Micah 6:8

What's been going on lately

Since I haven't done much blogging lately I thought I had better catch up and fill you in on a little of what's been going on in my life. Nothing very interesting but maybe it'll give you a bit better idea of who I am and what I'm like.

A couple of weeks ago my grandmother died. Don't worry about me; I didn't know her so I didn't feel any grief. Anyways, my mother flew into Vancouver from Winnipeg and my sister and her fiance drove over from Courtenay (a small town on Vancouver island) and we all drove together to Kelowna (a city 5 hours from Vancouver) for the funeral. It was really nice to be able to spend some time with mom and sister and to meet her fiance. The funeral, though, was really terrible. The minister kept making references to my grandmother being in heaven even though she was not a Christian. While no one knows for sure where her heart was I found it totally offensive that the minister was willing to lead people to believe that she was most certainly in heaven. He read a bunch of scripture out of context to try to prove this. My aunts were also reassuring my grieving sister that "Nana's dancing now. There's no need to be sad". I was crying with frustration but everyone but my mom thought that I was grieving. The following day at the entombment of the ashes my mom, her sisters, my sister, her fiance and I gathered together to put the ashes into a tomb. One of my aunt suggested we say a prayer together. The prayer started out fine but degenerated quickly. My aunts were praying about how heaven wouldn't be the same now that their mom was there. One of the them then piped in "And for God's sake don't let her drive". In a prayer, who do they think they're talking to?! They then started praying to my grandmother which made me feel very uncomfortable. In retrospect I wished I had stepped aside at that point. They would have just thought that I was grieving. I feel a bit like I endorsed their inappropriate prayers by remaining the circle. It's over now. I think that what I'm frustrated with is that I didn't get much of a chance to speak the truth. I just got a clear picture of how deceived my family really is.

Since Christmas I've been working on a few domestic projects. I'm trying to learn how to make sourdough bread. I'm attempting to make it with wild yeast like the people in the olden days did. Basically you let some flour and water ferment for a few days and then use that in the bread dough. During the fermentation process yeast multiply and are then able to rise the dough. I've also just picked up knitting. I'm making a scarf for practice but eventually I want to be able make socks. This, by the way, has nothing to do with the fact that knitting is trendy these days. I've wanted to be able to knit for eons and I'm a competent crocheter and have been for awhile. I'm also learning to sew. I got a sewing machine for $3 dollars at a garage sale a couple years ago and replaced a part. I just sat down with it a couple of days ago to figure it out. I've had a stack of mending to do for quite awhile so it was nice to get through that stuff. I'm also getting really excited about spring gardening. The bulbs are up (in my to be herb garden unfortunately) but every nice day so far I've been busy. I'll bore you with the details some other time.

My upcoming project is that I plan to develop a website along the lines of instructions in how to live an extremely frugal life. There are plenty of sites devoted to frugality but I intend mine to be different in that I'm assuming that people only want to use resources on things that are absolutely necessary. That means no info on frugal entertainment (maybe free entertainment but that's far down my list of things to add). In case you're new to my blog let me explain a philosophy that I try to live by. My goal is to waste as little of the resources God has given me as possible so that I might be able to use what is left over for his kingdom. Along the lines of "seeking first the kingdom of God". I'll let you know when I've a got a beta site ready.