XE here. We are pretty much settled in here. Except for the guest room, sun room and basement so that makes us 3/4 settled in. We’re making friends, there are kids next door and kids up the hill. Having fun with them. Often we’ll disappear for half an hour or more. We have a big backyard, a treehouse and a playset out back so lots of room to run around in.

The sweet corn was really good! Dad said that you have to eat it within an hour or so though after it’s come off the stalk or the flavor changes. You just peel the husks off and the strings and eat it. No cooking or anything. We’ve also tried Portuguese sweetbread, courtesy of our neighbors, quite delicious. The beans are good too, we ate some tonight. Mei and Di (the two in the middle) have tried apples from an apple tree on campus. A few bruises but you eat around them. They aren’t too bad, sweet and tangy. We like eating at the dining hall too. Good food here on the hill! =)

I’ll tell you about the highlight of the year here on the hill. It’s the harvest party at the end of the month of October! We’re not going to celebrate Halloween this year but we still get to dress up. There are 3 categories for costumes, something on the hill (like in a house or in the garden or in the barn etc.), a Biblical character or you can impersonate someone. That means that you dress like someone, talk like them, act like them, have the same mannerisms as them.

We’ll tell you what our costumes are once we make them. Maybe Dad can help me put up pics after the party. There is a costume contest and a pie contest. I’m not sure what the costume contest is about, I’m guessing the best costume or whatever. The pie contest is whoever can make the best pie, and they’re all pumpkin or apple pies. The judges have a slice and after they tell the winner, everyone gets a slice! We’re not going to try that though, not good pie makers. We’ll see how it goes.

That’s all for now. We’re having a good time here at His Mansion. Signing off. -DL

Golden raspberries, mmmm!

Dad writing:

I wanted to write about something simple and simply delicious.  We spent 14 years in berry heaven in Portland, Oregon area.  We had awesome strawberries, blueberries, marionberries (created in Oregon), raspberries, and boysenberries.  But along the garden path from our home up to the dining hall, there are these lush bushes of raspberries of the “late” variety in that they bear fruit in late August through September assuming no frost.  

I was struck by the beauty and uniqueness of golden raspberries.  They are frankly more delectable and sweeter than their red companions in the next bush.  I was chatting with one of Ag (agriculture) guys, and he was telling me that many fruits and vegetables we eat come in different colors naturally.  But because of consumer expectations such as tomatoes ought to be red, the other colors are never seen except outside the grocery store.

I appreciate the creativity of God in creating such diverse flora on this earth. To me picking a couple of golden raspberries on the way to work or lunch or a meeting is like a sweet juicy kiss on my cheek from God for my journey.  And Can It Be that God should care about me. I stand in awe of His Love.

Working the Wood lot

XE is here. Well, we’ve had lots of new activities going on here. Yesterday afternoon, after lunch and school, we helped work in the woodlot. That means stacking wood in the big wood shed. Mom and us 4 kids went up first. Dad came a little later and G didn’t help a ton but that was okay. We made chains where we handed the wood on until someone stacked it. Other people just threw the wood to each other and stacked it. Don’t worry, nobody got hurt. Us kids didn’t throw it though, just a handing chain. We did like 3 truck loads of wood and maybe a truck load or so of 3 footers (long 3 feet logs for the big boilers). The normal pieces that we usually stacked was a foot long maybe. I’m not quite sure. You should ask Dad. (Dad said usually 18 inches) If you don’t know all about the wood lot, to borrow from Dad’s HMP (His Mansion Presentation), we use 200 cords of wood a year and we fill the whole wood shed up. All 22 buildings are heated by wood and we do have oil backup. People come around and stoke some of the buildings. We have to stoke our own house though. 

Also, us 4 kids just started choir. We had our first practice last night and G is going to his first practice today. It’s going to be an interesting experience. Now, none of us have ever been to choir or voice lessons or anything. The closest we’ve gotten is our Christmas choir thing for church but I have a feeling that this choir isn’t going to be like that. Choir is from late Sept. to early June. We perform once a month from Dec. to early June. 

My sister, me, and Mom worked in the canning room as well. We shelled like 1 and 1/2 buckets that were about 5 gallons each, it was all peas. That was okay. But I don’t think that any of us wanted to see peas for a little while. It wasn’t too hard but my fingers hurt after that and my fingernails turned a bit green. Having a good time so far. Signing off. -DL (Dog Lover)

I am not sure vignette is the best word, but it will suffice for now.  This is Dad here sharing short stories about life on the Hill at His Mansion.  A wise and dear friend recommend I write these vignettes so that I would not forget them.  I will attempt to write and post regularly on the blog. Here is the first one:

Have you ever wanted custom shelves?  I enjoy functionality, and if I can afford it, beauty, when it comes to our living space.  When we came to His Mansion the community provided us with a great home that was completely repainted to colors we desired and some basic repairs done as well as two beautiful ceiling fans for the living room and guest rooms. 

As we moved in our things we realized we needed shelves in one of the kitchen closets in order to organize and “move in.”  We inquired and a resident in the program was sent to build custom pine shelving from Mansion milled wood.  He completed the whole project in a couple of hours while coaching Dawson on the skills of the trade.  Now we have aromatic pine shelves and the functionality that we needed to settle in. A couple days later one of short-term staff created two beautiful oak shelves along with an oak bar for hanging clothes so that I could improve the functionality of my main closet. 

Many of you may know that I am not very handy and such projects would have probably taken days for me to accomplish and resulted in much frustration.  Living in community has provided us custom shelves! AND we owe a debt of love to this community and to these young men who have blest us. 

Pounds of string beans!

MOM says:  ’Tis the season…not for holly and ivy, not yet anyway, but the season for harvesting.  Crops are busting out all over from string beans to corn to tomatoes to plums to summer squash to basil and cilantro and parsley and LETTUCE.  Today the kids and I, in 30 minutes, gleaned TEN pounds of string beans from our neighbor’s personal garden.  Ten pounds must exceed the definition of gleaning though.  Afterwards our family sat in the last bit of summer sunshine snapping beans for tomorrow’s freezing process.  Today we all had our first taste of fresh picked corn, meaning pick it, shuck it and eat it standing right in the field (do not pass the kitchen stove and drop it in boiling water prior to consumption).  Tastes like ice cream, cold and extremely sweet.  HIGHLY recommended to all.  

Red potatoes, red onions, carrots, and cherry tomatoes in red and orange varieties all abound (I like orange better).  Our neighbors on the other side of our house took her kids out to help harvest cherry tomatoes earlier this week and picked NINE GALLONS (I think she made spaghetti sauce).  Someone else also sauced their tomatoes, made two giant lasagnas and asked our family over for supper (yippee!!).  We are learning to live off the land; well, actually our family gets to live off the produce of various neighbors’ plantings this year.  During the long winter to come we’ll plan our own garden which the kids are very excited about (they haven’t thought about weeding yet and believe me, at summer’s end it’s a wild tangly weedy jungly garden).

‘Tis the season, to prepare for winter by saving up all the goodness and warmth of the earth now to deliberately savor in cold months ahead.  Fresh produce surrounds us, just begging to be eaten.  There’s greater depth to the word “harvest” for me here and new perspective on “squirreling away” food.  New friends are showing me how and I am learning.

Dad checking in.  We have now been here a week, and we are learning about life at His Mansion.  We have unburied ourselves enough to start eating at home but will continue to take a few meals a week at the dining hall.  We are getting to know our neighbors and their children, the residents, and the short term staff. We learning to balance wanting to spend time with people while desiring to get our boxes opened, and the boxes continue… 

I’m loving the quiet environment.  It gives my brain, my heart some room to breath.  I am anxious to get to “work,” because my mind is chomping at so many things.  I want to bring people into our home to hear their stories and be challenged by them. It blows my mind that when we need a new shelf; they send one of building and maintenance men down to the house to build it from scratch with oak, pine, or cedar that is milled from our forest or recycled from another project.  This is beginning to feel to like home, almost subversively this place and its people are enveloping us into its rhythms.

XE here or DL, whatever you like. Just for those of you who want to know about our trip across the country and where we stayed. Probably going to be a short post. Here we go.

From Portland, Oregon to Boise, Idaho where we stayed for a night with our adopted grandparent’s daughter’s family. That was fun, they had kids and a trampoline so we bounced up and down on that. Boise to Salt Lake City, Utah, we stayed with mom’s aunt and uncle for a couple of nights and received beginner’s tennis lessons. Salt Lake City to Moab, Utah we stayed in a hotel that night and went to see Arches National Park which was pretty spectacular. Moab to Colorado Springs, Colorado, Mom and Dad had some old friends there that we stayed with for one night and had fun. Colorado Springs to Kearney, Nebraska, we just stayed in a hotel since we were planning to drive from Colorado Springs to Omaha but that was like 9 hours but we didn’t want to drive that long. So we stopped in Kearney for a night. Kearney to Omaha, Nebraska, Dad has an uncle and an aunt there whom we stayed with for a few nights. Dad did a little talk about HM at their church. Omaha to Dubuque, Iowa, we stayed at Emmaus College in the empty dorms since students hadn’t arrived yet. Mom said that we were going to college early since we were already staying in college dorms. She was just kidding of course.

Dubuque to Chicago, Illinois, Dad has a cousin and we stayed with her family for a while, like 5 nights or something like that. We toured a little bit of downtown Chicago, went to the Art Institute, walked around, went to the American Girl Place. We saw the Arboretum with our cousins and we watched some of the Olympics at their house. Dad also went to a old friend’s house, met him in jr. high, and did a HMP (His Mansion Presentation) for some more of his old friends. Dad mentioned this in one of his other posts. Chicago to Cincinnati, Ohio, we stayed with one of Dad’s really, really old friends, someone he hadn’t seen in like 20 years. We hung out with their kids and relaxed a little. Cincinnati to Baltimore, Maryland. We stayed with my dad’s parents and our cousins flew in from Atlanta, my dad’s sister. We had fun with them, just running around, going to the small play park, going swimming together.

Baltimore to Livingston, New Jersey, on the way we had lunch with my Mom’s parents in Warminster, Pennsylvania, Mom has a cousin there and we stayed with her family. We hung out with her daughter, we made some funny videos since she has a video camera. Maybe I could post them sometime. The videos are really crazy and silly though. We don’t normally act like that, at least, I don’t. My siblings do sometimes. Livingston to Shelton, Connecticut, for a time of rest and relaxation at our friend’s house. We weren’t seeing people, we weren’t really doing stuff, just hanging out. Dad did preach twice (same sermon) at our friend’s church but other than that, we just laid low. We played mini golf (me, Mei and G all got holes in one!) they have a pool in their backyard so we went swimming a lot, played croquet and badminton. Then from Connecticut to Hillsboro, New Hampshire.

As Dad said, we dove in. So that’s our journey. Right now, we’re still unpacking, getting the house settled. Everybody is doing well, my siblings have made friends with the kids next door. There’s a small tree house in the backyard and a playground set too. People are really nice, friendly, warm and kind. We’re having a good time. See ya for now! -DL