Learning from each other

This was written a few weeks ago, but I never got around to posting it.

I had the most amazing time with three young women who are very devoted to God.  Two of these ladies seem to be approaching marriage very rapidly, a very good thing.  We decided to sit down and do a Bible study on marriage.  It was so much fun and amazing to see the insights that these young women have.  It seems like there is not much mentoring that goes on in today's churches.  Both young men and women are left to figure out how to live a Christian life.  

God will give us the tools we need to be able to follow Him.  One of the tools he has given us is people who are more mature in the faith and those that have already experienced life.  We can learn a lot from one another just observing how other's live in their everyday life.  The early church saw this as they met together day by day to have meals together and worship God.  Our churches are so disjointed now.  We don't even know each other.   How many of us know  the color of the carpet of Mrs. So and So who sits in the pew with us on Sunday morning?  How many could even tell you what the house looks like?  Many may not even know the town she lives in.  Could you tell me how many children she has? What her favorite book is?  

The people in the first churches could tell you.  The home church was an extension of the family.  They connected with people through meaningful relationships.  They did not just see them at the "church building" 1,2, or 3 times a week. 

 Have you ever had friends that you spend a great deal of time with?  We had some really good friends that we spent probably 20 hours a week with, outside of the church building.  We would be at their house or they would be at ours until the wee morning hours.  You get to know a lot about a person this way.  Not only did our children become really close, but you get to know their hopes, dreams, fears, and struggles.  I saw their desire to follow the Lord all those years ago, and they just returned from a survey trip to the mission field.

People say quality time is not the same as quantity time.  You find out more from eachother when you have no agenda.  A big spider jumping out at me may reveal that my friend shares that issue. When someone sees me struggling to get my little one down for a nap, she may have a suggestion that I had not thought of.   These things are not brought up during Sunday school or Church service.  I know these are trivial things but these lead to big things.

We need to surround ourselves with the church, people who believe in Jesus Christ who came to save us from our sins.  The church building is  just that, a building.  God does not call us to go to church every Sunday.  He tells us to "not forsake the assembling of ourselves together".  Our family tries to be with other families at least 5 days a week outside of scheduled church meetings.  These may be believers or they may be people we are trying to lead to the Lord Jesus Christ. This way we can bring more people into God's family, more tools to help us in our Christian walk.  

Sara Cowperthwaite

12 Emery Avenue
Thomaston, Maine 04861
cowperthwaitefamily@gmail.com

A day to clean

We are now in Ottawa, Kansas, our new home for at least the next month.  We arrived yesterday, just in time for naps and then running out to visit with friends.  So today was our first day settled down.

Since we have been back in the camper, we have remained in a place for the longest of 9 days down to the shortest of  1 night.  We never really moved back in.  We always had the camper in moving condition.  This means we have to climb over things to find a pencil, move the wagon (which is usually outside) to sit at the table, and keep rods on the bookshelves.  Today,  we put the pencil drawer back up on the shelf,  put the wagon outside, took the rods down, and a quite a few other things.

We also got out our cleaning products.  I cleaned inside the camper as we have been without water for a few different times.  We brought drinking water here and took showers elsewhere.  However, the camper had not been thoroughly cleaned.  It was not unlivable, but doesn't it feel nice to give everything a scrubbing.  This included emptying drawers of little used utensils and washing those.

Mark and Nathaniel gave the van a proper cleaning on the inside.  When you are in the car as much as we are, it gets very cluttered.  We sometimes even end up with miscellaneous socks or toys.  So, they got out all wrappers and food,  vacuumed and wiped it all down.  It looks very nice.

Grocery shopping was the next activity on the agenda (after lunch and nap).  We had to really stock up as our fridge was empty.  It was nice to get home and fill the fridge and cabinets.  Tonight,  I will be working on a menu for the next week.  I am hoping to get more disciplined in feeding my family better.  We just need more variety.

My family thought supper was great.  I made homemade pizza in my cast iron skillet.   I do not have a cookie sheet that fits in my tiny oven.  But I just discovered that my skillet fits.   It turned out awesome and will definitely be a weekly treat.

A look at the first day of bible school

We started our bible school in Genesis 1 and Matthew 1.  I wanted to give just a brief description of how our day works.  

Genesis 1
Separating the waters above from the waters below-  we discussed how we have water on earth and water in the sky (clouds).  This led us to talk about the water cycle
God making things after their own kind- Dogs always make dogs, cows always make cows, and humans always make humans.  There could not be evolution the way it is described in how people came to be.  Two monkeys have never produced a person.  God produced many types of animals.  There may be variations but one kind does not ever become another kind.
Lights in the sky to show us signs and time-  We took an orange and drew an equator and a spot to represent us.  We showed how we measure a day, year, and seasons using the orange as the Earth and Naomi as the sun.  This was really fun.
Adam and Eve were vegetarians- at this point God gave them green plants to eat.

For handwriting, Virginia wrote James 1:1 and Nathaniel wrote James 1:1-3.  This helped with the memorization, along with handwriting practice.
Spelling for the week came from these verses also.  Virginia- servant, Jesus Christ, tribes, faith.  Nathaniel had words such as various, endurance, encounter, dispersed.

Matthew 1
I had always dreaded reading the list of genealogies.  However, doing it as a family made it really fun.  We shared any stories about the descendants listed or stories that happened around their time.  We discussed the approximate ages of Mary and Joseph.  We discussed the marriage rituals of the culture.  We talked about the census and why they were used then and today.  This brought up a lot of current events as we talked about the government checking up on people.

This is just a brief description.  The afternoon is used for naps for the youngest two and math for the older two.  This will also be the time for story writing, journaling, drawing, and other assignments that link to what was discussed on the day.

homeschooling using only ONE textbook

Our family has started a new curriculum for our homeschool.  We teach all the grade levels at the same time, do all the work as a family, and use only one book as our textbook.  We are all learning a lot, not only about the basic subjects but also about daily life.  Our work together only takes us 3 hours in the morning and then the children do independent work at their level.  So far, we have been doing it for a week and a half and everyone is really enjoying it.  We call it Bible School.

As parents we have always said that we want our kids to love and obey God first.  Then, to be productive members of society and finally, to learn some academics.  This new schedule covers all of those in that order.  We use the Bible as our textbook and teach reading, language arts, spelling, science, handwriting, social studies, geography, government, health,  and music.

This is how our day is set up.  First we spend 15 minutes talking about one chosen family.  We talk about ways that they have encouraged us in the past and what good examples we can learn from them.  From this discussion, Mark or I write an email to or call the family to share our list.  We hope to encourage them to keep up the good work.  We then pray for that family and other prayer requests we may have.

The next hour is spent in the old testament.  We started in Genesis Chapter 1 and try to get through at least 1 chapter a day.  During this time we discuss anything brought up is the chapter that would be covered in one of our subjects.  Maybe it mentions stars so we discuss constellations.  Or perhaps a certain king, so we will discuss the design of that government, from kings, all the way down to servants.  We also discuss what God is trying to teach us for our daily life.  We then spend 15 minutes on a project related to the chapters we discussed.

The following half hour is writing time.  We practice handwriting by writing some verses from James.  Our family has decided to try to memorize the whole book and learned 3 verses the first week.  Nathaniel and Virginia also have spelling words during this time.  Naomi works with Mommy on preschool level things.

The last hour is spent in the new testament.  We read at least 1 chapter and work through how we can apply these ideas to our lives today.  We also spend time learning about the culture.  Why did Mary and Joseph have to go be counted for the census?  What is a census?  Why do we have a census today?

Everyone has enjoyed this time.  Both children do math out of a workbook in the afternoon.  I am so glad Mark helped me to implement this idea of teaching everything out of the Bible.  I think I will learn a lot by going through the Bible in order and remembering some stories.  I will also probably learn new ones from areas I have skipped over.

I will try to update my blog regularly with different topics we discussed in different chapters.  Please check in regularly for those.  Also, any suggestions you have for projects to go along with certain chapters would be greatly appreciated.  I will try to include pictures occasionally to show some of our work.

future blog posts

We have not had access to the internet in our last several stops.  Since we left Maine on March 21, we have been in Georgia; Tampa, FL; Tallahassee, FL, back to Georgia and now in West Virginia.  Our GPS wanted to give us the scariest way imaginable to get here, but we made it.  Now that we have computer access, I am planning on updating a lot more.  Today we are headed out to do some laundry, visit the library, and have dinner with some of the people from the church here.  We are here through Monday and then off to Richmond, KY.

I am hoping to blog on a lot of things in the near future.  The most exciting is our new way of homeschooling.  I also will share some pictures of our family. Samuel is growing fast and is super cute.

January- February 2009- recap of the last year

For a few days in January, we visited with family in Ohio and Mark helped at the truck stop.  We even traveled to Toledo to help up there for the weekend.  We had a good time but still felt unsettled about what we should do.

The trip to Texas was very fun.  Our family had traveled many times to Ohio but had never been to Texas.  We enjoyed the trip but especially the change in weather.  Ohio had been -34 with the windchill.  The day we arrived in Texas, it was 80 and sunny.  However,  two days later, there was an ice storm.

Also, because we had bought the camper after it was regularly below freezing in Maine,  we had not had time to try everything out.  In Texas, we realized that some of the water lines were broken.  Mark and Justin spent two days restoring water to the kitchen sink, and that camper never again saw water flow to the toilet.

We enjoyed many good times with people from the Dallas/ Fort Worth area.  We met some ladies from India who made wonderful Indian food.  We enjoyed meals and fellowship with the saints at North Richland Hills Bible Chapel. We even had supper with a trucker we had met at the truck stop chapel in Toledo.  The Bible Chapel threw a very nice surprise baby shower for myself and a lady named Shiny who attended the church.  It is great the love shown by other Christians.

Over this time our family adjusted well to life in the camper.  We settled into a routine that was very different from the one at home.  To make breakfast,  I needed to wake the girls to get them off the bed so that it could be turned back into a table.  We had to take turns getting dressed by climbing up onto the small bed and lying down.  This was the only place to close off, except the bathroom that you could not turn around in.

We realized God may have something different for us than the truck stop chapels.   He had worked in amazing ways to get us to this point.   I wrote about Mark feeling the need to live in a smaller place.  God had put the desire to move into our hearts so it was on the market and cleaned out.  He had supplied us with a camper that we may not have chosen to live in but were willing to stay in.   If God had not orchestrated all of this, we would have had to many excuses of why we should stay where we were comfortable.  A Christian life is not always comfortable, but God will never leave you nor forsake you.

God was now leading us to continue working with Justin as he traveled to work with churches in San Diego, California.  The adventure continues.........

January 2009- recap of the last year

In January, we had a survey trip planned to Ohio.  We had put our house up for sale.  The trip was to look at apartments and see what the Lord had for work for us in that area.

8 days before we left,  Mark was doing his personal prayer and bible study time.  He felt that we should go join his friend Justin Humes who was in Texas, to help with door to door evangelism.  Mark felt our 2 week trip to Ohio should be followed by a 4 week trip to Texas.  So I suddenly had to pack for 6 weeks instead of 2 weeks.  Remember, this is the middle of winter in Maine.  It was very cold to be packing the camper we had just purchased.

4 days before we left, Mark felt that we should clean out the house.  It was for sale and we did not want to drive back just to deal with the house.  We signed power of attorney over to my parents and began packing the entire house (in 4 days).  We got it done but everything was either thrown into boxes or tossed into the camper.  Nothing was really organized.

We left Maine not knowing how long God would have us gone for.  It was really hard to say goodbye to my mom and dad, not knowing when we would see them again.  We were excited to see what God had for us but also not sure how our family would adjust to such different circumstances.  I was 25 weeks pregnant at this time.

Catching up on our story October-December 2008

When I started blogging in January of 2008, I never knew the changes God would have in store for our lives.  My last post announced that I was 10 1/2 weeks pregnant and we were planning a trip to Ohio.

The trip to Ohio really was a turning point for our family.  We had gone to Ohio to visit family.  It was mentioned to us, while we were there, that a truckstop chapel had just opened down the road.  Mark has always been of the mindset that we should encourage fellow Christians, so we stopped by.  That one stop to visit turned into another visit and another.  He probably stopped by 4-5 times during that trip.  He saw the benefit the truckstop ministry had in encouraging the truckers, and sharing the Gospel to an industry that is difficult to reach due to erratic schedules and long hours away from  home.

Both of us felt that God had something more for our lives than coming back to Maine and going back to our regular lives. At the time, we both thought God must be leading us to that truckstop.  Little did we know that God had much better plans.  Going home we both felt that we were wrapping things up, not the enjoyment of returning home after vacation.  The decision was made to sell our home so that we would be able to do whatever the Lord was leading.

We spent the next few weeks preparing to move.  We were thinking of renting an apartment so Mark could go to the truckstop everyday.  This meant getting rid of lots of stuff.  During this time,  the chaplain from the truckstop asked us if we would be willing to travel every other weekend to another chapel.  We decided that if we did this, we did not want to be split up as a family.  So we started looking for a camper for weekend living. With the thought of a weekend here and a weekend there in mind, we began the search for a camper to stay in on the weekends on the road.

Within a month, God provided a 24 foot fifth wheel.  The camper had about 150 square feet of living space.  That is the size of an average sized bathroom. This included a queen size bed, couch, table, bathroom, and kitchen.  Nathaniel would sleep on the couch and the girls would sleep on the table which folded down.  This would definitely work for weekend travel but God had other plans.

to be continued...

We are back online, sorry for the delay

This is my first post  in a long time. For that, I am sorry. There is so much to tell, and it could take pages to get out all that has happened in our family since my last post here. You should check out our family blog for the basics, and I will post more as we go about how our new life  in an RV has changed our  family.

So, please check in from time to time, we would love to hear from you all, and hope to be an encouragement to you as you seek to honor the Lord in your family life. For family and ministry updates, see the family blog here.
Our family website has links to our "one  anothering"  blog and also Nathaniel's blog, called "A Christian walk for kids"

We recently were blessed with the birth of Samuel David Cowperthwaite. Samuel was born February 8, 2010 weighing  in at  7 lbs. 9 oz. and is a happy little boy (despite being sick this past week). We will be leaving Maine March 21, Lord willing, and headed back on the road, picking up our camper in Georgia.

News on the homefront

Just wanted to let everyone know that we are 10 1/2 weeks pregnant. We are very excited. I am dealing with morning sickness and I am really tired. Sorry I haven't written in so long. I have decided to try to get pictures to post here to show what we do during the day. Hopefully I will get those up soon. The next few weeks will be busy while we get ready for a trip to Ohio. The kids made a paper chain yesterday for each day until we leave and each link has a chore to do to get ready for the trip.
That is what is happening here for now.

sara