Catching up!

I can't believe I've let this much time pass since the last time I blogged.  The excuses are a-plenty, but rather than going down that path, let's just jump back into blogging.

Life in my world continues to be exciting and ever-changing.  Not only am I teaching adults ESL two nights a week, but also another conversation class to adults on Friday mornings.  In addition, the Lord has richly blessed me with 9 private students this fall.  

A friend said to me:  "You may not be going to the nations, but God is bringing the nations to you!"  He certainly is, and I love it!  

I have 11 different nations represented in my evening classes, 8 different nations in my Friday morning class, and amongst my private students, I have 3 Chinese students, 1 Hungarian, 1 Ukrainian, 1 Taiwanese, 2 Brazilians, and 1 American.  

God so knows my heart and how much I love internationals!  Each day is a kiss from Him through these individuals.  

Challenged to love

We all need love.  Many of us long to be loved and long to love.  Hollywood tries to define love, but most of the time, their perspective is far from the reality of what love really entails.

Love means dying.  Dying to self, dying to 'my way', and dying so that others may live.  Death is never pretty, nor is it easy.  Not too many people would sign up for love if they opened the dictionary and the definition read:  Love:  death to self and making choices to see others' needs met.

Anyone who has walked in loving relationships knows that the ooey-gooey pictures painted of love are not really, well, shall we say, real?!  Indeed, love is a many splendored thing, as the song goes, but we sometimes forget that love is a choice.  Sometimes that choice is painful and feels like the one doing the loving is somehow being cheated in the 'deal' we call relationship.  

That's the cost, though, for true love to grow.  Seeds are planted in soil, watered, and they break through the shell and become what they were intended to be.  So too with love.  It's a seed that has many factors working on it and seemingly against it, but when it blooms, it is beautiful.  Along the way, though, there are cuts, trimmings, and dry times.  In the end, however, the fruit of love is sweet and life-giving.  

Getting healthy!

HEALTH FACT: Learn to do stretching and exercises when you wake up. It boosts circulation and digestion, and eases back pain. http://ltl.is/QCEUi

Wisdom

A gem has dropped into our laps.  His name is Alan Lee, and he is an amazing teacher.  Each Wednesday night, we are blessed to participate in an outstanding learning experience with him.  Not only does he implement all facets of teaching strategies, but also the content, Hebrew and Torah, are being brought to life.  

In addition to his weekly teachings, he sends out daily e-mails of study and encouragement.  If you are interested in receiving his e-mails, leave a comment on this blog.  Here is a sampling of one of his recent e-mails:

One of my my most favorite statements of Paul's to not like very well is 2 Cor. 4:17 where he expresses our present challenges are just momentary and light affliction that we are currently going through in order to produce for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison! I don't know what his time frame is when he speaks of momentary, but when I think of some of my time frames it seems like a whole lot longer than 'momentary.' That’s the real problem, isn’t it?  Our present experience just seems so permanent.  We see heartache, persecution, disaster, despair and death and it just seems so permanent.  Hurricanes that tear lives to pieces in a day.  Wars that seem to never end.  Poverty perpetrated from generation to generation.  How in Yah's name can Paul even suggest that this is light, momentary affliction?  It doesn’t seem momentary to me.  All I have is seventy some years to deal with it and it feels very permanent.  Listen to me, God.  I just can’t hold my breath for seventy years and pretend that it will all be better in heaven.  Paul might have been able to keep his eyes fixed on the invisible reality behind the trauma of life, but I’m not so sure I can.

If we think that Paul was a stoic, blocking out the death and destruction of his world by staring toward the pearly gates, we are sorely mistaken.  Paul knew the hideous side of life far better than most of us.  How could he have such a different perspective when he rotted in prisons, was beaten black and blue, starved, tortured, insulted and ridiculed?

He chooses the word parautika.  An adverb to mean, “immediately, at this precise instant or what is happening right now.”  But here Paul gets creative.  Paul is a master linguist.  When he needs to express something that he just can’t find in the present vocabulary, he makes up his own words.  Here (and only here) he adds the definite article.  Literally – “the immediate, the present instant, the happening moment”.    Paul focuses our attention entirely on the second hand of the clock.  The world in the existing instant.  That’s where affliction resides.  In the next second of the clock.

All of my life resides in the next second of the clock!  That’s really all I have.  One second at a time.  Paul shines his linguistic light on this inescapable truth in order to demonstrate howtemporary it all is.  We never think of life as just one more second.  We focus our attention on much longer time spans.  My seventy years to make a mark.  My legacy.  My history.  It’s never just about one second.  Except for the logical truth that life is compressed into just one more second.  So, says Paul, throw that tiny, insignificant reality up against God’s everlastingeternity and then see what really counts.

Even in the worst of times, I can count seconds.  And no matter how many I count, they are miniscule compared to eternity.  “Just give me a second, Lord.  I’ll be right there”.  Yes, you will.

As I shared this evening at the Hebrew Lifestyle class, those of you who have Prophetic gifting are getting hit hard right now. Yahweh doesn't do anything unless He first reveals it to His prophets. Unfortunately, the "glamour" of the Prophetic leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to these momentary afflictions.

Hang in their gang! These Momentary and light afflictions are working for you a far more exceeding weight of glory.

Shalom,

Alan

This is sobering....

HEALTH FACT: By the year 2020 72% of American women will be overweight or obese. http://ltl.is/QCEUi

DoTerra Oils and ticks!

This morning, as Paul was preparing for work, he noticed something on the back of his leg.  Thankfully, instead of picking at it, he asked me to look at it.  Sure enough, it was a tick, fully embedded in his leg.

So, we did proper tick removal procedures...with tweezers, gripping the head and pulling firmly, successfully removing the entire tick, head and all.  Then we looked at our handy Modern Essentials book to see what oils may help.

I just praise God for these oils.  Lavender and Purify are the oils recommended by DoTerra to help support the body.  We will let you know how it all turns out!

Love and War Marriage Retreat weekend

Paul and I were asked to help facilitate a marriage retreat weekend this past Friday night and Saturday all day.  10 couples gathered to watch and discuss John and Stasi Eldredge's DVD called Love and War, based on their book by the same name.  

We gathered at a hotel near the KCI airport, and it was a divine appointment with many couples opening up and sharing the depths of their joys and their pain.  

Marriage is hard work, and our time was encouraging because we realize we are all in this together, a community, cheering one another on and providing the support all of us need. Probably the most significant lesson learned is this:

Your spouse is not your enemy!

The devil is your enemy!

Satan is out to steal, kill and destroy...especially marriages. That covenant bond is something he hates and wants to destroy.  

Interestingly, now he is choosing another tactic:  distorting marriage.  He's introduced a "new" way of looking at marriage rather than the way God intended it to be between a man and a woman.  So, the assault on marriage in the realm of the spirit is at full-throttle.  

Weekends like the one we just experienced are crucial for couples to learn how to partner together against the true enemy of their marriage.  

Why I have chosen Thrive

Some people may wonder why I have chosen to jump in with both feet into a company that specializes in freeze-dried foods, rotating shelving units and emergency supplies.  The main reasons are:

1. LIFE HAPPENS

2. HEALTH AND NUTRITION

3. SAVINGS

Please follow THIS LINK to check it out for yourself!  I've not met ONE person who doesn't like Thrive foods.  

What would you change if you learned ¼ of your food budget was going straight into the trash?

American households throw out a shocking 25% of their food on average—over 30 lbs a week!—and most of it comes from foods that spoil before they ever get to the plate.

That’s an average $2,000 a year families fork out on food that never reaches the fork!

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I'm getting a divorce....

Yes, you read the blog title correctly.  I am getting a divorce.  It has been a long, hard struggle, with many ups and downs, but the time has come and the decision has been made...I am moving forward into freedom.

Now, before some of you pick up the phone to call me or jump on Facebook to see if I've changed my relationship status, and before others of you come running over to my house to try to talk me out of getting a divorce, let me explain.  If, after my explanation, you still want to call, please do...I would love to hear from you.

I'm divorcing all the things that I have been married to for years, and some, for decades.  Somewhere along the journey of life, I came into a "loving" agreement with fear, anxiety, mistrust, and doubt.  Daily, on many levels and in many ways, I heartily agreed with, partnered with, communicated with, and united myself with these unworthy partners, who brought nothing but compromise and destruction into my life.  So, today, I am getting a divorce.

You see, being 'married' to fear has permitted the tentacles of all of fears' sisters and brothers to grab on to parts of my soul and even my body, with the goal of enrapturing me with their deception and lies...promising great things and delivering nothing.  So, I'm divorcing fear, and in doing so, divorcing all of these other manipulative minions that will no longer be given access to my life, my heart, my mind, my well-being or anything else in my life.  

The terms of my divorce are non-negotiable:  no longer will I be bound because "It is for freedom that Christ has set me free!"  (Galatians 5:1)  So I am standing firm and will no longer be enslaved by the aforementioned things.  No longer will fear of man enslave me and cause me to say that something is "ok" when it clearly stands against the beauty of God's created order.  Therefore, my divorce means that the acts of the flesh are cut off from me:  sexual immorality (every form that God's Word says is wrong is wrong), impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies and the like. (Galatians 5:19-21)

My divorce is final.  Please do not try to convince me otherwise. The only thing being wedded to the aforementioned minions has brought is twisted thinking, confusion, compromise, misguided decisions, and death to my very soul.  Please don't worry about me...you see, my divorce is bringing me freedom.  

Now I can walk in the fruit of the Spirit:  LOVE, JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, KINDNESS, GOODNESS, FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS AND SELF-CONTROL. (Galatians 5:22-23)

In this month of Adar, I am CELEBRATING this divorce, the ending of being unequally yoked to fear, anxiety, mistrust and doubt.  I am FREE and my divorce papers have been signed in the blood of Jesus.  

Now, who wants to call me and try to talk me out of my divorce?  By the way, Paul and I are happily married, and each day, we delve deeper into the joys and rewards of marital bliss, centered on Jesus!

The month of Adar

We have been on a journey with our spiritual family here in Kansas City for nearly 2 years now.  What I can liken the journey up to this point to is having been on a wonderful adventure through hills, valleys, up and down mountains, fording streams, climbing trees, digging ditches, growing weary, being rejuvenated, growing weary again, questioning lots of things and experiencing God's grace along the way.

Where we are now I can liken to having "finished" the previous adventure as we came to a cross-roads and had to choose between continuing on the same path, or embarking on a "new" path, which really turns out to be the Ancient Paths...the paths God has been leading us to all along in His perfect timing.  

We chose the Ancient Path...we chose to follow Him into His calendar, which is the lunar calendar, and we chose to align ourselves with His days, weeks, months, seasons and years.  I've known God is an orderly God, but our journey into all of this has uncovered an orderliness to God and a syncronicity that has brought about a peace, a settledness, a joy and challenges like nothing ever experienced before.  

We are smack dab in the middle of Adar I in the year 5774, and I could not be more excited about what God is doing and how He is transforming my thinking, my life, my heart, my soul, and our marriage.  The word Adar means "strength", and this is a month to get into the celebration mode of ending certain seasons of our lives.  It's also a month to overturn worry and root out depression and despair so faith can break through into our thought processes. (From A Time to Advance by Chuck Pierce).

Of course there is much more to this month, but these are the things that God has highlighted to me and is speaking to me about through His Word, the Bible, and in our prayerful conversations together.  This is a key month because what is broken off as well as what is set in place in our lives in this month will set the stage for the rest of the year.  

I've found that in my life and sometimes in my interactions with my fellow believers that we are "excited about this next conference" or "can't wait to hear this speaker come to our church"; we go, we listen, and then what?  We talk about it for a while, maybe apply some of the principles, and then we are looking forward to the "next thing".  I'm not saying those are bad things, but when I read Scripture, I don't see that being the primary mode of operating in the early church.  

The early church, and the pattern set up there was first about loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves.  Also, as we look at the whole of Scripture, the first "church", so to say, was God, Adam and Eve in the garden.  Throughout the Scriptures, home is and was the center of spiritual life.  Our western culture has moved it outside of the home an into a building where we "go" to get fed.  Meanwhile, the enemy has wreaked havoc in the home, destroying families and the home structure so we look to "St. Elsewhere" to be our "spiritual home".  

Can you imagine the transformations that would begin if home became the center of spiritual life again, and every time someone walked in your home, the first thing they said was, "Wow, there is such peace and joy here!  There is such a sense of rest!"  

Just this weekend, an old friend came to our home for an appointment with another friend of ours, a naturpath, and this old friend stayed after her appointment just to hang out and talk.  The Lord was so present in our time together as we shared, laughed, cried, encouraged one another; she made mention of the peace in our home.  That is God's presence, and nearly everyone who walks through our door makes a comment about how peaceful and restful our home is.  

I am not poo-pooing "going to church"...no way.  We still gather on Sunday mornings with other believers, but that is not the "mainstay" of our spiritual walk, nor are we "dependent" upon it.  I think of the plethora of nations where the only place believers in Yeshua can meet is in homes because it's illegal to meet publically.  Stories of exponential growth in the Body of Christ are pouring forth from those nations.  

I'm just excited to share that as we walk out God's calendar, His ancient paths, celebrating what He has deemed important to celebrate, we find Him.  What more do we need?

How significant is water?

We all know that we can survive many days, even weeks, without food.  However, we cannot survive very long without water.

The people of Charleston, WV have a new perspective on the reality of the need for clean water after the recent chemical spill into their river and water supplies.  What many may not know is the pandemonium which erupted as people flocked to stores to stock up on water; news media outlets kept that rather quiet.  

This ARTICLE gives a more balanced picture of what took place and also encourages people to plan ahead.

To that end, have a look AT THIS LINK where you can easily find top of the line, tested products that will be shipped directly to your door.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to be a blessing to our families and to others?

The times.....

A couple of days ago, I was reminded of a poem I wrote in 1985 after I'd visited the former Soviet Union.  We'd spent 11 days playing basketball and "touring", during which time, this naive 21 year old, was shocked by the limitations people there lived under.  It's one thing to read about communism and socialism and quite another to experience it first-hand, even as a "tourist".  

In the poem, I reflected upon sights, sounds and smells, and the last two lines read:

I never knew what freedom was

Until I saw what it is not.

Those same words flooded my being this week as I read about our nation's freedoms slowly being whittled away.  The tell-tale sign in the former Soviet Union of freedom being gone was the rise and promulgation of atheism.  

When a nation turns its back on God, freedom, in the truest sense of the word, flies out the window.  May we learn from other nations' mistakes and turn back to God in America!

DoTerra Essential Oils

My husband caught a cold...and we are treating it with lots of liquids, rest and DoTerra Essential Oils!

WOW, what a difference these oils are making in his recovery.  We've heard of people suffering for weeks with this junk and he is coming around today after just 3 days of intensive treatments with eucalyptus, OnGuard, Lemon, and Lime, primarily.  

Check it out here:  Arden's DoTerra Website

Our year in review!

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My adult ESL students

This past summer, I applied and was hired to be an ESL teacher for adults at Johnson County Community College.  This has been one of the best teaching experiences of my life so far because I have highly motivated, respectful students who are working full-time jobs and then spending 6 hours a week in the evening studying English.  

My group of 18 students is a level 1 class, which means we started with the alphabet and numbers.  I am proud to report that 16 of 18 received "gains" on their state level exams.

On Monday of this week, we had an end of the semester party where everyone brought food.  Only a handful of my students showed up, but we had a great time eating, laughing and speaking a little bit of English.  Here are a few pictures of my class!

Yolanda and Patricia - both from Mexico

Armando from Guatemala - He wants to be an English teacher back in his home country!

Maria, Armando, Jessika, her daughter, who came to the party, Jose, Yolanda and Patricia

Irene and Michael - from Ukraine

Arden, Jose, Aphinya, Patricia, Yolanda, Meseret, Maria, Jessika, Irene, Maria, Armando and Michael

Auschwitz and the United States

This is a heavy blog entry.  However, I believe it needs to be posted.  

I first visited the former concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1985.  My fellow AIA teammates and I were on a trip around Poland playing basketball, and our leaders decided we should visit the former Nazi death camp.  Quite honestly, and I hate to admit it, but my history lessons were sorely lacking in high school and I only knew smatterings of what transpired in this infamous death camp.  

We drove through a quaint little town called Oswiecim (Auschwitz in German) and there on the outskirts lay a HUGE plot of land dotted with the remains of barbed wire fences, brick buildings and smokestacks:  the infamous death camp of Auschwitz where the Nazis exterminated millions of Jews and other "undesireables".  After completing the tour, I remember feeling like someone had kicked me in the stomach and the ache would never go away.  Slowly, it did fade, and I proceeded to live my comfy life in the U.S. only giving a slight thought or two to what transpired in a far off land so many years earlier.

It wasn't until I taught my 8th graders about the Holocaust in the late 1980s that the gruesome reality of what took place ripped my heart open again.  

Fast forward to the mid 1990s when I began taking groups of high schoolers to Hungary to teach summer English camps; on the weekend between the two camps, we piled onto an overnight train to Poland to expose these American high school kids to the realities of the horrors of WWII death camps.  As we passed through the sweet quiet town of Oswiecim again, I couldn't help but wonder why the residents of the town didn't stand up and say anything during the holocaust?  

You see, there were furnaces burning humans cranking 24/7, especially during the final years of the war, and stories of ash falling from the sky and coating cars and trees and roads still exist.  In addition, the smell must have permeated the air, so why the silence?  And what does any of this have to do with the United States today?

I found these "answers":

Why didn't Auschwitz residents help the people in the holocaust?

The concentration camp and the extermination camp were well outside the town and surrounded by an exclusion zone.  Also, because if they did, they would probably be captured and sent to the camp as well as the person they tried to save.  Not to mention when they got captured they probably would have been whipped.  

And another:

Most residents of the town were not involved in the holocaust.  Obviously, the Jewish inhabitants were taken to the camp and killed.  The camp itself (or rather complex of camps) was surrounded by an exclusion zone.

Here is where it gets interesting and relevant to us in the United States today:

From a German woman… when she was about sixteen years old she said to her grandmother, “How come nobody stopped what was happening with Hitler. How come they didn’t stop them from taking the Jews away?”

And the grandmother said to her, “You don’t understand. It wasn’t one day that we woke up and all of our rights were taken away from us. They took them away from us slowly. And then one day you couldn’t speak out, because if you spoke out you were dead.”

We are not facing standing up for a particular people, although I do believe that day will come, but more significantly, we are facing standing up for ourselves!

As a believer and follower of Yeshua, I am advocating ONE THING:  Repentance and turning to the Lord.  

If we remain silent, if we continue on in our lukewarm ways of cultural Christianity, if we continue to feed the Babylonian spirit that has invaded our nation, families and individual hearts, we too will be asking the same question our German sister posed above.

Maybe you think I am sounding gloom and doom; Ezekiel is clear:  if I, as a watchman of the Lord, do not sound the alarm and warn people, I will be held responsible.  

In all of this there is GREAT HOPE!  His name is Jesus, Yeshua, and His heart is FOR us, not against us.  He is coming again for His pure and spotless bride, and so we must stand up, declare the praises of our King, share His love and His truth, not watered down, and shout it from the mountain tops:  WAKE UP AMERICA!  The Lion of Judah is coming and our compromise, our flirtations with sin, our bowing to the cultural tide of "whatever feels right is right" has got to stop.  

Our King is mighty to save, mighty in love and mercy and forgiveness, mighty to overthrow all that hinders His love from being manifested in our hearts.  He will do it because He is a jealous God, longing to defeat the true enemy who has done nothing but lie, steal, kill and destroy humanity.  He wants nothing more than His goodness to be manifested in our lives and in our nation; the key is discovering what HIS GOODNESS really is.  That goodness is fully encapsulated in One Person:  Jesus, Yeshua, the Messiah...a Jewish man who came to seek and save the lost, and is coming back for a pure, spotless bride.  HE is the way, HE is the truth, and HE is the life, and no one comes to the Father except through HIM.  

In WW II, it was not popular to take a stand for the Jewish people; it could get a person killed.

In 2013, it's not popular to take a stand for Jesus; in many parts of the world, people are being killed for their faith in Him.  

We in the United States are faced with this question: 

 Choose this day whom you will serve:  God or man.  Ironically, either choice will bring death:  death to self, or eternal death.  

An alternative to government healthcare

Now that we are faced with the choice to sign up for government healthcare or pay a tax penalty, how about a sane alternative:

Christian Healthcare Ministries!

Click on the above link and have a look at a wonderful way to live out New Testament life with other believers!

One of the newest blessings in our life!

For the past two years, we have needlessly fed a phone system that has taken us for a ride financially.  Sadly, we spent about $1920 over the course of the past 2 years for our cell phones which we could have saved had we been with THIS COMPANY.

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