Another Bump In the Road

Lawrence will be out of commission for basically the rest of the summer. He had surgery today to repair
a completely ruptured Achilles tendon. For the next month or so, you won't be seeing him out and about. He has a large cast on at the moment. In a couple of weeks he'll move to a "boot" which will give him much more mobility.

This disrupts the work schedule for the garden a little bit. We still have kids coming out Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings, but we won't have kids Wednesday mornings, until Lawrence can go back to work.

Praise God that the surgery went well! We want to personally thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers during this time.

WOW!! And the Story Continues.......

We received a generous donation from one of Lawrence's friends.

We were able to buy soaker hose and all of the pepper and tomato cages!!!! 

Hooray! 

Thank you for your generosity! 

I feel like the story goes like this:
                      the son had a father,
because the father was a good man,
                     because the man was a boy,
because the boy was changed,
                     because he worked in the garden,
because someone brought him to the garden,
                     because someone planted the garden,
because someone believed in the garden. 

We never know how a seemingly insignificant act on our part can change the future of many generations.

This is how we see it.

Thank you all for your support!

Sad News

Well, we hit a bit of a bump in the road.

Our corn was not planted far enough from the seed corn in the adjacent field.

Because of cross pollination concerns, we had to till up the sweet corn so it would not effect the farmer's seed corn production.

What a sad day that was for us! But, it was a lesson learned.

Now we can focus on the rest of the garden, which is growing nicely!

So What Did We Plant?

I wish I could draw on here. Then I could show you exactly what we have planted and where it is in the garden.  The corn runs in rows from north to south. We have the other veggies in rows going east to west.

In order of rows, starting with the northern border, here is what we have. Tomatoes. Peppers. Cucumbers. Onions. Okra. Pumpkins.

We also sectioned off a little meeting area within the garden in the southwest corner. We planted sunflowers around the border of that meeting area. We will be planting kid size sunflowers in the northern border as well.

Can't wait to see everything popping up soon!

Memorial Day Madness!

WOW! That's all I can say! Monday morning was very fun, mostly because we got the rest of the garden planted. This was because Mr. S had rounded up an awesome group of volunteers to get the job done. In fact, I don't even think my hands touched the dirt that day!  I walked around taking pictures, generally making a nuisance of myself. I almost wanted to cry, just seeing other people taking time out of their Memorial Day to help us. It was truly an amazing experience to be a part of.  Saying thank you didn't cover it, so we bought everybody their own Gatorade. :-)

Mr. S (Tim), Brad's brother in law, Kevin, Brad, Lawrence and Lindsey. We were missing one volunteer in the picture, Jason, who came and tilled up the ground so we could plant the seeds.  Thank you! 

Here are a few more pictures of everyone hard at work.

Lindsey and Tim figuring it out.

 Planting okra.

Our high tech marking system: flags, broken sticks and yarn. Hey, it works!

More discussing

More planting

Slowly But Surely

Lawrence and I were out Saturday morning planting more peppers. He had to leave for work at 9.30, but we got a good 2 hrs in the garden.

Sunday afternoon, after church and before my nephew's baseball game, he picked up four of the youth he works with and brought them out to help us. Two young ladies helped me finish up the peppers while the two young men worked with Lawrence to hoe the weeds out of the corn rows.

We got a lot accomplished and the kids said they had a good time!

For those of you who don't know Lawrence, he works a lot. This is mainly so I can be at home with the boys. Right now he works about  75 hrs a week between a full time (paid) internship at Child Guidance Center in Lincoln and two part time jobs. His only full day home is Sunday (until he leaves for work in the evening). His free time is spent with us or working on this project.

Lawrence is studying for his Master's Degree in Counseling, and, once he finishes his 1000 internship hours (this fall), he'll be eligible to get his provisional license, which will make him one step closer to becoming a LMHP (Licensed Mental Health Practitioner). At this point, he'll probably be able to quit at least one of the part time jobs. Once he finishes his 3000 provisional hours, he will become fully licensed!

We have wanted to start a community outreach for quite some time, actually since before we were even married, almost 10 years ago. It is amazing to see it beginning after such a long wait.

Looking back we have clearly seen the hand of God in our lives, directing us and teaching us to wait on His timing. How incredible it is to know the love of God and the love of a Savior. We truly are blessed and want to pass on the love and support we have received to those living around us.

To us, it like a small thing  we are doing, in light of so much need. We are so grateful for all the help and encouragement we have received so far. Thank You!