{"id":5615,"date":"2013-09-22T01:12:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-22T01:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=5615"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:31","slug":"praises-big-and-small","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=5615","title":{"rendered":"Praises Big and Small"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You’ll have to forgive me, those of you who have been praying with us for a solution to our house problem, because the Lord has taken care of it in His time and I was so busy with the start of school and then so relieved to have a solution that I forgot to pass along the good news to you!It actually started the last few minutes before the opening bell of\u00a0the first day of school – Labor Day Monday – when my mother-in-law, Trudy, Skyped with me to say that she had just come home from showing our house to a potential renter.\u00a0 Why was she showing our house at 7:00 am?\u00a0 Well, when her overnight shift at the hospital ended, she took a nurse friend of hers to see our house.\u00a0 In the next few days that friend confirmed that she liked the house; we then negotiated with her via Skype a bit, sent a lease and she started moving her stuff in.I can’t tell you what a relief it is to know that our house is in good hands.\u00a0 Also, it is on a two year lease with a possibility of being occupied for the next four.\u00a0 So, God willing, it will be a long while before we need to concern ourselves with finding new occupants again!Thank you all again for your prayers concerning the house.\u00a0 Although sometimes it bothered me to think of leaving Indiana without the house issue settled, we can actually testify to enjoying a “peace that passes understanding” throughout the last two months, knowing that God had a plan for the house.Other Praises:Temperature Relief:\u00a0\u00a0As I write this,\u00a0rain has started to fall\u00a0and it is a beautiful sight!\u00a0 I have to admit that the heat is getting to me a bit, especially during the mid-afternoons.\u00a0 I just drag myself around from about noon to 4 pm or so and feel like I accomplish very little.\u00a0 So I take encouragement from this rain – it’s\u00a0a reminder that\u00a0more comfortable\u00a0days are coming.\u00a0 People assure us that August and September tend to be the hottest months of the year and October starts a cooling trend.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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Rain Water Pouring from the Front Gutter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Natural Beauty:\u00a0 We’re starting to see posts on Facebook about mums, cool mornings, and pumpkin flavored this-n-that.\u00a0 Everything is still pretty green around here, but there is ONE tree that has leaves which are turning orange\u00a0– and it’s right outside our bedroom window.\u00a0 This morning we enjoyed watching the leaves drop from the branches one by one.\u00a0I can’t tell you how many times a day I am stopped in my tracks by the beauty of this country.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Our Autumn Tree<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
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Banana and Coconut Trees are Everywhere You Look<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
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No Mums, But These are in Bloom Right Now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
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And These Are ALWAYS "in Bloom"<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Love from Home:\u00a0 We have been the grateful recipients of a couple of care packages from friends and family back home.\u00a0 It was apparent that even the kids have been missing some of the simple conveniences of their former lives when we opened a box from Grandma Trudy and one of the kids squealed, “Bacon bits!!”\u00a0 I thought, “They never used to squeal when we came back from Kroger with a bag of bacon bits.”\u00a0 When chocolate chips and candy and tortillas and breakfast cereals are in short supply, you appreciate them quite a bit more.\u00a0 The same goes for friends you haven’t seen for a while:\u00a0 The kids get equally excited to Skype with folks from back home.\u00a0 For instance, today we finally had a much-anticipated call from the Combs family and the kids were overjoyed.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Power:\u00a0 Our Field Director, Brett, was able to find some extra batteries for our invertor and our friend Bud stopped by Thursday evening to connect them together properly.\u00a0 The invertor charges these big old batteries throughout the day so that when the\u00a0electricity goes off at 9 pm, the batteries are able to power a few outlets throughout the house and some overhead lights.\u00a0 With four batteries, we were sometimes running out of juice before morning came – which meant the fans suddenly stopped in the middle of the night.\u00a0 And then when Melissa and I would get up at 5 am to get started for the day, we were operating in the dark.\u00a0 Furthermore, the refrigerator was not one of the appliances wired into the invertor and with it going dead each night, a lot of food has been spoiling much too quickly.\u00a0 We are excited now to have doubled the batteries and we hope it eliminates some of the power-related frustrations.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Kids are Adjusting Well:\u00a0 One of my biggest prayer requests before our actual move was for extra grace for the kids as they said goodbye to the familiar and learned a new lifestyle.\u00a0 Those prayers have certainly been answered.\u00a0 Yes, they sometimes long for their grandmas, their old friends and Oreo the Dog.\u00a0 And there have been a few tears shed on particular nights, but the sun comes up on a fresh new day and they take it head on.\u00a0 A big part of the relative ease of this adjustment has been having built in friends living right next door.\u00a0 The Bundy kids have been wonderful companions to ours.\u00a0 Brett and Angie’s four kids are roughly the same ages as ours and each has a unique and fun personality and our kids have to be coaxed and cajoled back into their own house at the end of each day.\u00a0 We are truly thankful for the way the Lord has brought our two families together.I finish with a few pictures from the other day.\u00a0 Not sure where the idea originated but lately our kids and the Bundys’ have been seeing who can run the highest up the side of the large tree in front of our house.\u00a0 They get forty feet of a running start …<\/p>\n\n\n

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… and then run\u00a0straight up the side of the tree.\u00a0Shoes are optional.\u00a0 The tricky part is the dismount – you need to push away at the top to avoid leaving bits of skin on the bark of the tree on your way down or breaking your ankle by landing on the roots!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
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Caleb got the best height out of our kids, but …<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
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Nobody even comes close to Brianna Bundy!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
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She's a tree running ninja!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Thanks again for all your prayers!\u00a0 God hears and He has been so very gracious to us.\u00a0 I was impressed by the reality behind a single verse from Psalm 3 this week: (v.4) “To the Lord I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy hill.”\u00a0 Our prayers – though often weak and feeble – reach to the very throne room of heaven!\u00a0 AND then God answers!\u00a0 Both sides of that verse are absolutely amazing if you stop to think about it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’ll have to forgive me, those of you who have been praying with us for a solution to our house problem, because the Lord has taken care of it in His time and I was so busy with the start of school and then so relieved to have a solution that I forgot to pass […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5627,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5615\/revisions\/5627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}