I am slogging my way through Teach the Children after being gifted it from my mom as a thrift store treasure. It is long, meaty and not a super easy read. By the time I finish the book, I might just forget what was in the beginning! So I will be posting something I learn every week or so from it to help me remember.
Here’s Principle #1: What it Means to Teach Children to Walk Uprightly
In the Doctrine and Covenants 68:28 it says, “And they shall also teach their children to pray, and to walk uprightly before the Lord.” What does this mean?
In the book, the author, Neil Flinders, explains what it means. He states that animals walk on all fours. Man walks on two feet, or uprightly. When we teach our children to walk uprightly, we are teaching them to act as children of God, and not like animals. So that means teaching our children manners, morals, impulse control, faith in God as a loving Heavenly Father, faith in Jesus Christ, and love for all mankind. This little nugget of truth is helpful for me every day. If my child grunts or growls to communicate, I remind myself that he or she is acting like an animal. So I use my Nicholeen Peck parenting skills to say, “Just now, you were acting like an animal. Let’s act like a child of God and have a ‘do-over.'” Then I explain how I want the child to answer, then we have the “do over.”
What is the biggest lie about education? Is it that increasing money spent per pupil increases test scores? Is it that more time in the classroom means better scores? JaKell Sullivan tells us what the biggest lie is and how it relates to Common Core. This is a video every parent must watch!
Whew, I just got back from taking my homeschooling son to football practice at our local high school. He had to be there for a meeting right when school ended. It was a zoo with all the cars of kids leaving or being picked up! Yes, school here in AZ started this week, they are on day 3. I feel so sad for these kids having to go back to school the first week in August! Back to school time is hopefully not happening for the rest of you until September. I thought I would put up some videos, one each day, over the next few weeks, about education as official back-to-school time is here or coming up!
So here’s the first video I picked from last year’s Agency-based Education Conference held in Utah by Oak Norton.
What happens when a dad pulls his daughter out of public school for half the time, and lets her watch Netflix all day? Watch this video to hear the story of Rebekah and what she did after she got tired of spending her school time on entertainment. It’s a great story! Hmmm…if I let my 11-year-old son do the same thing would he end up choosing education over entertainment?
I don’t talk a ton about childbirth on this blog, just a little bit. It’s time to change that and talk a lot more! This new month of August marks 7 years since the last time I gave birth. August also is the month when I celebrate giving birth to two sons. The previous month of July is when I celebrate having my second home birth. I had a highly charged emotional experience leading up to my last birth, and I’ve been healing ever since. After having 2 hospital births, then 4 home births, I ended up feeling led to have that last baby in the hospital. At 38 weeks, I switched from a lay midwife as my healthcare provider to a certified nurse midwife. That was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make in my life.
So it’s not because I don’t think natural childbirth is important here on the blog, as to why I don’t talk about it much, it’s that I have been healing for the past years from childbirth trauma. Wait, let me rephrase that. It’s not so much childbirth trauma, it was trauma during pregnancy that pulled up memories of all the negative stuff from the previous childbirth and then caused me to project those fears onto the future birth. I think it’s time to break the silence I have had about my story.
I am a huge advocate of natural birth, birth at home, and even birth at a hospital if that’s where the mom feels where she wants to be, after evaluating all her choices. I love the power that comes from a mom learning all about birth and making the choices she needs to make to feel the most empowered she can be to have the birth she wants. When I had home births, I had the births I wanted, with great feelings of empowerment. When I had that last hospital birth, I also got the birth I wanted, with a different kind of empowerment.
The above video shows Jessa Duggar Seewald in labor for her home birth. Then the video below shows that she had to be transported after the birth because of blood loss.
I so appreciate all the women ought there who are willing to teach about what normal birth is. They talk about the blessings that come from experiencing a natural childbirth. Some of them even make movies about birth and the safety of home birth. The first video above shows a pitch to make the new documentary, Why Not Home? The documentary is all done, and you can see the trailer here. I love that it talks about home birth in a new light. That light is that a growing number of doctors and nurses who attend childbirth are choosing to have home birth themselves. Why? You will have to watch the movie to find out.
The two videos below are the Business of Being Born and a followup to it. The Business of Being Born is a must-see if you are pregnant! It was made by Ricki Lake, an actress, and her friend. I loved it when I saw it years ago. It definitely was a move that needed to be made. It’s not every day you have someone from Hollywood talk about birth, and homebirth, in positive ways.
So let’s talk about birth! Over the next year, maybe, haha, perhaps I will be sharing all of the stories of the births of my seven children. I tell one story here. That was the story of my first home birth, and third childbirth, back in 1998. If you have any birth stories already posted on a blog or web site, please link them below in the comments section. If you would like to share your story in the comments section below, please share below as well.
If you ever feel bored, that’s a sign that you need some new books to read! Thanks to the Give Your Child the World summer challenge, I found some new books to read according to geographic themes. We got some books for the first three weeks, and with a San Diego vacation in the middle, we are still reading the books for the first three themes: multicultural week, Africa week, and Europe week. I am thinking we will keep reading books from these themes for a few weeks, and then move on to the North America “week” which will be more like a month. The GYCW summer challenge just moves too fast for me!
So I read aloud Listening for Lions while the kids did dishes this past July. When Grandma was here she joined in reading and listening. This was one book that caught my interest right away, and I couldn’t wait to get reading to the kids after breakfast every day while they cleaned the kitchen so I could find out what happened next. Reading that book sure made the morning grind/routine something to look forward to! We even read Friday night and Sunday before Grandma left so we could finish the book faster. It’s about a girl who lives in Africa and is orphaned and gets entangled with evil people who ship her off to England in a web of deceit. I love the author’s use of metaphors, similes, and descriptive phrases of African flora and fauna. 5 out of 5 stars.
I like to read aloud one chapter a day from the above book, according to the theme from Give Your Child the World. So we read about Dr. Livingstone when we did Africa. For the North America theme, you can do people like Dwight Moody, for Asia, Amy Carmichael. I love learning about people who felt the call of God to spread the word about Christ.
The books featured above and below are for the “Multicultural week.” I was hoping the older kids would read them on their own, but they didn’t start reading them right away. So to whet their appetites, I am reading a chapter over dinner or while they do the dinner dishes. They are full of short 2 to 3 pages of people who changed the world for good. Reading these stories is such an inspired way to end the day and to perk up mealtime. Some of the people I’ve heard of, like Bill Gates, Florence Nightingale, and Wilma Rudolph, and some I have never heard of, like Marie Curie’s daughter, Irene. Did you know she won a Nobel Prize just like her mother did?
The book below is for the Europe week. It’s about two Jewish girls during WW2 who go into hiding in Sweden. Sounds similar to Number the Stars. We just started it for the “breakfast dishes” reading, alternating with the next book I have pictured.
The one below is also for Europe and I am reading it aloud while the kids do lunch dishes, sometimes alternating with the one above for breakfast dishes. It is about a girl who was found as a newborn baby and grows up not knowing her birth mother, in servants’ quarters in a home of three professors in Vienna Austria during WW1.
Now for a few picture books:
We are still in the middle of the one above, but I have a feeling it’s going to turn out well!
The maps book is an illustrated atlas with fun pictures of the animals, plants, and landmarks found in that area. It is fun to pore over with my 6 year old guy!
The above book looks fascinating! I hope to read it to the 6 year old this upcoming week.
Now for the books we finished by listening in the car to books on CD:
We listened to Heidi in the car on the way to Utah and back and then to CA. I heard parts I don’t ever remember reading before so I am wondering if I actually ever read it all the way through like I thought I had. It’s one of those books that I’ve heard so much about that I think I have read it when I actually haven’t I guess. I thought it ended after Clara learns to walk, but was I ever wrong. It just keeps going and going after that! It has so many references to God that I love. It is definitely a book about healing. Sometime I will have to blog separately about that.
I finally finished listening to Outliers, after hearing the TJED world talk about it for years! I listened to it in the car, alternating with Heidi, for the Utah road trip, and then for all the trips back and forth to town here in AZ, when the kids were either sleeping or talking and didn’t seem interested in listening to whatever kid book I had picked out for them on CD. It’s a great read! 5 out of 5 stars. If you read it you will find out success is not just a factor of hard work, but that the timing of your birth and your cultural heritage also factor in. For example, why are the best hockey players in Canada all born in January? Why are the three top computer geeks all born within a six month window in 1955? What is the connection between math proficiency of Asian high school students and rice farming culture? Read the book and you will find out the answers!
Ever year in June I get a hankering to learn more about the Founding Fathers. So for this year I picked the above book, to listen on CD. It was kind of a slog to get through, because I don’t have a mind that naturally finds battle descriptions intriguing, but it was worth it. I actually listened to Disc 1 twice because my mind kept wandering. I got to hear about Washington’s and the two Cornwallis brothers’ stategies, and how an outside force was shaping the turn of the war to the American colonists’ side. 4 out of 5 stars.
Now for some totally creatively practical books:
I got this book this past week and will be posting a review and giveaway soon! It’s a sequel to Melissa Richardson’s first book, The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast. Stay tuned!
I got the following two books pictured below because my 20-year-old daughter is coming home next week, for the whole week!.
I got this one because my daughter loves to sew, and reconstruct clothing. The whole book features instructions on how to take thrift store clothing finds and turn them into something even more treasured. I thought it would be fun to show her the different ideas in the book, like how to turn a poncho into a skirt, or a turtleneck into a bolero jacket. My favorite idea is how to turn a muumuu into a peasant top!
The above one has cool ideas for making outdoor space more livable. Not that I will be doing any of it, probably, since the inside space isn’t “done.” It’s fun to dream though!
Are you concerned about the future of our liberty, based on the current candidates for president? Do you want to know more about our rights and the USA Constitution so you can defend them? Scott N. Bradley, who is running for Vice-President with the Constitution Party, is having some webinars to help us learn about liberty, politics, and the Constitution. I missed the previous webinars, but I plan on listening to the upcoming one, this Tuesday August 2, 2016 7 PM MDT. Register for it here. Look for the webinar ad on the right hand side of the page, where it says, “Of Money and Liberty,” then click on it and enter your name and email address so you can get the link to the webinar.
In the meantime, scroll down to the bottom of the page to watch his previous webinars.
What is Waldorf Education? Why would you want to go to a conference about it? Waldorf education is based on the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, who lived in Germany a long time ago. He started a school for the children of factory workers in Stuttgart and then his philosophy spread. This philosophy is beautiful! It’s all about gently encouraging children to learn by following their developmental stages and providing an atmosphere that best influences learning. You can watch the video below to learn more, the scroll down past the video to learn about how to enter a giveaway of four tickets to the upcoming Waldorf Conference in Utah. I am bummed I don’t get to go this year, because I live far away in AZ. I have gone in past years (in my hometown of Highland, UT, yay!) and thoroughly enjoyed my time. You can go here to see the whole schedule. These giveaway tickets are worth $89 each!
Please comment below if you are interested in entering the random drawing and say a word or two about why you are interested. I will be doing the drawing on Wed. Aug. 10 around 9 PM CT.
Here is my review of the conference from 2013:
I recently had the pleasure of immersing myself in the Waldorf education world. It was such a peaceful, lovely day! When I was a young mom, meaning my oldest child was 4, I investigated different educational philosophies. I fell in love with the Waldorf education model, which was developed by Rudolf Steiner. I started out using the Oak Meadow curriculum, which is Waldorf-inspired homeschooling guides.
I didn’t know anybody else doing Waldorf, so I fell off the bandwagon. It seems like something that is best done with a culture around you doing it as well. I kept on with homeschooling, and that boy who inspired my search is now on a mission for the LDS Church. I am still homeschooling his younger siblings, and I recently got reinspired to do some Waldorf stuff with them. I am so excited to find out that Waldorf education is a blossoming movement here in Utah.
By the hand of Providence, I met someone in charge of the Utah Waldorf Conference last month and she invited me to the conference that was held last week. We had so many connections, mutual interests and friends, it was fascinating. When I got to the conference, the atmosphere was so incredibly peaceful and loving when I walked into that room. The two presenters just exuded love. I had so much fun trying my hand at all those Waldorf crafts I had read about years ago: wet on wet watercolor painting, beeswax modeling, and using block crayons. This was a dream come true! Thank you Krystelle for inviting me!
Last year, Melisa Nielsen, a homeschool Waldorf Curriculum writer, moved to Utah. She has many great podcasts, curriculum by grade, a Waldorf homeschool training course, and other great information on her website at:
So maybe you homeschool, yet you recognize the value of having educational experiences for your child outside the home. Your children having friendships with homeschooled peers can determine how happy they are with homeschooling. If you are in this situation, I highly recommend that you form a group based on the licensed New Commonwealth School model. This is what I am doing in my new community. We had a new commonwealth school (named before the licesned part was added on) and my older children loved it! They benefited so much from it. They got to learn in a setting with homeschooled peers, they got to have assignments from someone other than me, which helped prepare them for college, and the classes they took at the commonwealth school went on a homemade high school transcript to help get them into college.
As we approach August, it’s prime time to round up your homeschool tribe so you can get a group together for the coming school year! (Which, despite Arizona public school standards, I believe should start after Labor Day. Here in AZ, schools are starting the first week of August! Aw c’mon, it’s still summer!) So talk to your friends about having a liberty-based, family-based school, get them to come to your house, and show them these videos.
The first video above shows the Thomas Jefferson Education philosophy in a nutshell. This is the philosophy that the New Commonwealth School is based on.
Then this video above shows Oliver DeMille talking a bit about the philosophy.
The video below shows what the “Love of Learning” phase looks like. Years ago, New Commonwealth Schoools were just for ages 12 and up. Many of them have gradually changed to include classes for children under 12, what TJEDers call the “core” and “love of learning” age groups.
Then I would show this video from Brenda Haws. Brenda mentors moms in forming Licensed New Commonwealth Schools.
Here are a few testimonials about New Commonwealth Schools.
After showing these videos, ask who wants to be part of your school and learn from Brenda about the New Commonwealth School model. Then contact Brenda using her contact page here. Talk to her about the next step for your group and you are on your way!
If your group has time, watch this video below from Aneladee Milne which explains the New Commonwealth School model in more details. Aneladee developed the model and taught people how to form schools after the model. Then she sold her New Commonwealth School training business to Brenda. Skip to the 5:29 mark, where she says “Let me tell you what I understand about covenant communities…” as the stuff before it relates to proposed legislation in Utah for 2014. It was about compulsory education, and it didn’t pass. New Commonwealth Schools are based on the idea of having a covenant community, just like the Pilgrims had.
The above picture shows our family (minus my firstborn, who hadn’t arrived yet) at the Mormon Battalion Historic site in San Diego, CA. We went there recently as part of a Shumway family reunion.
One of the best things about living at the end of the earth, aka southeastern AZ, is that we are only seven hours from San Diego! Seven hours! That means seven hours from the beach! A day’s drive! Woo-hoo! We are going to go there more often! We are also only 5 hours from a beach in Mexico. So we have two beaches closeby. I have never lived this close to one! Anyway, we are back from the grand exodus the Shumway family, including Grammi, and 8 out of the 9 siblings, made to that beautiful wonderland. Here’s what I learned from our trip to our San Diego family reunion last week:
1. Don’t ever eat Mexican food before a whale watching trip. Especially if it’s cold Mexican food. We had this totally yummy Mexican food on Monday night, provided by a caterer. Enchiladas, tortillas, pulled chicken, pulled beef, pico de gallo, fresh cilantro. Yum, yum, yum, it was so good! There was so much that we used the leftovers for lunch the next day. I didn’t want to microwave my portion because I don’t believe in microwaves. So it was cold Mexican food. Even bigger mistake. We ate that right before the whale watching trip. The trip involved getting on a boat three hours into the Pacific Ocean. Three hours is a big mistake as well. Let’s just say I am glad the body has mechanisms that work. 18% of the group of us (40 to 50 people in the total group) used that mechanism. I thought I would be OK since we had a similar trip with my side of the family 5 years ago and didn’t get sick. I think this time the boat ride was a lot choppier, and I had eaten the Mexican food!
2. Go to the Mormon Battalion site when you are in San Diego, and make sure you give yourself enough time to take the tour. We didn’t have an hour to devout to the tour and I wish we had. It was a wonderful place and I wish we could have watched the movie.
3. Wherever you go in the world, there is bound to be a Shumway there or someone who knows a Shumway. Our tour guide at the Battalion site was one of my husband’s Shumway cousins.
4. Make sure you take your 18 year old son with you on any road trip to San Diego. We picked ours up in Mesa as he has been living away from us because of all of his “homeschooling away from home” activities. He is so full of funny sayings and memorable lines from movies. It made the road trip a lot more enjoyable. Take him on the whale watching trip too. He came up with the perfect line, “Those are the shrieking eels!” as we approached some sea life while on the boat (from Princess Bride). He also had me laughing so hard when we were in our “kabin” that I had to beg him to have mercy and back off in the humor department, or another physiological event would have happened! Any of you moms out there who have had 3+ kids know what I mean! (Dh would be reminding me here to increase my daily Kegel reps!)
5. Flights from Provo to Mesa are cheaper than those from Salt Lake to San Diego.
6. Go to church when you are out of town. You will be blessed with a new perspective. We always make it a point to do so. We arrived in San Diego Saturday night. As is our tradition, we did not take Sunday off from church but attended a local congregation. The speakers in the sacrament meeting were the cutest couple. He was a new naval officer, and she was a graduate of BYU-I. They told the story of how they met and then how Jesus Christ gives us freedom. The sister shared many quotes from LDS Church leaders. I especially liked this one, which deserves its own number in this list. I’ve copied and pasted it below.
7. “That which is received of him [the Holy Ghost] has a more powerful effect upon the soul than anything else received in any other way. A millennium of experience through sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, and all the powers of the universe combined cannot approach the sublime and complete experience of one brief moment under the influence of the Holy Ghost.” from Elder Keith B. McMullin, “Ye May Know,” General Conference, April 1996
Wow, that is such an amazing quote!
8. Being able to use Google during church on my phone is so handy. Also, searching with Google often gives me a desired quote faster than searching the Gospel Library app. The sister in sacrament meeting shared the above quote and both my daughter and I were impressed by it and wrote down what we could as paraphrases. Then I spent some of the rest of the block of meetings searching for the quote on my phone. Then we saw the same sister in Relief Society and asked her where the quote came from and she couldn’t remember, if it was Elder Busche, or someone else (she had quoted at least three leaders), and she said her notes were jumbled. So I just kept looking and was able to find it. I love it! Here’s the rest of the paragraph it comes from:
The Holy Ghost is the third member of the Godhead, sent forth by God to reveal all needful things. He teaches and testifies with divine power and clarity. His witness may go unheard or unheeded, forsaken or denied, but it is never misunderstood. “The Holy Ghost is a revelator” (Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith,sel. Joseph Fielding Smith [1976], 328). That which is received of him has a more powerful effect upon the soul than anything else received in any other way. A millennium of experience through sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, and all the powers of the universe combined cannot approach the sublime and complete experience of one brief moment under the influence of the Holy Ghost.
How did I miss this General Conference talk when it first came out? The date, April 1996, explains it all! I was an exhausted mom of 2 babies, ages 6 months and 2, and was probably either chasing a toddler, changing a diaper, or sleeping while nursing in the chair in front of the TV! I find it fascinating that Elder McMillan declares that the Holy Ghost’s witness may go “unheard or unheeded, forsaken or denied, but it is never misunderstood.” The Holy Ghost is real! One moment under its influence can’t compare to a millennium of sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, or all the powers of the universe!
9. When you go to a KOA Kampground, get a “Kamping Kabin.” The deluxe version. I remember going “kamping” to KOAs as a kid. This was nothing like it. It was great to have real beds, a fridge, electricity, and indoor plumbing.
10. When you have your 20 year old daughter fly in to see you for 2 1/2 days at a family reunion, take advantage of every moment to talk to her. I could have spent the whole time just visiting with her. She is so much fun to talk to and I wish she still lived at home. She has been away to college for about 2 years now. For the summer she is doing an internship as a software programmer for a GPS maker. So it was fun to talk to her about her latest programming projects and how the C language works.
11. When you need to buy crutches for the same daughter because she tore her meniscus just 2 days before her plane departure, because she fell 10 feet off a rock-climbing wall, and got the diagnosis, the day before the plane trip, 1000 miles away from you, get them at Walmart or a thrift store. We bought a pair on our way through Phoenix at Walgreen’s for $47.99. When we got back, dh found a pair at the thrift store for $6.99. Ouch!
12. If you are ever in charge of your ward’s sacrament meeting program, do like the Imperial Beach LDS ward and put the list of Sunday School classes and Primary classes on the back with the corresponding ages and classroom numbers. With our big family, it made it so easy to figure out where to go! Also, if your child is resisting going to Primary, go with him to the class part and that might make it easier for him to go to the group time (sharing time) part alone.
13. When you go to the beach, take along baby powder. My wise sister-in-law did this. It makes getting the sand off your hands a lot easier. This never would have occurred to me in a million years. That’s why it is great to have sisters-in-law.
14, Take the cousins and the aunts and uncles and go to the temple! We have done this when we have reunions for decades, and it is so worth it! We went to the beautiful San Diego temple. It always feels so wonderful to attend the temple, and then to have your husband, three sons, one daughter, two sis-in-laws, two brother-in-laws, nieces, nephews, and mother-in-law come with you makes it even more so.
My sweet mom braved leaving the comfort of her home and came over 1000 miles to visit us! Before I moved to AZ, I only ever lived an hour away from her at the most. When I was in college, I lived 30 minutes away and came home almost every weekend before I got married to do my laundry, primarily, let’s be honest here, and secondarily, to see my family. After I got married, we used our apartment’s laundry machines, so the laundry factor was out of the equation. I then visited my parents at least once a month for Sunday dinner. After we got our own laundry machines we still kept up the Sunday dinner thing of about once a month. My kids have grown up having frequent Sunday dinners seeing their grandparents and cousins. After 24 years of marriage, we moved out of state so sadly, the Sunday dinner visits are no longer feasible. My older out of the nest kids attend these when they are in town. But for me, not seeing my parents about once a month or once every two months is a new experience.
The reason she got to come was because my sister had a family reunion in Mexico for her husband’s family. Regrettably, I didn’t get a picture of my sister and her family for the brief time they were here. They stayed one night, the night of my son’s birthday when I made my favorite gluten free birthday cake. They went to church with us and then left Mom/Grandma here while they went to Mexico. Lucky me! Everyone needs a mom like mine to dote on them. She brought a box of my favorite herbal tea, licorice root, an aloe vera plant start from her plant back home so I can have my own down here, and a book I have been coveting for ages, Teach the Children, by Neil Flinders. Remember my book haul from the Deseret Industries thrift stores (D.I,) when I was in Utah a month ago? I went to four D.I.s and couldn’t find it. I saw it on Amazon and the price for a used copy had gone way down. So I was thinking of buying one that way. Then a week after I left Utah she found it at one of the D.I.s I had already checked. Wa-hoo!
We had a great time together! My mom and I both have similar views about politics and health so we shared our news and resources about both topics. I learned about a radio show that I found in podcast form, about liberty, by Krisanne Hall. So I showed her how to listen to it on her phone. It made great listening for her while she did some hand sewing and mending. I love that my mom is always willing to help me catch up on the mending. That’s something that I have been always woefully behind on in my whole years of marriage and motherhood. She even sewed some trim on some shirts and sweaters that I bought at thrift stores and have been wanting to spruce up to make them more Type 1 from Dressing Your Truth. We took her to swim lessons, to the park, to the Farmers’ Market, and to see the statue of the Virgin Mary on the mountain side by our home. None of us are Catholic but we enjoy seeing the cultural points of interest in the area. She also came with us to our church’s Pioneer Day Celebration. She got super excited seeing that I live in a mesquite tree forest, because she found all these recipes online for mesquite flour. To put it in her words, “You are surrounded by a year’s supply of food!”
Disappointingly, we found out that these mesquite pods could not fit through the holes in my Nutrimill grain mill. The blender didn’t work either. I know she left to go back to her home and my dad feeling sad about all this. But guess what? Less than a week after she left, we went over to finally introduce ourselves to our neighbors, after living here for 6 months. I know, I am slow at things like this. The missionaries were coming over for dinner in two days and I had told them last time we would meet our neighbors before they came again. Anyway, we took a plate of cookies over. The next day, one of them came back to us bearing gifts. Guess what one of the gifts was? A ziploc bag full of mesquite flour!!! The neighbor had no idea that just the week before my mom and I had given up on grinding our own. The neighbor told me exactly what i needed to do to grind it. She said what to look for when I collect the pods, and that in October at the local Farmers’ Market, I can pay $5 to get the pods ground up by a hammer mill. Hooray! I think I will mail this bag to my mom! It’s so lovely to feel God’s hand working through people around me, people who I have barely met, to provide for our small desires, like finding out how to grind mesquite pods into flour. That’s how amazing God is!
Tree of Life Mothering 