Tuesday July 8th

The Captain borrowed sixty dollars out of my account yesterday.  That would be fine, except for that my budget is pretty much down to the dollar these days, and that means there is not an extra sixty dollars that's not already assigned to some bill or other.  But never fear, he still had vending machines to check.  So today he went and checked his vending machines that still had money in them to be collected and came home with....  sixty dollars!  To the quarter!  It was amazing.  So he deposited it in my account today, and we're all good again.  There's no question in my mind that the Lord was behind that one.

Monday July 7th

Poor Liesl has been sick this weekend.  She's been coughing, and her voice has been very scratchy and hoarse.  This is never good, but it was especially bad for this weekend because she's one of the leads in A Field of Stars.  They've been rehearsing for weeks and weeks, and the performances were Saturday and today.  She made it through Saturday with only a couple of rough parts in her songs, but yesterday she got worse. She had a fever and her voice was worse.  She still had one more performance to get through tonight, so we were all praying for her.  She woke up this morning feeling a little better, but still spent the day lying around and not feeling well.  I was a little nervous about the performance tonight, but she totally rocked it!  Her voice sounded better than ever, and she did an amazing job.  She came home and crashed again, but for the performance she was great.  I am so glad the Lord heard our prayers and made her able to perform like she's been practicing for weeks.  Now we just need to get her all better!

Sunday July 6th

This morning before I church I was working on some Personal Progress goals, and read some scriptures about Christ.  I came up with some cool thoughts that I thought I would like to share in testimony meeting.
It was a nice plan, but it didn't work out so well.  When one of the first people got up to bear his testimony, his little boy followed him to the pulpit and wanted to talk in the microphone.  He let his little boy say something (that none of us could understand), and the little boy managed to break the microphone while he was at it.  It still worked in that it still carried people's voices over the speakers, but if it wasn't held up, it would just flop over onto the pulpit.  The Bishop was getting up to hold the microphone in between testimonies, and I could feel The Captain's stress mounting beside me.  Finally he got up and walked out, and I knew he had gone to find tools.  Sure enough, he came
walking back in a few minutes later with a screwdriver and a handful of screws.  He walked right up to the pulpit and as soon as that person finished, he started to work on the microphone.  The next person just used the hand mic while The Captain was taking the mic off the pulpit and putting it back on again.  The man is a compulsive fixer.  But he did a good job.  The microphone was standing straight and tall once again when he was finished with it.
All of this made it a little awkward for me to get up to bear my testimony.  But I had decided I would just do it anyway, and tried to move Gretl off my lap.  She was having absolutely none of that. She started making such a fuss that I put her back on my lap and gave up on the idea of bearing my testimony.  I know, I could have tried harder, but it was all so crazy that it just seemed like too much trouble.
But I still had these cool thoughts in my head that I carried through Sunday School and on to Relief Society.  I was wishing I had made a bigger push to bear my testimony in Sacrament Meeting when the Relief Society President got up and started the lesson.  And whaddaya know!  The lesson went along perfectly with my thoughts on Christ from the morning.  It fit exactly!  So I soon found an opportunity to raise my hand and share my insights, and felt a lot better.  I'm so glad that the Lord gave me a second chance to share the thoughts he had sent my way this morning.

P.S. My cool thoughts were these:  How could a people crucify their God?  It seems so insane to me that people would have that much nerve.  But Christ made his sacrifice so that He could be our judge.  He has paid for that right, and it is His alone.  That means that I have no right whatsoever to judge anyone else.  Christ is the only one who can do that.  All He has asked me to do is to love everyone.  So even though I might think that people who would crucify their god must be a bunch of dirt bags, he asked His father to forgive them, and paid for their sins even as they were killing him.  I don't know anyone who's done anything half so bad as crucifying God's son, which means that I should be able to forgive and love everyone in my life.  Easier said than done, but with God all things are possible.

Saturday July 5th

There were a couple of different ways in which we saw the Lord's hand in our lives today. The first was that A Field of Stars was performed twice, and it was a success!  It went great!  No one fell off the stage, no one messed up too bad, it wasn't complete chaos like The Captain was afraid of.  It was great!  Leisl was especially amazing as the female lead.  Friedrich did a great job as the drummer boy.  Kurt was very convincing as a ten-year-old boy, and Brigitta and Marta were very cute as school children.  There were no major mess ups that I could see.  I think The Captain saw a couple, since he's been working on every detail for so long, but as an uninformed observer, it looked great.


The second story I have to share is about the grocery store again.  (I'm telling you, I learn more there about following the promptings of the Holy Ghost than any other place!)  I had made a list of all the food we eat in a month.  I had gone through all my recipes (that I make on a regular basis) and written down every ingredient.  We have been counseled to have a three month supply of foods we eat regularly, so I was trying to have a three month back up of everything I need to make our usual breakfast, lunch, and dinners.

I took Gretl to the store with me, and we shopped until the cart was full and Gretl was tired.  I didn't make it through the whole list, but I was making notes on my list as I went along about which aisle each item could be found on.  When I had loaded all my groceries into the car, I suddenly realized that I no longer had my list.  This is not unusual for me.  I don't usually come home with my list.  It almost always disappears somewhere between the store and home.  But this list was different, because I had put a lot of work into it, and I wasn't finished with it yet!

I walked back along the path I had taken to the car, all the way back to the cash register where I had checked out.  I asked the cashier if she had seen it, but she said no.  It wasn't in the cart, and I couldn't see it on the floor.  It had just disappeared.  Grr.  I didn't know what else to do, so I got in the car and started out of the parking lot.  Before I got to the road, though, I had the impression that I could still find my list if I went back in the store one more time.  I figured that going back in the store would take less time than re-creating my list, so I turned around, found a parking spot, and hauled Gretl back in to the store.

This time I had the idea (not my own, I'm sure) to check at the Customer Service counter.  I walked up to the counter, but the girl was helping someone else.  As soon as the other person moved, I could see my list sitting on the counter.  I pointed to it, and told the girl that was what I was looking for.  She smiled and handed it to me and told me it had been on the floor.

Hooray!!!  I was so happy to have my list back.  See?  The Lord cares about all the little details in our lives, and is willing to help us out if we'll just pay attention.  I'm so glad.

Thursday July 3rd

Rehearsal for A Field of Stars started at 6:00 this morning.  The Captain got up at about 4:30am to go get set up.  I was surprised at how awake I was at 4:30 in the morning.  I thought about just getting up, but decided that was silly when I didn't have to.  So I went back to bed for an hour, and got up at 5:30 to go and spread fertilizer on the lawn.  I got Friedrich and Leisl off to practice, and went back to bed for a couple of hours.

When I got up again, I went to check on my yogurt.  I had started some yogurt the night before, and was delighted to find that it had thickened considerably during the night.  But now it needed to be strained, and I wasn't sure how to do it.  I poured it all into a cloth, and held it over a bowl, but I wasn't going to be able to stand there for hours while the whey drained out.  I tried to think of a way to hold the cloth over the bowl, and all my ideas were so elaborate that I usually didn't even have everything I needed to pull it off.  So, I asked the Captain.

In about two minutes he had the problem solved, and my yogurt was hanging nicely, where it stayed for several hours. He just tied up the top, put a handy little gadget on the bottom shelf of my cupboard (I think it's supposed to go to a peg board, but it worked beautifully for this.), and hung the yogurt over the bowl.  It was so simple and easy, and I was SO impressed.  He really is amazing.

So today's evidence of God's hand in my life is my amazing husband.  I tease him that he is a compulsive fixer, because if he sees something he can fix (and he can fix pretty much anything), he will just stop whatever he was doing and fix it.  One time he was picking up Louisa from a friend's house, and noticed that their front doorknob was having issues.  He asked for a screwdriver, and had it fixed in under five minutes.  He's just amazing.  I don't know what I would do without him.

Wednesday July 2nd

I kind of wish that so many of my posts weren't about money.  I really appreciate all the help the Lord gives us with our finances, but what else would I see if I wasn't so worried about money all the time?  I'm sure he's helping us in many other ways, but the financial help always stands out to me.

So today I went to buy some steer manure for my flower beds.  They haven't been doing very well, and I decided they needed a little help.  I didn't have very much money to spend (I probably shouldn't have been spending any at all), but I love my flowers, and it's not really such an expensive hobby.

I went to IFA, and found the 1.89 bags of manure compost, and figured that's what I'd get.  But then the manager got ahold of me, and showed me all the plants that were marked down to 25 cents each. (25 cents each!!!)  So of course I had go load up a cart full of those, even if they were half dead.  He also told me about the best compost to use in my yard, and recommended that I get that. (6.99 a bag)  Sigh.

So I took my cart full of half dead flowers to the register and helped the cashier count them all.  Then I told her I needed five bags of the cheap compost manure.  But at that moment I suddenly knew without a doubt that I would have more money soon and that I could get the bags of compost that I really wanted.  I didn't hesitate, but told her I also wanted two bags of the other compost.  I paid for them, had them loaded in my car, and headed home to happily spread manure and compost around my yard.  (Who knew that such a thing could make me so happy?)

But before I could go home, I needed to stop at my parents' house.  I was hauling stuff out to my car, ready to leave, when my mom called from her office that I shouldn't leave yet.  I went back in, and she handed me a check for the Captain's job with them.  It was so amazing!  I love it when I get a prompting from the Holy Ghost and act on it and it turns out so well.  My faith is not always rewarded so quickly, but today I knew that the Lord was watching and paying attention to every detail in my life - including which compost I was buying.

Tuesday July 1st

The Captain has been made the director of our local patriotic pageant this year.  It is called A Field of Stars, and he has drafted nearly all the family to fill roles in the play.  Gretl, Louisa, and I are the only members of the family who will be watching instead of performing this year. 

But the poor Captain has had a rough time of it.  His key actors haven't been showing up to rehearsals, in fact lots of people haven't been showing up to rehearsals.  Their first performance is this Saturday, and it wasn't looking good.  The poor guy was extremely worried about what was going to happen on Saturday, because it just wasn't coming together.
This week he scheduled dress rehearsals for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights.  It may seem like a lot, but he was really worried, and really wanted people to show up to practice.
So tonight he went off to practice looking pretty grim.  Most of the family followed him over, and I stayed at home with Gretl watching (sleeping through) old episodes of Dora the Explorer.  
I was hoping that the rehearsal would go well, and I was a little nervous when the Captain finally showed up.  His mood was...  good!  Very good!  Hooray!  Practice had gone well, and he was happy.  Boy was I glad!  Most of his actors had shown up, and they had one good run through of the entire play. 
He was much happier than he had been for days, and even seemed a little excited about how it would turn out.  I am so very grateful for the Lord's hand in making tonight's rehearsal a success.