Finally back on line

The guts of my computer are still hanging out of it, but it has a new hardrive, and my resident computer tech (son Nate) is gradually getting everything back to normal for me. The only glitch right now is that for some unknown reason he can't install Windows. He put Linux on instead, which he likes better anyway. I really wouldn't care, except that the Internet web watch monitoring system we have won't detect Linux!

All my men are leaving this morning to go help friends knock down a wall in their house. This family just bought property about a half hour from here, and the house needs some work before they can move in. They helped us get our house ready when we bought this place, so it's nice that we can help them now.

Today I've got baking to do. Not too much, since other friends gave us a lot of day-old bakery bread (which they get free from someone else). We still have enough in the freezer to get us through most of the week. I've got sour dough working, which I'm going to try today. I made French bread with it last week, which turned out really good. I also need to make some granola and some cookies. I've been experimenting with using honey (instead of sugar) in cookie recipes. The oatmeal cookies I made a couple of weeks ago turned out delicious. Today I'm going to try peanut butter cookies. The key to using honey is to use half as much as what the recipe calls for, for sugar, and to add about a fourth cup more flour for about every cup of honey used.

I got an e-mail last week saying that my new wheat grinder is on its way! Finally I'll be able to start using that half ton of wheat we got last fall! That was another unexpected blessing. I happened to be talking to another homeschool mom about the crops they grow on their farm. She mentioned wheat, so I asked her where the common Joe (me) could buy wheat for home grinding. She said she would ask her husband if we could buy some of theirs. The next time we saw her, she had a sheet of paper on which she had worked out how much wheat we would need for a year, based on the size of our family, about how much bread we would use in a week, and how much wheat makes one cup of flour! She figured out to the bushel how much wheat we would need, and told us we could have it for $60!!! So Tom got ten large totes from Wal-Mart and Canadian Tire (Wal-Mart didn't have enough in stock). On the appointed day, he and the boys drove out to where they were loading the wheat for shipment and helped fill the totes with wheat right off the trucks. Tom asked who he should pay, and they said, "There's no charge." !!!!!!!

Never let it be said that pastors and their families are poor. We are NOT. What we may lack in ready cash is MORE than made up with the blessings of being part of the church body. "I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread" (Psalm 37:25). "The young lions do lack, and suffer humger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing" (Psalm 34:10).

By the way, we still haven't found Larry.