Is it just me or is this year passing by a little too quickly? Wasn't it just March? Did I flip too many pages on my calendar?

We're back from our trip to our niece's graduation. It was nice to be able to rejoice with her. It would have been nicer if we didn't have to hurry back.We must be suspected of being spies or something. We were bugged. It was awful! (Do I have you thinking that our phones are bugged? Our truck and camper were peppered with bugs. We drove through lots of agricultural areas on our trip. I told you I had a weird sense of humor!) I had washed it before we left and had to wash it again yesterday. I had to do a lot of scrubbing to get all the bugs off.God kept the sun from coming out from behind the clouds until I was done. I almost didn't recognize it as being a gift from Him. So many times I have taken blessings for granted! Shame on me!

We have a mockingbird that lives in our yard. That bird must have a minimum of 20 different bird sounds. I love it! I believe God sent that bird to me to entertain me. The bird seems to roost in the tree in our front yard. He sings to me when I get up in the wee hours of the morning. Then, he moves to the back yard and sings to me while I hang clothes. That bird sings for hours and hours. The only time he stops is when it gets too hot outside.Oh dear, my son just asked me if it was ok for him to shoot the mockingbird! He doesn't like it because it wakes him up at night. Hmmmm.... I wonder... is that bird here to entertain me or to irritate my son? LOL!

I need to hurry up. I spent half of the morning cleaning the inside of my camper so it will be ready for my next trip and because I have to take it to the repair place tomorrow morning. The batteries aren't getting charged back up like they are supposed to and I also need a water filter. Our water is so hard it creates solid chunks in the bottom of the water tank. I guess all the sloshing around does it. Then the chunks clog up my faucets and toilet. I had to empty out the cupboard where the water pump is so they can install the filter.The other half of the morning I spent cleaning out a large cupboard in my kitchen. I had bugs! As I cleaned I found a bunch of foods I had purchased for my husband's weird de-tox diet he was on. I filled up my trash can. Now I have to go put away all the stuff I washed.My husband will be home soon and I have to get the clothes off the clothesline because he is going to mow the back yard. So, on to the Bible study!

I'm wearing myself out again. Yesterday morning I sprayed the yard for ants and fleas. Sunday I gave my dogs a flea bath. Because it hasn't been real hot the fleas aren't too bad, but I'm going to zap them before they get out of hand.

After I sprayed the yard I began laying some sod in our back yard. Like I told you before, we are building a barn and will be decorating the side of the barn like a western town. We are going to have a boardwalk along the front of the town. My husband has been digging up our grass for the boardwalk. Most of our yard is St. Augustine grass but there are areas that had other things growing. There was one big area where our tree used to be that had nothing.

 Yesterday my hubby rototilled the areas that need St. Augustine and I was scraping, smoothing, laying sod, and watering.God was out there helping me. More often than not the piece that I picked up fit perfectly next to the previous piece. There were lots of times when one piece jigged in and the other one jagged out so they both fit together as if I had cut them to fit! Oh, my God is an AWESOME God!! (And a mighty fine sod cutter as well!)Yesterday afternoon we went to a wholesale nursery to buy some bushes for the opposite side of our yard and a shade tree to replace the one that split down the middle. One of these days the yard will be completed. We've only lived there 18 years!

Yesterday morning I did some research on a study I've been wanting to do for the past few years. The study is on praise. I want to go into more depth on what the Bible shows us about praise. Did you know there are ten different Hebrew words that are translated into the word praise in the Old Testament? The New Testament has nine. I wonder what the differences are.It's going to take a while to do this study because there are a lot of scriptures to look up and to study. So, if you plan on holding your breath plan on reading it on the other side. I'll try to smuggle it into heaven with me because you will have suffocated while you waited!

I had to get a new converter for my camper. We just couldn't get the batteries to hold a charge. It turns out that the place where we bought it did a lousy job wiring it and that is what burned up the converter. We had to get rewired, a new converter, and new batteries. Plus, they hadn't wired our camper so the batteries would charge while we drove our truck so we had that done as well. It cost a pretty penny. Unfortunately our camper is out of warranty. Fortunately my husband was able to teach summer school and we will have some extra income.

My truck mechanic had informed me that the wiring job was sloppy a long time ago and I told the original installer as well as another "authorized service center" and they both said it was OK. I wrote a letter to the installer and pointed out that we had paid them to do the wiring and to put in bumpers in our truck bed. The bumpers had been put in backwards which we discovered right away and had them correct. The wiring we thought was fine because of having another service center check it. I told them that the right thing for them to do would be to reimburse us for our repairs. Chances are slim to none that they will, but if we all went according to what was right then I could expect to receive a check.It used to be, in the "good old days," that the customer was always right. Now the customer is always wrong and is shoved out the door to make way for the next wrong customer!

I'm going to upload this and go to the Christian book store and buy me some more praise music. I've pretty much memorized all the ones I have now which causes me to push them into the back of my mind as background music instead of worship music.See you next week!!

You should have seen me Saturday. My husband rented a little bulldozer/tractor to move dirt out from in front of our barn. He had been working with a shovel and wheelbarrow and decided that the tractor would be a wise investment time-wise.

The tractor had to be able to fit through a 48" chain link gate we have separating our upper and lower yards. (Our back yard slopes down toward a wash.) The tractor was a top-heavy little thing with a cage and roll bar protecting the driver because those types have a tendency to roll over. One other time we rented a larger tractor and it was able to make it up and down our hill. This little one didn't have the power. So, my husband had to make a sharp left turn as soon as he cleared the gate.

A number of years ago, my husband had placed cement stepping stones as a pathway going through the gate and on down the hill. He used a form that made the cement look like rocks. The way that tractor turned was three wheels stopped and one kept spinning. When my husband made the turn I watched as the wheels dug down into the dirt, pushing stepping stones up behind them. Each time he went through the gate more stepping stones got churned up.After the second time I saw that the wheels were digging deeper and deeper into the soil and eventually would either get stuck or cause the tractor to tip over and roll down the hill. So, I started pulling up the stones that had broken loose, used a piece of 2x4 to smooth the dirt as best I could and laid the stones on top of the dirt. I did that each time the tractor went over them.

 After a while I began grabbing all the scrap wood we had accumulated during the barn building and began laying it in the dirt as well because the tractor kept getting stuck while turning.Boy was I tired when we were finally done! My husband must have made at least 8 passes through there which makes 16 times I had to rearrange things! Plus, I was guiding my husband through the gate. He couldn't hear me and his vision was limited due to the cage around him. I had to do a lot of jumping around and waving to get his attention. Oh, yes, it was fun! When can we do it again?

 HA!I hope the tractor saved more time than it will take to fix the mess it made! This morning I picked up all the loose stones and threw them in the bottom of a planter that we need to put dirt in. We are going to buy gravel to put in there for drainage so now we can buy less gravel. I also trimmed my grapefruit and my orange trees.We had a bumper crop of pink grapefruit this year! Every once in a while I thin it out so the sun can shine in and the fruit will grow better. I usually have to cut off some small grapefruits because there are so many. However, if the sun can't shine in then white flies and aphids come and cause a problem. Plus, the fruit seems to get much bigger and sweeter when the sun is able to shine on it.

 "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit." John 15:2  So, God prunes us as well. Maybe if we get rid of stuff then the "Son" can more easily shine on us.

Today I am going to go to the high school and help my husband get his class in order. He pulls things out of the filing cabinets for his classes and I put them back. LOL! What a team! Good thing we aren't both pullers!

Today is the last day of school. Thursday night my husband and I are going to take an actual vacation. It will be short, but we both need one. Summer school and summer football starts next week and my husband will be very busy for a month and a half.

 Plus, any spare time will be spent working on finishing up our barn.Then, in the first few weeks of August, my husband is free. Those three weeks in August are the only time he doesn't have football or school or something else going on. That is our real vacation time every year.You can't tell that I am thinking a lot about getting away on vacation, can you?

We got a notice from our telephone company about a new phone number being set up. It had our address, our last name, and a first name that is not anyone in our family. I called the phone company today and the woman I talked to was acting like I didn't know what I was talking about. She kept saying the phone line was at our house. I kept telling her that was not possible because someone would have to put in a whole new phone line because we are already using the two that we have.I kept asking her where the phone was installed. She kept telling me at our house.

 Oh I hate it when people are not able to think outside of the box! She was not able to comprehend a new thing. The only thing she could do was disconnect the new phone number. I don't know what good that will do. I called the number yesterday and a recording told me that number was disconnected.

 This makes me think about "thinking outside the box." With God everything is outside the box. How often do we expect something to happen the way we've been taught it would happen? How often do we insist that the "normal" way is the only way? How often do we put blinders on to what God wants to do because it falls "outside the box?" Hmmm... what have we missed?

Sometimes days don't go the way we think they are going to go. Unexpected things come up. Sometimes our whole world gets turned upside down.

I can't depend on my own strength, wisdom, and intelligence to get me through. The best thing for me to do is to turn to God and simply cry out, "HELP!"

I'm back from my mini-vacation. It was nice. We camped next door to a golf course so my husband had something to keep him happy. Plus, where we went had lots of bike trails. We were able to ride around and look at things. The great part (for me) is there were very few hills. I'm out of shape and the few, small hills there were made me work way too hard!I must must must ride my bike around the neighborhood more often. Where we live has lots of hills and that will get me in shape for the summer.

Gosh, I wish every day was nothing but morning. I get my best work done in the morning and by the time the afternoon rolls around I'm too tired to do anything else, like ride my bike. Plus, if we were having normal weather this year it would be anywhere from 95 to 105 in the afternoons.My husband and I really enjoy our camper. It is perfect for the two of us. I have a picture of one like it here. Every time we go somewhere in it we talk about using it more. However, with my husband's busy schedule, we are mostly just dreaming.

There was a mobile home park right next door to our campground that put on a swap meet on Saturday. I got a bunch of stuff for our barn. (The side of our barn is going to look like an old western town.) I got four old windows that were almost identical to the ones we had already purchased at a salvage yard for $3.00 apiece. The ones I got at the swap meet were four for $2.00!

God sure does take care of us in so many ways! He knows I like a good bargain and He laid out a whole bunch of them right across the street from where I was camped! Plus, the weather was perfect for bike riding... not too hot and not too cold!

I am inadequate to write these Bible studies at the Clarion Call. I do not have a degree from seminary school. I do not continuously live what is taught here. What is taught here does not describe my family, either.

 Are you still here? Good. I will explain why I continue to add things to the Clarion Call.

 It was God's idea. He put the desire in my heart. He is the author of the Bible studies. It is He who gives me the scriptures to use. He wants to reach people on the Internet and has chosen me to be His typist.Well, I imagine there are quite a few times when my flesh gets involved and I add things that don't belong and delete things that do. However, I am pretty sure that doesn't happen real often. Every now and then I go get ministered to by the Bible studies here. More often than not, when I go read them it is as if I've never seen them before. That is confirmation to me that I wasn't the one who authored them in the first place!Whenever my thoughts turn to my inadequacy to teach whomever might happen across the Clarion Call I go read an old Bible study. It proves to me that God is in control here.

I was planning on getting this online yesterday. Really! I was working on it when my husband came home from his first day of teaching summer school. He got assigned to the other high school in the district and they have a different book than they do at his regular school. So, as my husband's secretary, I got the assignment to type out all the homework questions and create an answer key for my husband to use in class. There are only 30 chapters... two typed pages per chapter.... two chapters needed each day of the week for three weeks...I'd better hurry up and get busy! I hope my fingers don't wear out!