May 7th -A Day of Prayer and Fasting for Saeed Abedini

Dear Friends,

This is the 216th day that Pastor Saeed Abedini has been imprisoned in Iran. May 7th is his 33rd birthday and the ACLJ has collected more than 42,000 birthday wishes and notes of encouragement from people all over the world that they are planning to take to him personally on his birthday. Awesome!

(if you haven't had a chance to sign one or write your own, please do so at SaveSaeed.org) These notes of encouragement are needed now more than ever! 

 The thought struck me yesterday how incredibly powerful in the spiritual realm it would be if 42,000 people are praying and fasting for him on that day.

Friends, lets make this happen in Jesus' name by getting the word out.

Will you help? Can you make it an event and invite all your friends on Facebook? Can you tweet about it? Or blog about it? Contact your local radio station? 

Let's shake heaven and earth with our prayers for Pastor Saeed on May 7th!

~It has been reported that Saeed's health has been deteriorating due to internal bleeding as a result of the beatings he's suffered. He's also been moved to solitary confinement. Its been stated that this is a tactic used to make a prisoner who hasn't cracked, deny his faith.

Please keep praying for him, dear Friends. 

Here are links to the latest articles that I have seen:

Here and Here

P.S. I just visited SaveSaeed.org and it looks like they have 575,828 letters/signatures now! PTL!

In Him,

Becky

Celebrating 14!

 Happy Birthday to Andrew today!

The birthday breakfast

Dad's prayer and blessing

The cake and the recipe he came up with himself

The gifts and then movie trivia!  (thanks Zac)  

The silly string and water balloons

The targets of the silly string and water balloons and their trash bag protection

The danger zone

The egg on a spoon relay

The friends who grew up together and love each other like family!

Happy Birthday to a wonderful young man who blesses all our lives and is so much fun to celebrate! 

~Becky

Hooray!

Someone passed their learner's permit test yesterday! Hooray!

~Becky

Heaven in a jar

This isn't a paid commercial, I just couldn't think of anything else to blog about. ; )

The other day, Andrew happened to have his own jar of this:

                                                            And I had a jar of this:

So, we decided to do a little taste test. Actually, I did. He was a little sick of his jar by this point. LOL

Even though this one:

is sold every 2.5 seconds throughout the world and has a worldwide day of celebration, ; )

I can hardly believe it but I picked this one!

 

It isn't as sweet and it had more of a hazelnut taste in my opinion. : ) 

And it is cheaper. Win, win! 

Yes, important things are being said on the blog today. LOL

~Becky

Wednesdays in the Word

 Psalm 112 is my new favorite! 

"Praise the Lord! 

Blessed are those who fear the Lord, 

who find great delight in His commands. 

Their children will be mighty in the land;

the generation of the upright will be blessed. 

Wealth and riches are in their houses, 

And their righteousness endures forever. 

Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, 

for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous. 

Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, 

who conduct their affairs with justice. 

Surely the righteous will never be shaken; 

They will be remembered forever. 

They will have no fear of bad news; 

their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord.

Their hearts are secure, they will have no fear; 

in the end they will look in triumph on their foes.

They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor,

their righteousness endures forever;

their horn (dignity) will be lifted high in honor.

The wicked will see and be vexed.

 They will gnash their teeth and waste away; 

the longings of the wicked will come to nothing." 

                                                               ~Becky

What a week

It was an emotional week due to the things that happened on Monday in Boston and on Wednesday in West, TX. So very sad.

Thursday night my BFF and I went to a Bless Israel fundraising event. We were blessed to hear Jonathan Cahn speak. She'd watched his speech at the inaugural prayer breakfast and I'd read his book, The Harbinger so we were pretty excited. He didn't end up speaking about his book or even about America. Because of the 65th anniversary of Israel as a nation, he spoke about the history, the prophecies and the miracles that brought it about. Fascinating but late night.

Friday we were riveted to the news between school subjects concerning the manhunt in Boston and praying that there wouldn't be anymore loss of life.

I think by Saturday we were all just plain worn out! We headed out early that morning for Joy's softball game and actually froze! Kind of a gloomy day. Very strange for FL in the spring. Great game though until my frozen self had to wait out the rest of the last inning in the car.
Since it was so cold and cloudy and my hubby needed to rest his very sore back, we cuddled up on the couch and watched some watched some of this

and had a pretty lazy day unless you count sampling some cupcakes, as being productive. ; )

Joy, 'the queen of cupcakes' has been busy! Last weekend she made Nathan chocolate cupcakes from scratch with Butterfinger icing, to celebrate his first job. Saturday she made these sundae cupcakes for Zac's girlfriend who just got her first job.

They were filled with ganache and were the best ones I've ever tasted! Living with her keeps me working out! LOL  This week she will get to learn how to make things from gum paste at the bakery! Too fun!

My BFF went to the ER last night and needs to have some tests done. : (
Joy and I headed to the hospital to be with her and bring her some Starbucks early this morning. (prayers appreciated on her behalf!) She's in a beautiful brand new 'faith based' hospital and it seemed like it was also a half empty one. If you have to be in the hospital, this was surely the best scenario I've ever seen. There are signs about Christ on the walls and pictures of the 6 days of creation and she had a nurse who mentioned that God will heal her. Amen!
Thanks to the fact that we can stream our church's services LIVE on UStream, we were in the hospital watching/having church while Hubby and Andrew were watching it at home (he'd thrown up several times last night) and our oldest boys were, of course, actually there. It was almost as good as all of us being there together. -Loved that we were all talking about the message when we saw each other again! There's nothing like the Word of God to put life into perspective.

Hope all is well in your world and that we all hold our loved ones more dear, after this week!
~Becky
(Edited to note: Tests showed my BFF to be in excellent health and all is well now PTL!)

If you aren't from California and you don't know what you are missing

then make these yummy taquitos. They aren't similar they are very GOOD and they make me feel better about being so far away from the best Mexican food there is!!! Not to mention, my family loves them and the kids want to eat them "every Tuesday!" (hooray, one less meal to plan!) They are that good!

Thanks Six Sisters' Stuff!

~Becky

Wednesdays in the Word

When I told my hubby that we are studying, Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World,
 in our women's Bible study class, he looked at me and said "You don't need that at all" and laughed. ; )
 -He's taken to calling me his 'A,' which is short for Type A. Yes, I'd say Martha and I have a few things in common especially when it comes to having company! LOL
Anyway, here's an awesome quote from the book that I found so comforting:

"When life comes blustering down the street,
 threatening to huff and puff and blow our house down,
we can rest in ease. 
Because we are hidden beneath almighty wings.
Because we have a strong older Brother right there beside us. 
And He's rolling up his sleeves. (love that part)
That's the reason we can leave our worry behind 
-not because there's nothing to be concerned about,
but because we have Someone who can handle them a lot better than we can." ~Joanna Weaver

 "Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty." ~Ps.91:1
Amen! There's no better place to be.
~Becky

Resigning from things

Last Thursday and Friday, I spent 7 hours doing yard work (and bribing my kids to help me) while trying to resign from being the house on the street with the most neglected yard. There were four days of rain in the forecast, so we raked and bagged leaves and planted grass seeds with a vengeance while watching the darkening sky. -Not until Friday night did it actually rain, and instead of four days worth, we got 20 minutes worth. Ugh!!!  Florida! Why do I ever believe the weather forecast?

Anyway, in the middle of that crazy, grimy time,
something epic was happening.
Nathan was finishing up high school. Friday, he took his last final exam here at Blessed Academy. Ahhhh!!!! He's dual enrolled at the community college, so he has two courses to finish up there and then he's ready to graduate.
*He and I are both SO glad that he is done homeschooling.*
We did it!!! Hooray!!!! And we didn't kill each other in the process. ; )
It was rough at times. (just keeping it real)
I'm thrilled to be resigning as his teacher and am looking forward to my new role as his biggest fan and cheerleader from here on out.
Totally love this guy!

~Becky, 
with two down and two more graduates to go! : )

Congratulations to our bench tech

Celebrating Nathan whose internship turned into a paying job! So proud of your diligence, Nate!
He will make a percentage of everything he repairs. Saturday he made $40 fixing a keyboard! Congrats!

~And I think it is awesome that the guy who loves the keyboard so much

also knows how to repair them! : )

~Becky

Wednesdays in the Word

I've been meditating on these verses lately:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." ~Mt. 11:28-29

Such a popular portion of scripture that everyone's almost got it memorized without even trying! So, I've been trying to look at it with new eyes and really memorize it.
It's been my prayer that I would indeed "come" and "learn" from Him.
I want to "be gentle and humble in heart" like He is.
And maybe it is because I am short, ; )
 but when I picture taking part of a yoke with HIM, I picture it being lopsided with all the weight on His side. Amen? True 'rest' can't be found anywhere else.

Blessings,
Becky

Painting and decorating

Here's what your daughter paints when she's been watching too many episodes of Shark Week:
LOL 

I had a chance to take some pictures of the paintings that she's kept and I love them all.
 (well, the shark one might creep me out a little) ; )

My favorite is the sailboat in the right hand corner. It is gorgeous up close.

She painted this scene to look like a black and white photo and it is my second fave:

This is her Lord of the Rings painting and the details are amazing even though you can't see them in this photo:

And when she isn't painting, she's playing softball (and hit another home run this week that hit the fence! Whoo-hoo!) 

or she's practicing for her internship at the bakery. Gotta love a Styrofoam cake.

We thankfully have tips galore and they were actually her great-grandmother's.

I'm guessing she took a class and needed to be able to tell her tips apart from other people's because some of them have nail polished 'M's" on them for Marie. (which makes them more special)

We also have some of her cake pans and CANVAS decorating bags, which happen to be the hardest things to clean.EVER.

So, I did a happy dance in Michaels the other day when we found these:

 Disposable cake decorating bags. Who knew they made these?! Utter awesomeness! : ) 

~Becky

For the love of vintage paper flowers!

So, I fell in love with these flowers on Pinterest.

And since Joy and I had just hollowed out two books, 

(for the "nerdy chic" book purses that turned out to be WAY harder than we thought and are still not done) we had plenty of pages to play with. 

You can learn how to make them here and use an old phone book if one shows up at your door anytime soon. (why do they still hand those out anyway?!) 

Bree thought it was very interesting that I was bringing sticks in the house. ; ) I tried to find the prettiest ones, if sticks can be pretty.

Here's the finished product. Sorry the picture isn't so great and that you can't really tell that they are made of pages from a book. Definitely cuter in real life.

 I love, love, love them!

When I looked at my front door, I was reminded that felt flowers are made the exact same way!  

And I love those, almost just as much! : )

~Becky

Wednesdays in the Word

"Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it." Hebrews 13:12

Such a beautiful story about loving others in Jesus' name by Edith Schaeffer. I was sooo challenged in reading it that I thought I'd share it today.

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Matt. 25:44-45

We have a friend who passes out zip lock bags to the homeless who are asking for money. Love that idea. Here is what she puts in each bag:
a granola bar
a Slim Jim
box of raisins
deodrant
shampoo
toothbrush
toothpaste
and the Gospel of John

Challenged to open my eyes and be a blessing to those around me,
~Becky