Holy Week

In an effort to make sure that my children understand the meaning and significance of Easter, I have worked very hard to put in place family traditions that hopefully will not die in the next generation.  When the children were younger, I remember saying to Don, "I have managed to make this week more stressful than Christmas!"  Now, it is not stressful at all, but a week that I, too, anticipate.  I am realizing that this week I am breaking away, but it is not intentional at all!

Palm Sunday we were in Santa Barbara.  Monday evening held a beloved small group faculty meeting.  Wednesday we will back in Santa Barbara for a wonderful occassion of watching our son get the Westmont Warrior Golden Eagle scholar/athlete award.  And throughout this week, the three who remain at home are taking their standardized tests.  So, the challenge here will be to integrate the traditions as we have time.

After Palm Sunday, I like to decorate the house for Easter.  Then it is on to preparing our hearts.

On Monday, we watch the Disney movie Prince of Egypt. 

On Tuesday evening we watch The Ten Commandments, you know, the one with Charlton Heston. 

On Wednesday evening, we have a "Chametz" ceremony where we clean our house of all leavened bread.  It is actually a Jewish tradition that reminds us of the flight from Egypt, where the Israelites fled without their bread rising.  It has double significance for us as the leaven reminds us of our sin and how we need the Messiah to take our sin away.  After the ceremony we eat with matzo until Easter morning.

On Thursday we used to do a Passover Seder, but because of events in recent years, we save our Passover Seder until Good Friday.

On Friday, I prepare all day for the Seder.  I set the table with care, a full formal setting for whoever will be spending the evening with us, along with a place setting for Elijah. We follow a Haggadah that I purchased years ago.  I prepare a matzoh tosh, though I'd like to make or purchase a real one some day.  I also prepare an afikoman bag, charoset, the Seder Plate, and the items that go on a Seder Plate:  lamb shankbone, roasted eggs, parsley, and maror (I try to find the hottest I can find).  We typically have lamb for dinner, with butter beans, carrots, potato latkes, a green salad, and then Passover cake with strawberries for dessert.  Of course, we drink enough grape juice throughout the ceremony to make that a meal all by itself!

As we go through the ceremony, from the hand washing to the singing to the reading to the teaching, we are reminded each year of how God always comes through for us.  Our Seder has become as a meaningful a meal to me as I can imagine.  I think it is good to reflect on what God has done.

On Saturday, we dye eggs.  We watch The Jesus Film and we go to bed early.  Earlier in the week, I will have gone to purchase some special, meaningful Christian gifts for my loved ones to put in their Easter baskets.

On Sunday, we go to sunrise service.  As the sun rises and I sit in the amplitheater with 5000 other people, and I watch the cars pour in, I always contemplate how wonderful it would be if Christ would come back right in that moment.  The amplitheater would be empty except for all of the blankets strewn all over.  The cars would all be neatly parked and left there to be removed by someone else.  I enjoy the worship, the teaching, the Word, and the whole service, but I always think how wonderful it would be if....

Typically on Sunday afternoon, we have all of the cousins over where we have the most awesome Easter egg hunt I have ever seen.  Everyone brings the eggs that they took home the prior year, and this year they are filled again.  The dads and the bigger cousins hide the eggs and the moms go through the Resurrection Eggs with the little ones.  Then there is eating and swimming.  And, by the way, we eat leavened bread and ham - not kosher!

That is how we spend Holy Week, and I love it!

The Body

I Corinthians 12:14, 18 - 20

For the body is not one member, but many…  But now God has placed the members, each of them, in the body, just as He desired.  And if they were all one member, where would the body be?  But now there are many members, but one body.

As I walked into the Community Center at Mariners Church at 7:45 on Saturday evening, I was overwhelmed with emotion.  The 700 chairs we rented were all there and set up.  The awards were gleaming in the stage lighting, all set up.  The DVD was done and handed to the sound guy.  The ballots were in the back in crates, alphabetized.  The scripts were right behind them.  Lost and found throughout the campus was also on its own table.

This wasn’t the work of one person, this was the work of The Body! 

I know you haven't heard from me in a couple of months.  I've been busy planning a big speech and debate tournament.  414 competitors.  298 families.  Over 400 community judges.  About 50 "workers" who helped run this tournament.  At times it was overwhelming at what needed to be done and accounted for, like little pieces of paper with one word cut up and put into 16 envelopes to whether or not everyone had paid their fees.

On Wednesday, driving over to the start of the tournament, I was overwhelmed again, as I called my husband and told him that I could do no more.  I was "empty" and that Christ was going to have to do the rest.  I told him that I could never run a country, nor a state.  One tournament was enough for me.  He told me that if I did ever decide to run a state, that I would be surrounded by perfectly capable paid staff who would answer my every whim.

But the amazing thing was that I had a perfectly capable VOLUNTEER staff who did answer my every whim.  What could be better than that?

Time and time again, I am impressed by the way the Body of Christ works.  When everyone knows what they are going to do, things work like clock work, and everything gets done on time.  AMAZING!  And how great is our God to know the inner workings of a clock and even more profound, the inner workings of people!  To God be the Glory.

Thanksgiving Dinner

One year, I can't tell you which one, I was pretty smart and organized.  Since I feel like I'm regularly losing brain cells, it must have been quite a while ago.  Anyway, I typed in our Thanksgiving menu into the computer.  I also added the recipes, and on the second page I added the shopping list.  For the last few years I simply hit print and my menu comes out, along with the shopping list. 

~The Stout's Thanksgiving Menu~

Appetizer platter:  stuffed celery (cream cheese or peanut butter), carrots, pickles, nuts, Aunt Christina's eggs

Roast Turkey

Stuffing with onions, olives and celery (Nana Hill's recipe)

Plain Stuffing (for the picky)

Cranberry jelly (out of the can, for Don's comfort)

Cranberry Jell-o Salad (Nana Hill's recipe)

Green salad with raspberry dressing, dried cranberries and pralines

Spinach and Artichoke casserole (from the year the Crouch's didn't have a kitchen and this was their favorite and we didn't want them to miss out, but we thought we should adopt it as a regular)

Carrot/Cheese casserole (Nana Hill's recipe)

Macaroni and Cheese casserole (Nana Hill's recipe)

Green bean Casserole (Mom Stout's recipe)

Sweet Potato Souffle (Grandma Hattenfield's recipe)

Pumpkin soup (My own recipe!)

Garlic mashed potatoes (for my niece, Christen's delight)

Turkey gravy

Cranberry juice with 7up (Nana Stout's mixture)

Egg nog (A recipe I adopted while in college from my Campus Crusade for Christ staff member)

Fresh baked bread

Pumpkin Pie

Apple Pie  (I prefer Dutch Apple or French Apple, so I make one of those, and then a traditional for everyone else!)

Each year, we host a different crew.  And I see, as the years go on, that it will continue to be different people for the rest of my life.  Tomorrow we are hosting 21.  But every year is different.  I input all of the casserole recipes into a calorie counter a few years ago, and figured I ate 3100 calories in one meal!  On Monday of this week, I boiled and peeled everything.  Yesterday I mashed everything.  Today, with the help of Priscilla, Philip and Andrew, we mixed everything.  Tomorrow we will put on the toppings and bake everything, after the turkey is done, resting and waiting to be carved.  I love to have a clean kitchen when I serve dinner.  I like the dishwashers to be empty and ready to be loaded with the dinner dishes before we eat dessert.  That's why I trash my kitchen the day before!  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Our Own Little Corner of the World

Life has been a whirl the last two weeks.  We watched a national election.  We watched the responses of people who didn't like what happened on that November 4th.  Some people gracefully took the results of the evening with sighs of resignation, while others stormed the streets, stomping like outraged toddlers, who didn't get what they wanted.  It makes one wonder about parenting techniques all over again.  If the toddlers throw big enough tantrums will they eventually get what they want?  And then the compliant child never really gets what he wants because he was obedient to the authorities around him.  I know which one I'd rather go to a restaurant with!

Along with my Political Science degree, I was majoring in Psychology.  Did anyone really know that?  Or did they care?  And actually, my senior year, I was so fed up with what was being taught, I couldn't agree with my professor any more.  People really have spiritual problems, more than psychological problems, and too many times they are allowed to make excuses.  Don't get me wrong.  I believe that there are hormonal imbalances, and other causes for apparent psychological issues, but I always believed many people used the psychobabble as an excuse for their spiritual shortcomings.  Needless to say, I got a D in one certain professor's class, and I lost my major, so it was considered a Psychology minor.  So, I have a Psychology minor.  But I digress.

In one of the many classes I took, I remember them talking about men and midlife crises.  The need to go get the sports car.  The need to trade in the old, faithful wife for one half her age.  When talking about the reasons for this "midlife crisis", one reason cited was that when a President gets elected younger than you are, you take stock of your life and realize that you may or may not be where you want to be in your life.  And chances are, you will probably never be President.  Younger men had "midlife crises" when John F. Kennedy was President, than when Ronald Reagan was President.  But isn't that a funny thing to consider?

Well, look at Barrack Obama.  He is younger than my husband is.  Pretty much proof that my husband will never be President of the United States.  Glad that question is settled!  Okay, should I expect that my husband will have a midlife crisis?  Well, I lean back to my original gut feeling, that it really is a spiritual issue.

But, what about our own little corner of the world?  Have we been faithful in the small things that have come our way?  I pray so.  We have our own places of influence.  Our children, our church, our homeschool group, our neighbors.

Just this week, we got to minister to our son and his friends whose college has been affected by the fires.  We get to pray on a daily basis for all of our children.  We get to discipline them and disciple them.  We also get to minister to other children on a daily basis.  Spanish, Science, American Government, Speech, Debate and service to others.  There is no shortage of outlets to affect our own little corner of the world.  My husband is allowed to minister to a wider range of people, whether or not they know they are being ministered to, he is serving them with the gifts given to him by his Creator. 

And although the last two weeks have been a whirlwind, and we are only now getting to the crazy holiday time, I pray that we are faithful to our own little corner of the world.  And when confronted with issues we don't like, we teach our children to sigh and behave with grace.

Yes on Proposition 8 equals PARENTAL RIGHTS!

One of the more irksome commercials here in California, is where the Superintendent of Schools, Jack O'Connell claims that schools aren't required to teach anything about marriage.  Why is it irksome?  Because it is not true!

The California Education Code under the section for teaching "Health" is listed here.  I've bolded the code as it pertains to marriage:

EDUCATION CODE
SECTION 51890-51891

51890.  (a) For the purposes of this chapter, "comprehensive health
education programs" are defined as all educational programs offered
in kindergarten and grades 1 to 12, inclusive, in the public school
system, including in-class and out-of-class activities designed to
ensure that:
   (1) Pupils will receive instruction to aid them in making
decisions in matters of personal, family, and community health, to
include the following subjects:
   (A) The use of health care services and products.
   (B) Mental and emotional health and development.
   (C) Drug use and misuse, including the misuse of tobacco and
alcohol.
   (D) Family health and child development, including the legal and
financial aspects and responsibilities of marriage and parenthood.
   (E) Oral health, vision, and hearing.
   (F) Nutrition, which may include related topics such as obesity
and diabetes.
   (G) Exercise, rest, and posture.
   (H) Diseases and disorders, including sickle cell anemia and
related genetic diseases and disorders.
   (I) Environmental health and safety.
   (J) Community health.
   (2) To the maximum extent possible, the instruction in health is
structured to provide comprehensive education in health that includes
all the subjects in paragraph (1).
   (3) The community actively participates in the teaching of health
including classroom participation by practicing professional health
and safety personnel in the community.
   (4) Pupils gain appreciation for the importance and value of
lifelong health and the need for each individual to take
responsibility for his or her own health.
   (5) School districts may voluntarily provide pupils with
instruction on preventative health care, including obesity and
diabetes prevention through nutrition education.
   (b) Health care professionals, health care service plans, health
care providers, and other entities participating in a voluntary
initiative with a school district may not market their services when
undertaking activities related to the initiative.  For purposes of
this subdivision, "marketing" is defined as making a communication
about a product or service that is intended to encourage recipients
of the communication to purchase or use the product or service.
Health care or health education information provided in a brochure or
pamphlet that contains the logo or name of a health care service
plan or health care organization is not considered marketing if
provided in coordination with the voluntary initiative.  The
marketing prohibitions contained in this subdivision do not apply to
outreach, application assistance, and enrollment activities relating
to federal, state, or county sponsored health care insurance programs
that are conducted by health care professionals, health care service
plans, health care providers, and other entities if the activities
are conducted in compliance with the statutory, regulatory, and
programmatic guidelines applicable to those programs.

51891.  As used in this chapter, "community participation" means the
active participation in the planning, implementation, and evaluation
of comprehensive health education by parents, professional
practicing health care and public safety personnel, and public and
private health care and service agencies.

Don't even get me started on Planned Parenthood's Involvement!  This blog is specifically about Proposition 8 and the lie that California Public Schools don't teach about marriage.   Further more, Code 200 is listed under the Intended Purposes of the California Education Code.

EDUCATION CODE
SECTION 200-201

200.  It is the policy of the State of California to afford all
persons in public schools, regardless of their disability, gender,
nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any
other characteristic that is contained in the definition of hate
crimes set forth in Section 422.55 of the Penal Code, equal rights
and opportunities in the educational institutions of the state. The
purpose of this chapter is to prohibit acts that are contrary to that
policy and to provide remedies therefor.

So what is Jack O'Connell doing, lying in these commercials?

Parental rights have already become compromised in the state of Massachusetts, that allows homosexual marriage.  Parents who objected to pro-homosexual curriculum lost their lawsuit seeking to excuse their children from the material, because a federal court said that the public schools, "have an interest in promoting tolerance, including for the children of gay marriages."  (Parker v. Hurley, 514 F.3d 87 [1st Cir. 2008])

And for my children, I want to say "who",  I want to say "when",  I want to say "what" in regards to teaching my children about marriage.

Voting "Yes" on Proposition 8, keeps homosexual marriage out of the classroom, and keeps our Parental Rights intact.