Cheyanne's Inspiring Project

Cheyanne and I enjoy taking the time to read through her Clubhouse Jr. Magazine that comes in the mail once a month. This month there was an article about two young boys who minister to the homeless in their community. These boys who are 4 and 6, along with their church members, even wash the feet of their local homeless people. The time that these boys spent with the homeless inspired them to collect sleeping bags that they could distribute in the winter to those people who had to sleep on the street. After listening to the story, Cheyanne asked if she could collect sleeping bags and hand them out to homeless people. I told her that if she sat down and came up with a plan on how to get sleeping bags I would help her with this project. The next day she sat down with me and told me her ideas. She planned to ask the pastor at our church to make an announcement for her, take the article for show and tell to ask her class to help her, write the newspaper and ask them to put in an advertisement, put it on the computer, do extra chores to earn money so she can buy some sleeping bags, and ask people we know to donate. She is very enthusiastic about this project, and has already put part of her plan into action. Our goal is to collect as many sleeping bags as possible; however, we will also take any warm winter clothing. We are hoping to make our first delivery by the beginning of December but we know that we don’t have a lot of time until then so we plan to continue collecting throughout December and make another delivery in early January. If you have a sleeping bag that you would like to donate or other articles of winter clothing, please contact us at mhaak@hotmail.com and we will arrange a time that works for pick up. 

Cheyanne has already collected her first sleeping bag

October

I can't believe that we are half way through November already, it is going to be Christmas before I know it! I have friends who are already decorated and have their presents bought and I am still trying to figure out what happened to October. I had planned to do a thanksgiving post, and a Halloween post and who knows what else, but I just never got around to it, so I decided to lump everything together in one big October post. Our October was busy and November seems to be shaping up to be more of the same.

We started the month with corn silage. This is a time of the year that is busy and tiring for Michael, and some years it has been hard on the girls because he is putting in long days and they miss seeing him, this year however, we went to the farm every day and had lunch with Grandpa, Grandma, and Great Grandpa and Daddy. What a difference it made! The girls were able to spend time with him at lunch and they got to see great grandpa every day for a week, which was a real treat for them. We usually only see him a few days at time when we go to the coast. Thanks to Grandma we had great meals and fun conversations.

                                           



When corn was finished we headed to Abbotsford and enjoyed a Haak family Thanksgiving. It is always fun getting together and seeing everyone that we haven't seen in awhile. We are blessed to have a great place to stay at while we are there. My girls love it so much that they ask me on a weekly basis when we get to go again, they have already begun the count down until the Christmas gathering. I was challenged this Thanksgiving season with a verse from Colossians 2:7, "Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness." Nowhere am I promised that I will have everything that I want so I can be thankful, I am not even told that life will be fair, but, if I am focused on deepening my relationship with Christ, I will overflow with thankfulness. What a great promise. Instead of focusing on what I want this year I want to focus on Christ, so I can be thankful for everything in my life, the hardships and the blessings!  I wanted to take sometime this year during the Thanksgiving season to ask the girls what they were thankful for and to make sure that they were aware of how blessed they are. We made up little posters with a list of the things they said.

Cheyanne:

I am Thankful for....

• Healthy mom and dad to love me
• My bed
• Food we eat
• Grandmas and Grandpas
• God created stuff
• God made us to live with this family
• We have kitties

Emmersen:

I am Thankful for....

• Beautiful house
• God made a wonderful world
• Stuff to play with
• Dad's work
• Uncles, Aunties, Cousins, and Friends
• Neighbours, mommys and daddys
• Everything we eat

                                           

Bella

I am Thankful for....

• God
• God made toy
• God made stars
• Car
• Band-aids
• Shut doors
• God gave stickers
• Snakes
• Water
• Grandpas and Grandmas
• Great Grandpa
• Great Grandma
• Daddy, Emme, Cheyanne, Mason, Mommy

We often make a trip into Vernon on the weekends to run errands and pick up the odd groceries or whatever. It is never very fun for the kids, so on this particular Saturday we decided that we would stop at the log barn on the way home. It was so the kids could run around a bit, but really it was a fun photo op for me.

 The girls loved these big swings.

 They have some amazing old antiques that are fun to get pictures around!

 We just had to get a "pumpkin patch" picture.

 yup, he is going to be one loved little boy!!!

 look how proud of himself he is driving the wagon,

all we needed was to get one of the miniature goats hooked up in front of him.

And of course, we ended October with a little trick or treating. We had lots of fun going around the neighbourhood that my sisters and I grew up in, and we also stopped in at a few friends houses in town. We ended the night with hot chocolate and hot dogs at my grandmas house. It was nice warm evening for trick or treating, which was nice because the girls didn't have to worry about putting snowsuits on under their princess dresses. Bella and Mason's costumes were awesome, they had little fans in them that blew them up and made them look fat, and they were hilarious to watch run. Bella totally caught on to how trick or treating worked, and never wanted to stop, she just kept saying, "more trick treat?"

Emmersen already has the princess hands on her hip pose down pat!

Enjoying some healthy oranges after a night of candy, hot chocolate, and hot dogs!

The loot, we only hit 15 houses and we had more candy then we needed!

There is a heavy candy tax in this house, I think Michael and I ate most of the Chocolate bars, lol.

Exciting News!!!!!!

Nope, I am not pregnant, lol, just wanted to squash that assumption right away! Emme decided that she wanted to pray and ask Jesus to forgive her sins and live in her heart!!! Yea, clap, clap, exciting, lol. As a parent I am so excited to see her make this commitment. I spend so much time praying that my kids will learn to love God and that we will be able to show them the beauty of his grace, and I truly believe that with the holy spirit living in her she will begin to experience the beauty of God's grace every day. Yesterday right before I started to make supper (not the most convenient time) Emme came up to me and asked how we could "know God." She wanted to understand how we could know our creator, and saviour when we really couldn't see him, or hear him talk, or even go visit his house. For me it would have been easy to say, oh you just do, we pray and that's how we get to know him, but I had this light bulb moment, ya know the kind in the comics where you see the little light switch go on in the thinking box, that said, this is an opportunity to talk about salvation. I decided that instead of brushing her off and starting supper I was going to sit down and have her sit on my lap, while I told her about a love that would forgive all wrongs and was unconditional. I told her that the  best way to get to know God was to pray and ask him to live in your heart and to say sorry for the wrong things that you have done, and to thank Jesus for dying on the cross to forgive those wrong things. I also told her that when we pray and ask God to live in our hearts we have something called the Holy Spirit that helps us to make good choices and makes it possible to get to know God better. She seemed like she was excited to pray but also a little nervous so I asked her if she wanted to pray and ask God to forgive her, she said, "but I want to stay here, I don't want to go up to heaven." I explained how she wouldn't go to Heaven right now but that one day she would and it would be amazing. She asked if it would be dark up there, and I told her that it would be filled with the light of the Lord and that seemed to make her a little less afraid of what Heaven would be like. I find it interesting how even little kids worry about the unknown and struggle with a fear of Heaven. I have often found myself thinking about how much I want to see what this world has to offer and how uneasy I feel about going to Heaven. It is like the head knowledge telling me to look forward to this place, to long to be with Christ, to know that to "die is gain" has a hard time transferring to my heart. Well after answering her little worries about Heaven Emme decided that she wanted to pray, I asked if she wanted me to pray a little and she could repeat it or if she wanted to pray herself. She asked me to pray with her and she repeated what I said, as well as added all kinds of prayers for the family, and said Amen, with a huge smile on her face. I gave her a smile and told her how excited I was to know that I would see her one day in Heaven with me. I know that this is one milestone that only brings me happy tears, tears that have no sadness because she is growing up, these are the conversations that make me excited to watch her little mind mature so that I can hopefully continue to show her the love and the grace of the One who choose to be born in a manger, to live the life of a carpenter, and to die on a cross for her sins!

I thought that seeings how I didn't really write down how Cheyanne came to the decision that she wanted to ask Jesus into her life I would tag it onto the end of this post. I have all these random little notes to myself about different sayings and different experiences on bits of paper here and there so one day  I will do a post that is just for me to record our little tid bits from my pre-blog days, but for know here is Cheyanne's story. We had a family friend that had a baby right around the time when Bella was born. Her baby was very sick and ended up having to go to the hospital in Philadelphia. Baby Jocelyn spent approximately three months in the intensive care unit. Over these three months or so our family was praying for her on a regular basis. Sadly baby Jocelyn passed away in Philadelphia. When I heard the news my heart was broken for her mom, dad, and sister. Cheyanne asked me about baby Jocelyn one day and I decided it would be best for me to tell her the truth. I told her that she had not gotten better and that she had died and gone to Heaven. She then asked me how we could go to Heaven, so I told her that we needed to believe that Jesus was God's son and had died for the bad things that we did, and that we had to ask him to forgive us for those bad things. She right away prayed and asked God to forgive her and to live in heart. It was a pretty neat and emotional moment. I was amazed that a three year old could have such a tender heart towards God. In the time since she asked for God's forgiveness I have seen her love for God grow, and her excitement to learn memory verses and sing songs of worship is contagious. I am enjoying watching her faith be encouraged and strengthened by her school teacher and classmates.

My prayer for Cheyanne and Emmersen now is simple: "I pray that their love will abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that they will be able to discern what is best and live pure and blameless until the day of Christ Jesus, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God" (Philippians 1:9-11). I pray that we will be able to instill a thirst for Christ in their lives and that his love and grace will become more real to them as they get older. I pray that they will continue to make choices that draw them into a close relationship with Christ. I desire these things for them because I know that a Christ centred life is the key to happiness and contentment.