"Camp Good News is a Lot of Fun"

Hello from Naomi - I better do this camp post before I forget everything...We had a WONDERFUL week! We left last Sunday and took two vans full of kids and staff to Camp Good News held at Galilee Bible Camp in Lake Bronson, MN - There were 69 campers and 14 of them were counselled for salvation! Everything went pretty smoothly, and we all agreed it was one of the best weeks of camp ever :) One interesting thing was all of the different nationalities that were there - Nepali, African (Ethiopia, Burundi), Mexican, and Native American - and of course, Swedish!

This is Emily, Abby, and Priscilla out canoing -

Can you believe? Some of the campers liked catching turtles while they were canoeing! They had to let them go, but it was still fun :)

This is me teaching the key word (plumbline) for the book of Amos (or A moose) - Every year we go through key words for each book in either the Old or New Testament and this year was the Old Testament - the "theme" was "Surfing God's Word" and so most of the Bible lessons and verses were focused around the Bible.

Instead of being a counselor, this year I was one of the "verse listeners" - which means I helped listen to verses during verse memory time (4 times a day) and helped with whatever else needed to be done. It was a lot less stressful than being a counselor, but we still kept busy! - and we probably slept less than the counselors because we sort of stayed up late talking some nights...

The heroic counselors! Left to right is Ashely, Amy, Valerie, Roger, Reuben, Hosanna, Elizabeth, Isaac, Zach, Emily, Miriam, Krys, and Silas -

Kaleb was there and did a few of his "clown things" for the campers - including juggling torches!

Fair

Priscilla and some of the other young girls go around and hand out "free tickets" to hear the wordless book, have their face painted or get a balloon animal.

Here's Isaac sharing the wordless book with a small boy. In the last two days they've had about 150 children come through and have had about 12 decisions for Christ. That's exciting!

Here's the busy tent.

On another note, a man asked our farmer neighbor, "By the way, what part of a cow is the Angus?" After we heard that we laughed so hard, but actually, it's rather sad how little people know about the food they eat. And in case you don't know, the "Angus" is a breed of beef cows. They are usually solid black although there are also red angus cows as well.

Have a great day!

Inspecting Our Work

After a few days of really cool weather, it finally felt good to get out in the sunshine. Silas and I went over to the maze and he walked it with a GPS. I decided to walk the whole thing for the first time and knowing where I was going it took about 20 minutes. Hopefully we can get a picture by air someday. The corn is slowly growing, even though it might not seem like it to those of you south of here - which is pretty much everybody in the US. Okay, I'll let Naomi take over...

Hello! I hope you all are doing well - this week Hosanna and I went to Lancaster, Hallock, and Lake Bronson, MN to teach 5-day-clubs. They all went great - there were over 20 kids every day at the one in Hallock - it was supposed to be at a park, but because of the wind, we had it in a greenhouse a couple days! The kids in Lake Bronson were a little older, and several of them were at Camp last year, so that was kind of fun. Then our last club was in Lancaster and we had a good turn out there as well - one little boy got saved! A couple of the afternoons we went over to the Pankratz' and visited with them some - Hosanna and I enjoyed getting to spend time together and we had a great week....but we're glad to be home!

RoGator and Bits and Pieces

The guy my father-in-law hires to spray our fields came by last week with his RoGator. Quite an interesting piece of equipment. This picture doesn't do it justice. It's so tall you could almost walk right underneath it! At least if you were short. Unlike in the past, today's equipment is so full of technology. If you accidentily go over an area twice, it turns off the sprayers in that area so it doesn't get a double dose. If you miss and area, it tells you where exactly in the field to go over. Someday I'd like to ride in a RoGator!

Naomi left this morning to teach clubs in Munich, Langdon and Wales North Dakota. I'm not sure if she remembered the camera but I wanted her to take a few "cemetary" photos of relatives gravestones for a family history album we have. Yes, I know that sounds morbid! But tombstones are actually a nice piece of history and helps to make sure dates are accurate in our family history books. Isaac is teaching around here and Hosanna and Silas have the week off.

We've always been supporters of HSLDA, Homeschool Legal Defense Association, and probably will be for a few years yet. But I checked out CLA's, Christian Law Association, website today and they have started a homeschool branch as well. You can find the information at http://homeschoollegaladvantage.com/ It's a little bit cheaper than HSLDA but seems to do about the same thing. I think in these times where we know our freedoms are under attack, it's good for everyone to belong to a group like HSLDA or CLA. My dream is to someday give each of my children a lifetime membership, but we'll see, it would be a costly gift but a fun one to give!

One last thing. I had a couple of people tell me that my garden does not have many weeds in it according to the photo. Don't worry, I only took a picture of the half we weeded! The other half is like weeding in cement rocks and is full of weeds. I had no intention of making anyone feel bad! Sorry if I did that!!

First Week of 5-Day-Clubs

Hello from Naomi! Well, we finished our first week of 5-day-clubs yesterday, and last night us kids all got together and compared notes - our detailed accounts would probably bore you, but here's the overview -

Hosanna taught with Jonathan and Tim around here - in the picture, Hosanna is telling the Bible Lesson at one of their clubs. They had one in Roseau, one at the Jeffery's and one at the Dunton's - most of their kids were "church kids", but can you hear the story of Jesus too many times?

Isaac taught in Neche, Wahalla, and Pembina, ND with Gabe - in one of the clubs, they had 4 children who were saved at that club last year!

I taught with Valarie in Grand Forks and East Grand Forks. We had a couple "unusual" clubs - one was with 3 kids who were children of students at a summer Bible translators school - they knew their Bible well, so we had to study to stay a step ahead of them! We had one club in EGF and 3 girls got saved there - Praise the Lord! Then we had a club with "refugee" kids - from Bhutan/Nepal and Burundi - most of them did not speak very good English, so that was interesting!

Keep praying!

Christian Youth in Action - Week 2

Hello from Naomi! I hope you all have had as great of a week as we did! For the second week of CYIA, we stayed at different people's homes in Grand Forks (Hosanna and I got to stay with the same couple I've stayed with for several years - it almost feels like home....) and met at a church during the day. Sometimes we went outside on breaks - this is Silas and Roger.

This picture is Isaac talking about Camp Good News at the "graduation" - but more about that later. Every morning after devotions, chapel, and learning missionary stories, each group (we were split into four groups - I was with Silas and Reuben, and Isaac, Hosanna, Jonathan, and Tim were together) got everything ready to teach a 5-day-club, then went through it at the church without any kids - it feels kind of strange at first, but when the real club comes, everyone's glad they had the practice!
Hosanna looking over her lesson for club. After lunch, each group went and taught a real club, then afterwards, one of the Berntsons or the oldest person in each group talked it over and what could be improved on. We had one girl get saved in our club, so that was really exciting! After some more study and another class - everyone goes "home" for supper and is supposed to get things ready for the next day.
Last night they had a graduation/commissioning program - each of the CYIAers do something that we do in club - some lead songs, Hosanna showed how we teach a verse, and I gave a short testimony of things I've learned through CYIA over the years. We got home after midnight and we look forward to sharing with you more about the work in weeks to come!

Roadkill

About 5:15 AM this morning the phone rang. The kids had left earlier to go to Grand Forks for the second week of CYIA training. It was Naomi informing us that Isaac hit a deer not too far from our house and he wanted dad to go get it. (yes, they're okay - it only took a front light out) Being the thrifty man that he is, Arthur got out of bed, made the required call to the Highway Patrol, and went to collect our road kill. While it's cold out, it's not quite cold enough to let a deer hang so he cut it up right away, gave away some, and I decided to get some ready for supper tonight to share with the J. family.

Arthur here - Saturday morning we had a heavy frost. It got down to 27 degrees. That is the coldest I ever remember it in June. We have been averaging 20 degrees colder than normal this spring. The weather continually goes in cycles and patterns and there is nothing to be alarmed about for cold or heat. It is going to get hot on this earth when God's final judgement comes. For now, we can be thankful for the nice variety God has chosen to send us.

The yard covered with frost. It also killed about 40 of our tomatoes plants that we didn't get covered. Most of them were covered and they all survived.

Christian Youth in Action - Week 1

Hello from Naomi - judging from the blog, our family had a busy week! So have we - Isaac, Hosanna, Silas, and I were in Devils Lake, ND at CYIA, a CEF training. Myself, Isaac, and Jared are interns - which means we've all graduated, worked with CEF for a while, are going to work every week this summer, and we get to help with some of the critiquing and training. Anyway, here we're coloring. No, it's not to learn to relate to the kids....we get some premade visuals, but some we get to color ourselves - Isaac got his laminated.

Some of the rest of the group during "color and converse" time - while we color, we practice leading and singing the 5-day-club songs. Did you know that it takes training and practice to lead a song with a visual? You'd be surprised at how hard it can be the first time! This is my cousin Jonathan from South Dakota leading a song.

They keep us pretty busy - we study for like 6 hours or so a day, plus devotions, chapel, a couple classes, a practice 5-day-club (well, actually a real one, only WE'RE the kids), and we get an hour of "recreation" every evening - some evenings we all go down to an outdoor basketball court, and sometimes we go to an indoor rec. room (the whole training is held on a campground) - this is me playing "Carpet Ball" with Hosanna. (Mom here - no, Naomi does not have black eyes! I tried to edit out the red and it did an awful job and I didn't notice that before Naomi posted this!)

Isaac leading a song, with Mr. Berntson, our director, in the backround. (These pictures are awful I know, but they were really, really bad before mom lightened them.)

The main focus of the first week is for everyone to learn the Bible lessons. This year we're doing the Wordless Book Visualized, so that includes the stories of Heaven, Adam's fall, Jesus' death and resurrection, the men on the road to Emmaus, and Timothy. In order to pass each lesson, we study the Bible, the lesson book, practice it outloud at least twice - it must be a good length and include all of the Gospel truths - and then get critiqued on it. This is Hosanna telling a story.

Another coloring picture - this is Silas' first year. Overall there's 16 of us - 7 girls and 9 boys. We get today and tomorrow to catch up on everything around here and prepare for the second week - Thanks for praying for us!