It was summertime so Bettie’s family was on vacation. First they went to the library, and Bettie got to get her favorite book, Caddie Woodlawn, by Caroline Ryrie Brink. Then her grandparents met them at the pond with a picnic.

“We wanted to have a barbecue, but it didn’t’ turn out,” said Bettie’s grandpa wiping the perspiration from his forehead. “At least we have this watermelon and lemonade to cool off with. The sunshine is so hot!”

“How about we go swimming?” suggested Bettie’s brother Jack. “I’d also like to try sailing the boat that I finished building last week.”

“That’s a great idea!” exclaimed Bettie. She finished her food, and took off her shoes, and soon she was running barefoot towards the pond. She jumped in with a huge splash, which scared away a family of frogs and a cloud of mosquitoes.

“Oh no! I forgot to take off my sunglasses and when I dived in, I lost them!” cried Bettie. “I’ll dive in and find them for you,” said Jack whipping out a pair of goggles from his back pocket.

“Where did those come from?” asked Bettie in a tone of bewilderment. But Jack was already in the pond.

A few moments later, Jack came up gasping for breath with his arms full. He had Bettie’s sunglasses, a baseball, a gardening tool, and a hat that said “Camping at Camp Snookelwickles” on the front of it!

“It’s a regular field of treasures down there!” exclaimed Jack as he dumped his treasures at the edge of the pond and dived in again.

Bettie grabbed her sunglasses and put them on the table so she wouldn’t lose them again. When she got back to the pond, she saw a little girl her age swimming! They immediately became friends and Bettie told her all about the day --- losing her sunglasses and all! The other girl told Bettie all about her day --- they had gone sightseeing in Paris, caught a plane to Florida and there they were!

“It was barely even daylight when we got on the plane, but now the sun is going down!” said the other girl.

“You’re right! I hadn’t noticed. I’d better get going. I see my family packing up,” said Bettie, climbing out of the pond.

“Bye! Oh wait! I never found out your name! I’m Olivia Brown,” Olivia said.

“Olivia! What a pretty name! My name is Bettie. It was a pleasure meeting you!” called Bettie from over her shoulder. She turned around one last time and waved.

“Wow! There is so much humidity in the air and I can see a thunderstorm coming toward us! What a change from the nice weather we had earlier,” said Bettie’s dad. “Are we all ready to go? Wait, where is Jack?”

“Here I am Dad,” said Jack coming up from behind them with his arms full of things he found at the bottom of the pond.

“Well then, lets go!” said Bettie’s dad.

They all waved good bye to their grandparents and got into the van.

That night when Bettie went into Jack’s bedroom to say goodnight she said, “Thanks for getting my sunglasses Jack. Where did you get those sunglasses anyway?” wondered Bettie, but Jack was already asleep. She lay down on her bed and suddenly a thought popped into her mind: tomorrow was Independence Day! She fell asleep wondering what they would do then.

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“I’m going to get you!” yelled Tom as he chased his best friend Mark.

“Oh no you won’t!” Mark yelled back. He wasn’t looking where he was going because he was running to fast.

“Watch out for the mud!” exclaimed Tom’s sister Maryanne.  But it was too late. Mark ran right into the slippery, slimy mud and fell flat on his back! Mark’s twin sister Annie came running out of the house right then and she started howling with laughter. Then Maryanne and Tom joined in. Mark didn’t think it was very funny and responded but throwing a mud-ball and yelling “Its not funny!

Mark ran down to the mud puddle to make a mud-ball to throw at Tom but in his hurry he fell down too! Pretty soon the girls ran down too and they started a mud fight. Pretty soon they got tired of throwing mud-balls and they decided that they wanted to go inside. All four of them walked toward the house trying to decide who looked worse. Maryanne opened the house door and started to walk in but her mom stopped her.

“Wait a minute! You aren’t going to come in my house looking like that! Go try the neighbor’s house. How did you get so muddy?”

“Mark was running away from…”

“Tom was chasing me and…”
            “Mark threw a mud-ball at us and I went to get some…”

“I came out of the house and Mark had just…” All the kids started talking at once.

“One at a time, one at a time!. All I can understand is Mark this, and Mark that and Tom was chasing someone and there were mud-balls involved with it,” laughed Tom’s mother. “You go wash off with the hose and come back when you look a little cleaner,” and she shooed them off the porch.

The kids raced each other to the hose and had lots of fun spraying each other. Then they went and sat in the sun to dry off a little before they went inside.

This time when they went to the door they were allowed to come inside and Tom’s mother had some cookies fresh out of the oven for them to eat.

One day, my mom took me the store to buy a pencil. I looked at the rack of pencils for a while and finally decided I wanted the one that had pianos on it.  When we got home, I sharpened it right away. I still had to do math, so I got my math book and started writing. I got to a math problem (one that I didn’t like) and got it wrong. I was very mad, because it had taken me a long time to solve it. Then I thought of a good thing about it: I would get to use the eraser on the pencil. I always liked using an eraser for the first time, because it was so clean and new.

I turned the pencil over, and was about to erase, when I heard a little voice, so small that I could barely hear it, say, “Stop!” I looked around to see where the voice came from. I didn’t see anything, so I started to erase again. “Stop! Don’t erase!” This time it was a little louder and it scared me. I thought that it sounded like it was coming from my eraser, so I looked all over my eraser, and saw a little smiley face. It smiled at me, and suddenly an arm stuck out of the pencil and motioned for me to come closer! I was so surprised that I fell over and said, “WOW,” very loudly. The hand raised to the lips on the smiley face and motioned “sh.” I leaned closer, and it whispered, “Keep me a secret, and later, I will tell you about myself.” I quickly acted as though nothing had happened and kept doing my math. About a minute later, I remembered the problem that I had gotten wrong. I looked at the eraser, and it smiled at me.

I whispered, “How will I erase if I can’t use this eraser?” “You can use this one,” and the hand popped out of the pencil holding a regular eraser. I took it, whispered,
“Thanks,” and went on doing my math. I was very excited, and I had a lot of questions to ask the eraser.

*  *  *

“Time to go to bed,” my mother called. I usually did not want to bed, but tonight I was very excited because of the eraser. I tried not to act too excited, because then my mom would ask why I was in such a hurry to go to bed. Soon, all the goodnight hugs and kisses were over, (I usually would drag out hugs and kisses) and I shut the door. (I would always shut the door at night. Just so you don’t think that I did that because I was going to talk to my eraser!) I had smuggled the pencil into my bedroom when I put my pajamas on. I took the pencil out from under my pillow.

“Are you a person?” I asked the eraser. I felt so silly talking to a pencil!

“I do not know what I am. I guess the machines made me forget,” came the reply. “All I know is that I would like to get out of here. I suppose you wouldn’t like to tear apart your eraser though. I just might be here a while.”

“You are right that I would not want to rip my eraser, because what if my mother asked what happened to my eraser? What would I tell here? You said that you went through machines. What was it like? Do you know what you look like? I guess I could rip my eraser. I really want to get you out.” I kept talking and asking questions, giving the eraser no time to answer any of my questions.

“Please do rip your eraser!” the voice sounded very excited! “Didn’t I already tell you that I didn’t know what I looked like? Maybe I didn’t. I will tell you about the machines once I get out of here.” I had to decide if I was going to rip my eraser, which meant that I would have to tell my mother, or leave whatever was in my eraser in there. I really wanted to see what the thing looked like! I thought for a moment, and then I said, “I will rip the eraser, but how am I supposed to do it without hurting you?”

“I will shrink so I am so tiny that you won’t even be able to see me!” I had no idea how this strange, awesome, amazing thing was going to do it, but I said, “Okay.” I didn’t want eraser bits all over my bed, so I got out of bed and went over to the trash can to rip. Soon the job was done, and I saw a tiny figure that looked like a human being.

“You look like a human, but you can’t be one, because humans cannot shrink.”

“Oh well, I do not care how I look. Can I lie down on your pillow by you? If you are wondering, I can talk just as loud as you, and I can scream so loud, that once, I was about to be smashed so I screamed as loud as I could and the person the was going to smash me, became deaf. Never mind that. Let me tell you about the machines. They were so loud that I thought that my ears would blow up! No, loud couldn’t describe it. These machines were loud, roaring, deafening, earth shaking, window rattling, rapid, speedy, quick, dashing, rushing, and tearing along! Well, I didn’t enter this pencil till it was in the store, but I was at the pencil factory watching everything that happened. Here is how pencils are made. 
  First there cedar wood is cut into square blocks called pencil blocks. Then a machine cuts the blocks into slices called pencil slats. Then the pencil slats are then waxed and stained.”
 “Wow! It must have taken a while!” I said.
 “Well, the machines were very fast. They had to be because thousands of pencils are made each day! Did you know that more than 2 billion pencils are used in the United States every year! So they have to make a lot! On with the story. After they wax and stain the wood, a machine cuts groves in the slats. Writing cores, which are really lead are put in the grooves. Then they take another grooved slat and glue it onto the one with lead, and so it looks like a sandwich. Then another machine cuts the sandwiches into a whole bunch of pencil shapes and they are sanded smooth. Then each pencil is painted. As you can tell, this takes a lot of machines and a lot of blades! Then after they paint the pencil, the metal ring up by the eraser is put on, and then the eraser got put into place.” 

 “Wow! So where did you come along?” I asked.
 

“I came along when the were going to ship off the pencils. I decided to take a ride, so I jumped into that one that you bought, and then a man picked up a whole handful of pencils and wrapped us in plastic. It got super hot in there! Just when I thought I was going to die, someone else unwrapped us. But we aren’t to that part of the story. Along with a bunch of wrapped pencils we were thrown into boxes. It was so dark that I couldn’t see my own hand! After a very long ride, the box was lifted out of the truck, and I could see some light come in through the cracks of the box! Well, then we were all unwrapped and I could finally breathe! We were thrown into a plastic bin and I sat there waiting! Then you came along and bought me! That is all there is to tell!”
 

“What a story! I think that we will have lots of fun together!” I said.

 “Me too,” said the eraser.

Well, I hope that you enjoyed it!

Amy

Allthough I just posted this a few days ago, I moved it up to the top. If you would like to see part 2 and 3, scroll down.

I just finsished this story on Sunday. I will post the rest soon. Probably tomorrow.

The Answered Prayer Part 1

“Hi Daisy. Can you come to Sunday School with me tomorrow?” asked Sadie. Daisy looked at her torn and faded dress. It was the only one she had.

“I would like to Sadie, but I couldn’t go in this dress! And how could take Juliana with me? She is always crying except for when she is a sleep! That is why you don’t hear her.” Ever since Daisy’s mother and father had died, she had taken care of her baby sister Juliana. She tried so hard to get her not to cry so much, but it never worked. They both needed a mother.

“It won’t matter about your dress. I told teacher about you, and she said that she didn’t care how dirty your dress was. And there is a room for the babies so you could put Juliana in there!”

“Well, I guess I could. Can you come pick me up in the morning?” asked Daisy.

“I sure will! Here are two rolls from lunch I saved for you two,” said Sadie and hurried off.

Daisy watched her friend walk down the street. How she wished that she had a family and a nice dress like that. Then went back into the shed that they called home. She had found it a month before her parents died, and it had been her playhouse, but now it was her house. She changed into her nightgown, and washed the dress as well as she could. Then she patched the holes. It looked a little better. She dug in her box of fabric scraps, and found a little lace! This will look pretty on my pocket! She thought and quickly sewed it on, humming as she worked.

“Wahhhh, Wahhh.” Oh no! Juliana woke up. That means more crying. She went over to the baby’s bed, which was really a cardboard box with an old pillow for padding.

Daisy picked up Juliana and gave her part of one of the rolls to eat. Juliana didn’t eat it, she played with it, and stopped crying. She changed Juliana into her nightgown, and washed it too. She didn’t put Juliana back into it. She would save it till tomorrow. As she munched on a roll, she noticed that Juliana had started to eat the roll. Juliana was Daisy’s only comfort. She picked her up, and carried her out side. She sat there for a few minutes and then remembered that she was dirty! She went back inside, and washed herself, and then the baby.

“There! Now we look better don’t we Juliana,” said Daisy. Juliana only gurgled and then yawned.

“I guess we might as well go to bed because it is late, and there is nothing else to do!” said Daisy. She picked up Juliana, and put her back in the box. Then she curled up beside it, but she didn’t fall a sleep. She lay there thinking. If only I could earn some money. Then I could get some more food, and  maybe another dress! Then she thought about reading and books. I can read. It isn’t fair that I don’t even have one book to read! She lie there for a few more minutes, and then fell fast a sleep.

I hope you enjoyed, and please comment to tell me!!

Amy

Sorry that this is so long! The next part is quite short. I was having trouble splitting it up!

When Daisy woke up, she peeked out the shed door. The sun was up. She looked at her watch she had gotten for sweeping someone’s path. It said 7:13. Daisy got out of bed and knelt on the floor.
“Dear Jesus, please give us a family, Amen.”
She got up and changed into her dress. Then she looked around the shed for some food. She found a bag of stale pretzels that she had found unopened outside the shed. She ate a few. Most people would think that this is a strange breakfast, but I am used to it! She heard Juliana moving around, and then saw a little hand stretch out of the box. Daisy went over and got Juliana out and changed her. She had found a little lace to put on Juliana’s dress too, so they both looked the best they had looked in a long time.
Juliana started to cry because she was hungry. Daisy put on her shoes, picked up Juliana and walked to the closest house. Every morning they would give her some fresh milk. That was one of the things she looked forward to everyday.
“Thank you! I love the milk you give us, and it makes Juliana stop crying, so I like it even better!” said Daisy taking the milk.
“I am glad that it makes Juliana stop crying! Here is some bread that I had left over from breakfast.”
“Thank you again,” said Daisy, and went back to the shed. They both ate and drank the breakfast, and then went out side to watch for Sadie. It didn’t take long for her to get there, and they set off together.
“Do you want me to carry Juliana for you?” volunteered Sadie. She knew that Juliana was heavy and Daisy wasn’t used to walking very far.
“No, I can carry her. I like to keep her safe in my arms because she is one of the only things I own,” replied Daisy and they walked on. After a few minutes Daisy asked, “Do you think that the teacher will give me a book? She gave you one.”
“I don’t know. She might, but she might not. See that building that has the tall steeple? That is the church.” The girls walked a little faster and then, they were finally there. When they got inside, Daisy stopped and put Juliana down so she could rest. Sadie waited for her.
“Hi Sadie. Is this Daisy?” asked a pretty lady.
“Oh hi Mrs. Garret. Yes, this is Daisy, and that is her little sister Juliana.”
“Hello,” said Daisy timidly. There were so many people!
“I am going to be your Sunday school teacher.  Follow me and we will leave Juliana at the nursery,” said the pretty lady. Daisy didn’t want to leave Juliana with a stranger so she said, “Can’t she come with me? I don’t want to lose her.”
“Don’t worry, she will be waiting for you right in this room,” said Mrs. Garret pointing to a room.
“Nursery!” Daisy proudly read. “Ages 0-3.” She peeked inside and saw a lot of babies. There was also a nice plump lady who came and took Juliana. “Don’t worry about her. She will be in good care.” Mrs. Garret led the way to another room that had a lot of little girls her size. Daisy started to panic when she saw that Sadie wasn’t with them, and she wasn’t with the little girls either!
“Hello girls. This is Daisy. She is Sadie’s guest,” said Mrs. Garret. All the girls turned and went back to talking with their friends except one. She smiled and said, “ Hi! Come here and sit by me. Sadie can sit on the other side of you. My name is Kristy.”
“Hi Kristy. I like your dress. Do you get a book when you go to Sunday school?”
“A book? Yes. You will get a book from Mrs. Garret after we are done. She gives everyone one.” Just then Sadie walked in, and they started.
Daisy sat perfectly still at the start as they sang songs, and said bible verses. She knew a few of them, so she said them too but in a quiet voice that only Sadie and Kristy could hear. After that, Mrs. Garret taught a lesson. Daisy said spellbound as the teacher told them about a man that walked on the water, and then started to sink, but then Jesus saved him. Mrs. Garret told them how Jesus could save them, and that was when Daisy listened the most. Then they took a small break. Daisy ran as fast as she could to the nursery. She had to see if Juliana was all right. When she knocked on the door, the plump lady answered. She was holding Juliana who was smiling and laughing! Daisy was glad that she had had fun. Juliana held out her arms towards Daisy and the plump lady let her take her but only for a second. Then it was time to go back to class. On her way there, Daisy decided she like this place. Everyone was smiling, and happy, and they liked children! Best of all, Juliana was happy.
“Hurry up Daisy! We are about to start!” said Kristy popping her head out of the classroom. Daisy watched Mrs. Garret as she got out a few flannel things and then pulled a black flannel piece from her box. She set it all on a big board.
“Lets see. Julia, you did it last time, so it is Kristy’s turn to help me!” said Mrs. Garret. Daisy smiled at her friend as she walked to the front of the classroom. Kristy got a fun job. She would put up the flannels when it was time. Daisy loved the flannel people and animals. This lesson was about a guy named Noah who was told by God to build an ark. It was all over to soon, and Sadie told Daisy that they had to go home.
“Thank you Mrs. Garret. I want to come next week too!” said Daisy as she got up to leave.
“Wait! I forgot to give you your book!” She took a book that said “Bible ABC’s” on the front cover, and handed it to Daisy, who proudly took it and promised that she would take good care of it.

Daisy did come the next week, and the week after that! Everyone was very excited when she asked Jesus to come into her heart and be her savior. The girls in her class paid more attention to her and didn’t just call her the “poor shed girl”.

Amy

Then, a few days later, the short plump lady, who worked in the nursery, came and visited the shed!
“Hi Daisy. Where is Juliana?” asked the lady who was Mrs. Brown.
“She is napping. Why did you come?” asked Daisy who was very glad to see someone from church.
“Well, I wanted to tell you that I have decided to adopt you. You will come and live with me. What do you think of it?” asked Mrs. Brown. Daisy ran over to Mrs. Brown and gave her a huge hug!
“Yes! Yes! Yes!!! Juliana would have a mother, and she would get plenty of food! I would love that. I love you!” Daisy started hopping around.
“What about yourself? Don’t you want anything for yourself? You mentioned a lot for Juliana but nothing for you!”
“Well in Sunday school class, Mrs. Garret told us that we are supposed to think of others and that we shouldn’t be selfish. I would like a lot of stuff, but Juliana needs it more.”
“Well, I don’t like to say this, but since it is too late to move you, and I don’t have the car with me, you will have to stay here one more night. Here is some food for your breakfast,” said Mrs. Brown. She was so glad that Daisy liked the plan, and now her house wouldn’t be so quiet!
After the girls had lived with the Browns for a while, Daisy came down the stairs from her bedroom and saw Mrs. Brown playing with Juliana. Thank you Jesus for answering my prayer and giving us a family. Daisy thought. She stood there for a few more seconds and then went to play with her sister.

 Amy