God is so Good!

"I praise you forever, Lord! You are the God our ancestor Jacob worshiped.

Your power is great,
and Your glory is seen everywhere in heaven and on earth.
You are king of the entire world,

and You rule with strength and power.
You make people rich and powerful and famous.

We thank You, our God, and praise You.

1 Chronicles 29:10-13

I missed recording a gratitude list online last week but that certainly didn't mean that I didn't have anything to be thank-ful for. In fact that idea is very, very far from true! There were so many things to be thank-ful for that I was to busy to write about them. :-)

One of the ways God blessed enormously has a bit of a story.....

Each fall for quite a few years now we have driven a ways South of here to glean potatoes out of the field. The first year it was just our family and we met up with an older couple that lived by the fields. We picked up around 1,000 lbs that year and hauled them home in a mini van (along with all our family!). We were pretty excited about that and we told others about it too and pretty soon others were wanting to go along. They would say: "please tell us when you go to pick potatoes, we want to go too!"

This year we had more people than ever before that wanted to go so it was a bit of a struggle to get all the schedules meshed together but Wednesday was decided on. It was mid week so several of our Men didn't get to go so we figured it might take a bit longer to pick a bunch up. But we headed off.

Dad had been in contact with the potato company to try to learn what fields they had recently harvested in (They don't mind us gleaning and in the past have been extremely helpful) but they were a little vague as to where we should go. We drove to the field that they had directed us to but it was in the process of getting tilled under and having fertilizer sprayed on it, obviously it wouldn't work to get potatoes from. The question was where to go next. We just drove for a bit, past a bunch of fields that didn't have any potatoes to glean and then Dad leading our caravan of 5 vehicles pulled over. He came back to discuss the options with me in my van and we were trying to figure out which direction to head when an empty potato truck zoomed by.

FOLLOW THAT TRUCK!

We followed him through several turns and for a mile or so and then... a potato field... with potatoes to glean! Thank you God!

Our group of 29 (3 men, several women, and lots of kids! - it was a great FIELD trip!) jumped out and started picking up potatoes. We had been their about 5 minutes and one of the workers drove up. My mother-in-law was closest and so she talked to him. I couldn't hear what they were saying but I was thinking "Oh no, for some reason they don't want us to be here and he is telling us to leave". A minute later she came running and hollering for my Dad and then I really thought so. But then she told us "He says that they accidentally dumped about 400 lbs of potatoes out in a pile and if we follow him in a 4 wheel drive vehicle we can come get them." He was in a hurry and just wanted a few of us to come so those of us who were closest jumped in the 2 trucks and followed quickly.

At the pile we were able to fill up one hundred pound sacks in just a few minutes. We found out that it was way more than 400 lbs, it was closer to 2,000 lbs. Thinking back on that situation just makes me realize how awesome God is and how good He is to His children! We not only were able to get potatoes (and were led to a field) but God blessed us with a way to get them super easily! It just amazes me with the way things were timed!

All in all from the weighing and calculating we did, we are pretty sure that the group got over 3,000 lbs. We know that in my Dad's truck we had 2,000 lbs. So for my Thanksgiving list today I have:

12.Potatoes!

13. God's perfect timing!

14. Fun times outside with friends in beautiful weather.
15. Ken's parents coming to visit.
16.Terry, my father-in-law, spending hours telling my kids Bible stories.

17. Mara, my sweet 10 year old. I can't believe how wonderfully God has blessed us to give us Mara as a daughter. She is sweet, smart, compassionate, obedient and she wants to do what is right. Thank-you God for letting us have Mara in our home and lives!
18. Ken! I thank God often for a loving and hardworking husband! I am blessed to be his wife. Ken also celebrated a birthday this past week and I am thank-ful for the years that he has been able to have and I hope their will be many more!

19. Flowers. I feel so blessed to get to work with flowers fairly often. Whenever I am around them it makes me feel so thankful that God decided to make our world a beautiful and interesting place to be. This last wedding I got to work with a couple of varieties I had never seen before and I so enjoyed seeing a new part of God's creation!

20. Getting to see the best circus ever- right in my own front yard!

21. Impromptu performance of a little fairy to keep us all laughing while the regular actors figured out their next costume.

22. A pleasant rainy Sunday afternoon where I got to listen to Sharyl, my mother-in-law, compost music while I rolled out tortillas by candlelight.

23. A pretty much completed tree house! (I'll post pictures soon)

24. Fun with friends decorating the men's bathroom at church. The first and probably last time we will ever have a "party" in the bathroom.

25. Good helpers! (Sharyl also helped but I don't have a picture of her there, I also don't have a picture of the completed wall.)

26. The blessing of a new church building and the fun we could have celebrating it's completion!

27. A sweet little Megan who choose Oven mitts over a beach ball as a door prize. :-)

28. Fun making baskets with my mom and sisters.

29. Times with family and fresh corn on the cob.

30. Miracles