Wal-Mart Insanity

I usually do my running to Wal-Mart and such during the day, but since
we are down to one vehicle, I am doing things differently. Last Wed.,
Lindsay and I made a run to Wal-Mart at about 10:30 pm. Let me explain
our Wal-Mart situation here in Katy. We have the "bad" Wal-Mart, which
is about 2 miles away, and the "good" Wal-Mart, which is about 6 miles
away. I usually go to the "good" Wal-Mart because it newer, cleaner,
its lines aren't as long, it's better lit, and it just "feels" better to
me. Many times I have walked into the "bad" Wal-Mart and thought about
turning around, getting in my van and driving the additional 4 miles to
the "good" Wal-Mart. Last Wednesday night was certainly one of the
times I should have done this.

Lindsay and I got what we needed and then headed to the lines. For some
unknown reason, every line had 2-3 people in them. I guess they had all
waited until after Lost to do their shopping. We looked for the line of
least resistance and decided on one that had two carts; though they were
quite full, this still seemed to be the shortest line. Well, as we all
know, things are often not what they appear to be. There were two
carts, but 4 young women (early 20's). I did notice that this checkout
had several carts loaded with merchandise beside the carts these women
had, but didn't think much of it. I should have been paying more
attention! The young woman who had the conveyor belt loaded with all
types and colors of lingerie and baby products looked at the display
that showed her what her subtotal was and she went a little nutty. She
apparently didn't realize that she couldn't get the $800 worth of stuff
she had for $200. This is not an exaggeration; she didn't have any
clue what she was spending. This is where the story became
interesting. The other three girls began looking in their carts to see
what they could discard, ya know, what lace undies they really didn't
need. The one thing they all kept were their diapers. So I'm assuming
these were all unwed mothers(none were wearing rings) who were on some
kind of shopping spree. I stood there-no I wasn't the picture of
patience, maybe eternal hope-for about 10 minutes, then something
happened that made me want to scream. (I didn't, but boy did I want
to!) Girl number 3 pulled her cart in front of mine as girl number 2 was
finishing. Remember those merchandise laden carts? Well, they belonged
to the other 2 girls! And they were all paying together! At this point
I went to get into another line.

Things didn't go much better for me in the other line. After I emptied
about half of my cart, the cashier told me I needed to move up to the
next register (ya know how they stagger them, it was the one behind
hers). So, being the obedient child that I am, I put my stuff back in
my cart, only grumbling under my breath so Lindsay could hear me, and I moved to the third register. When I arrived at the register, there was another
woman there. The cashier came and told her to step back to the
register I just left, and then proceeded to check her out.

I was still in close proximity to the girls, so we could see their
progress as time marched on. They all took about 10 minutes checking
out, and they all had to void many things off of their tickets. They
ended up getting mad at the cashier (I think she earned an all expense
paid vacation for dealing with them) and then things became really
interesting. When they all finally decided what they had to have, one of
the girls stepped toward the counter to pay with her credit card. She
looked at the other three and said, "O.K., you all are going to pay me
back, right? Are you sure?! When will you pay me back?" I was
thinking... "You have spent 45 minutes in line, put everyone out, and
you are just now asking this question?" She then proceeded to swipe her
card and they all left.

It was a few more minutes before I was finished, and on the way to the
van I was quoting MLK to Lindsay.

"Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!"

I'm sure the time will come when I will visit the "bad" Wal-Mart
again... but it won't be any time soon!

The Jolly Green Giant is Dead

The Lord's timing is perfect and this was proven, once again, yesterday. Gene had to run into Houston yesterday to pick up something he needed for work. Just as Gene began to go up a hill on interstate 10, one exit before his, our big green van's (aka The Jolly Green Giant) oil pressure went through the roof and it coasted to a stop almost at the peak of the hill. And there is stayed. Gene called me and after 2 hours, and a lot of insanity, we finally got it towed to his office. We are blessed with a mechanic who comes to us when he works on our vehicles, and today Freddie came out. He pronounced last rites over the van, and said he would help us to find a proper burial site for it. In other words, he will help us find someone to buy it from us. We had our new van 33 days when this happened. We are so thankful for the new van and that the Lord allowed The Jolly Green Giant to serve us as long as it did.

Catching Up...Again

Thanks to my sweet husband, my computer woes are over!!! Last weekend we purchased a laptop before the old computer completely crashed on us. I am finding that I love the portability of the laptop. Before when working on things on the computer, I was confined to our room. Now, I am in the living room, right in the center of things. This makes me better able to keep an eye on what is happening while doing my needed computer work.

The last 18 days have just flown by! It amazes me how quickly the weeks pass. I do wish I could slow the days down, but then, if I had more hours, I'd just find something else to do with them.

On March 5th Hannah had her 14th birthday, and on the 7th Caroline turned 11. They opted for a simple shared birthday party. We ate hot dogs for dinner and then Gene & I took the birthday girls to Cold Stone Creamery for ice cream. After ice cream we took them to a nearby mall they hadn't visited before. After our mall excursion we came home to a streamer decorated family room and kitchen. Hannah and Caroline each designed and made their own cakes. It was strange for me to not be making their cakes, but I am pleased that they wanted to practice their baking skills.


On the 7th Cindy ran an interview with me about our ministry. I had some very challenging comments and questions, which the Lord used to help me grow.

Interview Part One

Interview Part Two

On the 10th we held an Evangelism One Day Training Course in The Highlands. We had about 15 people in attendance. It is a great blessing to be able to train others to share their faith Biblically. Our hope and prayer is that in some small way, we can encourage them to follow the call that every believer has been given, which is to preach the gospel to every creature.

One of our evangelism team members, Janna was married on the 11th. On the 9th, before our regular Friday night witnessing, we all met at El Rey Taqueria for dinner. It was our first time to meet her fiance, Jed. Last Saturday night(the 17th) I received a call from Jed & Janna telling me about their first street evangelism effort together as a married couple. It was wonderful to hear the excitement in their voices as they shared about their time together witnessing. I felt a great amount of encouragement when hearing how they are starting their lives together by placing their focus firmly on seeking to save that which is lost.

On Friday the 16th, we had a great time on streets. One of our team members, Jason, brought his Harlequin Great Dane. He is 14 months old and weighs a whopping 140lbs. His name is Niko, short for Nicholas. He was such a sweetheart and he got lots of attention, which is exactly what we wanted. We called him our Texas Chihuahua. We all know everything is bigger and better in Texas. He was a great prop to break the ice with people. As people walk down the street they tend to walk quickly by, and they often won't make eye contact with you, because they don't want to have to tell you they don't want what you have. But, Niko had people stopping to stare, which gave us the chance to talk to them about him, and offer to let them pet him. We had several instances where a person would refuse to take a tract from one of us, but after visiting with Jason & Niko, they were happy to take one. I don't know how many tracts we gave out as a team, but Gene & I were able to give out about 150. If you haven't tried giving out tracts in a busy place before, let me encourage you to do so. What an easy way to get the gospel into the hands of a lot of people in a short amount of time.


Sunday the 18th Gene spoke at the Philippine-American Good News Fellowship. They had their annual Rodeo Day (because of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo). The people were very welcoming and friendly, and we all had a great time. Gene taught on, "The Top 10 Signs I Was A False Convert." The sermon seemed to resonate with many people, and we pray that the Lord was able to use it in their lives. After church there was a fellowship dinner of cowboy fare. We had bar-b-que chicken, sausage & brisket, and for sides we had potato salad and baked beans. We had great fellowship along with great food.

Monday Hannah & I took my van in to see about having a piece of trim replaced. They ordered the part and it should be in one day this week. After our trip to the car dealership Hannah and I ate breakfast at La Madeliene's. Then we came home for a short while, going back out later to run errands and grocery shop.

Well, that should have you up to date on my life now. Hopefully, now that I have this new computer, I'll be able to update more often.

Computer Woes

My computer has been showing signs of a terminal illness and it is causing me to be able to post. I'm hoping I can get this typed and up before it shuts down again!! I will try to borrow one of the girls computers to post later.

It's been over a month...

Today is March 1st and it has been over a month since I posted here. This last month has been full of many ups and downs and my prayer is that the rest of the year will not follow suit. I'll try to catch you up on some of the things that have happened over the last month.

Jan. 25th was my 43rd birthday. It was pretty low key. That afternoon we received an e-mail that greatly changed things for us. The e-mail was a final straw which caused us to sever ties with The Great News Network. It was a hard decision to make, but over the last month the Lord has re-affirmed that we made the right decision.

Because of this change, we had to change domain names and re-work our website(which is still getting re-vamped). Our new ministry name which isn't really that new to us, as it's the name we had before joining up with GNN. We've gone back to Master's Key Ministries. You really wouldn't know that there was a change, except for our name and that Gene won't be going to Bootcamps any more. We will still be doing the same things we were before; meeting up with friends to evangelize on the streets every Friday night, and we will be adding some new family evangelism activities. We love teaching classes; equipping and encouraging others to share their faith in Christ, and we will be teaching a class on the 10th in Baytown.

On the 4th Gene spoke to a youth group at a Philippine/American Church. The people were kind and very welcoming. The youth were very attentive and receptive to what Gene had to say. Their pastor, Pastor Dindo, has a great heart for evangelism and wants his people to learn to share their faith. We look forward to hitting the streets with some of the people from this church.

Lindsay has been suffering with asthma/allergy problems for quite a while, we've tried many things, but most of them are ineffective. She began to get worse and on Feb. 1st I took her to the doctor again. She had a terrible sinus infection which was putting quite a lot of pressure on her ears; causing them to hurt a good bit. The doctor gave her a three week course of antibiotics, prednizone, and some decongestant. The next week we had a drastic change in the weather which set her asthma off and by 2am on the 10th we were headed to the hospital. This was our first time to go to the hospital due to someone's asthma. They gave her a couple of breathing treatments which did wonders for her. The hardest part was getting out of the hospital. They had several critical cases come in and every room in the ER was full. It took 2 1/2 more hours, just to discharge us. During the interim, Lindsay and I became rather slap happy due to the combination of no sleep and her drugs... we were quite the silly pair. Our Monkishness took over in rare form. As we sat in our room with nothing to do, we began to notice all of these things that were out of place. The game became for me to straighten up, but to make sure none of the nurses could see me through the glass door and windows. First there were the pens and items on the counter, they were just sort of scattered around. Then we noticed that the rubber glove boxes weren't centered in the dispenser. One of the trickier items was the hospital gown tie that was hanging out of an overhead cabinet, which was on the other side of the curtain and right by the sliding glass door. Lindsay was finding new things for me to "fix" as she played lookout for me. After the 2 1/2 hours we were able to straighten the whole room, feeling much better about it all. We were finally discharged at 7am and came home to crash for the day. This adventure wiped Lindsay and I out for most of the weekend. She did much better after her treatments and the doctor gave her a prescription for a nebulizer and albuterol so that she could do treatments at home. The treatments have helped a great deal, though the drastic fluctuations in temperature have played havoc with her asthma. I took her back to the doctor on Tuesday and her sinus infection is still here, so we have started another round of antibiotics and prednizone.

On the 19th Caroline came down with a stomach bug, and since then things have gone downhill on the health end of things here. Caroline is hardly ever sick, so I was surprised at her coming down with something. She was over it in a couple of days, but then Hannah came down with the same thing, and Rachel came down with an upper respiratory virus. Rachel's is still going strong, and last night Caroline awoke coughing. This morning she sounded just like Rachel. Pray for them... and for me through all of this.

The only other bit of news for me was that we bought a new-to-us vehicle a couple of weeks ago. My old van was getting to the stage of needing many repairs, you know, the money pit stage, and we decided to get a Toyota Sienna. We debated between it and a Suburban for a while, but chose the Sienna in the end. I love it, and believe a mother must have designed some of the features, as I love them. It even has hooks in the back for Wal-Mart bags so that they don't slide around the back of the van. I think my favorite part is the cd player, I'm able to listen to music now, which I hadn't been able to do in my other van, for quite a while.

Well, I think that brings things back up to date. I'm going to be starting some special projects around the house and will hopefully be posting about them here. I will also be doing an interview on Cindy's blog in the next week or so, I'll post here when she has posted it. The next week will be quite busy as I have two birthdays, a washer repairman coming and a class to prepare for, as well as all of these sick girls. So, if you think about me, send a prayer up.