California Wildflowers- Out back!

Last Father's Day I received a beautiful card with a very special gift. In the envelope was a package of California Wildflower seeds. Tonya, James and Emma sent them to from their cross country trip. Yesterday they bloomed in my yard! Click on the picture to enlarge them and read the marker.

My backyard has become full of rare and precious treasures fromthose who love me. I am blessed!

Psalm 16.8

A Sweet Lady - A Promise Fulfilled

I remember years ago reading this promise from Jesus: No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. (Mark 10.29-30)

I have never lived more than closer than 3 hours away from my immediate family since I left for Bible College in August 1976. At that time I lived a 3 day trip away. But a short time after I came across these words of Jesus. The pastor teaching the Bible Study that night told of the people he had in his life that were fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters. I have found the same in my life. I am rich with relationships of family.

One of the ladies who has treated me like a son is Sandy Mucci. What a joy to be with her and Dallas this past week! I am so thankful for their prayers for me.

God bless all the adopted moms and dads out there who fufill the words of Jesus for those who have left home for His sake and the gospel.

Memorial Day Weekend

Happy Memorial Day!

It is the official beginning of the summer season. It is a time to remember those who lost their lives fighting for freedom for us. It is a time for BBQ's and parades and reflection.

Plants will go into the gardens all over the northern part of our country this weekend. Fireworks have already begun to go off in my neighborhood.

It is a good time to think about our men and women in uniform over in Iraq and around the world who will spend this weekend away from family and friends. God bless America.

From My Friend, Pam Roy

How did we survive?

Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have.

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter and I used to eat it raw sometimes too, but I can't remember getting E-coli.

As children we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

Our baby cribs, toys and rooms were painted with bright colored lead based paint. We, often chewed on the crib, ingesting the paint.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. (Personal note: I remember playing kick the can and hide and seek after dark in Bellmore!)

We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt.

We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians, army, cops and robbers, and used our fingers to simulate guns when the toy ones or my BB gun was not available.

We ate cupcakes (Drakes!- my dad sold them!), bread and butter, and drank sugar soda, but we were never overweight; we were always outside playing.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't, had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren't as smart as others or didn't work hard so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade.

That generation produced some of the greatest risk-takers and problem solvers. We had the freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), the term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot.

How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention through out the next two weeks. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.

I can't understand it. Schools didn't offer 14 year olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) but they did give us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the sniffles.

What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything. (Our nurse at Martin Avenue was Mrs. Mensch)

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself. I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, PlayStation, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital cable stations.

I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of the dangers could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant 20, built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger.

What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot? He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm.

We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48 cent bottle of mercurochrome and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked (physical abuse) here too ... and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.

Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks remember why Tonka trucks were made tough... it wasn't so that they could take the rough berber in the family room, and Dad drove a car with leaded gas.

Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on two week vacations.

I should probably sue the folks now for the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent.

Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower and I didn't even know that mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive.

How sick were my parents? Of course my parents weren't the only psychos. I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof.

It was a neighborhood run amuck. To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes?

We were obviously so duped by so many sociotal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

How did we survive ??

Good Times/ Christian Fellowship

What a joy to serve with these guys!

Some Reasons Why My Granddaughter Makes Me Smile

Be sure to click on the pictures to enlarge them.
I see she is making you smile too!

What A Mother's Day!

This has been a great day- a wonderful day, a unique day.

For me the day began around 6:30am. Following my ritual of two cups of coffee, feeding the birds and the pond fish, then Moe, I began to prepare for my responsibilities as pastor.

I called my Mom at 8 to wish her a Happy Mother's Day before they left for church. Lucy called her mom in China as well as her sister to wish them the same.

We had a good service this morning. I asked Katrina Laux, our senior member of our congregation to pray for the mothers this morning- it was a beautiful prayer from the heart. It moved me deeply.

Following the service, as Lucy headed out to Flushing, Don and Angie (Tonya's in-laws) drove me to Mineola where we had lunch with James and Tonya and Emma. What a great time!


After lunch we headed back to Tonya and James' for dessert. It was nice relaxing and laughing together.




What transpired next I am still digesting. Tina walked me over to the Mineola Train Station. I sat down after I purchased my ticket and called a few other friends. No one was answering. It was 4:15pm.

A gentleman sat down next to me on the bench. He had a suitcase and laptop. I remarked, "You look like man who is traveling." Little did I know who I was talking to or the magnitude of what I just said. The man turned out to be Charles Weldon Wadelington (http://www.allbookstores.com/author/Charles_Weldon_Wadelington.html),
now being funded by an grant from Oxford to travel the US for 3-5 years and write a book on American Culture, taking the same travels W.E.B. Du Bois (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W.E.B._DuBois) took nearly 100 years ago. We talked for about 20 minutes before getting on the train and then another 25 minutes to my stop. When we finished we exchanged e-mail addresses and he told me I was going to have a line in his book! What a facinating man.

Dinner in Flushing with Lucy and Leo- beyond words- We went to a Korean BBQ Buffet. We grilled all our food at our "table". It was a lot like the food at that Mid Eastern Restaurant in Jerusalem... whew! I am stuffed. The meat and fish we did were so good. It was a new experience for me to BBQ the food right there on the table!

What a totally incredible day!

God bless all the Moms!
I finished my day by calling my mom on the way home.

It was a good day!

The Cumulative Effect

Aerial View of the south side of my backyard

Moe on squirrel watch,
Several are now missing tails
He is a tough guy when it comes to keeping the yard squirrel free!

Silver Dollars blooming for the first time in my backyard!

Beautiful Bell Flowers given to me by Margot- I have several now all over the yard

I just came in from some yard work. I love these early days of May- temperature in the mid 60's, cool breeze, this is my kind of weather! I do not do well in the heat.

This year I am experiencing a cumulative effect in the gardens. Seeds from past years are germinating. It looks like a bumper crop of lettuce is on the way. A few plants went to seed last year and this year I have little lettuce seedlings all over. The daylilies fall into that category. in a different way- they grow underneath the ground and add to their foliage each year. I have new shoots up all over. Other plants have dropped seeds as well and are starting to come forth now.

Emma Rose, still the prettiest flower in the yard!

It is a wondrous time!