In His Image

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...