Pastry Flop

This last week, we had the privilege of hosting our youth sponsors team at our house and had some pulled beef sandwiches, pasta salad and dessert!  Pie by the Mile!  Basically is pastry dough spread over a cookie sheet, pie filling in-between and then more dough on top.  Altogether, one big pie the size of a cookie sheet.

To get the pastry dough recipe, Colleen messaged her mother and got the recipe, which called for one pound of shortening.  If you know shortening packages, one pound is a whole container.  She mixed the dough and while kneading it commented that it felt very moist, yet broke apart when rolling like it was too dry.  We called my mother-in-law to find out what we should do, add more flour, or more liquid because we were at a loss of what to do.  "Oh, I think the recipe calls for 1 cup of shortening, not one pound.  (The difference is that 1 cup is about 1/4 of a package)

We did not want to make 4 times the pastry dough, so I went googling on the internet to find out what we can do to solve our problem.  The best answer I got, and really the only one, was to throw it out and start over.  "There must be a way to salvage something good out of that dough," I thought, but alas, it was a lost cause.  We threw it out, I went to the store to get more shortening (as we had used up the whole package on the last batch) and we started fresh.

The pie was delicious and worked out great and we had a encouraging time preparing for the coming year at Youth group!

As I was running to the store for more shortening and disappointed previous dough was hopeless, I began thinking about being a Christian in this world.

Often I look at myself and desire to "save" my flesh; I want to hold onto those things I am called to give up.  I keep insisting that they are not necessarily bad, but can be made good if I just try hard enough.  But, as I remember the pastry dough, there is no saving the flesh, it must be thrown away and burned in the fire.

1 Peter 2:11 states that the fleshly desires we have war against our souls.  We my think and try to take the things that are not from God and try to make them good, but it is clear, they war against us.

Kindof like Adam and Eve in the garden where eve saw the fruit was pleasing, good tasting and helpful in gaining wisdom yet, the act of eating it destroyed their relationship with God.

It is a pretty simple formula, if it is of the flesh, destroy it, and of God, embrace it.

Yet so difficult in practice, as even as we look at the war happening in Ukraine - simple in concept, but yet so complex and confusing.

The Mulching Mower Conundrum

As part of our rental agreement for our duplex, we are responsible for the upkeep of the lawn on our side of the property.  Part of upkeep is making sure your lawn is mowed.  Having lived in an apartment building in Sexsmith and then in Kiev (where the grass would get to the point where it needed mowing and then it would take them a month to actually mow it with a weedwacker), we have not had a need of a mower and one did not make the trip with us to Dauphin.

So, the first Saturday we were here, I went garage saling to find one.  Low and behold, the first sale I went to, they had an electric mulching mower.  Electric!  Great!  No need to fill with gas.  Electric!  Great!  GUTLESS!  The chord that came with it even almost stretches to all parts of our lawn, save 10 Ft Squared that I have to start up the mower and move fast because it will unplug and stop.  But enough about the electricity problem.

The thing that got me was the mulching property the mower has.  When I was a young sprout, we had a mower, but it had a bag.  So, one always had to check the bag and find a place to put all of the clippings.

I remember thinking to myself, "I wish there was a way to mow without having to always empty the bag"  and then it happened, a friend asked me to mow their lawn, and they didn't use a bag.  They just shot it out the side.  This was an ingenious idea, you mow the lawn and spew it everywhere.  It took much less time; well except for every 3rd time you mowed, you had to rake it up and bag it because it would begin to look unsightly.  Once again, I thought, "If only there was a way to not have to rake every 3rd time."  And then it happened, I bought an electric mulching mower 3 weeks ago, and no more bags, no more raking, just everything gets picked up, chopped and put back to keep nutrients in the soil.  Whoever thought of this was a genius!

Well, actually, whoever thought of this had no weeds in their lawn.

When we moved, we maybe had 10 dandelion plants on our yard; within 3 weeks of mulching (picking up the dandelion seeds and spreading them), our lawn has grown dandelions exponentially!  And all the money I have saved on not buying gas, I have spent at Canadian Tire buying Killex dandelion spray, but the battle is a lost cause.

As I was mowing the lawn this last time, I began thinking about those little seeds and sharing the gospel with others.  There are 3 different ways I thought of:  Someone who bags it all up and doesn't share,  Someone who shares with everyone, and others who share within a small, yet specific area.

On one hand, the lawn of the person who bags looks beautiful, with no dandelions.  Another spreads the seed everywhere, but with little aim and purpose, and the third, although only in a specific area, spreads exponentially.

I will be the first to admit that I do not go out and share Jesus with everyone, but, my prayer is that God will give me specific times to share and the wisdom and boldness to share when and where He desires.

Manitoba Bound!

Our Uhaul ready to go!

It has been quite a crazy month and to be honest, writing on this blog has not been on the top of my priority list.

To catch you up to date, we left Grande Prairie on Monday July 21 for Bow Island.  Tuesday we packed up the Uhaul and Wednesday we left for Dauphin at 4:00 am and arrived in time for supper at 6:00 pm, losing and hour on the way.

A very busy few days, but it is also good to have a home our kids can call home for more than a month as since February we have lived (constituting at least 5 days) in Poland, Ukraine, back to Poland, Parksville BC, Grande Prairie, Vegreville, Dauphin (ok so this was only a 3 day trip), back to Vegreville, Bow Island, Grande Prairie again and finally back to Dauphin where we have been for 20 days and counting!

I am pretty sure our kids are setting themselves up to move again, however, they like their own beds and Ellianna has started calling our duplex our house.  It also helps that we have not gone more than a 10 minutes drive away from the city (8000 people in Dauphin, but a Walmart, McDonalds and Tims!).

I was reminded when I put the title "Manitoba Bound" of the song Alberta Bound by Paul Brandt.  (Just a little video that really has no point to this blog, but a little piece of "home" for us)




I had the privilege of marching with the Grande Prairie Marching Band as we celebrated Grande Prairie's 100 years, so history is a little on the brain.  As part of moving to Dauphin, I went to city hall to register for Manitoba health insurance.  And noticed Fort Dauphin has been around since 1741.  And at one point was one of the most western settlements of North America.  Fort Edmonton was only around since 1795 (thanks Wikipedia for all that information (because everything on the internet is true!))  So we are living in a ton of history.

Manitoba has been very Friendly as their licence plates state; however, having only ever paid GST tacking on another 8% PST totaling 13% has been quite "unfriendly"

But with the extra tax comes alot of free things like no Library fees.  I was watching a Bomber's game with some guys this past week (for some reason, they don't want to get together to watch Eskimo's games) and I was explaining the difficulty of transferring our licence and registration.

There is a reason you have 90 days to transfer your vehicle as it takes 90 days to fill out the paperwork and jump through the hoops to get it done.  One guy commented "Welcome to Friendly Manitoba.  Socialism, everything is free, but you have to do a lot of work to get it!"

I started work last week and am starting to make connections; I even got to go inline skating at the skatepark and boy was I bad.

A few highlights include Celebrating Ellianna's birthday and going to the street fair (which happened to be on the same day)

And Jolen riding a horse for the first time (the wrangler said he was the littlest kid she has ever had ride by themselves)

We are excited for what God has in store for us and the community and if you would like to connect sometime, don't hesitate to comment or send us an email.  We would love to hear from you!