November 19 - 22, 2016

Saturday, November 19 - I woke up early and enjoyed the peace and quiet around the house. I watched the First 5 weekend wrap-up, and read my chapter in Proverbs and then did my daily Bible reading. It was good to be able to do all of those things without distractions. It is a rare morning that I get to do that.

The girls woke up, and had cereal for breakfast. They played and had a great time for several hours before one of them had to go home, and we had to start getting ready to go and volunteer for the Compassion Experience. We got ready to go, and left to meet our youth pastor and his wife, who were going to ride with us. We also met my friend, and handed her daughter back over to her.

We arrived early for our volunteer shifts. We thought it would take us longer than it did to get there. But that was good, because we had time to change into our Compassion shirts and be "trained" by the volunteers about to turn over their spots to us. The Youngest Princess and I worked together. It was our job to clean the iPods, and earphones after each group finished the experience. We were also to send them away kindly and offer them stickers. And keep a count of all the headphones that came back to us. By counting headphones, we counted heads, and knew how many people went through. It was very busy at times, and very slow at times. But we were all in close proximity, and we had fun teasing and cutting up with one another.

There were two guys who work for Compassion (not volunteers), who were working in the room at the end where people could sponsor children if they wanted to. As the sun went down, and it got pretty chilly where we were working, the Youngest Princess left me and hung out just up the stairs in the room with E and D. They taught her what to say to people as they finished, and let her do some of their job. She thought that was fantastic. And when it was slow going, they taught her how to shoot a rubber band, and various other tricks with rubber bands.

At one point I stepped up the stairs to check on her, and the Young Prince, our youth pastor and his wife decided to go through a story, leaving only my Prince and the Compassion worker at their stations. When I came back, they were discussing how My Prince was "Volunteer of the Night". The Compassion worker even gave him a "Volunteer of the Night" special name tag. But just a few minutes later, we had two groups come in, and My Prince forgot to do something, and so he lost his "Volunteer of the Night" status, and it was then bestowed upon me (the only other volunteer working at that point). It wasn't long before I forgot something and lost my status as well. The Compassion worker kept sneaking stickers to our youth pastor's wife, so that she could sneak and stick them on My Prince's back. She in turn involved our youth pastor and the Young Prince. So My Prince had quite a few stickers stuck all over his back by the time we were done. We had a great
time. We made some new friends, and we helped new children find sponsors, so we helped "change the story" as our shirts said.

We left tired, cold and hungry. We went with the Young Prince's suggestion for dinner. When we got there and ordered, they had changed their meat, and I (because I have a texture thing about biting into peppers and onions) could not eat my tacos. We ran through Chick-fil-A drive through, and I ate a Chick-fil-A sandwich on the way home.

We dropped our youth pastor and his wife off at their car, and then we came home and went to bed. The Youngest Princess and I read a chapter of Anne of Avonlea and then we went to sleep.

Sunday, November 20 - I woke up and got ready for church. It was as good a morning as a Sunday morning could be.

My Prince had some items he wanted to put on the remembrance table to use as visuals during his sermon. So we gathered those up after we were ready for church. We took them and set them up as he wanted, and then I went to Sunday school. Sunday school was good. I enjoy the friendship, and catching up with and banter that goes on every week. And I enjoy the solid teaching from God's Word that we receive.

My Prince did a great job preaching, and even though one of his visuals did not work as planned, it worked in a different way, and all was well. At the end of the service we had a "Send Off Celebration" for one of our young men who is going to be an interim youth pastor at another local church. It was a sweet time of memories and prayer.

After church, I was moving our things off the remembrance table, and putting the original decorations back, when one of the candle holders (with birdseed all around the candle) tipped over just as I put it on the table and birdseed went everywhere. We had to move the table and get the vacuum cleaner out. It was a mess! But on the positive side, by the time we got it all cleaned up and got to the restaurant for lunch, there was no wait. Everyone else had already had their lunch and made it home for their Sunday afternoon naps.

We ate and went home too. I studied for my Sunday evening class and for my Bible Drills class. I needed glow in the dark stars for my Bible Drills class, so we left early so that we could run by the store on our way to church. Of course, the store did not have what I needed, so I had to improvise. I bought this really cool flashing wand instead. I'll tell ya how we used it in a minute.

First, my Sunday evening group. One of us had a daughter that was sick, and another one of us was headed out of town, so that left just two of us. But we had a great discussion about our chapter and our week. We also had a discussion about something that has kind of been on both of our hearts. And we both committed to pray about the situation, and what, if anything we should do about it. It was a very sweet time.

Then in Bible Drills class. I had all of my kiddos except one. They were wound up after play practice, but they did fairly well learning our verse. My helper was out of town, so I asked another friend to help me out. She was gracious and did help me. Our verse was Matthew 5:16. After we had gone over it several times, and the kids were pretty familiar with it, I turned out the lights and brought out my cool flashing, glowing wand. They all got to hold the wand and say the verse. They all did a great job!

We came home, ate dinner, read our chapter of Anne, and went to bed.

Monday, November 21 - We slept in a little. The kids slept in a lot. Then we got ready and went to church to meet up with some of the other volunteers to go and help at our local Operation Christmas Child collection center. We helped check some of the boxes that came in and made sure that the labels were taped on correctly and that they had rubber bands on them so that the lids would not come off. The guys helped to load boxes of shoeboxes onto trailers that would take them to Atlanta to then be sent around the world. After helping there, we came home, and then went for a late lunch early dinner at a local Mexican restaurant. Then we came home and relaxed and enjoyed our evening at home.

Tuesday, November 22 - The Young Prince went to work for a local home and farm center. I got up early enough to make sure that he had some Plexus and some breakfast before he left for his day at work. My Prince went to work. The Youngest Princess woke up and came downstairs just about
the time I started my daily Bible reading. I asked her if she wanted to join me. She did, so I read it out loud to her. She stopped me from time to time to ask questions. It was a sweet time together.

My Prince came home and ate lunch with us.

We washed clothes and go ready to go on our trip to see the Oldest Princess.

The Young Prince came home from work. He had a pretty good day, but he was pretty tired. My Prince, the Youngest Princess and I delivered extra Thanksgiving food to a couple of families. Then we came back home and met up with the Young Prince.

We went to church for our mid-week service on Tuesday night this week. It was a very sweet time of sharing what all we were thankful for. It was encouraging to hear people talk about the spiritual blessings that they were thankful for instead of just the material blessings that we are all thankful for. I really enjoyed it.

We came home, did a little packing, and washed some more clothes. We read our chapter of Anne, and went to sleep.