Jessica Letchford

May our sons in their youth…

A friend asked me a few weeks ago to make up a graphic for this verse she was sharing at a Mum’s night.  I had seen this graphic a few days earlier and just loved the typography so I decided to give it a go!  I love  using Storybook Creator - it works a treat.

Categories: Australian Home Education, Planet Home Education

Pizza Angel

Last night, I made a confession.

I admitted to something that I’d known for a while, but never went right out and said it.  Or in my case – sing it! As Nomi, Josh and I watched and rewatched this old favourite of ours I knew I had to give in and accept these facts.

I. am. a. pizza. addict.

Best. food. ever!

 We love this song – I hope you love it to!

Let’s hear it for pizza, folks!

To read the lyrics, go here.

Categories: Australian Home Education, Planet Home Education

No breathing, no running

Have you ever tried to run without breathing?  I’d never tried it, so I gave it a go today.  It’s hard!  It’s unsustainable for even a short time.

 I read somewhere today that running without breathing is like trying to live the Christian life without Christ’s help.   Jesus said that we can do nothing without Him.  I’ve realised lately that without God, my life would look completely different.    I’d always known that, but it’s been going to a deeper level.  I became a Christian when I was three years old, and that’s awesome, but it means that I don’t know my ‘before and after’ story. However, I believe that without God in my life, I would be a selfish, proud, rebellious, angry, impatient, self-pitying teenager! Those are the things I’ve had to fight against, and without Jesus’ salvation from darkness and Him breaking the chains of sin on my life, that’s where I would be today.  I know that without the Holy Spirit I couldn’t be who I am now.  If you know me you might find it hard to believe, because people think I’m a sweet, good-natured girl, but honestly, it’s all by the grace of God!

But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man [salvation] is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26, ESV

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20, ESV

We need Christ.  Praise God for His indescribable gift which now ‘breathes’ in us!

Categories: Australian Home Education, Planet Home Education

The Story – this looks awesome!

Think of it… God’s story – our story – the Bible – in music!  This is an album with 24 different artists singing 18 songs, telling the stories of the Bible.   It looks beautiful!

What do you think?

Categories: Australian Home Education, Planet Home Education

The Journey Is Different

A few months ago, Mum had an amazing opportunity to give a video workshop with a lady from the States, Bev Linder.  All right, so it wasn’t exactly with – but Mrs Linder was doing a series of video workshops, called There’s a Person in There, and asked Mum if she’d like to get involved.  Mr and Mrs Linder started a ministry called Special-Heart, for families with kids with special needs.

My bro Daniel has some learning difficulties.  He’s overcome a lot of that now, but it was a huge learning curve for Mum to think outside of the box to parent and teach him.  She did an amazing job.  Daniel actually filmed the video – you can read Daniel’s response to the project at my Mum’s blog.

You can watch to the free workshops on their website, including Mum’s – The Goal is the Same; The Journey is Different – so jump on over to watch it and the others in the series.  Not to mention, for all you Americans out there, you get to hear my Mum speak a genuine Australian accent!

If you’ve watched the video, let me assure you – the ground was not hot.  And it’s actually harder to walk that walk with shoes on.  Maybe that just proves the point!  If you want to know what on earth I’m talking about… go over and watch Mum’s video!

Categories: Australian Home Education, Planet Home Education

Linkidy Links: October 2011

Loving the Pastor’s Wife – “One of the most important and most overlooked people in a church is the pastor’s wife. She is usually not on the organizational chart, does not have a formal job title or job description, and is an unpaid volunteer. But her ministry can make or break her family and church.”

A Dalai Lama Dilemma for Masterchef contestant Kate – Earlier this year our family was sucked into Masterchef.  We were so excited to hear that there was a Christian, and were frankly, so proud of her for making a stand against calling the Dalai Lama ‘your holiness’.  We were even more ecstatic when she won!

The Power of Classics – this was a really good article about classics.  Enjoy classics; think through them.  Stand on the shoulders of the great and dive into the universe that shaped the minds of the founding fathers of today’s world.

The Roots of Moral Authority - good post on ethics.  Who does determine right from wrong in our society after all?

Elvis Presley’s Diet - Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.  That’s all there is to it!

This is Why I’ll Never be an Adult – this was funny!

The Fear of Balloons - Nomi has decided that she has globophobia.  Any other sufferers’ from globophobia out there?

Categories: Australian Home Education, Planet Home Education

In Christ I Am…

I’m doing a Bible Study on a Christian’s Identity in Christ, by Charles Stanley.  So far it’s been really, really good.  I had to make a ‘postcard’ after Friday’s lesson.  This is who I am: in Christ, not in Adam.  What an amazing God, who gives such amazing gifts and such amazing grace, offering to us an incredible identity.  We just have to take hold of it!

Categories: Australian Home Education, Planet Home Education

I’m Seventeen!

yaaah… I’m seventeen!  Wow – it seems like only a year ago that I turned ten and went to Darwin with Mum, and blindfolded with an apron and was lead to my new blue bike as an eleventh birthday present – and was it really five years ago that I turned twelve?!  Wow.  I can remember thinking to myself how mature I would be when I was a teenager, and how teenagers were so. be awesome.   Sadly, I’m not as cool as I imagined myself to be!

(note the fly on my arm… a natural part of living up in the Kimberley!)

Anyway, thank you sixteen for everything I went through, and hello seventeenyearoldhood!  I”m looking forward to whatever God is going to do this year!

This year, to celebrate, I had some families over on the day before my birthday and we played board games before pizza and an old-fashioned movie night.   By old-fashioned movie night, I mean popcorn (popped from an old-fashioned red popcorn machine and poured into homemade red boxes), lollies in newspaper cones, and a movie outside on a big screen.  We watched My Fair Lady, which I hadn’t seen before, and I think everybody really enjoyed it! ( on the plain, in spain….)   It was glorious fun!

On my birthday I spent the day sewing a top (photos coming!), talking to extended family and friends, watching the old TV series Christy, playing Take Two and Sequence with my family, and listening to Keith Green’s music.  It was a quiet day but full of fun and the things I love.

I wonder what the next twelve months will look like?

Categories: Australian Home Education, Planet Home Education

Mates

Categories: Australian Home Education, Planet Home Education

Man or Beast?

“You have made him to have dominion over the work of your hands; You have put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yes and the beasts of the field”

- Psalm 9:6, 7

 Earlier this year the live export of cattle to Indonesia went belly up (literally). A TV report showed some horrific footage of how our cattle were being slaughtered overseas.  They showed cattle being killed in a simply awful and unnecessary way.  My Dad is a vet, who flies around the stations of the Top End region. Pretty much all of his cattle work involves this live export trade, so we were following the government’s response pretty closely.  The government and other animal-friendly parties and lobbies were shocked at what they saw, like most people were, and the government quickly reacted in a way that would guarantee that no more cattle were killed like this, by temporarily shutting down the live export trade, which in turn put people’s jobs – including my Dad’s – on hold as well.  Without the export, vets, farmers, port workers, and musterers would all be put out of work. During this turmoil, an animal-loving party attempted to ban all live stock export completely, but that didn’t get very far.  Just in the last couple of weeks the first boats went out again, but it took a bit of effort to reconcile the two countries. *

I don’t think the Indonesians needed to kill the cattle in the way they did, but I also think that a political party fighting for all live export to be banned completely is going too far, and the knee-jerk reaction of the government, to temporarily ban live export didn’t help.  A state representative for our electorate wondered in an article if people have forgotten that the meat we buy at Coles or Woolworths was actually alive at one point!  Yes, the ‘blood’ that makes a rare steak was at one point, circulating through a cow’s body and in fact keeping him alive. I don’t know about America, but in Australia we are getting more and more touchy about our animals’ rights and I wonder if people have forgotten the hierarchy God ordained.

This morning I read Psalm nine, and these two verses really excited me:

“You have made him to have dominion over the work of your hands; You have put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yes and the beasts of the field.“

– Psalm 9:6, 7

 Man has dominion over animals – even the sheep and cattle!  That dominion means we are in charge of the animals and God places us more important than them (see Matthew 10:29-30).  It reminds me of Acts 10, where Peter had a vision and God said, ‘rise, Peter, kill and eat’ animals that the Law had said were unclean.  Starting with Noah offering a sacrifice to God after the flood (Genesis 9:3), and continuing through the Bible, God has provided for us to eat meat.  Right back in Genesis chapter one God gave man dominion over the earth, and not animals’ dominion over us humans (see Genesis 2:15).  We need to care for animals and the world, but we’re not its slave.  As Christians we need to understand that – and enjoy that steak.

*Thankfully, my Dad wasn’t put out of work at all, really.  If the governments hadn’t pulled everything back together when they did, lots of people could have lost their jobs.

Categories: Australian Home Education, Planet Home Education

Hello!

Hi everyone!

Blogging has – kind of obviously – taken a backseat lately.  ‘Lately’ meaning the last month or two or three!  It’s not exactly that I’ve been busy, but I’ve been re-assessing my blog and my writing and parts of my life, and hence the break.

I’m now feeling rejuvenated and even itching to write.  Lots of things are buzzing around my head.  I think that if my head was on a highway, I would be called over for speeding!  There are things to do and places to be! Places to organise and things to make!  Songs to sing and books to read! A faith to explore and problems in the world to solve!

Lately I’ve been thinking about a lot of things, and the learning’s not over yet.  Things like my identity in Christ and how that affects my life, and the joy of the Lord.  I’m tussling over things that will make my faith my own – I’m not disagreeing from what Mum or Dad have taught me, but those things I’m reaffirming in my heart.  I’ve been thinking about how I want to spend Twenty-Twelve and the rest of my life, and wondering what on earth God could have planned for me!

Probably most of all, I’m standing in awe at the grace of God.  I’m gawking at his love, which would send Jesus to the cross.  His promises take my breath away.  In a roundabout way I’ve found my latest favouritist verse that gives me goose bumps each time I hear it:

“For as far as the heavens are above the earth, so great is the Father’s love;

As far as the east is from the west, so far has he taken his sins from us!”

- Psalm 103:12

I’ve enjoyed taking a break from blogging, but I am itching to start again.  I’m giving my spiritual and mental system a huge clean out, reassessing each item and either chucking things out, or keeping them and reorganising them.  I love clean outs!

So: sorry I went AWOL, and hello again!  I’m looking forward to blogging, whatever that may look like.  Perhaps it means blogging once a day.  Maybe it means once a month.  There’s one way to find out!

Love, Jess

Categories: Australian Home Education, Planet Home Education