Dad's Birthday

Today would have been my dad's 88th birthday had he lived this long! He was a handy man to have around as he was an air-conditioning and heating serviceman. He also knew about refrigeration and motors and electricity. It would irritate my mother to no end when he would take a small greasy engine apart and put it back together on our kitchen table. I took his talents for granted until he passed away 26 years ago, four days before my parent's anniversary, of a sudden heart attack.

 

His funeral service verse was,

 

Then I heard a voice from heaven say, "Write:

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on."

"Yes," says the Spirit, "they will rest from their labor,

for their deeds will follow them."

~ Revelation 14: 13,

 

because I made a note of it in my Bible.

 

A girlfriend found this bazaar poem for work gloves somewhere and sent it to me when I was a preschool Sunday School teacher.  I had to rework it a bit so that my class could give a gift of gloves to their daddies for Father's Day; however today I'm posting this in memory of my dad!

 

 
Dad's Gloves Craft.

Supplies needed:
a computer generated copy of the poem
1 pair of men's brown jersey work gloves per child (I saw some at a salvage store for 50 cents a pair here; sometimes you can purchase them in a bundle; my Dad's favorite thing to do was to buy in bulk! *grin*)
1 brown paper lunch bag per child
a piece of brown twine, abt. 8 inches long or so
appropriate tool rubber stamps and dark brown or black dye ink pad
or black and white printed clip-art 
glue or paste, hole punch, & pinking sheers

Instructions:
Stamp tool images all over the front of the bag with the ink or color in the clip-art, cut out and glue to bag.  Trim around the pre-printed poem with pinking sheers, and paste it to the front of the bag. Then place the gloves in the bag, fold the top over a couple of times, and punch two holes in the middle about an inch apart. Thread the jute through and tie into a bow. Dad's gift is finished! 

(Note about poem: "I", in the personal sense, was written as their Sunday School teacher, but it can changed to the corporate "we", as in siblings shopping together. Use as needed.)

 

Father's Gloves
Author Unknown.

 I went shopping store to store
For one gift that fits all,
Some were too tall, some too wide,
But many were just too small.

 The mystery was solved when I saw
The perfect gift for every male,
It’s just the right size for their dads
And it even was on sale!

  

It fits the hands that mow the grass
And takes the garbage out.
It fits when dads are pumping gas
Or moving things about.

 It fits for this and fits for that,
And on and on you see.
I’m sure you might have a chore or two,
Or maybe even three.

 So free your hands of cuts and scrapes, dad,
On all the jobs you do.
As you slide each hand in a glove;
remember the love they have for you.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!

Presentation Praise Part Two

"The two choirs that gave thanks then took their places in the house of God; so did I, together with half the officials, as well as the priests. . . And on that day they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy. The women and children also rejoiced. The sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away."

~ Nehemiah 12:40,43.

 

Come, ye thankful people come, Raise the song of harvest-home;

All is safely gathered in, Ere the winter storms begin;

God our Maker doth provide For our wants to be supplied;

Come to God's own temple, come, Raise the song of harvest-home.
Hymn by: Henry Alford & George J. Elvey, Come, Ye Thankful People Come

 

 I wanted to visit so many places in Illinois besides the Logan County Historical & Genealogical Society in Lincoln and in Missouri  that our week's schedule  was solid, therefore I didn't get everything written I wanted to in one post, so here's part two.

I'm slowly digging out photos taken during that week. Here's two photos of Liberty Mosquito church in Illinois that I began praying about. The Lord has graciously answered so many of my prayers during my research for which I'm so grateful. Being able to visit Illinois is/was one of them.

Since I haven't been able to go onsite to very many archives, I feel what I've found so far is just the tip of the iceberg and there is  more just waiting to be discovered.   


At home, my hubby enthusiastically got our fellowship circle at church involved in praying for Liberty as well and Elder Robert Webb, the church archivist of the Primitive Baptist Library in Carthage, IL has been busy beaver looking up its current building history so that we can obtain some of its past history in the form of church minutes that occurred during my 3rd great-grandfather's lifetime. In faith, I'm praying they still exist. Ironically, Brother Webb is the pastor  in the historic congregation my 2nd grandparents, Griffin & Margrett White and her parents, Enoch & Elizabeth Scaiefe, attended in Clay County, IL.  I think that's neat.

 

I've always been curious to know what my 3rd great-grandparents' spiritual life was like -- when and where was he ordained, what were their favorite Bible verses, what did he preach about,  did they pray for their future descendants, and so forth? And how did Liberty on Mosquito Creek get its name? Who organized it?  My grandmother  and most of my cousins have looked high and low for a photo of our ancestors to no avail, however I found a description of him in a Christian County history by Calvin Goudy: "He was a Predestinarian Baptist preacher, and was a strong believer in the doctrine that a man will not die till his time comes. He was a correct type of backwoods preacher, and when preaching in warm weather, would lay off his coat, open his shirt collar, turn up his sleeves, and fairly make the woods ring with his stentorian voice." Guess Martin didn't need a microphone back in those days! *wink*


Another highlight for me was viewing the original payroll document that Martin signed after he served as Logan and Christian county's very first elected representative in the state legislature after the two counties were formed from Sangamon county in 1839. A Dr. Cornelius wheeled it down to us on a cart at the Lincoln library in Springfield and gave us a photocopy of the second page with Martin's signature. Abraham Lincoln's signature was on the first page and they both received $100.00 for their service.


I don't want to bore you, but I was super excited to find other places that pertained to my ancestors in Illinois. If you  like scavenger hunts and putting together 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles then you will understand the excitement I experienced when visiting places that pertained to my ancestors, like the Old State Capitol in Springfield; the exhibit of Santa Anna's artificial leg he abandoned during the Mexican war at the Illinois State Military Museum; the Stafford cemetery near Osbernville, in Mosquito Township, Christian county,  which was five or so miles southwest of the Lincoln's first home in Illinois north of the Sangamon River. We looked north towards the Sangamon River from Stafford cemetery where the forced removal of the Potawatomi in 1838 ran along present day highway 36. We could not see the actual Trail of Death for the trees along the Sangamon River, however, Martin and his family might have seen the  dust trail and fire smoke of 1000 people, wagons, and livestock  during the latter part of September as that part of Illinois is as flat as the farmland in southwestern Kansas. 


And while we were in Illinois, the Lord blessed our friends, G. and P. with a genealogical treasure too! According to her family tradition,  her ancestor's name was embossed on a church bell hanging in the tower at their historic home church (St. Patrick's), but she never wanted to climb the tall ladder up to it to check it out. Just before we arrived in their city, the bell tower had been found unsafe during a repointing of the bricks that it was constructed of. Would you believe that just as we were given the grand tour of their fair city, turning a street corner, we saw that the bell had been removed and was sitting on the sidewalk.  After hurriedly hopping out of the van, P. was like an excited kid in a candy shop when she discovered her ancestor's name was indeed on the side of that bell! *smile*

In the home of pioneers, John & Jane Sullins, my husband's 6th great-grandparents,  a  Baptist church was organized and was named after the creek they lived near. It is one of Missouri's oldest churches and is  called the Fee-Fee Baptist church. Thomas Musick was the organizing Elder and a couple of John and Jane's children would later marry into the Musick family. Trying to find it, Melissa (Garmin) took us on a long tour of St. Louis' highways, but eventually we found the church. This is, of course, not the original log church house, but a later one, but is the earliest sanctuary still existing on the property. There is another sanctuary where a wedding was in progress as we arrived. The church cemetery was a few blocks away where Thomas Musick is buried.

As I was thinking about this second post, I remembered that Stephanie Ackerman has been taking notes of her pastor's sermons to put into her Documented Faith planner. I wondered if anybody had taken notes of one of Martin's sermons or if perhaps somebody had written a letter to a family member or friend and included some interesting points of a sermon of his. I also wondered if one of his sermons was ever published in a newspaper. Something again to pray about, because I have no idea of who might have done that or how to contact descendants who might have hung onto a letter, but God knows. And while I was thinking about this, I made sermon notes of my own in a little spiral notebook I carry in my purse. Our interim pastor has been preaching on heaven and my husband read scripture in our church service last Sunday. 

You know we are spiritual descendants of our ancestors. Sadly, in the book of Judges (2:10), I found scripture that said: "After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel." I'm thankful my ancestors faithfully passed on their faith and knowledge of the Lord's goodness to me and my husband and hopefully, we were good imparters of our faith to our son.

You know how you sometimes have selective eyesight to things around you? Well, I've had this in my house for something like 20 years, a former church friend, T.W. made it for me, and this morning I SAW it again with FRESH EYES when I realized who sent me a love note as I was thinking about how I was going to write this post! *smile*

 



 

May you find a love note of your own today!

Presentation Praise!

"And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you. . .

Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift."

~ 2 Corinthians 9:15

 

"Rest and be thankful."

~ Inscription on stone seat in the Scottish highlands.

     We had a lovely trip and amazingly enough, I wasn't nervous at all during my presentation. Must have been all those prayers that went up to heaven on my behalf! *smile*  I went to the Logan County Historical & Genealogical Society in Lincoln, IL to talk about my 3rd great grandparents and their family. After my speech, during the question time,  the journalist in the audience asked me the one hard question that I just knew would come up, but I decided to be straight-forward and honest in my answer. Now if you know me, I don't get into political stuff too much. I have my opinions like anyone else, but when people drone on and on about their opinions, my eyes tend to glaze over. *smile*  So it's like that when I go to read the Twelfth General Assembly Journal (my 3rd great-grandfather served in the 1840-42 House of Representatives in the Illinois State Legislature with Abraham Lincoln) and I can only take it in small chunks, meaning I knew that he was a democrat and he was appointed to two committees (Public Building & Grounds and the State Militia) and the journal showed what he voted on. . . I praise God for seeing me through the presentation!

 

     However, there were several things beforehand that the ole devil tried throwing under my feet to get me to trip up and give up, but I kept repeating Stephanie's quote "Pray. . . don't panic." One of the most difficult things for me was scrambling to come up with show and tell items at the last minute when I knew I wasn't going to have a power-point presentation. I've been to enough of these kind of lectures at local historical societies and museums to know that it is usually authors who are doing the book tour to sell theirs, which I don't have yet, and that anything hands-on or visual that you can show people is what gives interest to your talk. I was praying that the 4 travel maps that I ordered two weeks before I was to go would show up and wouldn't you know, Kentucky was the last map to arrive on the day before we were to leave and it was the first one I needed. I thank God for getting it here in time. The most difficult thing I had to let go of was the knowledge that I wasn't going to have a powerpoint because the person I most counted on to help tutor  me was never available; I feel she let me down.  I wish she would have been honest with me six months ago when I first asked for help  and told me no then or that she wanted $$ for a tutorial. I don't know about you, but I cannot read people's minds and while I've self-taught myself many things on the computer, I found that this was not something I could sort out myself and the harder I tried, the more confused I became. 

 

     Mom told me I was a stubborn child; I prefer to call it perseverance through difficulties.  *smile* Finally, we were packed and ready to go and we were on our way out of town, on a 6 lane highway (3 lanes going north and 3 going south) and  just as we came abreast of an exit, which was filled with cars lined up for at least a mile back, one little silver car two ahead of us, tried to cut into the line and stopped in the middle of the  lane of traffic because, duh, the lined up cars wouldn't let him cut in. The jeep between us and the little bug slammed on his brakes to avoid the bug and tried to go round, but didn't make it, because he was trying to avoid being hit by the cars passing him on the left and his jeep began flipping around in all the lanes of traffic by that time -- at one point we thought he was going to turn over -- and finally he came to rest in the safety ropes of the guard rail on the left side, not more than a foot from the bridge well between the two highways.  Be still our hearts! My husband just kept on driving as we didn't want to be the cause of any accidents behind us, but we praised God for his protection for all the drivers -- the dumb one, the jeep, and us!

 

     Not only was this a presentation trip, but I also wanted to avail myself of the research opportunities while I was there. A funny -- after trying to chase down an address we "lost," because we were waiting on people to get home from work so we could pick their brain about the history of the church my 3rd great grandfather preached in (yes, the second building of the Liberty on Mosquito creek church still exists, but it's in sad shape, need to pray for that situation), and because we had to go  to the little town close by to avail ourselves of a certain facility, we got into Taylorville rather late at night, discouraged. My husband had looked up the motel situation beforehand and knew there was one he wanted to stay in, so he had put the address in "Melissa" (Garmin) and she got us right to it. She must have known how down we were because she didn't give us any of her usual shenanigans like taking us around the block the long way (her favorite thing to do!).  The next morning, just as we were leaving the motel, I looked up and saw the sign to the very place I wanted to visit. It was right next door to the motel! LOL!

 

     And David decided the next time something like this happens, he's going to program Melissa with the GPS coordinates so she can take us back to the same place; live and learn!  That way we won't have to criss-cross the whole county back and forth a dozen times. *smile*

 

     While we were in Illinois, we also celebrated our 33rd anniversary. I thank God for my hubby. Did you know we met on a blind date? And the rest is history, so to speak!

     On the way home, we stopped in St. Charles, MO. They were having their Celtic festival. First stop was the Lewis & Clark museum on the Missouri river. After examining the doctoring remedies in one of their exhibits, I was thankful for the medicine we have today. While our medicine isn't perfect, it's a long way from "Rush's Bilious Pills" that I saw in the medicine chest display and yes, that was the real brand name on one of the bottles.

     On to Documented Faith = several weeks ago, as I began accumulating more paraphernalia in my notebook, it was getting harder to open the binder rings to add in more sleeves without losing a few since the notebook was only a 1-inch binder, so I switched over to a larger notebook, one about 3 1/2-inches wide. But then I decided I had to take my notebook with me so that I could use it to save paraphernalia from the trip, like all the receipts from the motels we stayed in, interesting travel brochures, and postcards, so I took extra document sleeves with me (several of which I used) and extra trading card sleeves (which I didn't), but the one thing I forgot to bring with me was notebook paper to take notes on. Thank goodness there was civilization where we went (ie. Wal-Mart), so I was able to pick up a lime-green composition book.  

Since the larger notebook was too large, just the one current month went with me in the green notebook in a Mary Engelbreit totebag that my friend C.B. found for me. I took some scissors with me, the extra sleeves, my coloring pencils, a sharpie marker, and about three rolls of washi tape. Since I've been home, I've decided to keep one month in the smaller notebook as it's less cumbersome and use the bigger one as an archive of sorts. It fits in between my chair and the side table right behind the file folder box neat as a pin.

 

     In conclusion, I'm thankful for the welcoming manners and the hospitality that was shown us in Lincoln, Illinois  and in each of the hotels we stayed at. I'm thankful that we were able to visit some of the places that my ancestors lived and that some of the buildings and places still exist. I'm thankful that people valued those things so they remained for me to enjoy too.

 

And by the way,  look what was waiting for me on my log-in page on my email browser this morning!

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