"Field Posts"

I am not very patient.  For those of you that know me, I know how that shocks you!  Yes, patience is one of the Fruit of Spirit that are to intoxicate me each day, yet, I apparently continue to quench the Spirit's power in this area of my life. Nehemiah is one of my favorite people in Scripture (ok, I admit, I have a lot of favorite people in Scripture).  I want my life to be characterized by the essential qualities of leadership that Nehemiah so perfectly displayed.  One of these is patience.  It was four months after Nehemiah first wept, fasted and continually prayed over the ruin of Jerusalem.  Four Months!  You may or may not think 4 months was a long time, but he did nothing for 4 months other than weep, fast and pray. Was he planning?  Setting goals?  Developing vision?  Quite possibly, yet he took no outward action.  He didn't try and force something.  He didn't immediately go to his superiors and start petitioning....

So, I have to confess that I have been spending way too much time on our computer at home lately: checking email, facebook, the Cubs site, reading blogs...  So Sunday night I found myself praying for the upcoming week and asking the Lord to help me stop checking the computer all day long and focus on other things.  Monday morning, when Rob turned the computer on, it was giving him a strange message and wouldn't start.  A call to Dell Monday night confirmed that our hard-drive crashed.  I had to confess to Rob my prayer from the night before.  Now I am lucky to check out all of the above for about 30 minutes a day on Rob's laptop at the end of the night.  Be careful what you pray for, you just might get it.  In truth, God knew just what I needed! ~Becky

I had a great time in devotion to God this morning.  I thought I would tell you about it.  Every now and then, I like to go back to the basics.  Why?  Because I am thick and need to be reminded over and over again about the basics. So, I went to bed early last night (thanks Becky) I got up early this morning and read from Psalm 1 and then prayed.  Psalm 1 is so simple, so profound.  So basic, yet so life altering.  So encouraging, So convicting. Lord, I want to be blessed in my daily walk with you.  I want to be the tree.  I want to be sustained and nourished by the Lord. I want to yield fruit. I want to be spiritually nourished.  I want to prosper. 1 Blessed is the man        who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked        or stand in the way of sinners        or sit in the seat of mockers. 2 But his delight is in the la...

If you received the latest Spirit Airlines promotional email and were displeased with their choice of words, join with me and let them know. Go here to send them a complaint.  They will personally respond in a few days (at least they did to me the last time I sent a complaint). Rob

RMI Sister Church Partnership Coordinators, Pastors, Friends, As you may have already heard, or have seen in the news, a major hurricane is bearing down on Haiti as I write.  The Hurricane is projected to cross the southern peninsula of Haiti where our missionaries and our Sister Churches are.  Please be in prayer for our RMI missionaries, our Sister Churches, as well as the Haitian people.  As information becomes available, we will post updates on our Haiti blog at http://rminethaiti.blogspot.com/ .  Updates will either be posted by our office here in FL or directly from the Haiti field. You can track the Hurricane at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index.shtml#GUSTAV Building His Church, Rob Thompson VP of Operations Reciprocal Ministries International

It’s hard to believe that 2 years have passed since my baby girl was born!  It was a whirlwind morning, as I went into labor 3 & 1/2 weeks early and 10 days before my scheduled C-section.  I got to hospital and found out I was 9 cm dilated (out of 10!) and she was born within 45 minutes—naturally, with no time for pain meds or a C-section.  What a blessing that was!! Here are 3 pics: from the day she was born, her 1st birthday party, and just a few weeks ago. Tessa bring such joy to our life!  She is a spunky girl with a great big beautiful smile.  She’s very social and loves to be around people.  Lately, she has turned into quite the little mommy with the birth of her baby brother.  Happy Birthday Tessa!   ~Becky

This post is long overdue... When Braden was born, my Mom and Dad came to be here and help.  I can't describe how awesome it was to have them here.  What a joy.  What a help.  What a great time we had.  The best part for me was the time spent together, but here are some of the memories and things that I appreciated about what they did while they were here... painting Tessa's nails for the first time blueberry pie floors mopped house cleaned making gallons upon gallons of limeade and orange juice juice parties feeding Drew and Tessa enough blueberries to sink a battleship making pop-sicles swimming bike walking reading to the kids, and reading, and reading making cherry coffee cake buying, returning, buying water bazooka mowing the lawn fixing and breaking my weed-wacker fixing my wheelbarrow and greasing my tractor mulching the garden washing the lanai cage! spending time with the kid...

We are fine.  If you have read the news, you know it never made it to hurricane status.  The map shows the eye is right over our home and I write this.  The winds are said to be about 60 mph. As I look out our windows, the wind is flying by and the rain just won't stop, but I don't think the wind is causing any damage.  I am sure branches will be around, but that is probably it. So, there you go.  We are fine... Rob

I am on hold with tech support as I write this... I probably spend more time on tech support and customer service phone calls than most.  It sort of goes with the territory of taking care of computers, equipment, billing, etc... So over the last year I have noticed a trend.  It is not new for them to put you on hold for a long time.  We've all been there.  But I have noticed that they they have started doing something that I think lacks integrity. So often now, the constant message I hear in my ear is something like this, "Due to unusually high call volume, your wait time may be unusually long."  Who are they kidding?  It is always long and what I find is that regardless of when I call them, they say the same thing.  This is just a way of trying to cover themselves for not having enough people cover their customer service need.  I have heard that message and been on hold for an hour, and with the same company heard that message an...

God designed me to be with people.  There really isn't too much that I enjoy more than spending time with people.  There is hardly anything better than hanging out with friends.  Yesterday, we had some friends over for a swim and pizza.  We just sat and talked (and disciplined our kids), and we had a great time! It was refreshing, relaxing, and rejuvenating.  Already can't wait until we can be together again. There are several couples that Becky and I have really enjoyed hanging out with recently.  There is nothing like it. Rob

I just came across this awesome mapping tool to track and watch the hurricane.  Check it out. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/weather/hurricane/sfl-stormpulsemap,0,2265668.htmlpage Rob

Tonight, after dinner, we played outside.  The kids played with the hose and hit the baseball off the tee.  I played with the camera.  Enjoy. Rob

Here we go again.  Currently, forecasters are putting the track of this storm to go right over our home on Monday evening.  The projections have it just under Hurricane status.  They are predicting 60 knot winds and 75 knot gusts.  Yes, I know, none of us know what a knot is.  That translates to 69.1 mph winds (exactly .9 mph less than a hurricane) with gusts up to 89 mph.  It is traveling across Hispaniola (DR and Haiti) and then will continue right over Cuba before it turns north into the South-West FL coast.  I am sure the fact that it is hovering over so much land it is keeping it from strengthening.  Keep watch with us here... http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at1.shtml?5day?large#contents Rob

Here is a video of the kids I took yesterday, Aug 2, 2008.  The first part is all Braden doing just about nothing.  But, that is what he does best these days.  After that, you will see Drew and Tessa having fun. Rob

Did you know that little girl tear ducts are bigger than little boy tear ducts?  Don’t get me wrong, Drew can get going if he wants to, but Tessa is amazing.  Within a second, she can have buckets of tears flowing down her sweet cheeks.  This morning it was because she wanted to watch Dora instead of Diego.  Her poor suffering spirit… Rob