In His Image

Greetings from the sporadic writers guild! I must confess that the author of this blog hopes that the remainder of his life does not keep speeding up as it has the last couple years and especially this last summer! August came and went and with it the 1st anniversary of A Stitch in Time’s founding. It also held another move for the business as the old location of 160 sq. feet was insufficient for it’s growth. I now have 270 sq. feet that is contiguous space and is only three-fourths of what I was spending. I moved the last week of August and only now feel like I may be getting settled in. We are on the move again though. It has been two years since I have been east to see Aimee’s family and with her brother-in-law needing an addition to their trailer, thought that this would be a good time to make a quick trip into Virginia. We plan to leave this Friday after work and drive through the night since that is the best time to travel with small children anyway!! We will be in Ferrum,...

During my growing up years, my father and I would have these discussions about whether something new was “right” or “wrong.”  I would inevitably ask, “What is wrong with it?” to which he sometimes did, or did not have an answer.  Now I have come to realize that the whole premise for the question is wrong.   To ask “what is wrong with it” is to imply that if it cannot be proven detrimental to me, then it must be ok for me.  But let’s take that premise and look at it from a different perspective.  Most of us have been to a hospital and to the pharmacy counters.  What if these doctors and nurses looked at the patient with an infection coursing through his body and then walked over to the list of medications and asked themselves, “what won’t hurt him?”  If that were the only standard for choosing the medication, there would be a host that they could prescribe!  But their goal is not just to avoid harming the pat...

Well, after a LONG hiatus from this blog, and a reminder from Jon, I have resolved to confine myself to this room until I get a bit of an update done to this thing! Not that I have a great affection, or a responsibility to this thing, but I realize that others have come to count on these ramblings for an idea on what is going on in the crazy, far-off world of the Stauffer’s. I was touched this morning by the sermon from the last few verses from Hebrews. My father, (the pastor) has been working through the book for the last ten months and it has been an encouraging, though somewhat baffling at times, study and has given much food for thought. This morning the part that really stuck out to me was the plea for the ability to live with a pure conscience. It was brought out about Paul who was able to say that he has always lived with a pure conscience. Paul!! The one who persecuted the church most mercilessly, and wrought great havoc among the early believers, was able to say that he...

Sunday morning, we were on the way to church and to pick up Aimee’s brother who cam to visit for a week.  Our boys had been ecstatic with anticipation of all the fun times with their Uncle Skyler.  However it had been almost two years since they would have seen him so I asked Japheth Jr. if he still knew what Skyler looked like.      “Yes Papa, I know what he looks like!” “What does he look like?” (I, who never misses a chance to learn better how to describe one’s looks :-) “Oh Papa, he has a round head just like Jeremiah’s!” Oh how the laughter rolled. Japheth was only trying to find words to describe his uncle so he compared him to someone he knew.  The thought came to me later, what do people compare me to when they try to describe my physical features, or more importantly, my spiritual features!  Truly, “by their fruits ye shall know them.”

What to do?  Being married has lot’s of problems.  One of which is this, when you have a cold, do you still kiss your wife goodbye in the morning as you leave for work?  If you don’t, you never know if you’ll get in a fatal accident and never have kissed her goodbye!  On the other hand, if you kissed her, she might have a nasty cold for the funeral!! Argh!!  What to do!!!!  Now I know why all single people smile all the time!

We are so thankful that the weather is warmer and that summer seems just around the corner! Here in Minnesota, when the daily temp gets up into the sixties, like is has for the last few days, we realize that the winter is finally over, even if we did have snow just a week and a half ago! This evening I was too tired to cut firewood so I decided to cut the grass in our pasture in preperation for church campout next weekend. My four oldest children all wanted a ride with Papa. Since I will not take more than one at a time while mowing, this was going to entail a lot of switching. So instead I hooked the wagon onto the back of the mower, made sure that the discharge was not going to hit them, and gave them all a ride. They loved it and Amiee did too as it gave her the opportunity to get some sewing done. I Love these days!!! On a business note, here is a picture of the machine I made for the sharpening of rotary cutter blades. It involves two spin jigs, and a cross slide table from a...

I wrote this about nine months after our first child was born.  It still is my heart and I want to bless all you mothers out there in the work you do! A Tribute to My Mother      In my life as I grew up, Mother was always something of a fixture and that is how I often saw her.  Just as you get light by turning on a light switch, so when you would get a skinned knee, Mother was there.  When I would wake up in the middle of the night with a bad dream, or get hurt feelings when someone at school said something that wounded me, Mother was always there.  It never occurred to me to wonder if she would have liked to be somewhere else, or if she would like to work at the job she used to.  I never questioned why she always had breakfast ready when I got up, or supper ready when Daddy came home from work, that was what mothers were supposed to do!  I felt that God must have given my mother to me instead of the ot...

This morning as I was traveling to Fosston to drop off some machines, I was listening to some of my favorite songs and one of them was by Michael Card entitled, Basin and the Towel.   One phrase really stood out to me this time though, “ one will kneel, and one will yield.   Our Savior servant must show them how, through the will of the water and the tenderness of the towel.” It started me thinking.  A few months ago, my good friend Keith, told me, “Japheth, you are a really hard person to be a blessing too.  You almost never want to accept the gift or help from a brother.”  It made me wonder, why?  Why do I find it so hard to accept the kindness of others?  Why do I always have to be the giver and not the receiver? This weekend we have communion again and since we still practice the Biblical ordinance of feet washing, I thought of the dialogue between our Lord and Peter.  Jesus didn’t rebuke Peter because h...

We praise the Lord that He saw fit to bless us with another son. After weeks of unrest in the fact of not knowing when we were due and several false starts of labor, today was a God-send! Jaden Scott Stauffer was born at 3:17 am on April 5th, 2006. He weighed in at 9 lbs even, and was 20 3/8" long. The labor was hard to get started but once Aimee's water broke at 2:05 am, things kicked in high gear and Jaden was born 72 minutes later. Both Aimee and Jaden are doing very well. Aimee had no complications and is recovering quickly. Truly God answered our prayers for safety and as quick a birth as possible. Thank YOU for all the prayers you have offered up for us the last week or so. We have felt them and feel very blessed by all the friends we have out there. Now it is 5:21 and I have not slept yet so since Aimee and the little one are sleeping, I shall try to get a few winks in before I have to get up with the rest of the children.

Yesterday I had my friend Jason, came up to me and said; “Japheth, I never heard if your new little one is a little boy or a little girl?” ( he had not seen us for two weeks since the previous week we had been home from church thinking we were going to have the baby.) (Me) “Well, it would have to be one or the other I supposed, eh?” “Yes Japheth, that is how it works! So… (about this time my wife, who he has not seen yet this morning, walks past us, still looking like she has imbibed too much on the watermelon patch. He looks down and sees her) OH….” The poor fellow! He got red and started stammering around and if I hadn’t felt sorry for him, it would have been quite hilarious! The new store is up and running and I have been busier than I thought possible! I have been getting at least 5-6 customers a day with some days as many as 15! Thanks to a dear brother who gave us the needed money to mail flyers to 930 sewers in the a...

Prov. 13:12 Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. Sometimes we wonder at the hand of God.  Yesterday morning we woke up with Aimee having strong contractions close together and various other signs that this was the time.  Yet, after a few hours, they started to slow down.  We consulted with our midwife and after prayer, decided to try and help things along.  Aimee’s due date is the 27th as close as we can figure, but do to a faulty pregnancy test, it could be anytime in the last two weeks. Thus the midwife and I were starting to get concerned that this baby was too slow in coming and thus would be huge, may be too large for Aimee to handle.  Yet by late afternoon, the contractions had stopped completely.  Her water had not broken, but that is nothing unusual.  We spent some time again in prayer and decided to just stop all things that we were doing to help the contracti...

We woke up this morning to the realization that today is likely going to be the day of delivery. However, we would sure appreciate your prayers as it is going very slow and Aimee's feeling discouraged. Please pray with us that God would draw this young life forth both safely and quickly! Thank you!!

A lot has happened in our lives the past few weeks. My inattentiveness to this blog is the by-product of a very hurried and harried life and it looks like it won’t change for a while. As you may have read back a ways, I was struggling to make ends meet with just the income from my own sewing machine repair shop in our basement. This was due in a large part to the large fee I had to pay to my former employer for them allowing people to drop-off and pick up machines in their store. Just before I took my son to Thailand for his eye surgery, I had started a part time job with another sewing store in town. When I returned from the three weeks, my new boss told me that she was selling the store. She also stated that the new owner did not want to handle the Janome Sewing Machines and was going to have just a fabric and patterns, quilt store. Did I want to buy the dealership with all stock? This was a huge question for me. I had wanted to do something like this in the future say, t...

I have no words of wisdom, or thoughts of great repose. Just some simple, humble, earthly thoughts, of the life within a rose. How great the beauty of the rose as it blooms within this sphere. Yet its petals drop so quickly, in it’s short-lived life down here. Roses take so much work, to keep them healthy every day. We’re always pruning, tilling dusting, to try and keep their diseases at bay. Yet we would think it odd, to give all our thoughts to petals And forget its roots beneath the sod. Or would we? Yet her life’s not held within, the lovely blossoms of bright red, but lies deep within the earth, the root’s by which she’s fed. Our lives are but a vapor here, like the petals of the rose. We bloom so quickly, and are gone, while the heart within still grows. So when our loved one passes from this life to their rest, they’ve only ceased to live with us, but still blossom at their best. For the Master Gardener plans his flower beds with care, and moves His flowers from time to time, to...

This is one of those before and after shots. Can you see why my heart was stirred when they took the bandages off the first time? We took the large picture this morning as that is when he most readily pulls the eyes together. This should continue to get better each day.

Greetings from a tired, globe-trotting father! It is now 11:00 at night and thanks to jet lag, I am wide awake! Oh well, I have acquired a precious 6 hours of sleep over the last 52 hours so if this seems a little dis-jointed, you’ll know why! :-) We arrived home here at 1:30am this morning. I want to thank all of you for your prayers! I felt so buoyed up these last two and a half weeks that I could hardly believe it! We praise God that the surgery was a success and we were very grateful we went. The doctors and staff were beyond my expectations and we were very blessed with their knowledge, skill and tender loving care! As far as the surgery, it took about a little over an hour from the time they put him under till I could go to the recovery room to see him wake up. I was so thankful that I was allowed into the operating room and hold my son as he “fell asleep.” I was the last face he saw and the first when he awoke and that meant a lot to me. I tell you, it goes thru the h...

Ok, it’s my fault I haven’t posted in a while, but let me fill you in. We had about 600 people at the funeral and ended up feeding about 500 of them. It was a moving service with her brother Dawson leading the singing and her other brother, Nolan, giving a short synopsis of her life. A good friend of our church, Keith Yates or affectionately known as “Bear,” shared two songs. Bear is blind and was rejected by his family as a baby and grew up in a bunch of homes. It was so neat, to see the joy on his face when he came to the last verse of looking forward to heaven, even after he struggled so much with his emotions the first few verses. My father brought a message on the fact the “Precious in the eyes of the Lord are the death of His saints!” Click in the picture for a larger view. Afterwards, the pall bearers loaded the casket into the back of our van for the trip out to the cemetery. It was a drive of almost 30 miles since we had to use the largest church in the area. We had c...

This evening as we had the viewing for Krystal, Val told me that he almost feels bad cause here we are weeping our eyes out and he is just so drained from all the crying he’s done that he has no tears left.  I assured him that we understood and felt no hard feelings whatsoever. In some ways it is so tough to have two funerals.  Yet this one is sure to be the harder of the two because of tomorrow.  Here at Kitchi, the graveside service is different than any other service I was ever at before moving here.  First of all, we dig the grave by hand.  Then when the casket is lowered into its wooden vault, the lid is screwed or nailed down and then they fill the grave back in by hand.  A few years ago when Krystal’s daughter Kayla was buried there, each of the children and Val helped to fill in the grave.  They were not told to do this, it was simply done by them. I watched as the family struggled with their emotions and wond...

Today was a little different for me, I did something that I had never done before, I helped dig a grave by hand.  A lot of thoughts go through your mind when you do work like that.  And no, I am not superstitious and feel all creepy and crawly, but it really makes you think. This wooden casket holds a body and someday will be indistinguishable from the ground around it which we are digging out now.  The wood will rot and man will return to the form that he had at the beginning of time, dirt.   I asked myself why?  Why didn’t God make us to disappear completely, body and all when we die?  Why the cruel and harsh reality of how disposable we are?  And the only thing I can come up with is this.  God uses death to remind us that this life is only for here.  We came into this world with nothing and we most assuredly will take nothing with us when we leave.  Life here is final.  There...

The service in east is going to be held at Gateway Minitries 11017 Kemps Mill Rd, Williamsport, MD 21795 at 10:30 Wednesday, January 11 Here is a map Map of 11017 Kemps Mill Rd Williamsport, MD 21795-3129, US For the service here in Minnesota, there will be a viewing Friday evening from 4-6 and from 7-9. We are not absolutly sure where yet but we will know tommorrow. The funeral service will be held at 10:00 am on Saturday, January 14, at the Evengilical Covenant Church in Bemidji. The doors will open 1 hour prior to the service for early arrivals. There will be a meal following in the church's fellowship hall. There is a lot of food being brought but if you want to bring a dish for the meal, or for the family in the days to follow, that is fine. The church is located just west of Bemidji on Highway 2, past the Bemidji Airport and beside Dave Walters Mobile homes.

We have some news as far as the dates for the services in memory of Krystal Yoder. In Pennsylvania, they are planning a service for Wednesday, January 11. They do not know the time or place yet as people have been hard to get a hold of. I will post it here on my blog with directions, once we find it out. Here in Minnesota, we will be having a service on Saturday, January 14 around 10 am.Internment will follow the service. We also do not know the place but I will send it out once we know. Please pray for the family and the host of people traveling for these services. As of this morning, Krystal's mother and step-father, Ron & Fannie Mae, Krystal's brother, Dawson, and Val's mother Clara Mae, have started driving towards Pennsylvania with the casket and with the snow, I know they would appreciate your prayers.

Today God Saw fit to take another of His gems home. We received word this afternoon that Krystal Yoder, wife of Val Yoder, was ushered into the presence of her beloved Savior. She has had a long battle with her heart and today it gave out on her while attending a wedding in Lancaster Pennsylvania. Her brother who is a medical doctor was there with her and said that she could not have been revived even if she had been at the best hospital. It was her time to go. Please pray for their family! Their oldest son is in Thailand doing prep work for the whole family to move there next year. This also happened at the same time that Val was attending a meeting to plan the development of a Bible school for Asians in Thailand. Pray for the family’s strength in all of this!!