“The RoseBouquet”

Do you have a friend that inspires you to greatness? I have an older pen pal friend who did that for me.

Louise and I met through genealogy. She heard of my family book, “A Godly Inheritance,” and that it contained Friesens, so she wrote to order a copy. In no time we were corresponding like new pen pals, and revealing more and more of our lives to each other. (So far we have not proved that we’re related - but it must be).

As a young woman, Louise, like her sister Margaret, had to go to the city to find employment to help out the parents on the home farm. They both ended up at the Lethbridge hospital kitchen and worked faithfully for many decades.

They found a basement suite close by for their living accommodation, but Louise had a car, and they always went home on weekends or days off to help with the harvest and work at the farm near Tabor. When the elderly couple died, from whom they were renting the basement apartment, they discovered that the house had been left to them in their will!

Knowing Louise as I did, I’m not surprised. She was always ready to go the extra mile to help out others, and to do more than they ask - like giving a cup of water, and then watering all your camels too.

The two close sisters reached retirement age. They still drove out to help their brother who had inherited the farm, but now they were able to travel. Usually it was a trip to B.C., as well as trips to visit various other relatives across the prairies. In B.C. they would circle through the fruit valleys, and fill up the car with boxes and crates of fresh picked fruit, then go home and make jams and preserves steadily for days and weeks, until all those precious treasures were stored for winter dining and for gifts.

Margaret gradually failed in health, losing her mind by degrees, so that Louise has had to take on all the work and all the responsibility. Mind you, she still took Margaret out for rides and in public, unashamedly, as long as her sister was able to go. Margaret died a few years ago, tenderly loved to the end by her loyal sister Louise.

In March, 1999, Dad and I went on a weekend trip to visit some of his cousins at Lethbridge, and one over the American border. In my heart I hoped to slip in a brief visit to Louise as I’d really like to meet this pen pal in person after several years of corresponding.

[Go to my RoseBouquet Friendship garden to read the rest of this article and see a photo of Louise and me.]

My Mom used to sketch house layouts on the backs of past month calendar pages. She knew what she wanted when that time would come! I think I have memories of seeing that back as early as 1960. My parents built several houses out of second-hand materials from older houses that others no longer wanted. But Mom always dreamed of the day she would have a NEW house made of new materials.

Later, I used that memory in my novel, Ruthe’s Secret Roses, and fulfilled Mom’s dream house by having my main character, Ruthe Veer, build her mom’s dream home while they were away on a trip.

Naturally, that didn’t help my real mom, of course, as she never got to see it. Unaware, for many years she kept on plotting and sketching how she wanted her dream house to be laid out, how large each room, and so forth.

Find the rest of this article in my Sharing Library: A Dream House for Mom

As a teen I daydreamed a lot - (I still do!) - one set of those early meanderings became a major part of my novel, Ruthe’s Secret Roses, but it is only recently that I’ve seen how intuitively that solved some problems.

We are all dissatisfied with ourselves in one area or another. We don’t like how we look, or our clothes don’t suit the persona we want to project, or they don’t fit well. Maybe we don’t like our personalities. We want to be like someone else. Or, we don’t like our situation at all. We wish we were someone else in another time and place.

If we know about God and have heard that He made and loves us, we are convinced that He is no good - all because we are quite dissatisfied with ourselves. “If God is suppose to have made a mistake like me,” you may think, “then I have no respect for Him.”

But turning our back on our Creator is exactly the wrong thing to do.

There are some things about ourselves that we can make over. Shabby appearances can be as a result of bad health. So set a goal for building good health and make yourself over. Perhaps a hair and make-up makeover would complete the project.

No, you are not designed or destined to be over-weight. Let’s not blame God for that. You put the food in your mouth by your own choice. It may be a hard choice and you’ll need help, but you can choose to work at reducing that excess baggage in your body. Weight makeovers ARE possible!

If you are stuck wearing cast-off clothes that don’t suit you, or are too shabby, (sigh! I know it’s no fun), you can work towards a better wardrobe. Someday you will be able to afford or make good clothes. However, try to remember that there is much more to you than your outer appearance.

When your spirit shines with enthusiasm and joy people connect with the real you and don’t notice exactly what you are wearing. So work on developing the inner you, not just your wardrobe. Otherwise, they will intuitively recognize you for nothing more than a clothes hanger.

Keep in mind that though God put the DNA into the sperm and egg that became us, He still thinks of us as creative works and masterpieces in progress, and He’s giving us a chance to participate in the finished persons we are to be. On many points God waits for our decisions.

Are we going to pursue knowledge and understanding? Do we want to improve our mind and appearance? Where will we choose to live and work? Whom will we choose for friends and which ones will we avoid?

Now you are wondering how I worked all that into the novel as a result of my daydreams.

The plot thickened and jelled as I learned to know and understand the above points.

The Darlin’ Bonne’s Shoppe was started in the book as a way and means of giving a teen aged girl that Ruthe the heroine had rescued from sure death, a home and a way to support herself. The plan was for her to design and sew clothes, even though she had never sewn a stitch before, and to talk with her clients while she sewed, telling them about the transformation she had experienced in trusting Christ.

God divinely intervened and brought other girls into the shoppe and the plan developed as they learned to sew and design, and then some more as clients or patrons began to visit and use their services. Betty, a student nurse, came to the door, recalling a conversation she had overheard between Ruthe and Darlin’ Bonne. She was dropping out of her studies and wanted to join them. Then neighbour girls, Donnie and Louise came to see what the strange sewing noises from that green house meant. They begged to join too. Later, a social worker brought over Evelyn, who needed a home and a new career, after her last parent died. Another day, Ruthe brought over a runaway girl she had seen at dusk, escaping from a black market adoption.

Their good reputation grew as women and girls, and children too, came in to have new clothes made for them, and as they got to know the seamstresses like personal friends. While they planned and cut out and sewed up clothing for these people, the Darlin’ Bonne girls developed a sense for who needed an inner makeover as well. They learned to share Christ with them, and guided many to pray and receive Him as their personal Saviour and Lord and Friend.

Sometimes, as in the story of Phyllis Shulton, they would all gather around one woman, and sew a new wardrobe for a totally new look, and at the same time, lovingly counsel her to a spiritual makeover. These transformations gave me a lot of pleasure to write, and I trust they give readers a great delight too.

If you like makeovers, you will especially enjoy those scenes and chapters in my novel, Ruthe’s Secret Roses. If you would like such a makeover, you may pick up enough clues to know how to get one in your real life.

At about 10 or 12 in age, I fancied myself a seamstress and decided to practice with Mom’s remnants on our dolls. I held the fabric over the dolls, got ideas, snipped, and stitched by hand. Mom liked perfection, so she was not terribly impressed.

I’d get over it and in my enthusiasm try again and again, learning a bit about allowing extra fabric for going around some body parts. I got most discouraged though, when I came to Mom for help, and she’d explain with a lot of words - what I needed was a demonstration. Then she would get exasperated and retort, “Well, I can’t help you if you keep doing things upside down and backwards.”

“Mom! I can’t help it that I’m left-handed. Just show me where it’s suppose to go, and I’ll figure it out…”

Sometimes she tried, but when she saw me stitching from the left again, she’d exclaim, “Someone else will have to teach you to sew!”

That turned out to be me.

In my teens I must have been drooling over a pattern book in the store, when the clerk offered me an older, out of date copy - for free. What a treasure! I poured over it at home and soon my vivid imagination was making up stories about the sketches I studied as I sprawled across my bed. Some of the characters became so vivid and real to me that later they became the girls in the Darlin’ Bonne’s Shoppe in my novel, Ruthe’s Secret Roses.

I studied that pattern catalogue too, for styles and colours, and what looked best on blondes or brunettes, and how many seams and pieces were in each outfit. I got quite an education. I did not sew during that time, but just knew that one day I would, not only sew for myself and that well, but I would design my own clothes.

Right after high school, as soon as I had my first steady job as a telephone operator, I sent away for a correspondence course in dress design that promised to teach sewing too, taking nothing for granted. I knew I needed to learn to sew as Mom had said. But I would teach myself through the course.

One of the first purchases I made with my salary was a brand new Necchi sewing machine, and a left-handed scissors.

Working around my shifts as an operator, I took time to do the lessons carefully, and then started to haunt the remnant bin in the basement at the Bay, a large department store that I often entered at one end and wandered through to the other door, on my way to work. Those were the days when polyester was just coming into use. In brilliant colours, no less! It was 60 inches wide, and that fabric just never wore out. A one-yard remnant might cost .99 to $3 or $5, and it was enough for a dress for me!

Finally, I was done with cast-off second-hand clothing, and I was designing styles and wearing colours that I had chosen myself. Whoo-hoo!

When I had paid off my car, I packed my Necchi and most of my worldly possessions and drove to London, Ontario, where I settled down and lived for about 12 years. There I continued to sew my own wardrobe, and more; uniforms for my Pioneer Girls club girls, baby quilts and teddy bears and other stuff animals, and also dolls. Often they were gifts, but sometimes I got orders and was paid for some items too. (I have one large, heavy red photo album full of pictures of crafts and toys I have designed and sewn in that era).

I had to sell and leave behind the ailing Necchi when I moved back home to care for my parents in 1983, but I helped choose a sewing machine and a serger for Mom - who could not sit at them to sew without turning green - so they were at my disposal.

These days my life is full of things I do on the computer, and Mom’s machines sit covered on the sewing desk, so it almost seems a lifetime away, but once in a while I get a yen to sew, and it’s like an itch that MUST be scratched. I cut out a stack of nine items of clothing on my birthday recently, and I’m gradually snatching half an hour or an hour here and there, to work my way through that stack.

Sewing is a skill I will always be grateful for; it has blessed me many times already. The dreams of the dress design shop were not wasted either, but I think they have an unfinished destiny yet.

________
Read about my novel here
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Or, Read sample chapters of my first novel online

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You can order the softcover paperback from
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It’s time for the next monthly garden photo story! Whew! This is more work than I had bargained for. But I’ve got another page of photos uploaded and ready for you to tour my garden in early August. Go to this page;
August Garden Photo Tour

I hope you enjoy my lovely pink morning glories as much as I do.

People like to talk about their brush with the famous or various great people. Have you ever had one? A few moments with a very important person (VIP)?

I’ve met people who will tell in vivid detail about how they saw Queen Elizabeth up real close. Almost in arms-reach. Some will talk about speaking with a famous singer or movie star. The speaker a conference told last night about being at a Bible camp in Romania and being served his bread for breakfast by the President of that country.

But… is that good enough? Does a brush with a VIP count as gaining a true friend?

Who is your very best friend? How great or important is that friend? Does she (or he) have a relationship with a very important, influential person to whom she could appeal on your behalf? (On second thought, maybe we should not use our friends like that.)

I’ve got some great news for you though! I have a fantastic and super-perfect Friend who invites me to use His name to get special attention, and He’s willing to be your Friend too.

Oh, you’ve guessed who, have you?

Well, let’s just look at this tremendous Friend and the relationship we can have with Him.

Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He was willing to be born as a baby, to prove that He has gone through everything we did - from our birth. He told His friends that if they knew Him, they also knew God, because they are just perfectly alike. If you want to know what God is really like, study Jesus!

He said that a sign of a true friend is someone willing to die for another, and He sure did that! He died for everyone willing to believe and receive that death as being in our own place. That death and resurrection - if we receive it - is our ticket into Heaven - for eternity! Jesus showed that He loves us to the nth degree. He did more than any of our other friends could do for us.

Not only that, but Jesus went back up to Heaven to sit beside the Father (God), and to pray for us. Say-but, those prayers are effective! They always get answered!

Sometimes our friends will say that they’ll pray for us, but not all of them carry through on that. Jesus said, “I’m praying for you,” and He means it! (Just wiggle down into that thought and soak in it for a while).

Wait, there’s more! He also promised to prepare some rooms for us in Heaven. (Some translations say ‘mansions’). Now just think, it took Him a week to make the universe, the earth and sun and stars, and to separate the land from the water, and to make animals, plants and people. And that’s all glorious and beautiful to behold. So if He is taking all this time to make rooms for us, - wow! Hallelujah! Glory be! - and how magnificent shall those rooms be? (Just camp your mind on that thought for a few minutes!)

When Jesus sent His disciples out, two by two, to deliver the kingdom message to the Jews, and to heal the sick and cast out devils, they came back absolutely flabbergasted at all they had accomplished. But then Jesus told them to think nothing of that - rather be glad that your name is written in Heaven’s Book of Life.

Isn’t that something tremendous to brag about in your Facebook account? Your name is in the Book of Life - meaning you will live forever! And… (trumpets, please), your BEST Friend sits at the right hand of God, and prays for you - continuously!

No body, but nobody can top us on that!

By the way, Jesus has time to talk with us all the time - even if our other friends are too busy, or don’t answer our emails.

During the 23+ years that I lived in Hague, at my parents’ house, we often had people come to the door to ask for donations, or to sell something. (The town had a reputation for good prospecting).

I’m basically a kind, compassionate and generous person, but this issue of having to decide on a moment’s notice whether to donate at the door, or how to know which ones to give to and which ones to turn away - well, it was hard on me. For one thing, I had so little money myself. If I did have a dollar or two to spare, I didn’t want to give it away foolishly at the door.

The school kids often came to sell chocolates, or to ask for donations for UNICEF. (In the latter case I asked them to explain to their teacher that I did not donate because UNICEF supported abortion in other countries).

When the young people would come around dragging garbage bags and asking for empty pop bottles or cans, I could honestly say that we didn’t drink such stuff in this home. (However, I didn’t mention that Dad has his own stash of collected bottles and cans in the back shed, and when he had a good load, he’d ask me to take help him take them in to turn in for cash. It’s a plan of our provincial government to keep them out of the landfills). However, when they asked for support to go on a missions trip… that would tug at my heart strings.

Sometimes they would be strangers with wonderful-sounding charities that would do so much good for orphans, and the blind, etc., but if I had never heard of them before, I wondered…if they might be for real or not.

Sometimes it would be friendly woman from the community collecting for one cancer research fund or another.

I was frustrated by this donating at the door business. I wanted to be a good giver, but I didn’t like to be jerked around, or to fall into impulse giving. I prayed about it a number of times, and gradually came up with a plan.

My church tithe would always be a foregone decision, but I would try to set aside another tithe in a special wallet, and I would pray and wait for guidance to know when to give out of that. If it was empty, I could say “no” with a clear conscience.

There are always plenty of opportunities to give, so I would gather information, study it and pray about it until I could settle on a confirmed list of missions and charities that I would give to regularly or whenever prompted. At the same time I would pray about each ‘gift’ and keep my spirit tuned to discern well when I should donate. I would count on God to show me.

With that plan settled on, when the doorbell rang, I would dash down the ramp in the garage to the outer door, and cheerfully say, “Sorry, I don’t buy or donate at the door.” Most often they turned away immediately, so I didn’t even have to explain about my prayer plan.

One day though, a salesman with a heavy case, asked, “Why?”

I answered frankly, “Because I don’t have time to pray about it and discern the Lord’s will.”

His quick repartee was, “Okay. Let’s pray.”

That flustered me a bit, but I told him it didn’t work like a magic button.

In my present circumstances I just don’t see that many people at the door, and generally not ones asking for donations at the door. (Maybe that was unique to Hague).

Now that I have some incomes and and am contributing my time to various missions, I think about planning my giving even more. In fact, I’m doing a study in the Bible on giving and working on a good grid of discernment to help me find the worthy missions and projects and people to support.

My missions wallet swells sometimes and there is a very unique joy and delight in feeding orphans in one country, buying school supplies for poor kids in another, and supporting missionaries who need their daily groceries. When it goes flat I am at peace; it will fill up again.

But no rash, unconsidered donating at the door for me.

Our childhood friendships often set a tone for the rest of our lives. In thinking about feeling friendless, I recalled some instances when I felt that way.

My earliest years were spent in the small prairie village of Chortitz, (where Mom was born when her parents still had a small straw thatched house). Pretty well everyone in the village was related to me in one way or another. The farm next to ours on the west belonged to my grandparents, and the one after that to our cousins. The parents were both my Mom’s cousins and their children, the older twin boys and the girl, Johanna, just a year older than me, were my second cousins.

I thought highly of these relatives, and was always honoured when Johanna would ask me to come over to play under their big spreading tree in the front yard, or even inside where she had a room of her own. Mom would not let me go unless invited, but I felt rather proud of the times I got to spend with this cousin.

On the east side of us where a great uncle and aunt on the farm my Mom’s grandparents used to own. Further down a hill and in the coulee, on the other side of the road was another great aunt and uncle, and if you followed the road to the intersection and turned south a ways, there was yet another great uncle and aunt’s farm. In the woods on that farm was a cabin. When their son and daughter-in-law with their children came home on furlough from a missions term up north, they would live in that cabin for a while. They had a daughter named Lois, who was near my age. She and Johanna were both second cousins of mine, but first cousins to each other.

I made a very upsetting discovery though. When the three of us played together, the other two whispered and giggled a lot and started pulling tricks on me. Mostly to leave me out or to give me a very negative role in our games. I don’t recall the exact details of one crucial afternoon, but I remember that we were playing some kind of post office under the big tree, and that the cousins would hide and I had to find them to continue our play time.

Finally I felt so hurt and wounded that I just turned down the gravel driveway and walked past my grandparents’ home (my most favourite place in the village) and went home to cry. I thought I’d never get to play with either of them again. I felt totally friendless.

So I was rather surprised to find that whenever I was with either cousin alone, we got along fine. But if all three of us were together, I was unwanted and snubbed. Later, when we moved to town, I found Lois was often at her other grandmother’s place next door to us and she liked to come play “house” in our attic. We had wonderful play times together.

This may seem a negative memory, but lately I’ve come to realize that we tend to snub our friends when we want to impress another friend that we grade of higher value. I admit to my shame that I’ve done this myself. And yet - strangely enough, I believe those early experiences have taught me to look out for the potential friend on the sidelines, and to try to draw them in.

During my years as a Pioneer Girls and an AWANA leader, I always worked hard at making the misfits feel included and loved. Somehow I’ve never quite lost the feel of being friendless. I remembered enough to empathize well.

However, it is not my main feeling. I have learned to know the very BEST Friend, who never snubs us for someone else, and who always has time to wrap His arms around us and hear all our hurts and pain. If we ask His advice, He teaches us to be a better friend to others, and He helps us forgive and let go of painful memories.

We’ve had far too much rain for most folks around here, (I wouldn’t mind some sunny days already either), but my garden has thrived with all that moisture! I took a walk around in the rain yesterday after supper with my camera. Would you like to come along?

See the garden photo story for this month Right Here

A quick review of the assignment last week in preparation for setting up a blog. You were to mull over or consider these questions;
1. What would you most enjoy writing about?
2. Picture your target reader. Who would you be writing to?
3. Go do a Google search to see if anyone else is doing that already. Is your angle better? Are they finding a following? Then you likely would too!
4. Prepare your personal testimony for the “About me” page.

You have those answers all written down or at the tip of your tongue? All right. Then let me guide you into starting your first blog.

First we need to consider some practical aspects.

If you consider yourself computer illiterate and you can’t handle anything more complicated than logging in to your email account at yahoo or gmail and posting an email, then we’ll stick to the very simplest blog of all.

If you are more computer savvy and would like something with more class, something you can personalize, and where you can control what ads appear there, or even make some money with your blog then I have another suggestion for you.

The Simplest Blog.

Go to one of the many web-based free blog sites and sign up for an account. Choose your username carefully as it is likely to be part of your blog’s address on the web. Would you do good evangelism if your blog address ends up as, //poopydiaper.blogspot.com? Maybe this would work better, //meaning-of-life.wordpress.com?

Where are those free blog sites?
wordpress.com
blogger.com
zooloo.com
livejournal.com
There are many more, if you want to do a search for them.

Plus, some that charge;
Typepad.com (free trial period then < $5/month)
squarespace.com 14 day free trial - (5 price plans!)

This site has done a review of the top 10 and compares them;
blog-services-review.toptenreviews.com/

Now, there is a certain stigma that comes with a blog that is a sub-domain of another site, such as yourname.blogger.com (the part before the first dot is a sub-domain). There is also the matter that on many of those blogs, the true site owner will put up advertising banners and make money on the clicks from YOUR visitors to the blog. You usually cannot delete a blog you start there. The site owner would rather leave it up so they can continue to profit from those ads.

The second option, should you want to avoid those negatives, is to get a domain (you can do register one at GoDaddy.com for less than $10/yr), and some low priced hosting service. Then you download and install the free WordPress software from WordPress.org, following the instructions. You can hunt through 100s of free templates and personalize your blog so that it is distinctively your own. It is possible to switch between templates or “looks” with just a click or two selecting the one you want today.

You will learn some things as you go, but I would strongly advise installing the Akismet plugin to handle the spam of people hoping to place comments on your blog that will draw traffic to their “unwise” sites.

With either type of blog, you then must bookmark your login page, and make a regular habit of going there to post your thought-provoking blog entries. in WordPress (and some others) you can with a click activate auto-notification to some blog directories and feeds that you have a new post entered, and this will start to draw visitors to your blog.

From there on it is up to you to write good content that will win over friends and present the good evangel to those open to it.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt to search and visit other blogs to see what they are saying, and perhaps making a good comment so that that blogger will come to see your blog. All with discretion and good manners, mind you, remembering the golden rule: treat others as you would like to be treated.

P.S. I offer a hosting service at an excellent price, and could install WordPress for you for a very reasonable fee, if you don’t mind waiting until I can fit you in.