Warning: Viewer discretion advised...

THIS BLOG CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES....... WEAK STOMACHS BEWARE! This is how my Hannah looked when I dropped her off at "school" this morning. Halfway through class we get a message from someone saying we needed to call our friend on her cell phone, Hannah had been in a bike accident. We called and discovered that Hannah had battled with her bike and lost. While on her break she, Mekala and another friend were riding their bikes, they went down a hill, and in the process Hannah hit a log. Mekala says that she saw Hannah and her bike flip, and then Hannah flipped again. Very dramatic for all involved.

In our conversation with our friend, we arranged to meet in a churches parking lot. Kent was thinking Churches Chicken and our friend was thinking big vacant church parking lot. Needless to say, it took us more time to get to her than we would have liked. We finally got to them, to pick Hannah up, and this is what we found....... beware!















The middle tooth was pushed so far back that we thought that it was missing and we sent our friend back out to the field to look for it. The other tooth that was damaged was a baby tooth already in the process of falling out, so it was easily removed and not worried about.

To "fix" the middle tooth the wonderful dentist(s) had to put LOTS of "sleepy juice" in her gums - four shots to be exact - and then they had to do a lot of pulling. Hannah was a trooper!! After the initial shock had worn off, she didn't cry at all. She squeezed my hand a few times, but that was it!! I was so grateful!! Mrs. Ruth said that she was wonderful and deserved FIVE prizes and strawberry ice cream for dinner.

After they pulled it back forward, the dentist put a "brace" on it using wire, bondo and her other big tooth to hold it in place. It is still not exactly were it should be, but it is a lot better that it was, and it can be fixed more later. We are now in a waiting process to see how it heals to know what else we can do.

Please pray that the young roots will heal quickly and fully. And that the tooth will work it's way back into place. We will keep you all updated on the healing process has we progress.

Lord, HEAL Hannah! We are asking for complete healing and restoration of all the roots. Put her tooth back in it's rightful place. Help the healing process go smoothly! May she be able to return to "Normal" quickly!

Prayer Warriors Wanted

We are learning so much during this time. One of the biggest "lessons" is that we need you and your prayers! Before we get any further along in this process of giving our lives to further the Kingdom of God, we want to be completely covered in prayer!! It would be so comforting to know that each and every day we are being lifted before the throne of grace. So at the bottom of my blog I have put a calender, and it is my goal to have each day filled in.

We know that there are a lot of things out there that can compete and overwhelm your prayer time. All we are asking for is one day a month, for you to commit to praying for the Forester family on the 5th (or what ever) of each month.

No one can change the world alone - We need you.

Please leave a "comment" to choose a date OR send an e-mail. Thank you so much, we are eagerly looking forward to your shield of prayer!!

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Speechless......... I am utterly speechless!

Let me back up and try and explain what all has happened this week.

As you all know, Kent and I are currently in the second part of our training. The cost/tuition total is $4000. (of which we only have $1655) We have been class for 6 weeks with out having paid our full tuition. The staff has been graciously giving us time to wait on the Lord. They moved the deadline back from Sept 1st to October 13th. Which is next Monday.

At the beginning of this week Kent was ready to give up. The future looked bleak and confusing. God has provided every penny that we have needed so far, why was he stopping now? What was he doing? What were we going to do if we had to wait and extra year? The questions were endless!

On Tuesday the staff, wanting to do everything possible to help us in this journey, came up with a plan that was a compromise of the two options that we thought we had. 1) train now and be on the field by summer '09. or 2) train in '09 be on he field by '10. Their option was to 3)train now be on the field by '10. So we began praying about what to do.

On Wednesday, we had some dear friends speak into our lives. They felt like we needed to be humble and open about our financial needs so that those around us could help! In all honestly we have struggled in that area, being in a constant state of "need" is extremely hard. You begin to feel like a beggar, walking around with your hands out all the time! So it is easy to start keeping all your needs to yourself . But Kent took their suggestion (that was a divine word from the Lord) and we shared our current needs that night at lifegroup. Hard, but needed. Our friends gathered around us and prayed for us. Several words were spoken, one of which was that Kent needed to let God carry him. Powerful!

On Thursday, we went to class, thinking that it very well maybe our last day in the class room. The class administrator pulled us out in the hall and told us that yesterday they received an anonymous gift of $2500 hundred dollars to cover the rest of our tuition!!

Speechless........... I was utterly speechless. I will never know why God's timing works the way that it does. We believe that God was waiting for us.... he is trying to teach us how to be humble, how to fix our eyes on him and not the storm around us. When we do that Miracles happen!!

I won't even try to explain how the rest of the morning went. God is Amazing. I want to share, it will just have to come later. Hopefully it will be a powerful to all of you as it was to us!!

Lord, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!! You are so wonderfully gracious! I can't even begin to express my feelings of gratitude. All that I can do is cry at the sweetness that you are! God, I want to keep my eyes on you!! Not the miracle. Not the next "mountain". Just you!!

the Zoo

Today was a glorious day! The big girls are in OK visiting Gram, and last night as a special treat Sarah had a friend spend the night! It was too much fun! Quick highlights of last nights events: Got in bed way later than 4 year olds should.
Had "talk time" for a while. (this lasted a lot longer that I wanted...)
Sang Jesus loves me for them hoping it would send them to dream land.... no such luck.
Got them both a drink
Then I hear these words: "Um actually, I think I would rather sleep with my mom."
SO I climbed in between the two of them and held our little guest.
Then I started praying, again a ploy to lull them to sleep. I thanked God for all the yummy fruit that he made and began listing is off one...... by ....... one...... softly...... and slowly..........
It only half worked. Our friend fell fast asleep, Sarah however informed me that I was praying too long and was waiting for me to stop. Girls will be girls...
It rained last night so it was a perfect day to go to the ZOO. It was cool and cloudy, there was NO ONE there so we had the place to ourselves. You really couldn't ask for a better day.

We had a perfectly exquisite day!! Fall is in the air....... come on cooler weather!

FALL

We got the decorating bug a few weeks ago. So I got up in the attic
and pulled out all our fall stuff. In the "stuff" was this "harvest"
sign painted by Mekala several years ago. When Sarah saw it she
was sad that she didn't have one. No amount of explaining would satisfy her.
So finally I gave in and told her that soon we would get one that she could decorate.
Before I got some "fall wood" to paint we colored these awesome harvest pictures. Every one helped, only we couldn't get them to stick to the wall, so we stuck them to the entertainment center.

The following week I was able to pick up these wood things at Hobby Lobby. We thought about painting them with acrylics, but I knew that would cover up the lines and details. Our first attempt was to water color them, and it ended up being our only attempt! They turned out great!! The water color was easy to use, it was easy to clean, and it was translucent so you could see the detail lines. Plus the colors were really bright. Sarah did the Turkey, Hannah the Pumpkin and Mekala did the Harvest.

This was Emma's. She did most of it, I just added the red on the edges to "fill in". Tuesday we used the wood leaf as a pattern to make our crayon melt, sun catcher leaves.

These are the pictures of the supplies, the process and the finished product. Pictures were an after thought on this one, so there are no kids in the pictures. SORRY.

The rest of the pictures are of the other fall decorations around the house. Even if it is warm outside, at least we can pretend that it is getting cooler!