Every month, Dad and Mom write articles for parents, specific to whatever the Lord has laid on their hearts that month. The addresses on the list are kept completely private. If you’d like to sign up, please visit this page.
Dad's and Mom's Corners
BTW – watch for a blog post soon on the annual Maxwell Family Photo session (scheduled for tonight, with a bit of wind, so lots of hairspray is in order) 🙂 … I’ll do my best to capture some “behind the scenes” photos!
Sarah for the rest
“This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalms 118:24).
I was entering in MOTH (Managers of Their Homes) registrations, and the first testimony below caught my attention. My parents had not a clue how the Lord would use this book in the lives of so many families; they were simply obedient when the Lord said to write!
It’s a sunny, gorgeous autumn Monday here in Kansas.
Sarah
What a blessing the MOTH program has been to our family already, after only 1 week! We are, of course, still refining the schedule to better meet the needs of our family at this season of life, but what a difference already. Our 6 children are ages 9 ½ to 14 months, and we are expecting #7 in early March. Trying to homeschool the older ones while keeping order (let alone fun!) with the younger ones was just not happening, and I ended up most days very discouraged. My meek & quiet spirit had usually bitten the dust soon after breakfast, and my husband and I knew we needed to do something to bring peace, joy, and order to our home, especially with a new little blessing on the way. I’ve tried so many times to develop a schedule for our family, but this is the first time ever that is has really worked. We have been accomplishing so much: Bible study, school work, house work (ChorePacks are next on my list!), fun projects, reading stories, character training, and just enjoying one another. Many behavior problems are rapidly improving especially with the little ones, who weren’t getting enough attention or supervision before. This is truly an answer to prayer. We are praying for you ministry! Michelle
Oh, and here’s one more:
I’m thankful to have such a robust resource in my hands! Thanks for sharing your years of experience. I know God will bless our family through the MOTH book and Redeeming the Time book (my husband is REALLY enjoying that!). Continued blessings on your ministry. Heidi
“Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time” (Colossians 4:5).
After being gone for five weekends, this is our first one home; well, home for most of us. Christopher and Joseph were away photographing a wedding in St. Louis.
After working on his October Dad's Corner for awhile, Dad washed the front porch.Anna has decided to spruce up her area where she does school. This involved moving yard tools and the like into another area.AnnaJesse--somehow I didn't get a picture of him outside helping, where he was most of the day!I saw a bus "to do" list tape to the inside of a bus window. It's quite the list! (We're not going to finishing converting it before the next trip, but rather, these are just items that need to be dealt with before we are gone again.)Dad and Mom went out to lunch together--they're smiling for Anna, who had her camera out.The girls and Mom cleaned up the front porch--it needed it!And we had time to chat with Melanie and Abby. Abby has only become cuter since we left on the trip!Mid-week, John worked on taking the Families for Jesus decals off of our trailer, which we're getting ready to sell. We will be purchasing a smaller one to pull behind the bus (our current one is too big to legally pull with the bus!).
Dad, John, and Jesse, spent quite a bit of the afternoon working on the bus. Their project wasn’t going so well…
We’re looking forward to being back at our little church tomorrow morning. We’ve heard attendance has been down (several have moved to another home, and the nursing home in general doesn’t have as many), so I said to Dad we’ll need to work on that, and he agreed 🙂 … He said we’ll have to have a membership drive (teasing, of course!!). Seriously, we’re excited about seeing all our dear friends. We send back postcards to them each week, which is a bright spot in their week. We’re extremely grateful to Nathan, Melanie, Abby, Grandad, Grandma, and another family for taking over church while we’ve been gone.
Have a very blessed Sunday, trusting and resting in our Lord Jesus!
Sarah for the rest
“As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the Lordis tried: he is a buckler to all them that trust in him” (2 Samuel 22:31)”.
Here they are! Thank you to all my brothers and sisters who made this possible. We hope you enjoy a little sampling of the music. We had Anna’s video camera in the balcony picking up ambient sound and so it isn’t high quality audio, but you will get the idea.
(You’ll need to click the above link, and the sample is an MP3.)
Speaking of music, today I updated our speaking schedule to show a map of our next trip. We have quite a few evenings available, plus days available for concerts. Please contact us if you’re interested in coordinating something.
Thank you for your prayers and rejoicing with us over Baby Max. 🙂
Sarah for all the Maxwells
“The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him” (Psalms 28:7).
Someone asked in a comment who played what instrument and who sang:
Dad — Sings lead, also plays bass guitar Mom — Guitar Christopher — Sings bass sometimes, plays harmonica, mandolin, and occasionally bass guitar Sarah — Plays backup banjo (and takes pictures 🙂 ) Joseph — Sings lead in several songs and harmony, plays mandolin and guitar John — Banjo, sings bass in a song or two Anna — Sings lead and harmony, plays fiddle Jesse — Sings in a few songs, plays dobro, guitar, and hammer dulcimer Mary — Sings harmony in a few songs, plays guitar, bass guitar, and mountain dulcimer
As you can see on the overlap of instruments, they’re traded around for different songs!
The purpose of this post is to ask for prayer. Many of you graciously inquire as to how we are doing and what we are up to. Let’s jump right in … A number of weeks ago we learned Melanie was pregnant!! We were both very excited. She quickly started weekly lab draws to monitor hormone levels. A few weeks passed and then some warning signs. On Monday we received word regarding the last lab draw – a key indicator of the pregnancy’s viability indicated very bad news. Based on these, Melanie’s doctor asked that she have an ultra-sound, to “check viability.” That happened yesterday. We were fully prepared for the confirmation that indeed this pregnancy wasn’t going forward. Instead, we saw a tiny baby with a beating heart! What a shock! To go from a mind-set of a pending, unavoidable miscarriage to seeing a beating heart and little baby – wow!! Thank You Lord!! It was like a miracle, being given our child back!
The technician started the ultra-sound and said, “Here’s your baby.” Both Melanie and I looked intently as we knew that would be our only chance to see him/her. Next she said, “Let’s see what that heart-rate is … 150 bpm — that’s perfect.” It got quiet for a moment, and then Melanie almost sat up and said, “Excuse me, did you say heart-beat?” The tech repeated everything, working to convince us that things looked good! Both of our eyes quickly filled with tears as the reality of what she was saying sank in.
Yes, there are still many questions. But, for today, our baby is alive, and we hope well. However, we are once again in a pregnancy with a lot of unknowns and uncertainty – yet our God is fully in control. We’ve sure been here before.
We are excited and thrilled that Melanie is still pregnant. We are asking God to sustain this little life. Should He bring us to your mind, we would be grateful if you would remember us in prayer as well.
Last night, as is customary for us, we closed our family Bible time with a hymn. We have been singing through our hymn books (yes, we skip the ones we don’t know…) and last night’s song was “Take time to be Holy.” I’ll close this post with the fourth verse:
Take time to be holy, be calm in thy soul, Each thought and each motive beneath His control. Thus led by His Spirit to fountains of love, Thou soon shalt be fitted for service above.
We were close to being able to put the post up with the music clips, but we would have to use an outside website to put the video clips on, and all the options weren’t good options. It would have had a clickable link to their site and we couldn’t in good conscience allow it. One was even a “Christian” video site, and it was filled with sensuality and worldliness. It was obvious we made a bad decision to offer a video.
If we were to post the video without an outside host website, it would be extremely expensive because of the amount of data it would download for each view, so that’s not an option either 🙂 . We’re extremely sorry for the disappointment. We would have enjoyed posting it, but it just isn’t an option. We will have to start over and do audio only and that will take a bit more time. Thank you for understanding!
Enjoying home life again…
Sarah for the rest
“This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalms 118:24).
The Maxwell family and ministry blog of Titus2.com.
