~Sarah's birthday party~

My birthday was in December and I celebrated with an icecream cake and family. We were too busy to have a party for me then. So, Mommy let us have a triple birthday party in Jan. after we got into our own home. Here's my fun pink table in our living room.
My table and I
My friends and I
It was a lot of fun and I'm glad that I got to have a party. Thank you, Mommy and Daddy, for having a party for me. =)

Prayer gains much!

Salvation is gained through prayer.
Full Salvation is gained through prayer.
Growth in Maturity, Wisdom, and Love is gained through prayer.

Apostasy is gained through neglect of prayer.

Abiding in the presence of God Himself is the reward of prayer.
So pray on! Pray on!

Your Saviour held His peace

The day when Jesus stood alone
And felt the hearts of men like stone;
And knew He came to atone --
That day "He held his peace."

My friend, have you far, far much less,
With rage, which you call righteousness,
Resented slights with great distress?
Your Saviour "Held His peace."
- L.S.P. in Guide Lamps for God's Lambs

A Popular Exposition of Methodist Theology

First part of February I finished A Popular Exposition of Methodist Theology by Charles O. Eldridge. Don't let the name bore you. Eldridge stimulated my thinking and highly edified me spiritually in a simple but eloquent way. I do plan on reading this book again. This book is a perfect introduction to sound theology and has been reprinted by Schmul Publishing Co., Inc. Good thing because the original was published in 1899. Here are some quotes from this book with likely more to come:

"Prevenient grace," i.e. the grace which comes before we ask for it. p 41

If we welcome this light, its brightness increases; if we turn from it, the darkness deepens: so the condition of each accounts with his treatment of the grace he has received. This accounts for the great difference observable between sinners, as well as for the degrees of life and power among believers. p 41-42

Those who reject the sin of the first Adam and embrace the righteousness of the Second Adam find in Him "more riches than their father lost."

[In part] sin is failing to respond fully to the divine command …as when the archer has taken a faulty aim, or not drawn his bow with sufficient strength. p 48

Perfect holiness implies a full and hearty agreement of the human nature and will with the divine. It is not mere submission. It is the... hearty co-operation with, the whole will of God: not only once for all, as in the great decisive experiences of conversion and entire sanctification, but day by day in all the ordinary affairs of life. Thus the will is constantly gaining strength through its activity side by side with the divine will. p 49

Is it innocent or sin?

Take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself.
- Susanna Wesley

~Kimberly's cake~

Right after we moved into our new home here in Colombia, Kimberly wanted to make and decorate a cake for Bro. Jimmy, Sis. Farly and family and their parents. She wanted to do this as a small thank you for their kindness in keeping us for 2 weeks while we looked for a home. Bro. Jimmy LOVES our jello cakes...so that is what she made. I thought she did a great job decorating the top.
(They don't like sweet icings here, so she just used coolwhip and colored it. =)

~My French Bread~

Bro. Jimmy's sister Judy is 8 months pregnant and has to have eye surgery on Tuesday. (Please pray for her.)
Mommy wanted to make some French Bread to take to her, so I asked her if I could make it. (And Mommy was my coach!=) It was so fun to make bread. It was my first time. Thank you, Mommy, for your help. I love French bread. For those who don't know me as well...I Love bread. Ok maybe that was a slight exaggeration but I really like it.



I miss my family and friends in the U.S. but it's fun to see people here too. Please pray for my cousin Natasha for she has to have surgery. Thank you.

~Fun to decorate, fun to eat!~

My sister Kimberly made this cake for our family to eat, but she let me decorate the top. It was late Saturday night and we didn't have a lot of icing, nor time to make more. I would've liked having more colors to work with, but I had fun decorating anyways. =)

~A Kimberly Quote!~

Back in 2004 when we told our Kimberly that we were called to go to Colombia as missionaries she was only 6. She was going to have to say goodbye to both sets of Grandparents (Who attended our church), and her beloved puppy, Bridget. One day she was VERY SAD and told me that God hadn't called HER but us to the mission field, so she would stay in AZ with Bridget and Grandma. =) But now 7 years later she's glad that she came too!

Glimpses of Greatness

I just finished reading Glimpses of Greatness by Edgar A. Bryan. These are personal vignettes of persons perceived to be great and of souls who truly were great such as H. Robb & Geraldine French, L. D. Wilcox, Glen Griffeth, Duncan Campbell, Leonard Ravenhill, Harry Shreve, etc. people the author had personally known or seen. It was a refreshing read and well worth the short time because the Godly examples of those mentioned challenged me.

Quotes from the book:
"Without revival the glamour wil be substituted for the glory." - I. Parker Maxey
"The preacher may go with the crowd; but the prophet goes against it. A man freed fired and filled with God will be branded unpatriotic because he speaks against his nation's sins..." -Leonard Ravenhill
"The confession must be as public as the transgression." -Oswald J. Smith
"Defeated folk cling to causes with no power to administer cures." -Howard Williams
"Revivals are born after midnight" & "We'll never reach the world except with the message of holiness." -Glen Griffeth
"We never give to God, we invest." "Start something bigger than you are and God will have to help you." "How can one be holy on the inside and sexy on the outside?" -H. Robb French
"One-worlders (communism was/is just one of several who are out to rule the world) do not want a vibrant Christianity around." -Edgar A. Bryan

Order from the author, Edgar A. Bryan 533 S. Union St. Westfield, IN 46074 or at his blog www.separateholy.wordpress.com

We are blessed indeed

I want to thank each of you for your prayers; we have felt them. We are getting dug out and making progress. You may still help us pray about what to do about this moldy damp apartment we live in. Praise God for a blessed Lord's Day yesterday. Pastor Jimmy preached just what we needed and the rest of our day was restful and spiritually profitable. Speaking for myself, I am facing a lot of crazy feelings right now that are so common to this kind of life. Thank God we don't live by feelings, rather by faith.

Today I was remembering so many of the houses I have been in here in the south in the mountains where the nights are colder -- at times in the 30s at night. Many have dirt floors, plastic, hanging carpet, or boards for the walls, and they place pans here and there to catch the drips as it rained (this part we understand), while cold air blew in the many gaps and their "pantry" is often empty. These shacks are inhabited by disfunctional and broken homes, single moms, and couples shacking up and many children with little hope who are often preyed upon. We are so blessed to only have drippy ceilings and mold. We don't have a dirt floor nor gaps in the walls. We have a family who loves each other, God, and others. We have a church family who loves each other, God, and others. We are blessed indeed to serve God and others with such a comfortable and joyful life. Thank you, God, for my many blessings.

It could be a lot worse

Praise God! We are back in Colombia and our trip went without a glitch.

I would appreciate it if you would pray for Heather. She is feeling very tired and very overwhelmed. I asked her to take a nap, so she and our two youngest are sleeping. Coming here is not just a matter of unpacking our suitcases. Our apartment is very tiny (by our standards at least; I would guess 760 square feet) and we were packed in tight as could be before our new baby. When we came in our suitcases nearly covered the entire floor of our living / dining room and that is nearly a third of our entire living space. Then although our dear national pastor had washed down our entire apartment it is still infested with mold. They had also rearranged our room to keep the rain from dripping from our ceiling onto our bed while we were gone. We started by our first day going straight to bed (at midnight) and then the next day by going out and buying groceries and new plastic organizers and then throwing away bunches of Heather's baskets which were infested with mold. Also most drawers that we open in order to unpack our suitcases are infested with green mold and is in much of our clothes we left and in much of our stuff. So we have bags of trash (moldy clothes and things we are tossing). My only suit that I left here was green with mold, Heather's shoes, my books, the boys pajamas, our furniture, etc, etc. We are taking out all our drawers and emptying out our closets and washing them to rid the mold. Then there is the pile of clothes to wash, lest the mold spread. We are reorganizing Kimberly and Sarah's room to make room for Mary. So at this point we are only half way unpacked. We are all working together to make this house as mold free as possible.

We are asking God to protect our children from the mold and heal Elijah; his eyes are puffy, red, itchy, and draining. I am not asking for sympathy for we are honored to be serving here. Nor am I asking for advise for we are praying for God to lead us and the situation is more complicated than could be understood and advised by someone on the outside. At this point we are all too tired to even consider moving again. We are grateful that the rain season has just ended and the dripping ceilings and crazy mosquitoes are at a minimum right now.

A testament of God's grace is that our children are happy and in the midst of all the washing, sorting, tossing in the trash, and unpacking I heard Heather sincerely say, "Thank You, Lord." And then she said to me, "It could be a lot worse." But please do pray for my precious wife.

~Cold fun~

Sorry that our blog has been "silent" for a few months. We are enjoying being in the USA, working on our house in Cinci, having a new baby in our family, getting ready for Christmas, playing in the snow, etc.
Here are 3 fun pictures of us having fun in the snow.
Here we are with our cousins Bryan and Darla who live just across the street from our house in Cinci. We have enjoyed getting to be with them on the days we go down to help Daddy on our house.
The snow man Sarah made.
Sarah and Noah playing out back of the house where we are staying.

Earthquake!

Yesterday when I was in the kitchen we had an earthquake here in Colombia. I was making Noah a sandwich when I heard the refrigerator and what was inside rattling. We have had problems with mice and rats coming up from downstairs where they store grain, so I thought that I was hearing a rat. Then I heard Mommy say something about, "It's an earthquake." Mommy tells more about the earthquake on her blog here. - post by Sarah

When the earthquake happened I was standing up watching the china cabinet shake; I thought that it was neat. -- post by Noah

I was downtown half running trying to get somewhere by a deadline so I didn't feel anything. But I noticed a bunch of people gathered outside of a tall building with shouting and a lot of commotion. I crossed the street to pass on the other side, thinking that it was a fight or an arrest (common here downtown) and I didn't want to be caught in the "crossfire." Later I found out that the news said that downtown people were yelling and fleeing the buildings. It was a 5.4 in magnitude. Heather describes more on her post in Heather's Highlights. -- post by Phillip

From what we are reading along with family altar in the morning

Our children beg for me to continue reading in this book, Thirty-three Years A Live Wire. In the morning when we have family altar I often also read 2 or 3 pages from John T. Hatfield or another exciting holiness book. Tomorrow we should finish the last chapter. If you find a copy to read, your children will be impacted and you will be left unsatisfied with the norm if you have a hungering after God's holiness.

"This is one of the Historic places of the Civil War. It was one of the strong fortifications of the Confederate army. Some of the old cannons are still there yet and they are just as good as ever, but they have no explosives about them. They are not in war now. How many old church professors are like those old cannons, sitting around on the breastworks of an old battlefield telling about what they did fifty years ago, but nor they are powerless, and the devil is no more afraid of their old brass cannons than a yearling bull would be of a popgun. One little sleepy devil could lay in the belfry and keep charge over a whole church full of such fellows.
". . . I had read of these battles in my boyhood days, at the time when the fight was on. I was not a soldier then, but I am now, I am in the war against sin and the devil, and it takes more backbone, grit and grace in these days to stand straight for God and declare against sin, than to shoulder a musket and go to war. There are men living to-day who were in those battles and fought bravely, who are now members of church and make a profession of religion and yet they are so cowardly they are afraid to let their wives and children hear them pray."

-pp293-294, Thirty-three Years A Live Wire: Life Of John T. Hatfield, By Himself, God’s Revivalist Office, Cincinnati, Ohio, no date.
John T. Hatfield was born in 1851 in Charlottesville, IN and was a personal friend of Uncle Bud Robinson who said of him, “He is always full of juice and freshness and fire and glory. Brother John never runs a meeting by a program; he is as liable to call mourners at the opening of his service as to call them at the close of his service. He is one of the greatest puzzles to the devil that is now living; the devil never knows what he is going to do next; he is about as liable to preach in one end of the church as the other – no strings on that man! He is a cyclone of grace turned loose on the hills of the earth to do just as the blessed Holy Ghost suggest to him.”
- post by Phillip

From what we are reading at night to our children.

The second baby was a girl. They named her Bertha Viola. She was a beautiful child, a bundle of sunshine and the picture of sparkling health.

One night when Bertha was about three years old, she suddenly became desperately sick. She had laughed and jabbered and romped all day as usual. She and Jacob Leander had skipped and tumbled and played all over the yard, through the house, and on the porch steps. Through the open door Villie could hear them singing the dear little songs that they had learned in Sunday school. How beautifully their voices blended in heavenly childish chorus!

And now what could be wrong with little Bertha? One crumpled hand lay under her hot cheek, and her tangled blond curls hung over the pillow edge.

“Dannie,” whispered Villie, “I believe she’s very sick. See how she rolls her eyes up into her head. ….

The doctor came at midnight.

“I know you folks want to know the truth about this case,” he said after he had sat by the child’s bedside for fifteen minutes, “but as yet I’m puzzled. I’ll leave this medicine and come back tomorrow. It acts a little like brain fever, but I wouldn’t say yet.”

“Oh!” Villie’s hand went to her throat, and she tried to control her emotion and stifle the spasm of sudden fear that gathered around her heart.

“You and Dannie go on to bed and get your rest,” Mother said. “Jake and I will stay here and take care of Bertha.” ….

Not joy, not ease, not sunshine but trials and difficulties, heartaches and troubles make great experiences, and great experiences make great lives. To struggle and battle and rise above troubles and discouragements develops strength of character and courage for greater trials farther on. Out of kindness and tenderest love, God ordained it that we could not look ahead, not even for an hour. It’s a moment by moment life to live.

For three weeks little Bertha Viola lay unconscious, hanging between life and death. The doctor charged seventy-five cents for his daily calls. Dannie stayed as close to the house as possible, and Villie hugged Jacob Leander close in her arms and cried over his head.

The day came when Bertha Viola was well once more; so the family went to town on a shopping tour.

-- Dannie of Cedar Cliffs by Christmas Carol Kauffman, 1950 (an excellent and beautiful true story of Dannie Roth, 1865?-1950, and his dear wife Villie, a dear Christian couple and faithful laymen in the early Mennonite church.) We have been reading from this book many nights before praying and putting our children to bed. -post by Phillip

*I LOVE coffee*

As you can already see I do love coffee. Here in Colombia people start drinking coffee when they are Elijah's age and I wish that the people in the USA did that because I love it. Now I don't drink a 4 gallon thing of ice coffee every day. I limit myself to about two times a week. Here is a little acrostic I wrote about coffee.

C =contentment

O =on occasion

F =fabulous

F =fantastic

E =enjoyment

E =extraordinary


I LOVE COFFEE!!!



post by Kimberly*

*Kooking in the Kitchen with Kimberly*

"Blueberry Kiss"
1 cup fresh or frozen blue berries (thawed)
1/2 cup vanilla frozen yogurt or ice cream
1 Tablespoon sugar or other sweetener, to taste
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup ice cubes
Throw all the ingredients into the blender and blend up good!! (from VITA MIX RECIPE book)
ENJOY!!!

I've made this recipe at least two times. Mine is different though because we can't find blueberries here so we use a berry named agras. We think agras is black currant.

posted by Kimberly

Advice to Christian Workers

All ministers should be revival ministers, and all preaching should be revival preaching; that is, it should be calculated to promote holiness. People say, “It is very well to have some men in the church who are revival preachers and who can go about and promote revivals, but then you much have others to indoctrinate the church.” Strange! Do they not know that a revival indoctrinates the church faster than anything else?

-- Charles G. Finney quoted by E. E. Shelhamer in Heart Talks to Ministers and Christian Workers, 3^rd Edition, printed by God’s Bible School, pg. 107

Scouting trip into Argentina

After an all night flight I arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina on a Tuesday. What a huge metropolis -- around 13 million souls!

One site ranks Buenos Aires as the 10th most populated urban area in the world, another site at 15th. I didn't return home until a week later, so I had plenty of time to walk the streets, pray, and to try to learn about this mission field. I had the honor of sharing in one church and preaching in another on my only Sunday there. I was able to pass out tracts, witness, and make some good contacts. God let me meet a dear preacher and his family who are trying to plant a church in a poor neighborhood of Buenos Aires. They want to study in the classes that we have been offering to those here in Colombia and plan to offer in Argentina. I also made the three and a half hour trip into Montevideo, the capital city of Uruguay. In both countries I saw a dearth of good churches and as far as I know there is an absence of any holiness churches who would be happy to identify with our preaching of heart holiness.

Waaaaaaaaaah!!!!!

The other day while at church I was playing my violin and I had to put my case in the middle of the floor. (this was after church) Well I looked down and Elijah was IN my case and broke it!!!! Jesus made him cute so that we wouldn't shoot him. Smile!! We do love him dearly. He keeps life exiting!!




post by Kimberly

~For the Mothers in my Life~

"If I am Thy child, only God, it is because Thou gavest me such a mother." -Augustine

I bless God with a sincere and deep gratitude for the three holy mothers in my life. My first mother (Sherry Dickinson) bore me next to her heart for nine months and has continued to carry me in her heart with love, instruction, and prayer for these following 36 years; I am who I am due to God blessing my life with my mother. My second mother (Martha Bryan) has done the same in such an excellent way so as to replicate her noble self in the lady who is now my wife and mother of our children; I am a blessed man due to the mother of my wife. The third mother in my life (Heather Dickinson) is my wife and the mother of our children. I now sit here staring at the computer unable to find sufficient words to praise her enough. She is beyond precious and virtuous, and she excels my ability to laud her as she deserves; I and our children are filled with joy to belong to her life. "Thank you, God, for Heather!"

Regarding our three mothers: "Her children arise up, and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all. Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised. Give her the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates." -Proverbs 31:28-31

Discipline verses Salvation

A chairman, in representing one of his preachers, said, “He has not much salvation to offer, so he goes it heavy on discipline.” Is not that the real seat of the difficulty with preachers who have so much more zeal and success in getting people out of the church than they do to get them to unite with the church? They have not much salvation to offer. They can see the disease, but do not furnish a remedy. A person who has the toothache will not make up any more faces if you cut off his head. But is that the best way to treat him? To destroy a church is not the best way to promote its purity. Piety, prudence, and patience will go further towards getting people fitted for the kingdom of God, than will a furious zeal to turn them out of the church. Before you begin proceedings to turn members out of the church, read the chapter on Discipline in “Fishers of Men.” Above all, read Matt. 18:15-17. Then pray for them, until your heart is filled with deep, tender love for their souls. If proceeding against them, act just as you would if the person complained of was your own brother or son. Remember that the great object to be gained is the salvation of the soul.

- Minister Benjamin Titus Roberts (bishop of The Free Methodist Church) published in "THE FREE METHODIST" quoted in Pungent Truths

Christian, choose your spouse well

If a believer marries an unbeliever, he has the devil for his father-in-law.

- anonymous

-pdd

Are you discouraged?

Unbelief concludes evil to be invincible and seeks to manage what it cannot destroy.

said Samuel Chadwick, pg. 25 of 25 Sunday Mornings, (London: Epworth Press, 1951) Thanks to Edgar Bryan.

I must stay filled with faith by obedience, sanctification, prayer, and looking to the promises. -pdd