5_3_2006.htm

Christianity Today has a range of other articles relating to the topic, for instance: ‘Jesus Out of Focus’ says.”We really need the facts at our finger tips regarding the apocryphal gospels, their dating, and how the biblical canon became formalized, if we are to answer honest questions with more than wild opinions or silly reactions.” www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/006/10.24.html

Mark Moring’s wisdom on DVC and how we react to it, is essential reading: (I found this excellent). www.christianitytoday.com/movies/commentaries/downwithdavinci.html

Most children are taught to pray when they are young - at least if their parents or grandparents understand the value of prayer, as it was a generation or two ago. Nowadays, we can’t take that for granted any more, but do you recall praying as a child?

You probably started with little memorized prayer verses at bedtime and at the table. Did you also move on to praying secretly to God on your own?

I did. Now I should interject, that I may have been a a brighter, more imaginative child than others, but when I heard sermons in church about prayer and personal devotions, I tried to carry out as much of that as I understood. I imagined that Jesus and I would go for walks and sometimes we would just swing our hands together.

But I was a chatterbox when I felt safe with an adult and I would ask oceans of questions! I didn’t always get answers when I asked them of God, but I chalked that up to not being able to hear or understand them. I was confident that God had answers for every question, and plenty more that I couldn’t think up yet.

When I heard in Sunday School or church, that the Bible says we should go into our closet and pray privately I understood that fairly literally. Sharing a bedroom with two younger sisters meant that I didn’t have much privacy. But - by laying an old cushion on the floor of our closet, (which was a little cramped for it was under the slope of the roof and hard to stand up in anyway), and by keeping the door open a crack for a ray of light to shine on my Bible on my knees, I worked at my memory verses, and I talked to God. I was about nine, going on eleven.

I recall there were stretches of time when my prayers were mainly about my brother Ernie, who I feared was in our family by mistake. He just wasn’t like me at all, and always doing things that made our parents scold him. But in that closet I found verses in I John that talked about loving God, and if we hated our brother, we should not say we loved God, as that made us a liar. Okay, for Jesus’ sake I was willing to be made loving to Ernie, but in the natural, I confessed it was impossible.

Later on, I had a chance to prove that, and to discover I did love him.

In church we would have visiting missionaries speak and show slides, and I began to make a prayer list of them, and of countries around the world that needed the gospel. Through that I became a true intercessor. That is, I prayed with tears for the lost. I wanted them to know my Best Friend, Jesus too.

Mom was sickly and often in and out of hospitals. Naturally, I begged for her healing and that she be able to come home again.

By trial and error I discovered what times of the day were best for me, and when I’d be least likely to be interrupted. Just before bedtime, since I stayed up later than my sisters, was good for the latter, but then I’d sometimes wake to find myself sleeping with my head on my Bible on my knees. Getting up early in the morning was hard if I’d been reading in bed. I don’t recall now which was the best time, but I do know I experimented with times and places.

The best part is, it developed a life-long habit. There have been other stages in my journey as an intercessor for others before God, but I am thankful for those early efforts that begain in my pre-teen years, from about age nine onward. The most enduring image is of always pouring over my Bible, all marked up with verses I had memorized for prizes at Sunday School, and for the Mid-Prairie Scripture Mission, who sent around a representative to our schools to hand out prizes. (I won a Bible for one year’s work when I was eleven, and two free weeks at camp when I was twelve).

I rather favoured Proverbs for easy to understand verses that gave advice or direction when I was reading serendipitously, or at random. When I read something that struck me as intended especially for me, I would pretend to dialogue with the Lord over it. Very often when I asked a question, another verse I had memorized would pop into my mind, and lo, it had the answer! I had no trouble convincing myself that God and I were having a talk.

But I sensed that others, including the adults in my world, didn’t have this happen, so I learned to keep my private times, private. Still, I knew that I shouldn’t keep this very good thing all to myself. Jesus was great and powerful enough that He could easily have this kind of friendship with everybody in the word, and He could still give us all individual attention!

Then, when I was sick with the mumps at age 12, I had a dream in which I wrote a book that would show the world how wonderful this friendship with Jesus really is. Long story shortened, I did write that book over the next two decades, and more. it is even published! But at this stage, I am trying to let the world know, (on a very short shoestring budget) that it exists.

To read sample chapters of my first novel online, start at the beginning

To order the e-book to download and read on your computer; Order Page
(or if you email me, we can make a deal and I’ll send it to you on CD).

To order the softcover paperback from Booklocker use; Booklocker.com

This is my most favourite time of the year. I like the changing seasons. We have no excuse to get bored, but somehow this time is the one I enjoy most. Our spring is probably later than most other parts of the world.

(Just another hour’s drive north of us, and you’ll find the population very sparse. Lots of unnamed lakes and forests with some hunters and trappers moving about, and a few aboriginal settlements, but next to no roads, so only those who fly or trek in are up in the vast northend of our province. Beyond that is the North West Territories, and eventually the North Pole).

Our days are longer now, the sunshine is wonderful, the trees are green with freshly bursted leaves, and the breezes are such gentle, soothing caresses - it is just great to be alive!

When you sow seeds into the garden you can go check your rows one day after another, and suddenly one day, there’s a row of little green sprouts winking up at you. Just like over night. Then another and another. It just makes you want to water them and see more!

Right now I’m so glad of my habit of early morning walks around our town. It seems the energy I expend is repaid to me with more energy than if I didn’t walk. I feel healthier and able to take on far more than before. My heart is cheered, and my mind is off with ideas like a puppy that got away. Yes! I’m glad to be me, an content to be where I am, doing what I do!

Well, at last. I have that photo story ready of the City-style party for Dad’s 90th birthday on April 30. I cropped 52 pictures out of the two films worth of shots, but I’ve just selected a best efforts for this page; Dad’s 90th Again

Not only that, but I managed to put together a page of what I consider the best author pictures my friend Kathy Wollf took back in early April. I think I’ve decided which one I should use on all my websites, but I’ll let you go look them over and send me your feedback as to which one you like best. You might even influence me. Give it a try.
New Author Pics

I received a translation job out of the blue last week, and since these come so seldom, I had to sacrifice other blocks of time to do it. Less progress on the sites’ renovations. It earned me a bit of money, but - I think I’ll have to raise my rates.