Spirit Divine, Attend Our Prayer ~ Hymn

Spirit Divine, Attend Our Prayer

Spirit divine, attend our prayer,
And make our heart Thy home;
Descend with all Thy gracious power;
Come, Holy Spirit, come.

Come as the light! to us reveal
The truth we long to know;
Reveal the narrow path of right,
The way of duty show.

Come as the fire and purge our hearts
Like sacrificial flame,
Till our whole souls an offering be
In love’s redeeming name.

Come as the dew, and sweetly bless
This consecrated hour;
May barrenness rejoice to own
Thy fertilizing power.

Come as the dove, and spread Thy wings,
The wings of peaceful love;
And let Thy Church on earth become
Blest as Thy Church above.

Come as the wind, O Breath of God!
O Pentecostal grace!
Come, make Thy great salvation known,
Wide as the human race.

Spirit divine, attend our prayer;
Make a lost world Thy home;
Descend with all thy gracious powers,
O come, great Spirit, come.

Words: Andrew Reed, June 1829

My heart goes out to the people of Poland this morning who have lost so many of their leaders in this gruesome tragedy. May God’s Spirit comfort them in their loss and may their hearts turn to God for comfort and peace.

Friday’s Fave Five! ~ Easter Edition…

Time to sit down, take a deep breath, and consider the blessings of this past week. Now visit Susanne at Living to Tell the Story to join in or to see some favorites. Thank you Susanne for hosting this great exercise…

Easter, Easter, Easter! I love Easter. I love that our Faith is defined by what Jesus did on the cross on our behalf. The whole Lenten Season culminating on Resurrection Sunday and now the days leading up to Pentecost are great days to focus and be refreshed. So here are my 5 favorites from this past week…

1. Getting together with my sister Lana G! and keeping our Russian Heritage traditions going by baking the Russian Easter bread and making and molding the traditional sweet cheese spread. I have to get more cans to bake the bread in by next year. Someone at our Easter table let it slip that she might have some in her garage. Along with these traditions watching my daughter color the Easter eggs is always a fun time.

2. The night before Easter I went to the opening Sounders Soccer game. I went to a nearby park and ride that was offering special buses to take fans to Qwest field. My bus ended up being real special as I was the only one on it!! The bus driver and me. I thought of you Thom! This was one of those really big metro buses, too. I had to chuckle. Too bad our team lost…ugh. On the bus trip home there were more people but the bus driver recognized me right away…

3. Easter was such a nice day of celebration for us. We went to a baptism of 2 little sisters we know. So sweet. We came home to get ready to host our Easter meal with my DIL’s family. There were 12 of us and we had a good time eating, sharing and laughing.

4. Whoohoo! I finally got to meet some of the Mennonite Girls from MGCC face to face on Tuesday. Five of the Canadian Mennonites had a field-trip down to the Skagit Valley to see the tulips and we all met up for lunch in La Conner. It was like we were old friends. Each gal is so unique yet so cohesive in the group. I don’t know if that’s the right word but I hope you understand what I mean…

5. Tulips, tulips, tulips! I love tulips. To see these lovelies like the sea before your eyes is absolutely amazing. I praise God for creating tulips and I’m so glad those immigrants from Holland settled in the Skagit Valley and grow them for our pleasure and for their livelihood!

Keep scrolling down to the next post if you’d like to see some tulips in the fields…

 

Have a great weekend everyone!

 

Happy Birthday to My Mom!

We’re both a lot older now! My mom turns 86 today and my dad will be 87 in May. My mother is truly the Proverbs 31 woman. She has always put her children and husband as a top priority in her life. Her first child died at 2 years old and she has raised 8 others sewing clothes for the girls and making 3 meals a day most of our lives except for Sunday mornings. On Sunday mornings because we’d all be in a hurry to get ready for church she’d get a break and we’d have store bought coffee cake for breakfast. Usually it was a frozen Sara Lee variety. Of course there would be preparations under way already for Sunday lunch. Usually we’d bring someone extra home for that lunch, too. Once in the while in the middle of the week my father would pick up a pizza from Johnny’s and we’d even get soda to have with it. (Did I get that right siblings? Was it Johnny’s pizza?)

So today I am thanking our God Almighty for giving us a mother who loves us, sacrifices for us, and loves her husband. It’s a wonderful heritage and we have benefited in many ways from it.

 

Tablescape Thursday ~ Easter Revisited

For some of you that visit my blog regularly this will be a repeat. It’s time for Susan’s Tablescape Thursday so I wanted to post my actual Easter table for this week.

Were you aware that tulips continue growing even after they are cut and placed in a vase?

I just realized that about all my tulips as I trimmed the stems each day when I added fresh water and they were taller the next day!

My centerpiece is the Traditional Russian Easter Bread (Kulich or Paska), Colored Eggs, and hollow Chocolate Russian Matryoshka dolls.

The china is Royal Albert Moss Rose.

We used our International 1812 Sterling. The stemware and napkin rings are Target clearance. Napkins are from a thrift store and the tablecloth is from Goodwill at $4.99. The runner is also from Goodwill but I forget what I paid.

Our traditional molded sweet cheese spread that is called Seerney Paska in Russian. The XB is for Христос Воскрес (Christos Voskress), Christ is Risen!

We squeezed 12 around the table and had a wonderful time celebrating the Resurrection of Christ!

It Was So Much Fun…

…to laugh and talk with these girls!

 

6 of the 10 contributors on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog.

Julie, Bev K. , Betty R., and Charlotte were unable to join us.

 

It was my first face to face with all these ladies. You know these girls are even thinner in person. I forgot to ask them their secret on how they stay so slim while cooking all that great food!!  And for the record…Kathy, I think you are great!! I feel so blessed to have been adopted into the fold even though I’m not Mennonite. Many of our Russian recipes are similar to the Mennonite favorites.

Before eating we got a little shopping in.

After lunch we parted ways.

I headed South and they headed North with a stop at the Tulip Fields.

 

I brought home a food gift and the prize I won on Judy’s blog giveaway a while back.

 

My own Vancouver Olympic Mittens and a Canada Pin! Thank you MGCC for a wonderful day and thank you Judy for my prize. I love the mittens and the pin.

Before I met up with the girls I had a quick stop at the tulip fields and I’ll show more of those photos later.  Blessings!

 

Seeds of Friendship ~

Today I’m heading North to La Conner and I’m meeting up with 5 of the Mennonite Girls from Mennonite Girls Can Cook! We’re going to have lunch together at Seeds. I am so looking forward to meeting these blogging friends in person. My camera is all packed and ready to go!

Seeds of Friendship

I planted some seeds of friendship
All nice and neatly in a row
I tended to them with love and care
Then watched them sprout and grow

I’ll be sharing more about our meeting later in the week. Happy Tuesday to you all!