Productivity and Coronavirus

I know this stay-at-home time due to the COVID-19 pandemic has been hard on people in many ways, so what I am going to say here certainly is not intended to lessen the difficulties caused by this, but I must say that these past 9 or 10 weeks have proven to be very helpful to Russ and myself for getting some projects done that we never seemed to have time to do when we had our regular schedules of activities.  In that regard, I almost hate to see this come to an end!  And I should warn you that this is a longer-than-usual and more-photos-than-usual post!

Let me see ... just what have we gotten done?

Household jobs ... new door handles on our outside doors

 and new knobs on all our kitchen and bathroom cabinets, PLUS I cleaned all those doors and drawers before we added the knobs.

Then there are all the cards I have made and mailed ... about 70 of them as of this writing.  I have tried new techniques and used up lots of my "stash" of supplies.  That is a good thing!

This next photo should actually have two of these in it ...

I got the manuscript for my book (actually it is mine and Russ' since some of his poetry is in it too).  I had been working on it for quite a while and have been able to finish it up and send it off to the publisher on April 29th, a red-letter day for us!!

The other disk is the slides I have digitized and just completed this morning!  3,107 photos spanning about 70 years!  Oh, my goodness!  I had not counted up the span of years until this very moment and I am stunned that we are old enough to have slides from that long ago!!  Yep, I guess we both were that young at one time!  As we have done those slides, Russ and I have laughed and cried and remembered all the ways God has blessed us with His blessing of peace and joy through the years, even in the hard times.

 Here is a sampling of Russ through the years...

When he was a college student, attending a summer training program with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.

That is him, that dot near the top of the antenna he helped rebuild as a missionary with West Indies Mission (now WorldTeam) in Haiti after a devastating hurricane destroyed the other one.  He had worked in Iowa building the antenna parts, then went with the parts to Haiti.

After the antenna was completed, Russ worked as an engineer and disc jockey for the radio station.  One of the programs he did was "slow English" in which he read books and the Bible slowly so people who were learning English could follow along.  That is what he is doing in this photo:

After being in Haiti for about 4 years, he came home to the US and married Joyce, and then along came Anna Marie.  They dedicated her in church in South Carolina.

In the meantime, I was in Lebanon, working with the church in Beirut and surrounding area. 

Here I am pictured with some members of the church I worked in.  My housemate in the 3rd from the left and I am at the far left.

When the civil war in Lebanon forced me out, I went to live in Madaba, Jordan, where I taught a wonderful group of ladies.  I have such fond memories of all those years!

The bottom line is that the past couple of months of self-isolation, albeit challenging, have been most productive and I am thankful for them.

Hay there

I am sooo tickled with the card I made yesterday afternoon!  It took more work than usual but the result made it worth while, IMHO. 

The card base is just a flat piece of yellow card stock to which I adhered a flap I cut in a fancy edge.  I attached the flap to the back of the card then added the stack of little farm animals, all with foam tape for some dimension.  The animals seemed a lttle plain, so I added a little blue bowtie to the pig and that was just what it needed!  I added a second medium sized chick to the side, peeking out from the message under the flap and I think he is so cute!  Glad I decided to do that.

Open the flap by following the directions there at the bottom to "lift here" and ...

The photo doesn't show it very well, but I colored a light green hill for the barn to sit on, plus the green grass across the bottom of the card to add a little bit of a "farm feel" to the final card.

And also the relatives

I Chronicles 13:40 And also their relatives … came bringing food on donkeys and on camels and on mules an don oxen, abundant provisions of flour, cakes of figs, clusters of raisins, and wine and oil, oxen and sheep …

Chapter 12 is full of information about David’s fighting men, their great soldiering abilities and readiness for battle.  Verse 2 tells us the “mighty men” were gifted ambidextrous warriors; verse 8 says they were experts with determination and strength even on their faces and that they were fast and sure-footed.  By the end of the chapter, I felt rather intimidated by the strength, bravery, and readiness of this great army around David.  I felt that way UNTIL I noticed who else is listed at the very end of the chapter.  Not everyone could be a strong and fearsome warrior in the fighting army.  Their supportive relatives had an equally vital role to play.  They are the ones who made it possible for the army to be battle-ready.  They came by the droves, by every means available, bringing food for these “might men” and the army.  Their role was as important as that of the mighty men and the rest of the army.  How encouraging to know that even if I am not a “mighty man” with special skills or abilities, I can have a supportive role in the accomplishments of those who are more actively engaged in the fight.