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!

continued here