The last part of our CSA year...

Back in June I posted about our CSA experience so far here.  We enjoyed so many yummy meals as a result of our participation with the Firsthand Farmers Cooperative.  Thank you so much to all the farmers and farms who were involved!

Here are the photos from the rest of the season (not every week, I didn't always remember and/or we away).

June 30, 2011.  Clockwise from bottom:  Carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, beans, kale, basil, potatoes

July 7, 2011 Clockwise from bottom left:  garlic, fennel, leek, rosemary, carrots, green beans, tomatoes, potatoes, raspberries.

August 11, 2011 Clockwise from left: zucchini, green pepper, eggplant, mini tomatoes, garlic, basil, large tomatoes, okra, summer squash (yellow zucchini)

August 18, 2011 Clockwise from bottom:  tomatoes, butter, eggs, baby turnips, lettuce, summer squash, potatoes, green peppers, onions, hot peppers

August 25, 2011 Clockwise from bottom:  Tomatoes, butter, lettuce, eggs, jalapeno peppers, carrots, green/red peppers, eggplant, onions, summer squash,

August 29, 2011  Clockwise from bottom:  summer squash, eggs, plain yogurt, carrots, onions, red peppers, lettuce, tomatoes.

September 5, 2011 Clockwise from bottom:  lettuce, serrano peppers, jalapeno peppers, eggplant, basil, moogurt, eggs, watermelon, zucchini, onions.

September 12, 2011.  Clockwise from bottom:  zucchini, eggs, moogurt, parsley, green beans, delicata squash, jalapeno peppers, potatoes, garlic & green peppers.

September 26, 2011.  Clockwise from bottom:  Butternut Squash, garlic, scarlet turnip, radishes, collard greens, parsley

October 3, 2011.  Clockwise from bottom:  Sweet Dumpling Winter Squash, eggs, moogurt, sweet potatoes, turnips, lettuce, salad mix, green & yellow beans.

October 13, 2011.  Clockwise from bottom:  Bok Choi, eggs, green peppers, radishes, moogurt, lettuce, arugula.

October 17, 2011.  Clockwise from bottom:  Broccoli, eggs, raspberries, butter, cooking greens, salad greens, winter squash, green peppers.

October 24, 2011.  Clockwise from bottom:  garlic, green peppers, sweet potatoes, eggs, mixed salad greens, butter, carrots

November 14, 2011. Clockwise from bottom:  Jerusalem artichokes, butter, eggs, sweet potato, beets, lettuce, turnips

November 21, 2011.  Clockwise from bottom: fresh ginger, daikon radishes, carrots, butter, eggs, luttuce, turnips

December 5, 2011.  Clockwise from bottom:  beets, Jerusalem artichokes, carrots & cooking greens.  The 1/2 bushel of apples was an additional purchase.

A big week of letters!

So, my last post was a Mail Call Monday post, 2 weeks ago.  While happy to receive a book, I hadn't received any letters from my sponsor children.  That was January 9th and I posted before I checked the mail.  That week I got letters on Monday (Allan), Friday (Tania, Andres) and Saturday (Allan again).  It was a deluge, a downpour of letter blessings!   4 in one week!  That has never happened before!  I was so excited!
Here are some photos of their letters:

Allan & Tania are both from Ecuador and this is their "Reciprocal Letter" paper.  Andres' is different; he's from Guatemala.

Allan's letter.  Pardon my "white out", it is to protect both Allan and my family :-)

The back of Andres' letter, with the translation.  Check out his great Christmas drawings!

Allan's drawings!

Tania always incorporates Bible verses into her drawings:  God is love (center of flower),  He is my strength and my help (left circle), I can do everything in Christ (right circle),  quietness, confidence (left leaves), peace, reason (right leaves).

What a blessing these letters have been to me.  I love these kids!!!

Mail Call Monday - No letters but a book!

I checked the mailbox with high hopes every day last week but there were no letters from our sponsor children.  However, on Friday when I went to the mailbox there was a "larger than letter" package from Compassion.

My copy of Chris Seay's book A Place at the Table: 40 Days of Solidarity with the Poor.   I'm excited to read this and do the 40 days and the perfect time seems the upcoming lenten season.

Speaking of letters...  The Compassion Blog had a great post today about how much our letters mean to our sponsor children:  10 Motivating Reasons to Write Your Child.  Check it out! 

Mail Call Monday... erm Tuesday - Katherine!

We received a letter from Katherine on Tuesday, December 27th (there being no mail on the 26th), so I have high hopes for my trip to the mailbox today after yesterday's postal holiday.

Katherine, who lives in Nicaragua, wrote us a short and sweet letter.  She celebrated her 10th birthday in October and this letter was a combined Christmas letter and Thank You letter.  Sadly, no photo but lovely words.

Hi dear Sponsor,
 
God bless you!  My grandma and I are happy and thankful because of the gift.  We pray for God bless you always.  I am so happy because I bought so many things:  a skirt, 2 blouses, sandals, slippers, underwear, toys for my sister and socks.  Thank you for your help.  Christmas is coming.  What are you going to do on Christmas?  All the families here get together to have dinner; I think that you do the same.  I hope that you receive many presents.  I ask you to pray for my Mom, for my grandma, for my sister and for me.  Love and farewell,

Katherine 


Planning to send off a round of letters today via Compassion's online writing tool.  Have been meaning to write to the children about our trip to the animal safari and my now infamous camel bite!

Have a blessed day!

New Year on the way!

I don't have a reflection on the past year.  I should.  Maybe tomorrow I'll put Super-Awesome's Christmas letter up for you to read, that's a good synopsis of our past year, and funny too!

However, as today arrived I worked on finding two tools to help my New Year get off to a good start.

The first was a new Bible Reading Plan.  Last year I did a chronological plan for the first time and enjoyed it, but I wanted something different for this year.  After checking out two great blogs (here and here) which have a number of different plans described for you, I have decided to try Grant Horner's reading system.

The second was a grocery list... you laugh.  Can't I just write a grocery list down each week?  Yes, but I wanted a comprehensive list that had everything (or at least almost everything) that I could possibly need from the store, so that as the week/month went by if I ran out of something, I could highlight the list and then bring it it to the store.  I found an amazing... no wait, wrong word... the Ultimatest... (yes, that's what they've called it)...  The Ultimatest Grocery list here.  Here's a teaser of what it looks like ;-)

 You can print it off as is (note the Carcinogen section!  Or Super-Awesome's favorite in the baked goods "Pie!Pie!Pie!") or edit your own (didn't need the Carcinogen section, or even the far less cancer-causing Pets section) and print it off.

Happy 2012! 

Five Minute Friday: Open

Joining up with Lisa-Jo, The Gypsy Mama for the final Five-Minute Friday of 2011.  Here are the rules:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Most important: visit, comment, encourage the person before you. OK, are you ready? Give me your best five minutes on:

Open...


Go:

An open door.
 
That's what comes to mind when I think of open.  We are praying for God to clearly show us what our next move is.

One clearly open door.  Super-Awesome is in the process of applying for a new job as the current one will be ending on June 14th... that's just a little over 6 months away.  There are several possibilities and while no interviews or offers have resulted yet (at least two applications have yet to be submitted), we are praying for one clear open door.

God brought us here with only one door opening and while we aren't guaranteed it, we are praying for another single open door this time as well.  I pray to be open to whatever next adventure God has in store for us.  We know God has a plan for us and while we still don't understand the purposes and reasons why we are where we are, nor where we are going next, He does.  We are thankful and prayerful.

Stop!

A Bittersweet Letter

I am a mailbox checking addict... there, I've confessed.  Here in the US we also get mail on Saturdays. When we moved from Canada and I found out about this, I was ecstatic.  I was also confused about the flag up, flag down business.  In Canada, I've either had a mailbox right on my house (no flag), a mail box connected to a mail room in an apartment (no flag), or one of those community mailboxes (no flag).  So the only flags I knew about were the ones other people had, mostly on rural type roads.  In Canada, (currently, I believe) the flag up means that the mailman has come and you have received mail.  In the US, I discovered, the flag is put up to notify the mail carrier that you have outgoing mail, and unless you have outgoing mail it stays down. (Isn't it cool that you can send mail out from your own mailbox?  I know you can do that with the community mailboxes back in Canada because there is a general mail slot... but your actual mailbox isn't two way). 

For a mail checking addict like me, this is problematic because unless I have outgoing mail, or watch the window continually (and since we're confessing, sometimes I do...) I don't actually know if the mail has come.  I have, however, developed a "highly scientific" system.  If I don't have outgoing mail (I did try to have outgoing mail all the time, but that gets expensive!) I do a survey of the other mailbox sets that I can see from my house to see if any flags are up and then monitor them throughout the day to see if they've been put down.  Not a perfect system but relatively efficient!  I'm sure a very few of you will find this fascinating and most of you will just be shaking your heads at me!

Anyhoo, because we receive mail on Saturdays, I received mail on Christmas Eve.  I wasn't sure I would, not knowing how the USPS would observe the Christmas holiday (they had the 26th off, in case you were wondering, and well-deserved in my opinion).  But there on Christmas Eve was a largish envelope for me.  In it was a letter from our sponsor child, Maria, in Ecuador.  It is a bittersweet letter because Maria is aging out of the program in January and this is the last official letter we will receive from her while we are her sponsors.  Our family has sponsored someone in Maria's family since 2003.  First her sister and now her.  As I have confessed before, I was part of the "Lame Sponsors" movement before 2010 and as such would write only very rarely, generally around Christmas when I received paper and instructions to write my child.  Thankfully, before I started sponsoring with Compassion in 2010, I learned more about the impact of my letters from bloggers like Ann Voskamp, Lisa-Jo Baker, and Michelle Wright  (if you click on their names, it will bring you to posts about the importance of letter writing). 

So when I began those new sponsorships, I also applied the same letter writing principals to my previous sponsor child Maria from Sponsor Hope.  Can I encourage you that a real relationship developed?  That in my one year of earnestly writing to her once a month and praying for her more often really made a difference.  It did.  My bittersweetness is that it came too late for her sister, and while an encouragement to her, was only a year of letters, when it could have been 4 years.  But God is gracious and we are not to worry about yesterday's regrets.  May I encourage you to start writing more if you haven't been a regular correspondent?  It truly does make a difference in the lives of these children.

I'd like to share parts of Maria's letter with you.  For some background, Maria's father passed away in 2009 and her mom passed away unexpectedly this past August.   Maria is the youngest of  6 children and is 18.

Hello dear sponsors please know I am so thankful for how you support me in my sad moments.  Thank you for your prayers, I tell you that I am doing well and always trying to get through the loss of my mother.  Thank you also for the prayers you send.  You are wonderful people, kind and nice.  I am doing well in my studies.[...]

I tell you that I recently wrote my second trimester exams and I did a really good job.  I want to tell you about a new idea I have had, I have been thinking about going into the career of being a chef.  It would be a new diploma, so I would have two.  Both would be lots of fun and I'm praying that I will reach my goal of having two professions.  I know I can do it.  I have a positive mindset and I'm working really hard.  I know with God's help I can do it and thanks to your help as well. [...]

I went to visit my mother's grave. [...] I never imagined I would ever be visiting her there but I know I must be strong and accept and try to understand that we all must die someday, nobody can live forever and so we don't suffer, God waits for us who believe in Him with open arms.  God has given me tests and I have managed them.  I know I have experienced a lot of hurt and bad things and I didn't think I would get past them but little by little I try.  Never think I forget you.  I love you like you were my second family. [...]

I hope your kids and all your family are well.  May the King of the Heavens take care of you, protect you and continue to bless you.  Blessings, Maria.

I don't think I need to make too much comment.  What a blessing our time with Maria has been. 

I am pleased to tell you that we'll be able to keep supporting her family as she has a niece who is entering the sponsorship program and we will be sponsoring her once Maria moves out of the program.