The Sawmill

It's here!  We thought it would never arrive!  We were so excited the day they called and said it would be out the next morning between 8 and 10 AM.  They finally got here a little before noon and low and behold, they only brought us part of the mill!!!  What a bummer!  Sexy Man had to drive 30 miles to pick up the rest and bring it home.  He happily did it though :)  He could not wait to start putting it together.  It took him approximately 7-8 hours to put it together and by that time it was 9 pm.  So you know what he HAD to do....CUT WOOD!

At 10:30, I finally had to stop him.  I told him the neighbors were going to call the cops on us!  It is VERY LOUD!  He was having a blast though!

That is one happy man, if I ever saw one!  Love the new look, honey :)

 Of course, his dad had to come along and help.  We are always little kids to our parents :)  Had to make sure he wouldn't get hurt...

 Look at all the logs still to go and more waiting in the woods!!!  Think he will be busy on his days off for a while.

 Ten years ago, we found this company call Logosol...

Today, one of our dreams became reality!

It is the coolest thing to be able to make your own lumber from trees off of your own property that your dad bought back in the 50's!  This is just a start after one log of pine and one maple. We are officially on our way to that log home we have been dreaming of!  God is so good!

Psalm 37:4

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Log Surfing

Okay, so Texas may not have beautiful beaches filled with white sand or endless blue ocean to surf the waves but we do have lots of beautiful and exciting things here.  Sometimes it just takes a little imagination but the possibilities are endless!

We had a big storm here last week and it took out a LOT of trees on our place.  So what is a man to do with all that timber just laying around on the ground to rot?!  Well, the only LOGICAL thing in HIS mind, buy a sawmill!  Yep!  It will be arriving here next week!  So you know what that means...a lot of sawing, moving logs, using tractors and last but not least, LOTS OF MANLY MUSCLE!

I went along with it because I knew I would get to see a LOT of this and how much better can it get for us ladies than that?!  I could watch him work ALL DAY :)

In the midst of all of this work, Sexy Man (yep, that's what I call him, LOL), thinks of a GREAT way to have fun:  LOG SURFING!

What a great way to have some fun in the midst of all the work that is yet to be done.  Just hop right on as Grandaddy pulls you back to the house to unload the wood!  So, my oldest thought this was an awesome idea and decided he would be next to try it.

And he's going....

Going...

GONE! HA!

What a blast!

And even Grandaddy had fun!  His job was pulling everyone on the logs and watching them laugh and have a ball.  Hard to believe he is 81 and still working hard!  He LOVES his tractor.  I think he his ready for another storm :)

So, now that we have most of the trees to the house, the cutting will begin soon.  I wonder what kind of games we can make out of that??  Maybe, uuummm, try to keep all 10 fingers and toes??!!  That should be fun, LOL!!  What a great afternoon, beautiful weather, and some awesome LOG SURFING!

Only at the Sutton Ponderosa!!!

Career vs. Cupcakes

There comes a time in life when you have to make some tough decisions.  Decisions that will change your life forever.  Decisions that will either make you or break you.  Decisions that will affect your family.  Decisions that will make those around you laugh behind your back.  Decisions that will impact those closest to you.  Decisions that will ultimately lead you closer to God and decisions that will be a testimony to the most precious gifts that God has given to you.

A few years ago, I was able to quit my job and work part time to stay at home with my youngest.  During this time, I thought God called me to go back to school to become a nurse.  So I started pursuing that calling without prayer, without the consent of my husband, and without really thinking through how it would impact my family.  It was a dream of mine to finish school and do something “great” with my life.  But at the expense of what? A lot of my friends had done it and it sounded so great; the money, the short work week, and the flexible schedule.  Who could want anything more? Right?!  After two years of taking one class at a time, I finally was accepted into the nursing program at UT Tyler.  I was so excited and proud of myself.  My parents were gleaming!  Only four semesters and the world would be mine!  I could buy my kids anything they wanted, go on all sorts of trips and have a title behind my name!!!

STOP!  Put on the brakes! Two weeks into school and I knew I had made a HUGE mistake.  I spent every waking hour with my head in a book or at school.  Once a week, I left before my kids woke up, only to come home to study more.  The days ran together.  I was missing out on precious family time, feeding my kids garbage and passing out before I even had time to talk to my husband.  Half way through the semester, we were told that our work load would double next semester and my clinicals would require me to be gone around 5:15 in the morning and get home around 7:00 at night.  WOW!  What had I gotten myself into?!  This is not what I pictured for my family.  Where had I gotten lost?  Where had I gone wrong?  And what was I doing?! The Lord brought me to my knees one night as I was tucking my youngest into bed.  He started crying because he did not want me to be gone when he woke up in the morning…

I knew then and there that this career was not for me or our family.  I never once consulted God about nursing school and I wanted to be in control of my destiny.  Well, it was tearing my family apart and I was losing the battle.  God told me that night what I was supposed to be doing.  He had allowed me to stay at home all along so that I could take care of my family, not so I could go to school.  I wasted so many precious hours and days with my family for pursuit of something that God never intended for me.  He has already given me the greatest job of all and that is being a wife to a wonderful husband and mother of the most precious boys I know!

Since making the decision to not go back to nursing school, God has richly blessed my life.  I have never been happier and more peaceful than I am right now.  I even got to make homemade cupcakes for the first time, icing and all :)  My husband is happy, my home is in order, my kids are eating real food again, I get to play with my kids everyday, I get to tuck them in every night and read the Bible to them and wake them up every morning, I have read a book, I am able to read my Bible every morning and best of all I am doing what God has called me to do all along.  Soooo, people may be disappointed in me, people may call me a quitter, laugh behind my back, find a new friend or even say things about me; but it doesn’t bother me anymore.  I have chosen my husband and kids over a career and that is worth more to me than any piece of paper ever will be.  God has a unique design for each and every family.  And in our family we are making cupcakes :)

The world is yelling at us to do one thing, while the Lord is whispering, “Follow Me”.  Don’t let the distractions of this world keep you from your true calling…

An excellent wife, who can find?  For her worth is far above jewels…She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness.  Proverbs 31:10, 27

Time... Where does it go?

I hate to disappoint my loyal Bible on the Bus readers but this blog is not totally devoted to what has been going on, on bus 7 from Heaven, but more of what God has laid on my heart to talk about and deal with over the past few weeks. So I hope I don't turn you away or let you down but to maybe lift you up or meet you in the same place where I find myself today...

Time is of essence to all of us. What do we do with it? Where do we spend it? How do we spend it? And with whom do we spend it? Is it spent wisely or foolishly? Do we miss it when it's gone? What would we do with it if we could get it back? Powerful questions and with good reason. God gives us one life and we are to choose wisely how we spend it and what we do with it. He created us for one reason and that is to spread the Good News with others. Knowing all that, somehow I still choose to take the long way around or the way that is harder. Not sure why, but I do.

Since I started nursing school a few weeks ago, this thing called time, has been lost. I am not sure where it goes but it always seems to get away from me. No matter how I try to capture it, it is always just a fingertip away from my grasp. I rise with our chickens and fall asleep well after dark but that doesn't seem to matter. Time just keeps slipping away and what have I really accomplished at the end of the day? Not to much that really mattered, unfortunately.

Time is given to me each day to spend wisely. I try, I mean I REALLY try to do my very best to spend those 24 hours wisely but I fail miserably each and every day. Over the past few weeks, I have lost touch with the kids on my bus because I am only driving two afternoons. I really don't even try to get to know them. I just drive as fast as I can to get them off the bus so that I can get home and try to catch up on what I didn't get done while I was gone at school all day. I have not even changed the Bible verse on the mirror for the past several weeks. It still has Jeremiah 29:11 written on it. I have fallen down on my responsibilities at home and am relying on others to do what I should be doing. I have missed opportunity after opportunity to love on my boys that I will never get back. I have also missed so much needed time with my husband while my head was in my books studying instead. I hate to say it, but I have not even been reading my Bible each morning to start my day. Why you ask? Because I don't have time or so that is my excuse. I have filled every waking moment with studying for a career that I am not even sure that God has called me too.

So is it worth it? Is going to school really worth giving up everything else? Is it worth missing time with my husband and boys? Is it worth falling down on my responsibilities at home? Is it worth missing time with the Lord? Well, that's what everyone tells me. They say, "It's only two years, Linna"! "It will be worth it when you're done". Really? Will it? I will never get these two years of my life back, in return for a career, a very good career of taking care of others. Well, each and every day has been a struggle for me because of all of these questions and things that run through my mind. It is a struggle for me each and every day to make myself go to class and spend the time that I can never recapture. I pray that I am spending my time wisely and that I will not forsake the things that are really important. I pray that I will find a balance. I pray that God will forgive me if I have stepped outside of His will for my life...

Even as I write this, I have lost another hour. I hope that it was not in vain. I hope that someone can use it to find peace or realize how precious each minute is and to spend it with someone they love. I hope that God will use this to open my eyes to the things unseen and to remind me of the precious gifts He has already given me. I hope that He is not disappointed in me if I did step off His path and if I did, I hope that my pride won't get in the way of allowing me to do His will.

Life isn't always grand and I can't always sugar coat this blog with how great everything is. Sometimes life is tough and this is just the real me trying to deal with the cards at hand. I don't always have the right things to say or the right answers. I am just little old me trying to do the best I can with the time I have been given. Don't lose anymore of your time! Go spend it with those that matter most :)

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11

Tear Jerker

Last summer we went to Tennessee for an extended vacation. We wanted to make it sort of a mission trip since we could not afford to go out of the country or anything. Since I am a big couponer and get lots of free stuff, we decided to make goody bags with basic essentials and also a print out of the gospel to take with us. We gave them out to homeless people we saw along the way on our trip. It was awesome to see their face light up when they opened their bags! The boys LOVED it and wanted to do it again. I say all this to say, that this vacation inspired my youngest son more than I could have ever imagined. As I mentioned in a previous post, we had a garage sale and Jamison wanted to take part of the money and buy Bibles. He said he wanted to give them to homeless people when we went on trips again. I was thrilled at his idea so we went to Mardel and got 10 Bibles. Edison got five and Jamsion got five. We told them that they could use them however they saw fit. They both took their Bibles and wrote a little note in the front of them. The Bibles then went to my office and had been there up until a couple of months ago...

Jamison's best friend, Corbin, got also saved a couple of months ago and was so excited! He started bringing his Bible to school, so of course Jamison had to start bringing his also. They would look at them together at lunch. The next think I know, I am getting an email from their teacher. She tells me that Jamsion and Corbin make her cry every Friday because they had started taking their Bibles on the playground and reading them. The email stated that it had started out as just Jamison and Corbin but had now grown to about six kids. She said that I had a missionary on my hands. The boys were inviting others to join in with them in their "Bible study time". I was in tears. My son and his best friend had started their own Bible Book Club, or so they called it. This is where the Bibles come into play.

I asked Jamison about the Bible Book Club after I got the email. He told me all about it and was so proud of it. He asked me if he could take his five Bibles to school for the Bible Book Club because there were some kids that did not have Bibles that they could bring to school. Wow! (My 8 year old son was doing something that I should have already been doing on my bus). So of course I said yes and he took them the next day. His teacher gave him and Corbin a plastic bin to put the Bibles in to take on the playground. So each Friday and sometimes other days, the Bible Book Club meets on the Hallsville Elementary playground for ten minutes or so. From what Jamison tells me, they read a few verses and then go play. How awesome is that?! Two eight year old boys with a heart for Jesus have created their own missionary field right here on one of Hallsville's school playgrounds. Who would have ever thought by making little goody bags to hand out to homeless people on vacation would have sparked such a wonderful idea in a wonderful little boy.

I am so excited to finally be posting this blog. I have been waiting on a visual for everyone and finally got it today and if this picture does not bring you to tears, then you need to search your heart. Isn't this exactly what we should all be doing? Leave it up to two little boys to open the eyes of this mama, their teachers, and everyone else reading this blog. Who says that Jesus can't be in public schools?! I hope that this blog and these two little boys inspire others to go spread the Good News. We each have our own mission field right before us. We just have to be willing to let God show us and use us for His glory. The blessings you will receive from it are unlimited. So what are you waiting for? Go share Jesus with those in your mission field and be blessed!

Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Matthew 28:19-20