CHRISTMAS READIED

It’ll be December soon. After cleaning the church yesterday, we put up Christmas decorations. I’ve found discrepancies with the stable account but still thrill with the thought of the Incarnation of the Son of God.

WELL, the kids look ok, don't they?

My Dad filled up the house with pictures. The house is like a photo museum.

I found a photo of the time I took my kids to the Bible campground when they were little and decided to sketch it. But I decided not to spend time on me, just on the kids, and it turned out like this:

But after I was done, I realized I had a picture of something that looked like my kids were getting kidnapped by someone, since that woman doesn't look like me!

Hm...maybe I should've spent a little more time drawing myself...

Oh, and I didn't color it either. For some reason, I was pressed for time.

MY FAVORITE MEDALIST

Just before my sister moved down to Okinawa almost 10 years ago, a huge, flat carton arrived at the front door--she had won a color TV! One of those things you KNOW you will never, ever in a million years win, right? She hadn't even bothered to open it then, just let it be sent that way. The TV was set up on a small table in her basement apartment. Well, it made the table look small.

Altho' for a few weeks, I didn't get to see my critter friends at the park, I got to see animals in their natural habitats anyway, via nature TV shows that flashed across that large screen. That's a bat flying over the surface of the water!

Oh--hanging around the edge of the monitor frame are Joyce's graduation tassel on the right side and the longer thing on the left is the blue ribbon at the end of which is the medal for winning the voice contest. And the Clione plankton, monkey, and turtles on rock down the side of the picture are souvenir magnets nearby.

After my stepmother's funeral, I saw my sister running around to the banks, city office, post office, etc., taking care of legal matters concerning the accounts, bills, house, property, inheritance. Many great leaders would be willing to make "brave sacrifices" necessary to stand at the front of a large army. But I wonder how many would spend hours in the dark reminding elderly parents to take their medicine (repeatedly because they forget if you tell them just once) or would humble themselves to work in languages they had to constantly ask for help? I'm sure Joyce felt a lot better being handed a medal for first place than being given repeated explanations by the clerk.

Daddy had several small handwritten memos in his study: "No holiness without humility." Qualities of humility, meekness, integrity have been so forgotten, even in the contemporary Church. But I think I saw one medalist that, at least unconsciously, hadn't forgotten.

PASS IT ON

I better skip a few drawings and move on, or I'll never get through my sketches. 

Remember Scot Garner, the modern day Bezaleel-Oholiab who fashions offering vessels for God? He gave a challenge one Wed. night to the older generation to set an example for the younger folk, using the Century Plant, which blooms every 70 years. Anyone have a guess as to what I had to sketch that night? When a reference photo showed the height of the plant next to a human being, well, the drawing just had to be, from Scot's talk, a grandfather passing on what he had to his grandchild.

CONSECRATED SERVICE

I had barely stepped through the Gushikawa Baptist Doors when I saw on the left shelf a miniature wooden model of the church building, complete with four cars in the parking area. Slit and hinged roof made it perfect for dropping in an offering on the way out the door after worship/fellowship. If God had wanted you to see how really good Scot's work was, you'd be able to see the stairs, rails, kanji, rooftop cross.

Three "S's":a.Scot Garner's Woodwork Skill, b.Stuffed Animals (used for videos) hiding in the shadows, and c.Sanitation necessities in the front--God uses all things consecrated to Him.

PROBABLY THE SKETCH THAT GOT THE BIGGEST RESPONSE

Here is the sketch made from the photo of the Christmas 30 years ago. OK; it was actually the photo that got the "biggest response", but the sketch was shown at the same time, and I just pretended everyone was smiling at the picture I drew! Hey, there's no law against getting encouragement from anywhere you can find it, right?

WHEE!

Fathers toss their young ones up in the air. I used to find air turbulence unreasonably frightening until I imagined my Heavenly Father outside the aircraft giving me playful attention, and then it really helped. 

"The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms" (Deut. 33:27)

EVER AT THE HELM

When my sister asked me to look through my stepmother's photos, I found one during her days as a single evangelist. It showed her participating in boat evangelism with a handful of young people. But we weren't sure about using the picture, because it was quite old, and we didn't know if people would show up who even knew about those days.

The day of the funeral, someone came I didn't recognize at all...it turned out she was 13 when my stepmother, a single evangelist to the island of Ishigaki, had led her to the Lord. It had been 50 years since then--and yes, she has been walking with the Lord all this time, but she had been completely out of touch with my stepmother--but she heard about her going to Glory, and she had come to the funeral. She recognized the young man in the orange jacket in the center of the picture--he went on to Bible School after that and has pastored several decades. He came and sat behind her at the funeral.

Yes, our God knew where that boat in the sea was headed 50 years ago, and He knew which picture would spark encouraging memories last week. What a great Navigator we serve. If only more would get on board and know Him too.

FROM OKINAWA

  This is being written from the other side of the ocean.

This was the view from the balcony of the home of our Saturday women's meeting.

I'd gotten here before I realized I'd left my adapter stick at home, so I can't show my sketches in the computer. Photos will have to do for a while. I'll upload the sketches and their explanations when I get home. When that will be is anybody's guess.

I'll be going back Tuesday, Nov. 29, crossing this ocean, I guess. Kinya has said he'll meet me on the other side, got my plane ticket for me and agreed to help me take an extra suitcase home when I asked him to come meet me at the airport!

A CHRISTMAS PHOTO

  How was the wise man to know that one day the baby she held in her arms would grow up to be the pastor of the church and officiate at her funeral?  Yes, Yoneko Nishino, one of the women in the Gushikawa Baptist Church, brought a photo from a church Christmas play 30 years ago in which she and my stepmother were two of the three wise men, and...yes, that's her son, Takashi, my stepmother is cradling!

  They didn't know. But God did. And He cradles all of His own in His arms--all the time. How secure we are who rest in Him. I know I am a month early, but...Merry Christmas.

(Oh--when I saw this photo, I couldn't refrain, and ended up sketching it. I don't have the adapter with me--I think God wanted this photo shared instead.)

ON SISSY'S BACK

My stepmother told me when she was just a baby, her mother was so busy, she would strap her to her 7-yr-old sister’s back and go out to the fields to work. One day, she lost her balance and fell smack on her back—in other words, on the infant’s face—and couldn’t right herself. She lay there on the ground like an upturned turtle--for hours until someone came along and helped her up. By then, the baby had stopped breathing and was turning purple. The older sister was sure she had murdered her baby sister.

But God had other plans for this baby and couldn’t let it die just yet. When the grandmother saw it, she held it upside down by the legs and gave it several firm whacks in the fanny as a physician might do, and a strong cry brought relief to the parents...and the sister.

SIDETRACKED

Oh--because of my stepmother's recent worsening of health, with the possibility of my flying down to Okinawa in the near future instead of next year (I'd been looking forward to doing that in January)...well, I got sidetracked and forgot to mention my last drawing in yesterday's post.

It was composed from a photograph taken in 1987, at our wedding reception, in which Kinya and I sang duet "As For Me And for my House, We Will Serve the Lord". 

I don't have to worry about likeness for pictures like this. Artists can be turning all white upstairs this year, but everyone was young once, right?

SKETCHING NOW

Let me try this again, as I've been making oodles of drawings, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to keep sending them to everybody separately, and I can never keep track of which ones I sent whom, so...I'll just put most of them up here and hope if you're interested, you look here, ok? (I know. I should have another separate site. I don't know how to set up those things. I barely got this far.) Here are three of some of my more recent ones. Blogging is supposed to be out-fashioned, but I'm not doing it to be "with it"; just to let you see the pics I draw, whoever I usually send them to or whoever else would be interested.

Corner Cove was the place I spent the most time when I first came to the park in 2016. Last week, the Lord gave me a real pretty sight as I took my walk there. Some of the leaves were red and yellow, so there was no need for flowers; it was so colorful. The mallards came by too, adding music to the quiet atmosphere.

A few minutes later, when I saw the Akatombo on some rocks on the side of the pond, I was sure it would fly away but began quickly sketching it. Imagine my delight when it came back and landed on the drawing pad when I'd finished, as if looking at itself, saying, "Wow--a picture--of ME!"

I put the Nov. 1-14 drawings into smaller than 1" form so I could post all of them at once, but then they wouldn't load. I don't know how this computer stuff works, so I'll just show you three of them and show you new things drawn from here on. Well, ONE more. I found an old photo of my kids and tried to sketch it. the cheapo journal I got has a translucent cover so is perfect to slip this sketch behind as the first page--keeps the picture from getting unnecessarily dirtied, plus is a nice picture to look at!

The last time I posted, it was about Daddy having gone Home. It looks like my stepmother is getting ready to join him soon. Please pray for us.