Trick and treat holiday fun for young children

Our four grandchildren, Joshua and Jesse in Auckland and Josie and Evie in Tokyo have extra time on their dimpled hands between Christmas 2010 and New Year 2011.  Here's the grandparents'  time-filler suggestion.

Before checking out theTrick and Treat plan, meet our grand-fab-four by scrolling through their recent pictures.

Please meet....Josie

and Evie

and Joshua

and Jesse

So....let the trick and treat- fun begin!

1. First the TRICK:  you have to practise it a little!
2. Then you have the fun scaring your friend.
3. After that your friend is going to need a TREAT.  How about you  bring your friend some cooldrink or something like that, but really be kind to him and her - just for a treat! after all the scary stuff!
4. Remember to plan your treat before you do your terrifying trick. 

To be kind is as much fun as terrifying a friend!

THE TRICK

How to terrify your friends.

This quick and easy trick will leave even the most fearless of your friends quaking in his boots.

You will need

1. a small cardboard box
2. scissors
3. cotton wool
4. tomato sauce
5. the middle finger of your left hand.

What to do:

1. cut a small hole in the bottom of the box, just big enough to get your finger through.
2. Fill the box with cotton wool.
3. Once you've done this, cover the cotton wool around the hole with some ketchup.
4. Next, put your finger through the hole and lay your finger in the cotton wool.  It looks gruesom. doesn't it?
5. Hold the box so its resting in the palm of your left hand.

Now it's time to have some fun. 

1. Tell a friend that you have a severed finger in a box.  Of course, he or she won't believe you.
2. Ask your friend to touch the finger.
3. Of course. the moment your friend touches the finger, he or she will feel a finger made of real flesh and bone and jump away with a look of absolute terror on his or her face.

THE TREAT:
And now it's time to treat your friend - after such a big fright!

When my enthusiasm to pray sags...

This evening I would like to quote directly from an inspiring and funny blog I'm subscribed to - which in of itself is a high recommendation!   Gordon and I are chilling out at the end of a working day and so good was the post, that I felt compelled to read it out to my soul-mate. 

Between the two of us, we pieced our memories together of how David Lino, Pastor at Trinity Baptist Church, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, a good few years ago, organised a simple but very efficient intercession plan across the whole congregation.  It was suggested that we write the names of three - or was it 5 people down on a yellow card.  I remember it was a YELLOW card.  And committed ourselves to pray consistently for those names over a period of time.  I could not have been too good at it, but do trust that God in His mercy would have acted on those prayers.  But there was Julius, an elder at our church, and he prayed tenaciously and for many years for the names on his card - a real modern-day George Muller.

I must ask David Lino if George Muller's prayers sparked the yellow-card-prayer-plan.

Please do visit the Blazing Center when you get a chance.

I get easily discouraged in prayer.

If I don’t see the answer quickly, my prayers lose their edge and enthusiasm. My faith in God starts to peter out, and my prayers become less frequent. Which is why I find the words of George Mueller so encouraging.

In November 1844, I began to pray for the conversion of five individuals.  I prayed every day without one single intermission, whether sick or in health, on the land or on the sea, and whatever the pressure of my engagements might be.  Eighteen months elapsed before the first of the five was converted.  Five years elapsed, and then the second was converted.  I thanked God for the second, and prayed on for the other three.  Day by day I continued to pray for them, and six years more passed before the third was converted.  I thanked God for the three, and went on praying for the other two.  The man to whom God in the riches of his grace has given tens of thousands of answers to prayer, in the self-same hour or day on which they were offered, has been praying day by day for nearly thirty six years for the conversion of these two individuals, and yet they remain unconverted; for next November will be thirty-six years since I began to pray for their conversion.  But I hope in God, I pray, and look yet for the answer.

Some time after Mueller spoke these words, a fourth friend was converted. After he died, the fifth and final of his friends was saved.

What an example to me! Mueller prayed for thirty-six years! There must have been many days when he felt discouraged and doubtful, yet he kept praying. He was steadfast, and in the end God honored his steadfast prayer.
In 2011 let’s pray like George Mueller. Let’s pray bold, persistent, steadfast prayers.

How not to do hiegene a four-year-old's way

A few reminder hiegenic guidelines on how to be careful and then
a blog-link of how not to be careful.

1. Thoroughly wash your hands with soap, once you have used the used the toilet, changed diapers, or handled pets. Hands should also be washed before you deal with food.
2. Keep the eating area clan and well elevated.
3. Make sure that the kitchen clothes and the washing, cooking and the general utility area are kept clean.
4. Make sure to protect your food items and the kitchen as a whole against animals, pests and insects
5. Use insecticides only during the night time, after having removed all the items form the shelves and drawers. Before storing the stuff again, wet mop the area once.

On practising hiegene the toddler way - do see our daughter Isabelle's  hectic, crazy and funny story on 4 year-olds baking gingerbread men at their German nursery school (kindergarten) in Tokyo.

I end by recommending point 4 with an addition:  "protect your food items and the kitchen as a whole against animals, pests and insects - and especially against 4 year old boys!"  Maybe there is a point to be made about building up immune systems?!

Christmas in two hemispheres

It has started to snow again and here is a snap-shot from our window. 

It is very very quiet outside.

And then a photo of a mountain scene in the Montagu area in the South Cape - South Africa.

 sparked off memories of  past Christmases in South Africa.

and memories of  Christmas in Germany

• I'm thinking of Christmas on the ostrich farm where my dad grew up.  Oudsthoorn in the Karoo in the middle of summer is an oven! 
• Gordon and I for Christmas in Germany with our children, heavy snow, the smell of the Christmas tree and a darting deer.  Waking up to a winter wonderland. 
• Christmas nursing Michael in Port Elizabeth who was terribly weak by then - outside the beach was packed. Time did not have meaning - there was love.
• Christmas in our respective childhood homes, trying to stay awake to "see if it IS Father Christmas who puts gifts next to our bed".  
• Gordon remembers Christmas along the southcoast on summer holiday and being devastated when another boy told him there is no Father Christmas. 
• Christmas in Port Elizabeth with lots of our children and friends - tables set for 25 people - what a buzz!  And Christmas in Jeffereys Bay - right by a beautiful sea.
• Christmas in the East Cape with nativity plays in the farm church and real lambs. 
• Christmas at our home, gifts under the tree and our small children playing surrounded by Christmas paper. 
• Christmas in Cape Town.

And your Christmases?

Through all the years, all the Christmas seasons, Jesus is indeed Emmanual, God with us!  

Cold or Freezing?

Even when temperatures are about average, strong northeasterly winds can make it feel bitterly cold in the UK.
Such a wind is often described as a 'lazy' wind, as it does not appear to go around you, but straight through you instead! In such conditions weather forecasters often mention "the wind-chill". But what is it?

Wind-chill is a measure of the amount of heat lost from the skin as the wind blows across it.


 Early wind-chill development was based on conditions likely to be encountered in Antarctica. Frostbite is a major hazard to anyone working in such areas. It was found that wind speed was critical to formation of frostbite; whilst it was possible to work in temperatures below minus 40 Celsius, winds of as little as three or four knots can make a dramatic difference.


So in calm air a temperature of 0 Celsius feels like 0 Celsius. But if there is a wind of ten knots blowing it will feel the same as minus five Celsius feels in calm air. As the wind increases to 25 knots, the wind-chill falls to minus 12 Celsius. A wind of 40 knots gives a wind-chill of minus 16 Celsius.
 
If you feel compelled to find out more, please go to this BBC website on weather.  Otherwise just warm up with a nice cup of tea and wrap up warmly!

Facebook is now the third largest country.

Did you know?  We didn't!

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg

The social-networking platform he invented is closing in on 600 million users. In a single day, about a billion new pieces of content are posted on Facebook. It is the connective tissue for nearly a tenth of the planet. Facebook is now the third largest country on earth and surely has more information about its citizens than any government does.

For further reading, please follow this link  to TIME magazine.

Thank you for bank-notes and bank-cards!

Fancy having to lug your cash around while hunting down just the right Christmas gift!  Here is the pre-money-notes scenario:  strung up coins with a specially provided square hole:

By the way, it is the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil! And...if you have time, free guided tours at the British Museum and National Galleries are worth it over and over again.

Narnia's Aslam in Regents Street

The Christmas Lights on Regent Street  have a Narnia theme this year - 2010.  Swinging around Picadilly Circus last night and seeing Narnia's Aslan looking down on the shopping crowds, we thought:
what sweet irony that after the Christian emblems have been banned to appear in the London's Christmas lights, here's Narnia's Aslam shining brightly in one of London's main streets! 

Here's our afternoon-picture from the top front of the red double-decker London bus  - after dusk it's a whole lot more impressive.

Modern Technology - for now

Modern Technology....  (We will probably be smiling at this in a couple of years' time).  But for now it is just marvellous to be able to ride in a bus heading for London and at the same time making a phone-call to our children in Tokyo or in New Zealand!


One statistic:  in the British Library there are 150 million items - this is no typo.  The vastness of human knowledge, contained in one country's library, let alone throughout the world, obviously cannot be grasped.  How much less the vastness and infinity of our Father's knowledge.  


How silly of me to trust my own perspective in preference to His!  More than silly, it is foolish and could be an eternally detrimental personal habit.

It's lovely to communicate with our children on the other side of the world, it is mind-boggeling to belong to  an all-knowing and a saving God who invites us to ask for His wisdom.