How Wide

On Tuesday Michaela and I helped out a five-day club. Since I was in charge of the songs I decided to do the classic How Wide and Deep. This song brought back great memories of CYIA and when I used to sing this song in club as a participant. The kids and the teachers enjoyed the song, the only problem was Michaela and I started cracking up in the middle of the song. (It might have had something to do with how I was "accidentally" poking Michaela during the song.)

Lessons

This is actually CYIA report Part II. While at camp our dorm mom talked about being gracious. She explained some of the characteristics and even gave some examples. That devotion really stayed on my mind for a while. For those of you who know me pretty well I can be loud, obnoxious, and very blunt all at the same time. In fact some people are even scared of me(we won't say names but I have learned that some people from different cultures just don't go around hugging strangers). God was trying to tell me that graciousness was something that could definitely be worked on in my life. So during CYIA I picked someone who seemed quiet and shy and attempted to carry a conversation with them without scaring them( Shy people do tend to be scared of me). We ended up having a great conversation that lasted about twenty minutes which went very well. Now since then I've had countless failures at being gracious but you don't learn God's lessons in one day. "A gracious woman retains honor." Proverbs 11:16a

Two Porches, 1 family

Two of our summer projects are to paint our porch and a friends porch. We started our friends porch today. While I played with their children.It was very hot and tiring work, and I sweated a lot even though the only thing I did was sweep the paint chips.(the weather might've had something to do with it too, but that's not the point.) Anyway, those are two things we will be doing this summer.

Over&Out

GRACE

Beijing Olympics 2008 or The Matchmaker Returns

We have just concluded a wonderful time with my great friend Judi Boyer. We haven't seen her since our wedding nearly 19 years ago (July 28). The reason being that she spends most of her time in China working for Scope Ministries and more importantly our Father. This time her furlough worked out for us to see her. She brought us the nearly matching (except for Grace) shirts commemorating the Beijing (that's pronounced Bei-jing, not Bei-zhing Mr. Costas) Olympics. For those of you who know the story of our union, this is none other than the beloved matchmaker that lured us both into attending the same ski trip unbeknownst to the fact that the other was attending. Pretty sly Judi. Of course there are no hard feelings on either side, after all we are happily married. We toured our 90 year old house, toured the garden, saw what God has done in our lives, is doing in our lives and prayed for what we would like to see God do in our lives in the years to come.

Rising to the Challenge

Christian Youth in Action, aka CYIA, is a camp that Michaela (4 years, see her previous blog) and Joshua (3 years) have attended. Elfrieda Harder has been associated with CYIA for time in memoriam (that means a long time in the past of an indefinite nature). A loose tradition has been to serenade Elfrieda some evening with a song. The group of boys who have done it lately were not attending camp this year. 4 boys, including our Joshua, decided that the tradition must not die. I don't know who initiated this but I suspect that it wasn't Joshua. Anyway we members of the Creer family were fairly shocked at the animation that Joshua portrayed in this serenade as well as the volume while singing (he is a good singer, trust me on this I'm an expert). Joshua is a somewhat verbal and animated person at home but rarely in public (except during some sports as far as animation but not the verbal). I want you to know that there wasn't an earthquake during the video. Michaela was laughing so hard that she couldn't hold the camera still. I had to use YouTube to get you this rare footage because the blog site was taking too long to upload. Enjoy. (Paste the following link to your browser)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL_Y02eNeGY

Ah....Summer

The summer days here thus far on the home-front have been reasonably slow yet eventful,let me explain. The first week that Michaela and Joshua were attending CYIA training was also an evening bible school at the local bible church here that Grace attended. Her bible school started with a dinner meal each evening. As a result, Eddie and I had several evenings that week to spend together that were reminiscent of our first year together before children. Our evenings included candle light dinners, walks in the garden, and quiet times to visit or just read a good book. Our own bed and breakfast right here at home. Other activities around here for the past several weeks have included lots of gardening and yard work as well as repair of fix-it projects around the house. We have so enjoyed our harvest thus far of fresh lettuce, rhubarb, and broccoli and look forward to more to more fresh produce to come. Hope all who are reading are enjoying their summer as well.

CYIA Conspiracy

For my CYIA blog, I'm going to talk about pranks. Now the boys in my dorm were plotting against our dorm supervisor Micah Wissman, and I made sure not to be involved. Yet, I was thrown into it by accident. What the boys were planning on doing was taking some of Micah's stuff put in a box and mail it to him. The rule at CYIA is you have to sing in front of everybody if you get a box. Another funny fact is that Micah's girlfriend had been sending him letters. But she had addressed them to "Mr. Handsome", "Sweetypie", and Honey Buns." And they did read these names out loud. So the boys took the stuff while Micah was gone and began placing it in the box. Midway through my friend, Jacob Swehlah, decided to take out Micah's underwear and return them. As he was doing so, Micah reentered the room. Thinking quickly Jacob dropped the goods . . . right by me. . . while I had just woken up and had no clue what was going on. "Quick, hide them!" he whispered. Still half asleep I obliged him by stuffing them under my pillow when Micah wasn't looking. The next day Micah received a mysterious box addressed to Cutiepie. He opened it and found to his shock his deodorant, socks, and beef jerky. All that morning he had been looking for these objects. He had even run to Wal-mart because he simply couldn't find them. We all laughed together at the prank. But this was only the beginning . . .

New Things

For starters, I am not doing this of my own free will!( Daddy forced me.) Anyway, a few weeks ago I got new glasses, they're adult glasses and Mommy says they make me look older(I think they make me look bug eyed.) And then, two weeks ago I got new left-handed scissors. We finally found some at Wal-Mart.

Over&Out

GRACE

The End of An Era

I have just finished my fourth year of Christian Youth in Action camp. I cannot even begin to tell you all the countless stories, answers to prayers, lessons, and frustrations that happened there, so give me a minute...

Okay, here we go. First of all this year we had a new director named Jake Wulbecker. He fit into the role of director so easily that all I can say is that it was smooooth as butter.(former CYIAers know what that means) I really liked him and the first day he challenged us to give not only our summer but the rest of our lives to God. This is something that has to be done daily. Another thing that really stuck with me was to share my faith on a regular basis. That can be pretty scary for me but I've been thinking of some ways how. Also this year there were four first fourth year students who were all girls. That's right we are the only ones who faithfully came four years in a row but others will definitely take our place.

Now for the fun stuff. My second and third years at CYIA we have always been late for supper the first day. So determined to get there on time this year we set out at 3:30pm to get to the church by 5pm. Because our van's air conditioning doesn't work at all we decided to take my dad's car. Well about half way there my dad notices that the engine is getting really hot so he switches the air to vent to give it a break. Everyone gets really hot so he switches it back to air. In order to accommodate the engine and the people he switches about every five minutes. When we are fifteen minutes away we notice the engine is very hot and it won't cool down. So we pool into a gas station and it starts steaming! It is now about 4:30pm., plenty of time. Well we spend the next half hour cooling it down with a lot of water. So once again we pull into the parking lot fifteen minutes late! Oh, well everyone is just used to it by now: the Creers will be late. Random facts: I misplaced my camera three times, two people stole my shoes once, the boys stayed up till midnight playing basketball one night, Mr. Peepers died, Mr. Snoopers took his place, my teaching partner told me Happy Birthday at least ten times Roscoe the flamingo was kidnapped(and returned), and I came home exhausted and ready to go.

Michaela Is 18 Today

Our culture has certain landmarks for ages (e.g. 10-double digits, sweet sixteen, 18-entering adulthood, 21-entering adulthood again, 30-over the hill, 40-farther over the hill, 50-no comment). Michaela has reached some landmarks not ordinarily recognized by our culture. She regularly communes individually with God, has a heart to serve God and others, has shared the gospel with many children and led some to Christ and is a nice person to be around on a daily basis, to name a few. We pray that God will greet her some day, saying, "Well done thou good and faithful servant".

I Am Not Fond of Cats

So you may be wondering why I have a picture of cats considering the title of this blog. To take it further, I am allergic to cats. I have a daughter (or two) who love animals. We conceded to cats and banished them to the outside after some unpleasant episodes indoors. Well I was working outside and I noticed the mom cat had finished nursing the kittens and they were all bundled together asleep. At this point I will interject that I took a class in college that included instruction in basic photography and developed an enjoyment of photography. I still use my Pentax 35mm SLR ME Super with the zoom lens at times. So as I passed the cats, the lure of a good picture overwhelmed my aversion to cats.