Post Surgery Fashion!

Just because one has surgery, doesn't mean it is necessary to forfeit fashion and elegance.  Sorry I did not have a 'red carpet' to demonstrate my stylish post surgery apparel; I am sure you will get over it.

Here in all his post surgery glamour just hours after his hernia repair, our model is showing off his elegant cucumber picking gown, complete with matching top and bottom.  Here Tom demonstrates the tucked in style accessorized with stylish black rubber boots.   Note the luscious cuc in his hand.

Next in our lineup is the ever popular lounging gown, ideal for reading or relaxing in bed, especially after an arduous hour at the hands of a surgeon.  Here Tom is demonstrating the 'untucked' look, a more relaxed and comfortable mode for this occasion.  Please note the matching blue/white socks.

We are please to announce that our collection even includes an egg collecting gown for the chicken raising enthusiasts.

And for the computer enthusiast, here Tom is modeling our latest selection in home computer lounging apparel; loose fitting, it is just the thing for relaxing at home at your computer terminal.

And for those special moments when it is time to take our medications, we have Tom showing off our comfortable, relaxing medicine gown, used exclusively for downing those troublesome medications.

The look on Tom's face tells the whole story:  relaxing stylish garments designed exclusively for the partaking of those doctor prescribed medications.

 

 

Life just doesn't get any better than when you wear our complete line of surgery recovery garments.  I would like to thank my brother Steve for sending me his 'been there, done that' set of beautifully designed and tailored scrubs for this posting.

 

 

Crazy Month

This month seems to have been crazy busy with something important happening every weekend.

In addition, of course, we’ve had about 20 cucumbers to pick every day plus beans, a few tomatoes and some carrots to deal with.  Tom enjoys Chile Rellenos, so that takes care of some of the Anaheim and banana peppers we are growing.

The chickens are up to about 6 eggs per day, and we need to figure out what to do with them. I enjoy my chickens.  I like to watch them.  It’s fun to feed them, and very rewarding to go look for eggs.

I’ve been busier than usual with church activities.  Our institute teacher shifted over to teach seminary.  To fill in the gap, I’ve started teaching institute on Wednesday.  Then the seminary teacher will be out on Monday (tomorrow) and I agreed to teach his class.  That was before I realized I also had a conflict on Monday, but I worked around that.  They also decided to run another teacher development class on Sundays and I’m teaching that as well.

I have 6 people to visit teach with three different companions as part of our new program to keep visiting teaching and home teaching within a geographic region.  I’ve seen 5 of the six and communicated with the 6^th.  However two are not in good health and need more than just a monthly visit.  I’ve been sharing garden bounty with them as well.

Monday we invited Ernie, one of Tom’s home teaching families over for dinner.  He was delighted to come and chat.

Tuesday and Wednesday I tried to get a lot of work done.  I have my two regular articles for the Executive Coach.  I am also in the process of creating the newsletters for two HVAC companies and a generic one for promotional materials.  I was working to finish up the web copy I needed to do for the Infinite Banking/Whole Life Insurance agent.

Thursday I left to drive to Nashville for a “Night of Clarity” event.  The drive went well—about 7 hours including stops. That evening there was a gathering for all of Rebecca Rice’s colleagues and clients.  I met Tom Dyson, editor and publisher of the Palm Beach Newsletter (a place I’d like to write for) a number of insurance agents and very interesting clients.  I connected with Josh, the web designer I’m working with in Little Rock and Nelson Nash, author of Be Your Own Banker and founder of Infinite Banking.

Friday morning I sat in on a meeting of Agents and a representative of Mass. Mutual.  The good news was if agents shifted their designation under them, they’d get a lot more in benefits and commissions.  The bad news was they could not promote “Infinite Banking.”  This was important to me as I was designing the website and looking at writing a book for her. This was her focus. It has necessitated a paradigm shift.

The reality is that everything IBC promotes--a secure place to park money, tax free withdraws, control, privacy, easy loans, retirement income, etc. --are still there as a benefit of a well-crafted whole life policy.  It just needs to be framed as something other than “infinite banking.”

Now she needs new web copy and a different kind of book. She needs a system to train her agents. She said, “How about if I just put you on a $10,000 retainer.  Work that off, and send invoices. Then I can transfer more.” Yes.  That works for me.

Friday was spent learning about Austrian economics as opposed to Keynesian economics.  They showed how the boom/bust cycle is caused by government intervention.  Keynesian economics thinks government needs to control things.  So the more things go south, the more the government tries to control it—creating more and worse bubbles and busts.  Ron Paul was the keynote speaker.  And I actually got a photo with him.

It reminds me of a story about an airplane that had such wild swings it hurt the passengers.  When they re-created the situation, it was caused by the pilot trying to correct the initial problem. If he had taken his hands off the controls, the auto pilot would have corrected the problem much sooner.

They talked about the dangers of fiat currency and a central bank that allows governments to keep spending by loaning them money.

Saturday was spent talking about the solution: privatized banking.  Essentially with Infinite Banking you become the bank of one.  You have control, you get borrow. If you don’t pay it back, no-one comes and repossess your house or car.  It’s secure—not influenced by market swings.  Indeed, it was the way successful people avoided the extremes of the depression in the 1930’s.  Nelson Nash spoke this day.

I learned a lot.  I ate too much good food.  I left to drive home about 4 pm and got home a little before 11pm.  I had some books on tape, some lectures and courses to listen to, and I spent some time thinking about projects and singing as loud as I wanted.

Tom, bless his heart, snoozed on the chair downstairs so he was there to welcome me home.  He’d continued to pick about 20 cukes a day and took them to the farmer’s Market for Wendy to sell.

Today went well.  Elder and Sister Rice reported on their mission.  My class went well for the first day.  The Teacher Development Class is 6 weeks long. I have just enough time to teach it before I go off to be Grandma for new babies.

Tom has a Priesthood meeting in Branson tonight, so he won’t get home until late.  Tomorrow he goes in to “follow in his brother’s footsteps.”  We’ll let you know how that goes.

A good week

This has been a great week.  It’s been crazy busy, but fun.

I’ve wanted to order tickets for my October trips… but haven’t been sure of where I’m going.  And I ordered an American Express Delta card to take advantage of the 30,000 free miles. I hope we’ll soon have the definitive word on when the Sibs Reunion is to I can make the flight arrangements for that and for visiting kids with new babies and going to my Bootcamp training for copywriting.

I’ve gotten most of the web pages written for my Infinite Banking client.  I’ve been working a bit on the HVAC newsletter, although I haven’t seen the $$$ yet. It looks however like we may have 2 or 3 companies signing on.  That makes it more lucrative. 80-90% same writing, 2-3X the income.

REJOICE!  My duplex in St. Louis finally closed! Hallelujah! It’s been about 10 months since the first offer.   Part way through dealing with the title issue, I wondered if I’d have to give it away.   Well, not quite.  But it is great to be able to move on.  I am now totally out of St. Louis properties.

Our cucumber plants have been SO generous.  We’ve taken dozens to give away at church on Sunday and offered them to neighbors.  Wednesday, we had a friend sell some at the farmer’s market.  They brought in $19!  Almost paid for seeds.

Thursday I went to RS. and made some cute little acorns out of burlap and plastic eggs.  Um.  They look cuter than they sound.  They had some talks on preparedness and CERT training and we had 6 friends of one sister come to learn about it.  It was so fun to talk to new people.

Friday we left at 6:40am to go to the Kansas City temple. We attended the 12:00 session and the 5pm session.  They have a little bit of odd times.  So we had a chance to go to Olive Garden for a nice lunch/dinner between the sessions.  After the second session, we drove about 2 hours back toward Springfield and spent the night in Bolivar.

Saturday we drove the rest of the way to Springfield for my Seminary and Institute training.  It was excellent.  I coaxed Tom into staying for at least the first hour, and he stayed for two and was reluctant to leave.  But he had shopping to do.  The meeting let out about 2:30. And we both went off for more shopping.

We stopped at Joseph Banks and got Tom a new suit.  Then on to Aldi’s to grocery shop and south to Branson for our next meeting.  The Mission President decided to open up Zone Conference to all the members of the stake.  He said that M&M’s (Missionaries and Members) need to be more united and work together. There are changes in missionary rules so they can help more with the  less actives.

It was a powerful conference. It made me realize I still WAS a missionary.  That we are all missionaries and are never released from that responsibility.  Indeed, the only “part time” Missionaries are the ones who serve for 2 years and are then released.  We got home a little before 11pm. 

In the middle of all this traveling, temple and meetings, I thought, “This is really fun!  I’m with Tom, we’re serving the Lord. What can be better than this?”  It felt crazy busy just like it did on a mission.

Then we had to prep for Sunday.  I was teaching a Primary class. Tom was teaching the priests and speaking in Sacrament meeting.  After church he had Bishop’s Youth Discussion (BYD) that he was in charge of and we needed refreshments.  (We stopped for ice cream on the way home Sat.) and then made brownies Sunday morning.

Church really was great.  After BYD we went to a welcome home celebration for our friends the Rice’s who returned from their 14 month mission to the Navajo Reservation.   They had great food!  And Tom went home teaching after this.

I wrote up notes from the seminary training to send out and wrote a letter to the bishops and to the missionaries, and called some people I felt impressed to call.  Had nice chats with Mom, Rebecca, and Adam.

Now it’ 9:30 and I’m bushed.  But I can’t believe I got so much accomplished.  Surely the Lord does expand the time so we can accomplish what we want, when we do what He wants.

Thoughts on Abuse

On the way back from Springfield we listened to several talks.  One of them was about abuse.

One thing that struck me about abuse of children is that they think it’s their fault.  They are somehow defective.  So if a parent feels angry and yells at the kids, the kids see that they are flawed and it’s their fault.  The sad thing is this can last their whole lives.  At 80 they will still think there’s something wrong with them because of how they were treated as children.

She also spoke about spiritual abuse.  This is when someone speaks for God unrighteously.  You can tell if it’s unrighteous if the person is not acting as God would act.  All God’s communications are filled with love, kindness, peace, and charity.

The unrighteous person may use guilt, force, embarrassment, or belittling to force their will on another, calling it God’s will.

I thought about someone who may have a parent or leader telling them things they don’t agree with.  Suppose that person goes back to the leader and says, “I don’t agree. I think this.”

How would a Christ-like leader respond? How would God respond?  I think they would say: This is what I think will bring you happiness and these are the reasons why I think you should do it this way.  If you do it your way, these are the consequences I think I think may happen to you.  I love you and want you to be happy.  But you are free to choose. The decision is yours.  And I will love you no matter what you decide to do.

I just appreciated the way to know if you’re receiving spiritual abuse. I also liked the clarity of knowing how a righteous leader would respond.

Just my thoughts.

Cool August

This has to be the coolest, rainiest August I’ve ever seen here in Arkansas. I think it’s rained almost every day this month. – Just checked Weather.com. It’s rained the last 10 days.  Rain total: 7.95 not including today!

The garden continues to grow, but the tomatoes are dropping leaves with a fungus or something so they look like skeletons.  We’ve been giving away cucumbers and beans.  Now that the chickens are older, they will eat the over-ripe beans and tomatoes.  So less goes to waste.

One day this week I picked banana and Anaheim peppers and pealed and froze them.  I really need gloves to do that. I had hot hands for about 24 hours.

This has been a “get ready for seminary” week.  Tuesday the church had a broadcast for S&I people. It was excellent.  I’ve been emailing my teachers.  Some have seminary starting as early as Tuesday the 13^th!  Others the 14^th and the 19^th.  Seems awfully early from when I started school after Labor Day.

Wednesday we took Rebecca and Kids out to lunch at Letty’s—our favorite Mexican restaurant.  I think they were well behaved and enjoyed the food. It is amazing to see the house morph as Rebecca packs.  Books arrive back at my book shelf I haven’t seen for months. Surfaces that have been buried by shoes, clothes, toys, or computers and tablets resurface. Pillows that have been scattered through the house suddenly need to be stuffed back into the closet.  It’s a bitter-sweet transition.

Thursday, not-so-bright-but-early, Rebecca and the kids headed off.  They had to brave the rain to load the last things into the car.  I think Levi wasn’t sure until the very end that he was going with them.  He was a happy dog to hop into the car.  We waved goodbye.  Then I had my mastermind call.  Went to lunch with relief society sisters, and went a doctor’s appointment. 

Friday I got some work done on web pages and the newsletter.  I took a course on Photoreading that was most interesting.  I hope I can increase reading and comprehension as I’d like.

Saturday we had a huge Especially For Seminary activity—348 kids from three different stakes and 30 Institute “counselors” to help it go smoothly.  It was really well run.  The kids had a fun time and I think the counselors did, too.  They had games, workshops, dinner, a devotional and a dance. 

Tom and I drove up early and took our two youth to the Youth Advisory Council that was held in Springfield at 1:00.  We went off to Panera’s for lunch and then back by 2:00 for the start of EFS.  We visited with leaders, hung around the workshops and devotional, snagged dinner, and then helped clean up the outer rooms when the dance started.  We left about that time and enjoyed an Andy’s Frozen Custard desert before we headed home.

Today we had some excellent church meetings.  Lots of good people in our ward.  Tom went with me to visit one of my sisters that I only had an address for, and we found her home today… but not interested. 

With Seminary starting, I made a list of quotes about how reading the Book of Mormon brings blessings.  I decided to add those quotes to my blog.

Blessings of Reading the Book of Mormon

This year we will study the Book of Mormon in Seminary. I looked up the blessings of reading the Book of Mormon: Increased faith, more of the spirit of the Lord in your homes, strengthened resolutions to be obedient, greater ability to resist temptations, increased reverence, mutual respect and consideration.  more righteousness, faith and hope. More desire to do right. and so on.

Here are the quotes.

“Let us not treat lightly the great things we have received from the hand of the Lord! His word is one of the most valuable gifts He has given us. I urge you to recommit yourselves to a study of the scriptures. Immerse yourselves in them daily so you will have the power of the Spirit to attend you in your callings. Read them in your families and teach your children to love and treasure them” (Ezra Taft Benson, “The Power of the Word,” Ensign, May 1986, 82).

President Gordon B. Hinckley encouraged us to read and study the Book of Mormon “Its appeal is as timeless as truth, as universal as mankind. It is the only book that contains within its covers a promise that by divine power the reader may know with certainty of its truth. Without reservation I promise you that if each of you will observe this simple program, regardless of how many times you previously may have read the Book of Mormon, there will come into your lives and into your homes an added measure of the Spirit of the Lord, a strengthened resolution to walk in obedience to His commandments, and a stronger testimony of the living reality of the Son of God”

There is a power in the book which will begin to flow into your lives the moment

you begin a serious study of the book. You will find greater power to resist temptation. You will find the power to avoid deception. You will find the power to stay on the strait and narrow path. The scriptures are called 'the words of life' (D&C 84:85), and nowhere is that more true than it is of the Book of Mormon. When you begin to hunger and thirst after those words, you will find life in greater

and greater abundance” (President Ezra Taft Benson, Ensign, Nov. 1986, 7).

“I feel certain that if, in our homes, parents will read from the Book of Mormon

prayerfully and regularly, both by themselves and with their children, the spirit of that great book will come to permeate our homes and all who dwell therein. The spirit of reverence will increase; mutual respect and consideration for each other will grow.

The spirit of contention will depart. Parents will counsel their children in greater love and wisdom. Children will be more responsive and submissive to the counsel of their parents. Righteousness will increase. Faith, hope, and charity—the pure love of Christ—[p. 120] will abound in our homes and lives, bringing in their wake peace, joy, and happiness.” Marion G. Romney.

“I think that people who study the scriptures get a dimension to their life that nobody else gets and that can’t be gained in any way except by studying the scriptures. There’s an increase in faith and a desire to do what’s right and a feeling of inspiration and understanding that comes to people who study the gospel—meaning particularly the Standard Works—and who ponder the principles, that can’t come in any other way” (Bruce R. McConkie, in Church News, 24 Jan. 1976, 4).

“I challenge every Latter-day Saint to come to a knowledge and an understanding of the scriptures. These sacred books are our bulwark of defense against a cunning adversary” (Marvin J. Ashton, in Conference Report, Oct. 1977, 110; or Ensign, Nov. 1977, 73).

“I promise you that daily family prayer and scripture study will build within the walls of your home a security and bonding that will enrich your lives and prepare your families to meet the challenges of today and the eternities to come” (L. Tom Perry, in Conference Report, Apr. 1993, 113; or Ensign, May 1993, 92)

I promise you that if you will read the words of that writing which we call scripture, there will come into your heart an understanding and a warmth that will be pleasing to experience. Gordon B. Hinkley.  Improvement Era, June 1966, 531)

I am grateful for emphasis on reading the scriptures. I hope that for you this will become something far more enjoyable than a duty; that, rather, it will become a love affair with the word of God. I promise you that as you read, your minds will be enlightened and your spirits will be lifted. At first it may seem tedious, but that will change into a wondrous experience with thoughts and words of things divine. (Gordon B. Hinckley, “The Light within You,” Ensign, May 1995, 99)

On Principles: “As you seek spiritual knowledge, search for principles. Carefully separate them from the detail used to explain them. Principles are concentrated truth, packaged for application to a wide variety of circumstances. A true principle makes decisions clear even under the most confusing and compelling circumstances. It is worth great effort to organize the truth we gather to simple statements of principle” (Elder Richard G. Scott, Ensign, 11/93, 87).

  "In preparation for today, I set aside some time to read the Book of Mormon in a short period of time. It changed my life. I had a feeling that I had not had before. It was as if I had always read the Book Of Mormon as if it were in snapshots. Suddenly, I saw it as a movie, in full color and wide screen. People became more real to me, The Savior and his visit was almost as if I had been there.  You want your students to see that their challenge is not to prove that the Book of Mormon is true, but to prove to God that they are true. When they do this, they will know that the book is true. And when they prove that they will do what it says, God will tell them more.  …. But your students will prove the Book of Mormon, as they will prove all scripture, by themselves saying, "I believe it is true; I will try it." Once they have proved themselves to God, then the proof will come to them because they will see the spiritual fruit. "I beg of you, for yourselves and for the students, to have faith that they will want to read it, not that you must drive them to it, but that it will draw them to it as it will draw you. I urge you that when you feel you are too tired and do not want to read, that you would have the confidence that Nephi knew how to help. The Lord wrote the book. He showed Nephi how to do it in such a way that it would draw you. And, it will draw your students." -Elder Henry B. Eyring, 17 August 1990

“Feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do” (2 Nephi 32:3).

Missionary Work Goes On

I love the circle of life.  When we were in Kenya, we knew this young man.  He went on a mission and I've been writing to him each week.  Here is his letter of this week:

Thank you so much for your mails they always keep me strong on mission especially the video that you directed me to watch last week [about spiritual crocodiles.]  You remind me of the hard times i had to overcome, the challenges that i was facing.

When i look back now i see myself stronger than i ever was before. What a pleasure to meet wonderful people like you, you've really proved to me that God really does always have a purpose for everyone of us especially his servant.  Because could it not have been you guys i could have fallen less active following the hard times i experienced when my Mum passed away. 

I salute you guys keep up the good work even though you are home now. 

One of the greatest effort that i cherish on mission is, one of the less active guy that we reactivated in my first area on mission has got his mission call and he is to report in the MTC in September. And  gaze [guess] what? He'll be serving in Kenya Nairobi Mission. What a joy do i feel in my heart for him.

On Saturdays from the previous week we've been doing service at a school that we used to meet in and its been a very exciting moment to me.We also had a baptism yesterday for bro. Buhle a part member family of the Ndlovus he is twelve years old and i was touched by his testimony  that he bored yesterday after his baptism.

What I love is that our missionary goes on a mission, activates someone, who then goes on a mission to our missionary's country!  Who knows what lives he will touch?  Maybe someone in the family of the very missionary who first helped him.

I love this work!