Linden Invite

     A few days ago, our cross country team was at the Linden Invite.  Our Junior High team did very well.  Four people on the team got meddles, I being one of them. 

    At the end of the race, I thought I was going to faint!  The only thing that kept me going was what the coach of the Heartland team had told his people.  Right before the race, our team was praying together and after we finished praying, we heard the other team's coach say this:  "There are twenty meddles!  I expect at least half of them!  You hear me!? Half of them!"  And from then on, I made it my goal not to let one Heartland person finish before me. In the last half mile, I finally past the last of the Heartland team!  I didn't let one of them beat me!  Another person on our team, was the fist girl to come in and even though she finished a couple places behind me, she only let two Heartland people come in before her!

    Over all, I would say that our team had a victory at this race.

Our team

If people just thought that way about me.

Behold, here I am: witness against me before the LORD,

and before his anointed: whose ox have I taken?

or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded?

whom have I oppressed? or of whose hand have

I received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith?

and I will restore it you.

1 Samuel 12:3

    Now it takes a lot of  courage to say something like that!  But when Samuel said this, he was old and he thought it was better to say sorry and return what he had taken, then to be held accountable for it on judgement day.  Here's what they said in return:

And they said, Thou hast not defrauded us,

 nor oppressed us, neither hast thou taken

ought of any man's hand.

1 Samuel 12:4

    Wouldn't be great if people thought that way about you!  I know I would like it.  The problem is, that they don't.  I think that the reason they answered this way, was because he had just won a battle for them the night before.  I think some people really thought way, but I am almost sure that the night before, at least one person out of all forty-thousand people that fought in that war, could have named something against him.  The reason why I think this, is because Samuel isn't God and the Bible says: All men have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Romans 6:23.   They even said bad things about God who is perfect! 

     Even though we can't accomplish this, we should make it our goal to have people think this way
about us.  We could wittiness so much more effectively if everybody thought of us this way.

Bible Bee is over!

    The Bible Bee is over and done!  I did pretty good but I did not win at regionals or make it to nationals.  But I think that I won because I did my best, and you can't loose when you memorize God's word because, you gain something from it every time.

I said that I was taking a break from blogging but.........

    I said that I was taking a break from blogging but when your brother gets a couple inch crack in his head I think you can make an exception.  Yesterday when he was riding his bike he turned his head to say something to one of the neighbor children, and he ran his bike into one of the neighbor's cars (it wasn't exactly his fault that he hit it because it was parked halfway  over the sidewalk), and he went over his handle bars.  His head probably wouldn't have broken if it hit somewhere but the hinge (we aren't sure if it hit the hinge or the part where the hard plastic over the tail lights meets the meddle).  At the hospital he got eight staples in his head, the nurse said that it was a bad split, and Dad said that it was about three inches.  He got home around 10 o'clock and has acted just fine since then.  I will post some pictures a little later.

 

blogging break & Bible Bee

I am sorry that I haven't been posting for awhile.  I have been getting ready to compete in  the National Bible Bee and it takes a lot of time.  Please pray that I will do well at the competition August 27th.  Until then I will not be on my blog much, but I hope to be posting more after the competition.

I Peter 3:15 ~ "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:"

(Photo credit my sister Lydia)

Our Computer!

    Early this morning, Haley opened the computer and heard a sound, click click click!  Then a message popped up.  No hard drive!  Oh no.  We found out that our hard drive had crashed, and that we had lost a year of stuff.  Right now I am posting off a computer at Staples.  Thank God they have high speed Internet!

Bible Bee!

      Lately I've been doing allot with bible bee.  At first I was falling behind, but when my dad made a deal with me, that if I got all five hundred scriptures perfect, he would take me to Canada, I quickly caught up.  I have to memorize 9 verses a day.  But today I am going to memorize 18 verses.  Pray for me that I will be able to memorize them all, for the glory of God.  Even though I am excited about being able to have a chance to go on a fishing trip, I'm doing it ultimately for the glory of God.

Tennessee!

      Last week my Dad, Vince (my brother), and me went on a vacation down in Tennessee, while our sisters were at a conference.  We stayed at our Grandpa's house, which is in Fairfield Glade.  It is in  a ideal location for people who want to go site seeing.  Every thing we saw was about ten or fifteen minutes away.  Here are some pictures that Vince and I took.

This is a view over the fourteenth hole of the golf course.

I thought that it would be a cute picture to have Vince under a ledge like this.

I figured out later that copperheads like living in places like that.

We ended up finding a copperhead a few feet away.

Grandpa and Vince under a hangover 

This is a interesting kind of moth that I found.

Can any of you tell me the name of this species.

In this picture I am leaning over a Cliff.

We brought a pop up camper.  It broke so much,

we spent all our spare time on it!

This is a cave that I found.

This rock I thought looked like a hand.

In this picture is of Vince walking across a swinging bridge.

Vince had just dropped his water bottle over the edge,

and I caught it in this photo.

Dad, Vince, and me.

This is one of falls at Burgess falls

I thought that this was a fun picture.

I walked the whole way to the falls without shoes on.  On the way I kicked a root,

I kicked it so hard that it tore my foot open.  After that I had a hard time walking.

There were a lot of water snakes down at the bottom of the falls.

We did not know what kind of snakes they were.  Do you?

This is the bigger of the two falls.

I love this picture that I took of Burgess falls.

A picture from above the falls.

These are some ledges that I thought were beside the falls.

My favorite saying

      I have been thinking about the saying:  A stitch in time saves nine.  You can apply it almost anywere in your life.

Death

      Death most people hate the word.  It reminds them of some loved one that died.  People come so close to death each day that they usually don't even think of it until someone dies.  I one came centimeters from death.  It happened like this:  I was out helping our neighbor cut down a tree.  They couldn't cut this one piece unless they got that piece of the ground.  The piece was too big to pick up, so they took their car jack and jacked that huge branch up.  There was this log on the other side, that I thought I would pick up, so I just reached under that hulk of a limb, and just as I was about to get that branch, when  the limb fell!  I could not move.  I remember seeing my Dad (who was mowing the lawn) start running towards me (I have never seen him run that fast in my life and I never will again.  At least I hope).  But he was not there in time to help.  Those two men (blubbery guys), had God himself help them lift up that log!  Some people would say that they had a big rush of adrenaline, but I belief it was god!  Later that night those same men tried to pick up that log (it was half the size it had been early), and they could not for any thing.  That night we had to go to a party, it happened to be at a doctors house.   The doctor said that if the log would have been just centimeters to the right or left, I would have either died or have been paralysed.  That's one story of somebody getting close to death.  I think it was god who saved me but most people would say, I just got "lucky".  That story most likely got you to think about death, but what do you do about it?  You must trust god with your sin.  You cry out to god and ask him to take your sin, he will.  He will give you new life.                              

Please Pray

    Just a little bit ago I read a post that had a pray request in it.  The blog owner asked for people to spread the word.  Click here to view the post.

Please Pray~ Alabama

       I'm sure you have heard about the tornado devastation down in Alabama.  From what I've heard and seen the devastation is horrible.   Last night our family was looking at pictures from the tornado.  It was amazing how big they were.  They took out whole towns.  On this website they have a couple of stories that I thought were very interesting.  I would like you to pray for the families that were devastated.

Japan

   I read this post about Japan and I thought that the money that he wanted people to donate was going to a good cause.   Please click here and consider giving money.  

      The other day I my mom showed our family a video on You Tube that when along with the Easter.  I thought it was really good.  Click here if you would like to view it.

Taming Your Tongue

"But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison."

James 3:8 

That scripture explains that the tongue is so powerful that no man can tame it.  Another scripture says:  "The tongue deviseth mischiefs; like a sharp razor, working deceitfully." (Psalms 52:2)  Here is another: "Thou lovest all devouring words, O thou deceitful tongue." (Psalms 52:4).  You know how people swear and all that bad stuff?  That scripture explains why. People are so perverse that they love that sort of stuff.  In a book I once read it said that the reason they liked somebody was because he could swear wonderfully.  Now that's pretty bad.  In the verse at the top it says that no man can tame his tongue.  Even though it says that I would like to encourage you to try to tame your tongue.  You never can set the bar to high, because the higher you set it, the harder you'll have to try to reach it.

"Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof."(Proverbs 18:21)  The word life means: salvation.  The word death means:  not excepting Christ.

"And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that [were] on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." ( Joshua 24:15).

Good posts

       Lately I have been looking at a couple of blogs and I came to some amazing post!  I thought that some of you might like to see the posts that I liked.  Here are the links, The Resurrection, God's Power Made Perfect.  If you have already read it good for you, but for those who have not, I strongly encourage you to make it a priority.

Giveaway!

I entered in the Element Bars giveaway and the Spry Gum  Giveaway.  I thought you might like to enter also.

Juggling is one of my hobby's and I thought I should post on it.

                                                        The first two pictures are lucky shots because they are not blurry

The next couple are a little more wild!

When your juggling your arms just "fade" away

In this picture the camera picked up my head nicely

                                                 I was throwing the ball under my leg in this pic.
                                                                
Photo credits Lydia .

The birds are back!

The birds are back, but each night the water freezes.

It makes the geese very angry.

Near the end of the day the ice melts.

Then the pond behind the our house is full of geese.

 I have been taking some  pictures of spring and I thought these were fun ones.

Three more to go!

        On April 1st I lost one of my teeth!  That means I have three more teeth to loose!  I ended up using the tooth for an April fools trick at the end of the day.  It happened like this:  I put the tooth back in my mouth and went into the living room.  Then I went up to my mom and toled her I had another tooth loose.  I asked her to wiggle it.  Well, I bet you know what happened when she touched that tooth!  It really surprised her when that tooth came out.  That's my last story from April fools day.

April fools

        Have you played any April fools day tricks yet?  I've played a couple already today.  My first one was on my dad, he had left for work and I was trying to think of a good one to play on someone, when I thought I would try calling dad and seeing if I could trick him that he left something here.  So I called him and and told him he had left one of his keys at home, well he told that he had all of his keys and said I must have a different set.  I was not about to give up so I told him he had left his wallet, and this time he believed me, but he said it did not matter because someone he worked with was going to take him out for launch, and he just would stop home after that, then I told him that it was April fools day, and he laughed about it.  That's my story.  Tell me yours.

 

He will help you

Today I was reading the Light and the Glory when  I came to this text: "Once we lay down His Cross, our fallen nature is such that it strongly resists taking it up again."  And right then and there, I cried out to God and asked Him to help me hold up His cross.  And I encourage you to do the same thing, because He will help you so much.