Monday, on the road again

Went to the grocery store for Mama Trudy this morning and then we are on our way to Tulsa. Have to tell you... we just filled our gas tank with $3.13.9/gallon gasoline in south Oklahoma City.

It's a beautiful day. 80 degrees at 10:40 a.m.

We're enormously happy and relieved to have the job of emptying our storage unit over and done with. Again, Debby, we appreciate your help and your extra pick-up truck to help us get all the stuff moved.

We had a wonderful visit with Debby and Don's mom yesterday, Sunday. Mom is doing much better now that she is living at Debby's. Getting her trailer all set up for living in has had to take second place to Debby's father-in-law. Steve, Debby's husband, is now in Miami, Florida with his daddy as he deals with the last stages of cancer. Debby will be going to Miami on Thursday for the weekend. Steve has talked to his dad about his salvation, but still isn't sure he understands. Debby says it's going to be her goal to lead him to the Lord. We are praying that she gets there in time and that God will soften his heart and open his understanding to the simple gift of eternal life that Jesus Christ has for him through faith and forgiveness. We're also praying that God will allow him to live long enough to share is salvation with someone else and help lead them to the LORD. Wouldn't that be awesome!?! Thank you for praying with us.

Mama Trudy is doing good, also. For this, we praise the LORD. I sent the following email to all my family and friends of Mama Trudy that I have email addresses for and I thought it might be an idea that you would like to use in your family. If you don't have an aging Prayer Warrior in your family, feel free to borrow mine. She would be so delighted to receive mail from folks we've met in this ministry and you can be sure she will pray for any request you send her. Just tell her that you are friends of Don and LaVon. It would be a tremendous blessing to her to hear about the answer to your prayers, also.

Just a little history about her commitment to her Savior: She has read the complete Bible through every year since 1967!! And she says that God speaks to her in a fresh way every time she reads it. OK, here's the email I sent out:

While we were in chaplaincy training this week, ministering to the elderly was a topic. This idea came to me. While it seems that all of society thinks that someone else needs to minister to our aging parents, the Bible tells us that their families and their church families should be doing this. (I am not condemning nursing home care here, as long as the family does not ignore the aging one while in nursing home care.)

The idea: As Mama Trudy's extended family, we love her and want her to be happy, don't we? Nothing would make her happier than to receive letters and phone calls from her family. Not just letters, but letters with specific prayer requests for you and your family. She's a prayer warrior, we all know that. And we know that she prays for us daily, but how much more rewarding it would be to her, and beneficial to us, if she had specific prayers to pray every week. Don't shelter her. She knows none of us are perfect. Tell her anything that's on your heart that needs prayer. She will take it to her grave and never tell a single soul, but our Heavenly Father. (especially if you tell her it's confidential) She will take your request to the cross with complete faith and trust. It would be such a blessing to her and give her life new meaning to be able to pray specifically for her children, grand children, great grand children, nieces, nephews and friends.

Look up and write down scripture that you would like prayed for yourself and your family and send them to her weekly or at least twice a month. She loves getting mail.

I think this is a great idea and I'm going to do it. Just think of the legacy of the prayers of Mama Trudy. A great way to honor her and bring fulfillment and usefulness into her life. She's ninety years old and she's still with us... she's still with us for a reason. Not only that, we are so blessed that she doesn't have dementia or Alzheimer's Disease.

I pray that you all get as excited about this as I am. I think it is an idea from God.

Mailing address: (I started to post her mailing address and phone number, but decided against it. Just email me at lavon7_99\at\yahoo\dot\com* and I will send you Mama Trudy's address) Please pass this on to any and all family and friends of Mama Trudy. I don't have everyone's email address.

*Thanks to Snookie for the heads-up! Explanation regarding my email address: "There are programs out there that search for email addresses on a daily basis and the ones found are then sold to spammers. Save yourself a lot of time from having to delete all the spam and make that change. You can even put in a sentence explaining dot is . if you think it is needed." ... so \at\=@ and \dot\=.

Love to all.