Watching God work

August 5, 2013

Last week, I was able to spend three amazing (cold!) days at Spirit West Coast with some of the most wonderful Compassion advocates around.

On Friday night, a few of us were standing among the crowd waiting for Bob Lenz to come on stage to speak. (Actually, they were all waiting for Thousand Foot Krutch to come on stage, but that is beside the point.) There were a few technical difficulties and Bob ended up having 5 minutes to give his 30 minute talk. But Bob is so great at what he does, he made all the right points that he needed to make. Then we started walking through the crowd, handing child packets to anyone who raised their hand. I handed a child packet to one young lady and she looked at the child’s birth date and said, “Wow, that is my birth date!” I told her to hang onto the packet, pray about it that night, and if she decided to sponsor the child, come by one of the Compassion tables the next day.

Saturday afternoon, Scott (our fearless leader!) gathered all of us to pray for the day and for God to bring the people to sponsor the children that He knew needed to be sponsored that day. Not too long after this, the young lady I had handed the child packet to came by the booth!

Jessie decided to sponsor little Jose in El Salvador!

I didn’t know when Jessie’s birthday was when I handed her that child packet, but God did. And He knew that Jessie was just the right person to sponsor little Jose. I will be praying for both of them as they begin this wonderful relationship together through Compassion.

What about you? Would you like to sponsor a child who shares your birthday? You don’t have to wait for someone to hand you a child packet at a concert, you can start your search today on the Compassion web site. You have the chance to make a difference in the life of a child living in extreme poverty today. Don’t wait, your Jose may be waiting for you.

Capture Your 365

July 31, 2013

Another week of photos to share!

ISO 800, 50mm, f/4.5, 1/160 sec

Day 201 – Shades of Blue: Just a few books from our book collection that just happen to have blue covers. Have you read any of these?

ISO 800, 50mm, f/5.6, 1/200 sec

Day 202 – Urban Art: Living out where we do, we don’t really see a lot of what would be considered ‘urban art’. But my son has quite a collection of stickers on the back window of his truck.

ISO 800, 160mm, f/16, 1/500 sec

Day 205 – Action: The youth group at our church does a park tour through the summer. Rather than meeting at the church, they meet at different parks each week, play games, spend time in worship, and DT, our youth pastor, preaches a lesson to the kids. This past week, they were playing frisbee which gave me a great chance to capture an action shot! I put the camera on shutter priority because I wanted to make sure I was able to freeze the action in this shot. Can you see where the frisbee is?

ISO 400, 28mm, f/5.0, 1/40 sec

Day 206 – Progress: A friend of mine brought me a whole bunch of fresh peaches! So I made attempted to make peach jam (it looks real syrupy, so we will probably use it on ice cream!), made 2 peach crisps, and still had extra peaches.

Question for you: What mode do you usually use to take pictures?

Compassion Hunt

July 29, 2013

Have you been able to participate in Compassion’s Photo Scavenger Hunt?

Here are the photos I was able to capture and share on my Instagram account:

This has been a fun scavenger hunt to participate in and I hope you enjoyed my photos! But if you are not currently sponsoring a child through Compassion, would you consider looking through photos of children who are waiting to be sponsored?

Capture Your 365

July 24, 2013

A week worth of photos for you this week!

ISO 400, 50mm, f/2.8, 1/10 sec

Day 194 – Cropped: Each month, on the Capture Your 365 photo challenge, we are encouraged to take a self portrait. For this photo prompt, I put the self timer on and decided to take a picture of just my hands knitting a dish cloth.

ISO 400, 50mm, f/2.8, 1/25 sec

Day 195 – Old and New: School supplies are showing up in the stores. I picked up a few boxes of crayons. Believe me, they are not for us! We have a big plastic drawer full of old crayons. I will be saving these new boxes to take with us to Mexico.

ISO 400, 50mm, f/2.8, 1/8 sec

Day 196 – I Spy: My daughter has discovered Sherlock Holmes.

ISO 400, 55mm, f/8.0, 1/50 sec

Day 197 – Dry: Things are usually pretty dry here in the California Central Valley during the summer. It is very rare for us to see any rain for months until the fall.

ISO 800, 50mm, f/5.6, 1/13 sec

Day 198 – Starts with S: I couldn’t resist the strawberries at the farmer’s market. You know what that means…

ISO 800, 48mm, f/5.6, 1/13 sec

Day 199 – A Source of Happiness: One more batch of strawberry jam! I hope to sell a few more jars, but we will be keeping some for all those PB&J sandwiches we like to eat.

ISO 800, 50mm, f/5.6, 1/8 sec

Day 200 – Two Scoops: I just love ice cream, no matter what the season.

Question for you: What is your favorite thing to photograph in the summer?

Letter from Abner!

July 22, 2013

Last week, I received a letter from Abner. He is one of my correspondent kids from Colombia. Here is what his letter says:

Dear Godmother,

I greet you with a big hug and many blessings in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ; I wish that God pours health, wisdom and economy. I am very grateful for the beautiful album and card. You show me the great love for me, I liked to see the beautiful creation of God reflected in the sea, what I liked was seeing the humpback whale. My family and I are praying for God to manifest much more in your life. I would like you to support me in prayer for my whole family knows the word of God. My family and I are in good health; I share with my family praying at the table. I want to tell you that at school I was in the 5th position, I excelled in art with the highest rate. I go the CDC every Saturday. Every day I learn about the word of God, the planet care, house rules and crafts. Sponsor, I’d like you to please send me pictures of your house. This Saturday the teacher taught us to do green heads, is dashed with sawdust, seeds, pantyhose and buttons for eyes. This seed will grow within 15 days. I want you to please read this verse from Matthew 13:37-38 “He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man the field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one,” We also want to say that I will be on holidays in the month of July for 3 weeks. I leave you with much joy wishing you great blessings in each of your activities.

I recently sent him a small photo album with pictures of our trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium back in January. I am so happy to know that he received it and has been enjoying it. The thing that makes me the most happy though is that his whole family knows the word of God. What a blessing that must be for Abner!!

Question for you: Has your sponsored child every asked for a photo of your home?