Excellence In Christ
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• Nov. 22, 2009 - Standing In The Gap For Life: Time For Christians To Lead The Way On Adoption
Posted By Lisa (Lively)Metzger in Adoption• Nov. 22, 2009 - Cute Photo!
• Nov. 18, 2009 - Homeschoolers and Health Care
Posted By Gena Suarez, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
For all my homeschooling friends who think ObamaCare will solve their financial and health insurance woes, think again. It may give you temporary relief for your financial headache, but it may also invite government nannies into your home to improve your child's well-being and health.
HR 3200 that passed the House of Representatives, currently has a provision for funding states that implement a "voluntary" home visitation program for parents with young children or who are expecting. (See Sec. 1904 sec. 440) The intended purpose is to " improve the well-being, health, and development of children by enabling the establishment and expansion of high quality programs providing voluntary home visitation for families with young children and families expecting children." In America we used to believe that was the role of the parent, but now it's the role of our benevolent and compassionate Uncle Sam. A gaze over the Atlantic will show us exactly where we're headed, "Health and safety inspectors are to be given unprecedented access to family homes to ensure that parents are protecting their children from household accidents.
New guidance drawn up at the request of the Department of Health urges councils and other public sector bodies to “collect data” on properties where children are thought to be at “greatest risk of unintentional injury”.
Council staff will then be tasked with overseeing the installation of safety devices in homes, including smoke alarms, stair gates, hot water temperature restrictors, oven guards and window and door locks.
The draft guidance by a committee at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has been criticised as intrusive and further evidence of the “creeping nanny state”.
Where are the safety devices for the "creeping nanny" who keeps sticking her nose into our personal lives?
Why homeschoolers support this bill or President Obama is beyond my understanding.
-Spunky
Cross-posted, with permission, from SpunkyHomeSchool |
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• Nov. 16, 2009 - State Mandated Parental Interference
Posted By Gena Suarez, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
Mike Huckabee, Chuck Norris, and Michael Farris talk about how the new health care bill that will allow the government to enter our homes and tell us how to parent our own children.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSqmDC28jPk
You can read Chuck Norris' article about the bill on World Net Daily.
Huckabee, Norris, and Farris also discuss how international law may be used to judge a case on juvenile heinous crimes instead of American law. This is important for homeschoolers to know because because the international law that may be used is from Europe and Europe has made the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. So Europe is telling us how we have to judge our juvenile criminals and that can lead to telling us how we have to raise our children as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrtiEAC1wlk&NR=1
Hat tip to Lisa Barthuly
Tia Linschied
Senior Editor of HSB |
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• Saturday, November 14, 2009 - Understanding God's Grace
Last week as I was preparing my Sunday School lesson I got to thinking about Noah. The Bible says, "But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord," Genesis 6:8. It was a wonderful thing for Noah and his family that they did. No doubt about that. God's grace brought them through the destruction of the entire world and all its inhabitants, and through a brand new beginning in a world that was now hardly recognizable. I wonder about the emotional impact that great flood had on Noah, and more especially, on the womenfolk who were aboard the ark. God made everything new. The Bible says Noah found grace.
But the grace that brought the Noah family through that terrible apocalypse also required Noah to endure possibly a hundred years of ark building while the world mocked on. As a "preacher of righteousness" (2 Peter 2:5) he warned the world of God's coming judgment and had not one convert (except maybe his sons' wives). There was much work to do in gathering food for his family and all God's animals. He and his family endured an entire year of cabin fever in a closed-up boat, eating the same simple meals every day and cleaning up after a whole population of smelly beasts. When they got off the ark, they must have felt like they had traveled to a different planet. How lonely they must have been those first few years!
In my way of thinking, supposing I were Noah, finding grace in God's sight would have meant something different. God would have come to me and said, "Noah, you have found grace in my sight. I am going to completely destroy the world and everyone in it, but I will save you and your family. I am going to make an ark big enough for your family and all the animals I choose. Your neighbors will be respectful of your faith, and even though none of them will believe you, they won't bother you, either. In fact, I will cause them to help you gather food for your journey. The ark will have lots of windows, with strong awnings, so you can get some fresh air in there, and there will be a covered deck so you can go outside and get some sun after the first forty days. When you come off the ark, I will have made you and your sons beautiful homes and fields all ready to harvest. My grace will make things easier for you."
That's not what happened, though. Finding grace with God didn't mean an easier life, in fact, it meant a lot more trouble and difficulty and things Noah would otherwise never have experienced.
So here is what I have been thinking about. The troubles and difficulties I am seeing now -- are they actually part of God's grace in my life? I think they must be! Knowing that these things are part of the process of his grace should make my heart more grateful, don't you think? I know this. Every Christian knows this. But I feel like this is sort of a new realization, like this "bad" stuff really is God's plan for me, and not just obstacles for me to overcome in order to follow his plan. This IS the plan! I can trust him with this! Up until now, I think my understanding of God's grace has been all wrong. I''ll be chewing on this for a while.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8,9
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• Nov. 14, 2009 - Easy Southern Sweet Potato Casserole - THE BEST!
Posted By Lisa (Lively)Metzger in Recipes
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Easy Southern Sweet Potato Casserole
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup butter, softened
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 3 cups cooked mashed sweet potatoes .
Topping
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/3 cup flour
- 2 tablespoons butter, softened
- 1/2 cup chopped pecans
PREPARATION:
Beat eggs, granulated sugar, and 3/4 cup butter. Add milk and vanilla. Combine with the mashed sweet potatoes; spoon into a greased 2-quart casserole. Combine brown sugar, flour, 2 tablespoons softened butter, and pecans, mixing until crumbly; sprinkle over sweet potatoes. Bake at 350° for 45 minutes.
Serves 6.
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• Friday, November 13, 2009 - Fire Ants
Some fire ants snacked on Emily's arm the other day. We have lots of them around here, and while they don't go looking for you to hunt you down and eat you, they do feel welcome to sting if you cross their path or disturb their home.
I don't know if the ants sting because they feel threatened, or if they are just mean. The get ahold of their victims with their jaws mandibles, then pivot around the bite location to sting repeatedly. It is mildly painful to have one sting, but to have several, or, God forbid, hundreds of them all at once is awful!
These fire ants were climbing up a post, and Emily leaned on it. In less than seconds she had ants moving quickly up her arm. Emily hollered to her chivalrous, manly friend, Brandon, to help her get the ants off. By the time they had cleared them, she had at least a couple dozen stings.
Her mosquito bites swell to the size of a nickel or bigger. (No, we don't have mosquitoes here, not many. These were Missouri mosquitoes. Foreigners.) Looks to me like she is mildly allergic. Fire ant stings normally look like this. But look at these things. This was several hours later. (You'll have to use your imagination. My photography skills are right up there with my helicopter mechanic skills.) The next morning even her face was swollen.
What I want to know is, might this be a good indication that she is also allergic to bee stings?? Should I be carrying Benadryl everywhere we go?
The sting of death is sin;
1 Cor. 15:56
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• Nov. 13, 2009 - Artifically Induced Dyslexia?
Posted By Gena Suarez, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
Recently I was introduced to an article that piqued my interest. I read the article carefully to make sure I was understanding it, and to make sure I wasn't skipping any clues that the author might be a crack-pot. Plenty of people think I'm one, so I suppose I should be able to recognize one when I see it.
The article is called, "Can Dyslexia Be Artificially Induced in School? Yes, Says Researcher Edward Miller" and it's written by Samuel L. Blumenfeld, a name many homeschoolers should recognize because he's the author of Alpha Phonics.
Now, I admit that I know next to nothing about dyslexia. So I thought I'd do a little research on what dyslexia is. Interestingly, it isn't just about seeing and writing letters backwards or upside down, that is only one symptom, and someone with dyslexia may not have that symptom at all. Basically, it's anyone who struggles with reading. Not necessarily a dislike of reading, but someone who truly struggles with decoding and comprehension. That is not a medical description, but the sum of what I read from several dyslexia help websites. All of them agreed, however, that dyslexia is always either inherited or neurological in nature.
Mr. Blumenfeld and Mr. Miller disagree with the above theory. They believe that the cause of this artificially induced dyslexia is caused by the sight word reading method and they offer evidence that backs their theory. Read the article, it's very fascinating! (Note: There was one "bad" word in the article but not so bad that I didn't want to write this post and link you to the article. Just be aware that's it's there and I know that it's there.)
Now one of the things mentioned in the article are the Dr. Seuss books. Dr. Seuss himself apparently thought sight word reading was a lot of twaddle. Still, he wrote the books and made tons of money. Why this interested me is because two of my children went to bed one night with Green Eggs and Ham and the next day they could read nearly anything I put before them. Wallah! The mystery of decoding words was revealed! So if sight reading can cause dyslexia why could my daughters read anything and with a voracious appetite? The simple reason is that I had been teaching them phonics, not how to sight read. They didn't memorize the words in the book, they sounded them out.
My youngest daughter didn't learn to read until the end of her third grade year. She struggled with reading until that point. All of her symptoms pointed to dyslexia. After reading the linked to article, I began to think more about the change. If what the article says is true, then my youngest daughter should still be dyslexic, and yet three months after she started learning to read she was reading The Hobbit. It struck me that what I had been using to teach my daughter to read prior to the few months before her night with Green Eggs and Ham had been sight word books like Dick and Jane, and Rod and Staff Pathway readers. The books themselves don't teach using phonics, but I was still trying to use them to do just that and supplementing with phonics because I knew phonics was the best way to teach reading. My daughter was caught in that limbo state mentioned in the article.
Because my daughter struggled with reading, I kept reading her schoolwork to her knowing that when she was ready to read, she would. We never made a big deal out of it. Then in the middle of her third grade year I switched to just a phonics reading program. The night my daughter went to bed with Green Eggs and Ham she read the words by sound, not sight. She then took off with her reading, the method of reading set. Praise the Lord it was phonics and not sight reading! By fourth grade many of the students reading method is set, and for many of those it was set before then. I think my daughter wasn't set before that because we weren't forcing her to learn to read like they would have in the public school.
All I can say is that the article totally fit the pattern that my family experienced. I know that it was teaching reading by sight that caused my niece in public school no end of struggle and tears for many years. The public school system still believes that sight word reading is a valuable tool and it refuses to look at the evidence that shows the dangers of it. I won't say that sight reading is bad for all students, it is used to teach the deaf, but we are talking about a handful of students who need to learn to read this way. If the schools would quit pushing students to learn to read before they are even ready, and use phonics to teach reading in the mean time, they would have a much better success rate at making children literate.
Tia Linschied
Senior Editor of HSB
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• Thursday, November 12, 2009 - There Is Hope
Posted By diamondsintherough
 image from stock.xchng
When we first started homeschooling, I naïvely believed with all my heart that my children would LOVE school. They didn't mind learning (nevermind loving it), but they HATED writing. We could do any assignment orally. But when the children were told to do something ( anything) in writing, I witnessed, to my unbelieving eyes, the return of the temper tantrum. Happy voices turned ugly. Whining, crying, and wailing prevailed. Little bodies writhed on the floor or ran away.
Maybe their little muscles just weren't ready to write, I don't know. Whatever the cause, I thought, What am I going to do with this? We couldn't go on through elementary, junior high, and high school doing our assignments orally! Not with one child, but especially not with four!!!
I cajoled, I argued, I threatened. I finally figured out that God's way would be the best way to handle this rebellion, because after all, rebellion is what it is. (Proverbs 29:15).
One small compromise: I allowed them to tackle the keyboard from a very young age, making up words and stories and sending I-love-you emails to their parents and sisters. Yes, I wanted them to learn to get their thoughts from their brains to the end of a pencil. But maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the thoughts went from their brains to a keyboard. ??
Forward several years. My fifteen year old daughter is twelve days and 23,000-some words into a novel. She is a participant in 2009 NaNoWriMo (that's short for National Novel Writing Month). She has a journal and a story blog in addition to her regular blog. She writes for the HSB Backyard. Once in a while she contributes to my church ladies' newsletter. Who'd a thunk it? She still hates writing by hand, if it's assigned writing, but she has learned to write in spite of it.
Don't give up on your non-writer. There is hope. 
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• Nov. 12, 2009 - My Mission Field
Matthew 9:37-38, "Then said Jesus unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest."
Do you sometimes hanker to be doing some great work for God? You feel as though you are wasting your life in your home. You would love to serve the Lord in some harvest field. Yes, it is true, the harvest is great and the laborers are few. But why are they few? Because mothers have not understood God's purpose.
Are you looking for an easy path in life in life or do you have a heart to serve God as a missionary? Dear mother, you are already a missionary. God has chosen your specific mission field for you. It is your home and family. You are employed by God to train laborers for His harvest field. You don't raise children and then send them to Bible College to prepare for service. You train them for God's service from the time they are little. They should be ready to labor in the harvest field when they come forth from your home.
Is a missionary's work easy? No, it takes sacrifice. Is motherhood easy? No, but it will be worthwhile. It takes everything you've got--all your resources of time, energy and strength--but you will influence nations. It takes sacrifice--many mothering days are exhausting and overwhelming--but you will receive the fruit of your labors and an eternal reward. It will take committed prayer and intercession, but your prayers will be answered. Remember, you are not on vacation; you are on the mission field!
Maybe God has only given you one laborer to prepare for Him--that His is plan for you. Maybe he has given you six, or even twelve! Wow, would twelve be too many? Jesus trained twelve disciples who impacted the world. How would you like to train laborers who "turn the world upside down"? (Acts 17:6)
What kind of laborers does God want us to faithfully prepare for His service? The following is my vision for our children, grandchildren and future generations. I believe He wants us to prepare children who are...
Baby lovers
Blessing imparters
Bible believers
Bible obeyers
Committed laborers in God's harvest
Courageous overcomers
Demon destroyers
Diligent workers
Evil haters
Faithful servers
Fearless soldiers
Freedom fighters
Fruit bearers
God fearers
God lovers
God pleasers
God worshippers
Gospel preachers
Holy Spirit empowered witnesses
Home lovers
Israel supporters
Jesus fanatics
Justice keepers
Life choosers
Light shiners
Liberal threateners
Obedient listeners
Parent honorers
Responsible citizens
Sharp arrows
Tomorrow's leaders
Truth bearers
Truth keepers
Truth lovers
Truth preservers
Truth seekers
Truth speakers
Persecution endurers
Prayer warriors
Righteousness lovers
Uncompromising disciples
Valiant conquerors
Wisdom getters and
Zealous servants of the Living God!
Wow! Can you imagine anything more exciting and fulfilling that raising laborers such as these? You couldn't have a greater mission field or a greater vision.
Love from NANCY CAMPBELL
PRAYER:
"Thank you, Lord, for showing me my mission field. Help me to serve you faithfully and to raise prepared laborers for your great harvest field. Lord, I am open for you to give me all the laborers you have planned for me to train. Amen."
AFFIRMATION:
I am a full-time missionary, recruiting and training laborers for God's harvest field.
Many women like to save these devotions. They print them out and keep them in a folder to read over and over again. Some print them out and pin them on the fridge with a magnet to read through the week. If you are printing this devotion and need it to be smaller, highlight and change to a smaller font.
If you know others who would be blessed by these devotions, you are welcome to forward them or let them know they can subscribe by sending a blank email to subscribers-on@aboverubies.org |
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