A heart for Missions

Most of my followers have been watching, praying and some, even holding their breathes to see if and when our Amy would return.

I have good news! AMY IS HOME!

And I am really thanking God for her safe return. We had a few issues with her return flight, but after many hours of talking on the phone, interceding and getting blessed by a new one time donation the flight was secured. She boarded the plane in Honduras and arrived in Kansas City the evening of the 18th.

Over this last month, we have been helping her transition back into civilian life so to speak. After months in Belize and Honduras with no running water, toilets, clean drinking water and sleeping with tarantulas getting back into the American swing of things has taken a while. I have never seen a young lady so very thankful for the small things in life.

Amy is here only for a few more months. She will leave in May if she has enough money and solid sponsors. She will either head on to Colorado for an internship there or she will follow her heart to Thailand to work with women being saved from the sex trafficking movement.

While Amy is here in my home we have been taking her job hunting but that is not going so well. A month later and she has only had one interview.

With all that said, let me tell you that God is good and will make a way for Amy to continue in her 3rd DTS training with YWAM (Youth with a mission) Want to read more about YWAM? Click here.

One of our neighbors who grew up as a missionary in the Philippines came up with a wonderful idea. I had been teaching Amy how to make home made breads so that she would have the practical skill should she need it. We had taken a few samples for them to try.
The result?

Bread Tasting Parties!

So now we will be asking our friends, family and neighbors to host a bread tasting party. The object? To sell bread for Missions.

Raising money for Amy has been very difficult. Finding people who have a heart for missions and a little change in their pocket is a rare experience.
But everyone needs bread.
And most people want healthy bread.
Combine those 2 with a tasting party and we are praying for a smashing success. Our church is not a "normal" church in the respect of having bake sales or fund raisers. So all of this must be done outside of the church and on our own.

Here is a sample of some of the breads we are making and also us in the process.
And for those of you who thought this was a home schooling blog, it is! My little ladies have had their hands in this project from the start! Train them up in the way they should go and they will not depart from it.

Stuffed Breads.. these make a delicious dinner.

Getting ready to braid

The braid before rising.

Amy making Indian Pav Bread

Cutting the Pav

Finished Indian Pav 

 They taste similar to Lambert's throwed rolls. I think I have found their secret recipe!

whole wheat organic dinner rolls

See how beautifully they rise before baking?

The beginning of Cinnamon Rolls. This is our household favorite.

Beautiful creation!

Partially glazed and partially not Cinnamon rolls.

Swiss Braided Bread

Is this crust not absolutely amazing?

It turns out so beautiful every time

This braid is Amy's personal favorite to eat.

Herbed braided breads.

More herbed braids.

Cinnamon Clove braids

Absolutely PERFECT with a cup of hot tea!

You may be asking what you can do?

* If you live local consider hosting a bread tasting party. It would consist of preparing a soup, a salad and a drink, and then inviting your friend over for a great time. Bread will be available to try during the evening with your meal and also for purchase on the spot and pre-orders.

* Pray for Amy. She so desperately needs to be covered in prayer at this time in her life. She has a ton of decisions that need to be made and wants to be sure she is clearly hearing from the Lord.

* Become a sponsor. Consider a one time offering to Amy or become a partner with her. No amount is too small. I PROMISE! Every dollar gets her one step closer and in foreign countries you get more for that dollar as well. It is very expensive to travel (remember my post about having over $500 in shots and pills we didn't know about until the week she left?) and Amy is responsible for all of her expenses. You can donate directly through YWAM or mail a check here. I will post instructions on how to donate through YWAM in a separate post soon.

* Lastly, buy bread. It's 100% organic whole wheat. It's that simple.

More Thanksgiving fun...

One of the units that Blake has been working on in Home Economics is cooking. Baking to be exact.

So out come the pans and we set off to do an afternoon of baking.

We made 3 loaves of lumpy bread, but they tasted good. Two pans of cinnamon rolls and 3 pans of dinner rolls. Here is Blake rolling up the cinnamon rolls.

Here are some of their creations. Hali and Blake worked on these for quite a while. The end result was very yummy!

We gathered pine cones and other outdoor treasures at the beginning of the week. Here the kids are painting their pine cone swags. Next week we will hang them on the front doors. They turned out wonderful!

My lefty has to concentrate to make sure she get's the look she wants.

Fantastic!

While outside gathering pine cones we also gathered leaves in order to make leaf print place holders. Once the paint dried we added the names of those people we were spending Turkey day with.

Remember that stamping I told you about in the last post? Here is an example of how they turned out.

This is Robert Frost "The Road Not Taken".

And this one is John Keats "To Autumn". The kids are giving these away as gifts to their hostesses.

Every good home schooling mom has a good fail once in a while, right? Well... I came upon this awesome recipe that was INDIAN CORN. You were supposed to take corn puff cereal, marshmallows, dehydrated fruit and Fruit leather and make these really cute corn cobs with a stick in them. Suzie taught class this particular morning because I was called away on business. To say the least she was frustrated with both me and my recipe when I came home.

Total fail. But they sure tasted yummy according to Hali.

They just fell apart.

And this is what it became.

Moving on... These are my little Turkey day Mascots. They currently reside on my bookcase in the livingroom.

Left over Africa work

Abby did a monkey one as well that turned out very cute. I don't know where the picture has gone.

Jamestown Lapbook. Just in time. I had Blake and Hali do this project and told them they had less than 2 hours to finish it and get the mess cleaned up. You can tell they rushed through it.

I wonder why Blogger insists on turning my pictures every which way but right?

To start our Asia unit off, we made home made papers. We will construct a journal next month when we return from break.

Digging through the recycling box to find the colors they wanted.

Here you can see how they are drying the paper a bit on the frames before they start to remove it. They made green and Orange paper this time.

As part of our Antarctica Theme we did the blubber experiment. I couldn't resist since we covered both Whales and Penguins. The kids thought it was great fun to pressure each other into keeping their hands in the water. Hali made it 4 minutes without any blubber as protection.

I think that is is for my random posts of this week. I did want to mention that along with Frost and Keats we also studied Francis Scott Keys "The Star Spangled Banner". I thought it appropriate on Veterans day. What amazes me is that even though it is our national anthem, most Americans only know the first and last verse. Most don't know the story behind it.