30.4.08

Hi Everyone!
Praise God! He is doing wonderful things!  
Here's just a quick post for the moment that got cut short due to computer troubles. It's the second half of our trip in Ontario. (the first is hopefully to come on saturday :) Anyway, I wanted to leave you with a couple quotes to inspire you:

 "There are not two Christs- an easygoing one for easygoing Christians,
and a suffering, toiling one for exceptional believers.
There is only one Christ.
Fruit-bearing involves cross-bearing."
~Dr. J. Hudson Taylor  

"We must serve God even to the point of suffering."
~Dr. J. Hudson Taylor

God bless you all and keep close to Jesus!
~In Christ, Miriam
Now we're off to Cobourg!
it's our first time in Toronto and I'm trying
to get a picture of the CN Tower as we pass it on the highway... 
Gosh, I hope I get a good one! 



Look, look there it is!
 oh no...  missed it...


Oh hey look! There it is, see it?
    oh, um... never mind I guess ...
Ahah! Now we've got it! See? It's there off on the horizon -
the tall, thrusting one.
but, er, well you might have to blow this one up a bit...
and, do you have a zoom.. on your computer?...
maybe I'll just take a picture of a postcard next time.... :P
playing a little jazz after setting up

Everyone say "EHHH!"





you guys are so great! lol God bless you all!
our new friends, Art and Emily :)
us with our good friends the Harmons :)
*you know- its incredibly difficult to smile and stare at the
camera for long periods of time with the sun shining in your eyes*
*especially if the camera-man is counting to 18*  
Gabe and Joel enjoying a lovely tree
admiring some pretty crocuses 
saying our goodbyes-
we love you guys! God bless and thank you for everything!
apparently you're looking at a few of the "1000 Islands"
in New York 
*glad they didn't choose me as their ad photographer* :)
a little sign of Spring
Ah and the Willow... it's just starting to wake
up from it's  long rest
                                          Forsythia!                                         


and more Forsythia!!




and Daffodils!! YAY! 
Spring hath arrived! :)

9.4.08

Hi Everyone!

Ha ha these next pictures were pretty fun. :) Yes, I had to start back with pics from several weeks ago to get caught up, but they were so much fun and such good memories that I could never skip them! =D

Just as a great testimony, I'd like to share real quick what God did the night of the first picture: We arrived at Holden Chapel with three of us (Gabe, Dad and myself) so sick we couldn't move. We couldn't do any set up at all and were flat out on the pews the whole day. Seth and Joel were really sick as well, but they could at least move, so they had to do all of the set up. A friend of ours, Mrs. Poole was praying at the church and over us all day and that was really the biggest comfort.

When the time came for us to be announced, we still couldn't even get up! The pastor opened, we stood up, still sick, we walked out, still sick, we walked across the stage and God did it. He strengthened us completely to do all of the dancing, all of the singing and playing, filled us with energy, and it lasted until we walked off stage to have prayer with everybody. :) *my strength left when we were half-way through prayer and I had to go backstage, but the rest of the guys made it!* It was the most awesome thing! Just seeing the amazing miracle that God did... it was.... really neat. So now we know that we can press on no matter what and God will take care of it!! And the most important and awesome thing is that His Spirit was there and He was glorified! "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." 2Cor12:9 "But the Lord stood with (us), and strengthened (us), in order that through (us) the proclamation might be fully accomplished, and that all the Gentiles might hear..." ~2Tim4:17


"Bless the Lord O my soul; and all that is within me bless His Holy Name!" ~Ps.103

"Oh give thanks to the Lord, call upon His Name; make known His deeds among the peoples. Sing to Him, sing praises to Him; speak of all His wonders!" ~Ps.105


The rest of the pictures go from God's concert at Linden Ponds (which is a reirement center) to us at home on the Island, to the concert in Millbury, MA. I hope you all enjoy the pictures and God bless you!!


In Christ, Miriam


"I will extol Thee, my God, O King;

and I will bless Thee forever and ever...

They shall eagerly utter the memory of Thine abundant

goodness, and shall shout joyfully of Thy righteousness."

~Ps.145:1&7


at Holden Chapel
* unfortunately, I was to sick to get any pictures
of the audience, but a special thank you to our dear friend
Jane who grabbed a couple of shots so that the night
wasn't completely un-documented* :)
us with our dear, dear friends the Pooles
who we stayed with the night of the concert at Holden Chapel =)




new friends at Linden Ponds Retirement home! You folks are so great!
And er, happy Be-lated St. Patty's Day to everyone! lol
Yes, I am aware that it's been like, 3 weeks since then.... or more I suppose. :}
how true!
Dad with Joe
* he's one of the directors who helped us so much*

Courtney and I
*she's the other director* :)
**aren't those headbands so fun??** lol
us with Courtney and Joe :)

O'Petrofskys ;)

Jump ahead a few hundred miles and you'll find the Skys at home...
making salsa!!!
Yum! :D

Oh oh! Isn't that a beautiful sight?


Ahhhh another dash of color ^.^

8.4.08

*sniff* we get rather emotional about our
dicing around here

What Ho! On yonder snow mound stand some
dashing figures!

Gabe, Joel, and Andrew
*what a funny thing, eh? Going from sun, shorts and sandals
to puffy winter coats and snow* :}
Ah, the very picture of form, motion and style
as he glides smoothly across the ice...

"Who-ah! Whah..."

" Eeyahhhh!"

our watchmen of the North



here's lookin' at you... :)





So Joel was sawin' wood all night and making a dreadful racket... he kept us all up!
..........
Gosh! Look at all the wood he sawed!

Now jump ahead a few hundred miles and you'll find us at...









The First Congregational Church of Millbury!
a group of dear friends :)

the Scanlons are the sweet family we got to stay
with in Millbury.  Thank you guys so much for
your kindness and hospitality! Blessings on you!
just for fun... I mean, what else do you do when you
see a cool staircase?? =D
taking our leave :)


and with that, I think I'll bid you adieu as well.
Have a wonderful night and God bless!!!!

1.4.08

Part 2
Hi Everyone!
Our time in March was really an amazingly exciting trip! And I know it's kind of old news, but such cool things happened that I still do have to tell you about them! :)

I left you off with.... mmmm, the Seniors' luncheon at the Southshore Baptist Church...


Now we're on our way to Barre Vermont. We've entered the state and our van starts quitting on us again as we drive. So we start praying for it and God sent His angels again to push us the next few hours to get us to the church [ didn't have time to stop to fix it or we would miss the concert]. The van kept going till we passed the church accidently... and then the truck died! We turned around and it started again then pulled into the church parking lot! lol Golly.... Praise the Lord! :)


Anyways, so then we got all set up and WOW what an exciting night. I mean, it was so cool that God would pour out His Spirit on a place just because people invite Him. We didn't do anything to deserve His visiting, He just saw fit to come and bring revival to our hearts. Isn't that super neat?


( a smaller but still significant part of the night was that Gabe had laringhitis...laharanghitis, laryngitis?...*sigh* I could never figure that one out ... anyways, he had that and God got him through everything including Rudy! :)


Also, there were so many neat testimonies that people shared with us... and we just praise God for what He's done in their lives!


We got to stay with some really super sweet people who just gave so much of their time and energies and went far beyond the call of duty (going to bed late and getting up really early, preparing meals...) and I just want to thank you Mr. & Mrs. Bullard, for your hospitality and kindness to us... you were such a blessing! :)


Then we went to a sunday morning service at a United Methodist Church in Montpelier where we enjoyed meeting new, sweet people and playing music and sharing. It was really a nice time. Thank You Lord! :)


Then, I'm pretty excited to share this next one because it was pretty cool and brought about lot's of blessing. We went to this little tiny town called Worcestor, VT. about a half-hour from Montpelier... the church was very small and the population looked smaller, but when we went in, the pastor was opening up the back and setting up more chairs! (he had faith, that's what he had :) But when the night came, God did indeed fill up all of the extra chairs he had set out and poured out His Spirit on that place! And do you know, that though this place hardly registers on the map of the rest of the world, it registers on God's map? And He wanted to visit it and send revival upon that place and bring new life to it! Isn't that exciting?? I just love God's ways!


Then, *and here's when I ran out of camera space* the next morning some friends that we had met the night before [the Beltramis] called us up. They are professional photographers and offered to take pictures for us... [which was a blessing because we needed some new shots!][I mean can you imagine getting by on my pictures this whole time?]. But we had an awesome time with them and I was so wishing I had my camera! Taking behind-the- scenes-shots of the whole picture-taking shebang would have been really fun. :) But that's okay, I've posted at least one shot of the experience below for you. =) So then while they were working on the pictures, we went to play at a seniors' residence at about 12:30, I think, and had a wonderful time there. It was neat meeting sweet people and making new friends. :)



Afterwards, when we reconnected with the Beltramis, they found out our van wasn't working (indeed, we didn't know how we'd get back) and took it into their brother's repair shop and got it fixed for us! We went to lunch with them, had a splendid time and by the time we were done, the van was done and we said our goodbyes and headed off! So cool! Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Beltrami for everything, you've been so sweet and kind! We so enjoyed spending time with you and getting to know you both... God bless you!



So that was the end of our whirlwind week (total count being 8 concerts in 7 days and 11 total in 2 weeks)... there was so much more that happened and many, many more blessings but I'm just trying to sum up a few things and trying not to write down the world's longest blog posts! It's rather difficult you know, because in person the story takes over an hour to explain... and an hour really looks like a whole lot more on, er, a screen. Especially since in that hour of conversing you have several other family members putting in more comments.. well anyway, I hope you enjoyed it :) and I hope you all have a wonderful night and God bless you!



Praise God!!

In Christ, Miriam

Look, look! Somebody drew that!
Isn't that so cool?? :)




Fort Square Presbyterian Church
now, this may look like an ordinary church to you, but in
fact, this church was founded and built by maritimers! So everyone was
either from Nova Scotia, or P.E.I. or somewhere around there.
It was awesome!
(a point of particular interest to us was meeting a man
by the name of Harding... the same name our very own Harding Creek
Road was named after :)
some of the group :)
I actually failed to grab pictures of everyone, but
fortunately our friend Scott managed to get a couple!
a pair of proud Celts!

~ at the United Methodist Church in Barre, VT ~
us behind the scenes ;)