Thank You Father for 20012

My blog today is a thank you letter to God my Heavenly Father.

I just want to praise You Father and give you glory, honor and praises. This year has been the best year of my life. I have come so far in You Father, I'm not satisfied yet but I'm so much closer to You than I ever thought possible. You have truly become a father that I can crawl up on Your lap and cry my heart out to. You hold me in the palm of your hand and make the crooked places straight. You lift me up when I am ill or under attack. You show me how to be a better woman of God. I can't use words to describe how much I truly love you. Words are totally inadequate.

Last January we were barely holding on and this the last day of the year we are blessed beyond measure. How awesome are you Father! We are totally victorious! Glory to You Lord! What wonders have You in store for me and my family for this coming year? How will You use me to Your glory? I come into this new year so excited I can hardly wait. I feel like I might burst from the wait.

Panama was truly one of the main highlights of this last year. A thousand people we saved, people were healed, and lives touched supernaturally that will never be the same. How awesome were You Lord! Now as we prepare for Peru we claim five hundred children for the mission team and five thousand souls won over to Jesus. We claim lives touched in supernatural ways, severed arms and legs to grow back, demons cast out of people, and even the dead raised to life. Nothing is to difficult for You Father. I promise to give you all the glory and "write, for these words are true and faithful." Revelations 21:5, that all may know of Your glory.

I will continue to write books for your glory, even if no one wants to read them for it is what You commanded me to do. I will continue to seek publication of our books(for I know the stories are from You)
I will serve you more in this coming year.

Wednesday will start my fast and I will seek Your face for the plan You have for the coming year. I will be obedient to all that You tell me to do for I love you with all my heart. My sole desire is to please You. I know that You will show me exactly how you want me to do that.

Thank you Father for all of my followers on my blog may I truly touch their hearts in the coming year and I pray that You pour out blessings on each and everyone of them. Touch the lives of each person who accidentally land on my blog or finds my author's page on facebook. Let me always be a blessing to those who read my work.

All Honor, All Glory be the King of Kings, the Lord of Glory, the Heavenly Father, the Great IAM. I love you so much and only want to thank You for being who You are and for loving me. Thank You for choosing me, for adopting me, and claiming I am Your own. Glory! Glory! Glory!

A Simple Amish Christmas by Vannetta Chapman

My book review today is A Simple Amish Christmas. I really enjoyed this book. I love the Amish books, a simpler way of life. (in some ways anyway) This one was no different, it was very well written, and kept my attention. I hadn't read any of Vannetta's books but I will enjoy reading more.

Annie Weaver left the Amish world to live with her aunt, she didn't fit in with the rest of her people. While living with her aunt she received her GED and went on to receive a nursing degree. She became a nurse caring for very ill children. Annie is called home to Miffin County, to care for her father who has had a bad accident. How can she explain to her family about her training?

Samuel Yoder is a hard working farmer, he is also the only health care provider in the Amish world he lives in. He was widowed many years earlier, a lonely man he has taken on the responsibility of his people to the point that he felt much older than his twenty-nine years. He has little hope of ever having a family of his own.

Annie's return brought Samuel and Annie together in the care of her father. Annie soon earned Samuel's respect with her nursing skill and he started taking her on calls with him. Annie was very attracted to the handsome, gentle man. Samuel had many issues to deal with but began to care deeply for this young girl.

A story of forgiveness, trust, and finding where you fit into God's plans. I know it will inspire you. It's a great read, even though Christmas is over. I hope you will go out and get a copy, you can find it at Amazon.com.

I hope you all had a great Christmas. We had our family celebration on Saturday night. My grandson had to return to his dad's on Sunday, but Saturday was great. We were to have Christmas dinner at Scott's (my son-in-law) mother's home in Sargent. She was brought to the hospital Monday night and is still there today. I was having some problems and was kind of relieved not to go out in the cold weather. I became very ill and we ended up not having a Christmas dinner but just had some snacks. I went to the doctor on Wednesday and was told I had a serious case of Bronchitis, ear infection, and a cracked rib. Merry Christmas! God is good and I am improving daily. God bless you all. I'll talk to you on Monday.

Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas and a Happy new Year! My grandson is here, Praise God I haven't seen him since July. So I'm not going to be posting today or Monday. I plan to enjoy every minute I can with my family. God bless you all and I pray only the best for you this season.

Fear of Faith You Choose

This last week has been a week of horror for the United States. A week where a dysfunctional mother was killed by her tortured son that went on to kill twenty babies and several adults. A normal mind would ask why. Many people will blame God for such a horrendous event, but God doesn't kill babies, He doesn't call them home to be a flower in some garden in the sky. No, the devil stole these children! He reached down into a tormented mind and told him there was no other way. Just what goes on in the mind of a man like that we will never know. Many writers try to tell stories about it but we really have no idea. We do know that
he felt he could no longer live with what he had done. Maybe he felt like he was saving them from a terrible life, maybe in his tortured mind he was protecting them. We will never know.

Two weeks ago, that community was celebrating. They had a tree lighting service where the whole town came. There was face painting and singing, everyone was full of joy and now the whole community is in mourning. I was thrilled to see the Billy Graham Chaplains there ministering to the people. They even brought grief dogs to minister to the crowds.

Where do we go from here? I have read so many stories and posts on the internet where people are afraid to send there kids to school or let them out of their homes but we can't live like that. We can't let the devil win! We must fight back! We need to pray for divine protection over our children everyday. We need to lay hands on them and bless them. We need to pray for our kids and our nation. God is a good God but if we live in fear His hands our tied. When Job lost his children he said "The thing that I feared has come upon me" Fear drives out faith. You each have a choice, you can believe God's Word, believe in His divine protection, His love for you or you can live in fear and never leave your own home. Joshua said "As for me and my house we will serve the Lord" That is what I choose. I choose to believe that God has a plan for me and my family, a good plan and if evil comes to my household He will see us through.

Where evil abounds grace does abound more. Choose Faith, don't live in fear. God is good and His mercies endures forever. God bless you and keep the joy of Christmas in your home. God sent Jesus into this world for such a time as this.

Acts of Honor by Vicki Hinze

My book review today is on Acts of Honor. I ordered this from Amazon and didn't realize it wasn't a Christian Suspense. There was a lot of language that is not normally in the books I read but it wasn't obsessive and it was necessary in story. Men in a mental hospital that had been tortured wouldn't use Christianeze. I love Vicki's books and this wasn't the one to disappoint me.

Dr. Sara West has specialized in working with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. She now has an eighty-percent success rate. Her methods are very unorthodox but she gets results. Her brother-in-law, David Quade committed suicide five years ago, now Sara struggled to help her sister and her niece learn to live again. Sara hates the military for what happened to David and her family, she had spent the last five years trying to get answers form Colonel Jack Foster, now he comes to her and wants help. He has an officer that has had his brain scrambled. Foster wants her to find out if this Shadow Watcher is salvageable. She will be given five patients and she will need to find his man and report back to Foster. She tries to send Foster packing but his promise that she will find the answers to David's death leads her to accept the challenge. She goes under cover to a military mental facility that doesn't exist. To treat people that no longer exist. If she fails she too cease to exist.

Major Jarrod  Brandt wakes to find himself in isolation, wearing a straight jacket, and not knowing who he is. He remembers an electric chair, a red haze, and episodic rage nothing more. Sara meets with him but triggers and episode of rage and he almost kills her.

Sara meets her patients and gives them each a name as the hospital only has them identified by numbers. (I love the fact that when she meets the patient she named Joe, she immediately knows he is "The One") She recognizes that Joe is her Shadow Watcher. Now she has to help this man even though he tries to kill her at their first meeting.

This is an excellent military thriller. I come from a military family and I found the story very plausible but quite heart stopping. I would hate to think of things like this happening to my son, who was in the Special Forces.
I really liked this book and will read the rest of this series. 

Happy Birthday to Me

My Birthday is today so I am going to share with you about how I feel about that. I was born two weeks before Christmas. My parents brought me home on Christmas Eve (in those days women were kept lying flat for ten days) I still have a doll that they gave me for that first Christmas. It's a cloth bodied goggle eyed doll.

For as long as I can remember my parents always told me there would be an extra present under the tree for me because of my birthday, yeah right! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to count gifts under the tree. I was always disappointed. Christmas was always hard at our home, my dad was military and there was four of us kids so money was tight.

The first year I was married, we had nothing, my husband gave me crayons and a coloring book. The next Christmas he was in Vietnam, by the next Christmas my marriage was in trouble. A year later I had three kids under two and a husband who had disappeared off the face of the earth.

Every year in the past forty-four years I have thought; 'next year will be different, next year I won't be alone, and next year I won't be broke.' I would fight depression all the way through November and December. I know as Christians we aren't suppose to be depressed, but sometimes that is hard to put in practice. It doesn't help when your parents pass on, a grandchild dies of SIDS, or when you lose a child.

This year should have been different for me. I have grown so much this last year. I thought I had it all together but as my manuscript(only the first chapter, no one will read the whole thing) was rejected again, I found I had a fight on my hands again. I started getting up at five each morning to pray in the Spirit and then the attacks began; a cold, the flu, a pulled muscle. How many know how hard it is to be up and positive when your in pain?

Today is my birthday and I know that the attacks are over. Not just because of the date but because God is good and His mercies endureth forever. I have come through it all victorious. I trust God with everything and in everything and I know that He has only the best in store for me.

Thanks everyone for all the Birthday Wishes and Prayers. God bless you all. I'll see you all on Monday.

Tracking Justice by Shirlee McCoy

My book review today is the first book in the Texas K-9 Unit Series by Love Inspired Suspense. I love Shirlee's books, she writes great suspense stories and her romance is second to none. She doesn't preach but her faith is woven deep within each of her stories. I love her characters, although they are flawed in many ways they fight for what they believe in and they don't give up.

Eva Billows wakes up in the middle of the night to find her seven year old son had been kidnapped. Eva isn't a stranger to violence and has little faith in the law enforcement of her city. Both  of her parents had been murdered several years ago and the killers still haven't been found.

Police Detective Austin Black and his canine partner Justice are called in to track the young boy. He assures the desperate Eva that he will find her son but Eva isn't about to trust a man so she follows them into the woods.  Austin is unable to tell her she can't come. Finding the child isn't the end of their troubles as one of the men who kidnapped Brady comes back to get him. Can they keep him safe? Can they find "The Boss"?

The book is action packed and very hard to set down. I know you will enjoy this book. You can find out more about Shirlee's books at; www.shirleemccoy.com. God bless you all.

The General's Secretary by Debby Giusti

My book review today is The General's Secretary by Debby Gousti, a January issue of Love Inspired Suspense. It is the fourth book in the Military Investigations Series. I really enjoy the way Debby writes. She is one of my favorites. Her books are always fast paced, action packed stories but filled with love and faith and this book is no exception, it is a great read.

Lillie Beaumont is the secretary of General Cameron. She has made a good life for herself while trying to live down her past. Her mother disappeared years ago. Everyone assumed she had ran off and left her only child, a four year old to fend for herself. Her murdered body was found years later in a oil drum, she had been buried alive. Now Lillie's past has found her, when the man that had been sent to prison for her murder show up on her doorstep. He tries to tell her of hidden secrets but is murdered before he can tell her who is behind her mother's death.

Special Agent Dawson Timmons of the Criminal Investigations Division is there to protect Lillie and find the killer but Dawson has his own agenda. He is fighting his own demons from his past. The past of both of these people is intertwined, are they brought together by divine inspiration? They begin to face the problems from their past but someone is trying to prevent them from finding the truth.

The truth must come out. You know it always comes out, how we deal with those truths are what makes us the people we are. I love stories of love and forgiveness. How awesome God is and how He loves us. It is awesome to share this with the world and touch those who might never enter a church. I'm sure you will love this story. You can find out more about it or how to order it at www.DebbyGiusti.com. God bless you all.

Midnight Shadows by Carol J. Post

My book review today is by Carol J. Post, I haven't read any of Carol's work before but I really enjoyed her writing. Midnight Shadows is the January issue of Love Inspired Suspense and a first for Carol.

The story takes place in a small town in Florida. Melissa Langston has a stalker, she flees to her hometown.
Melissa changes her name and tries to make a new life for herself but soon she starts receiving flowers, notes, and sees shadows in the night. She is sure her stalker has tracked her down but the police think shes over reacting.

Chris Jamison, former fiance` comes back to town to take over his father's business after his death. A former cop Chris believes she is in danger and sets out to keep her safe.

Melissa turns to Chris for protection which triggers her stalker to go after Chris instead of Melissa. It's a good story and I'm sure you will really enjoy it. I highly recommend it.

Ready for the Holidays

We live in a HUD house, when we moved back to Broken Bow there weren't and houses to rent so we were forced to rent a low income home. I hate living in one because we pay high rent and yet everyone assumes you are poor because of where you live. You may ask yourself what that has to do with the holidays but I am getting to that. Twice a year we get a notice that they will be inspecting our home, yesterday was that day.

I will be the first one to tell you that I am not a good housekeeper. I'm a creative person, which means I tend to be messy at times. I take care of the home, my daughter is the Assistant Manager at our local Runza Restaurant, my son-in-law is disabled and almost blind, my seventeen year old granddaughter is a full time student and works nights at McDonalds, my grandson work as a manager at McDonalds, his girlfriend works full time at the nursing home, and that leaves me with the house and a fourteen month old baby girl. Need I say more?

We received the notice last month so I have been trying to deal with things. It was what they call a white glove inspection. They want all the walls cleaned, windows washed, filters changed, ect. Some of those thing are hard to do ahead of time.

The day before Thanksgiving I was taking down all of the decorations to make room for our Christmas stuff when I pulled a muscle in my lower back. I have been fighting this condition ever since, the more I do the more it hurts. Night before last I hurt so bad I was up all night. I can't take pain meds as I am allergic to them so I just had to tough it through. I prayed, I confessed healing, I cried all to no affect but my house is now clean. We passed the inspection with flying colors and my house looks beautiful. All of the Christmas stuff is up, I actually slept last night, and I am ready for the holidays.

Are last couple of months have been really hard, our car has been broke down and we are walking or having to call for rides, which is so embarrassing when you keep telling people how blessed you are. I know people look at us and laugh, they sure don't want what we have but this is just an attack and we are not giving up. We are going forward and what you see and feel has noting to do with our real world. God has this plan for our lives and we are standing on the edge of a breakthrough. I am excited to see what He has in store for us.
I trust God with everything with in me and I know something awesome is about to take place.

I'm read for the holidays, how about you? Are you ready to go forth even when things look bleak? God has a plan for each of us, we just have to trust Him. Thanks for visiting today, God bless you.

Oblivious to the Obvious

What we need now is a fresh prospective. In Philippians 4:4-8 we find that God is good all the time. We are to think on His goodness; whatever things are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtue, and anything praiseworthy-- think on these things.

II Kings 6:15-23 tells of Elisha servant, he is frightened by the army but Elisha prays to God to open his eyes that he might see that there are more on their side than in the opposing army.

Oblivious means preoccupied, not conscious of your surrounding, just like the old saying, you can't see the forest for the tress. We get to the place that we are so focused on the problem that we can't see the answer. Our problem is just another opportunity to prove God's Word works, a chance for God to show off for us and show us what He can do.

We have just had a major disappointment in our election. So many of us are so focused on what we have lost that we have given up looking for the answer. God wasn't shocked because of the way the election went, we need to stop looking at the fearful economy, at the joblessness, and at the situation with Israel. We need to humble ourselves and pray for our nation and we need to trust God to do the rest. Believe me He has a plan and it will be a good one.

God bless you all.