I’m delighted to have had a chance to review this title. Please click here to read my review. Scroll down to the bottom of this post to learn how you can enter to win one copy of this book!

CONTEST CLOSED. Our Winner is Peggy Gorman! Congratulations Peggy!  I will email you - please let me know your mailing address within three days.  Enjoy!  Thanks to everyone for entering!

It is time to play a Wild Card! Every now and then, a book that I have chosen to read is going to pop up as a FIRST Wild Card Tour. Get dealt into the game! (Just click the button!) Wild Card Tours feature an author and his/her book’s FIRST chapter!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!

and his book:

Bringing Home the Prodigals

Authentic (April 1, 2008)

Always Leave a Light On

Sometimes God ambushes us: it happened to me on March 14, 1998. I had been invited to speak at the National Exhibition Center in the UK to thousands of people who had gathered to pray for the return of their prodigals. I had prepared a message based on the timeless parable of the lost son, and it was folded securely in the inside pocket of my jacket. I believed I was ready to deliver God’s word.

I have been at many Christian events over the years, but I have never experienced the wave of emotion that filled the auditorium that day. The organizers had seated my wife, Dianne, and me on the platform, and as I gazed out at that vast audience, I couldn’t help but wonder what stories lay behind the prayers.

Somewhere, no doubt, was a woman whose husband had once led a church and been a faithful husband and father until the night he told her the four things that so many Christian men tell their wives when they leave them for another woman: “We were so young when we got married we hardly knew what we were doing— I doubt we ever really loved each other”; “In the long run this will be better for you”; “One day you’ll realize this is best for the kids,” and “I’ve prayed about this, and it’s OK with God.”

And somewhere there was a father who had told his tiny daughter Bible stories. She had picked one each night from the huge children’s Bible they kept on the shelf in her bedroom. They had said prayers together, and he had always been touched that, from her youngest days, she had prayed for others more than herself. But as he prayed in the auditorium that day, he thought of her later teenage years and the gradual disinterest in anything to do with God. A great sobbing convulsed his body as he remembered the night he found the drugs in her bedroom and, finally, the day she left, cursing both him and God.

These people had gathered, every one of them with a prodigal on their hearts: friends, brothers, husbands, wives, and sometimes in a strange reversal of the parable, mothers and fathers—but mostly children.

But that great arena did not hold only people praying. In the very front was a huge wooden cross. Its shadow seemed to reach over the whole crowd. During the day, people were invited to write the name of their prodigal on a small card, bring it to the front, and lay it at the foot of the cross. I watched them as they came: young people bringing the names of school friends, married couples holding hands as they laid down the names of children, friends walking together clutching cards, and often the elderly, shuffling forward and bending slowly as they lay the names of those they loved at the cross.

After an hour or so one of the organizers asked me if I would leave the platform and stand by the cross to pray with some of those who were coming forward. Of course I agreed and made my way to the floor of the arena and to the cross. That’s when God ambushed me. What occurred in the next two minutes changed my life forever and was the impetus that was to take the message of “Bringing Home the Prodigals” around the world.

When I reached the cross there were tens of thousands of names there. They were written on cards that were spilling off the little table at the foot of the cross and onto the floor. I picked up and read some of them: “Jack” “Milly” “Bring Charles home, Lord.” It seemed to me that the pain of the world lay at the foot of that cross. I thank God for what he has done in the lives of our two children, but at that time Dianne and I had heavy hearts for them, and I remember laying Katie’s name at the foot of the cross and Lloyd’s name next to hers. And then I started to cry. I could not stop.

As I wept, God laid a message about prodigals on my heart that I first preached later that day. It was not the neat, nicely wrapped-up one with all the answers—that was in my pocket. It was a message forged from brokenness and a sense of utter dependence on God. As I finished speaking that day, I remember thinking that one day I would put it into a book.

But life for all of us is busy and the book was never started. And then one day, as part of some routine tests, the doctors found a possible abnormality with one of my kidneys. They feared it was a tumor. I had about ten days to wait for the results of the tests that would determine what the problem was.

On one of those days I found myself ambling along a London street. It was a wonderful spring morning; on such days, London is at its best. The air was crisp, the sky blue, and behind me the sun shone off Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret’s Chapel as I made my way past Churchill’s War Rooms and into St. James’ Park.

The park was almost deserted, and the pigeons, squirrels, and I looked at each other as if there was little else of interest. Never does life become as precious as when you think it may be suddenly shortened. I began to think about things that really mattered to me. The message of the prodigals came to my mind, and I knew I had to get that book written. I started it that week. A few days later the test results came and were favorable: I did not have a tumor—just an over-sized kidney that I’d probably had all my life. A few months later the book was written. But that was only the beginning.

One day the people who had invited me to preach at their day of prayer in the National Exhibition Center in Birmingham in the UK called to ask me to meet with them. They said God had told them to pass on to me the mantle of the burden for prodigals that they had carried for so many years. We began to visit the denominational leaders to see if the message resonated with them. Without exception—whether it was the Salvation Army, the Baptists, Catholics, Methodists, or even the Archbishop of Canterbury himself—the response was the same: “This is a God-given word for today. We support you in it.”

Over the following few years in auditoriums all across the United Kingdom, more than fifty thousand people have experienced a Bringing Home the Prodigals event. Even now in my mind’s eye, I can picture them listening to the message and bringing the names of their prodigals to the foot of the cross. We began to hear the most remarkable stories of prodigals coming back to God.

Since then we have been taking Bringing Home the Prodigals all over the world. I have watched people stream forward to lay the names of their prodigals at the cross in Costa Rica, Uganda, South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, Borneo, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and North America. This little book contains the heart of the message of Bringing Home the Prodigals I believe God has laid on my heart. I warn you now; it is a simple message. Most of us feel we know the parable so well that there is hardly anything new we could learn. Maybe this is true, but God wants to remind us of what we knew in our hearts all along—and somehow forgot.

I wrote part of the book in a small conference center on the Gower coast near Swansea, Wales. It is not far from where Dylan Thomas wrote “Under Milk Wood.” The building is set on a hill, and the view from my window was unspeakably beautiful, running across fields, then woods, and finally ending at the sea in the great sweep of the bay. One morning I took a break from writing and stood outside the house gazing into the distance at the breakers hitting the beach. After a few minutes I was joined by a priest. He had on the traditional long black cassock, had a flowing grey beard, and wore what my kids used to call “Jesus sandals.” He had been leading a discussion in one of the seminar rooms and said he had “just come out to get a little air whilst they ponder a couple of theological teasers I’ve set them.”

We began chatting and he asked me what I was doing. When I told him I was writing a book about prodigals, he told me a most moving story. Let me try to capture his words as I remember them:

In a village near here, is a large old house. An elderly lady lives there alone and every night, as darkness falls, she puts a light on in the attic. Her son left home twenty-five years ago, rather like the prodigal in the parable, but she has never given up the hope that one day he will come home. We all know the house well, and although the bulb must occasionally need replacing, none of us have ever seen that house without a light on. It is for her son.

The theme of “leaving a light on” has become a recurring one in the letters and emails I have received from all over the world from those who wait for a prodigal’s return. Shortly after one of the Bringing Home the Prodigals events, a woman wrote to me. She told me that her daughter had walked out of their home when she was eighteen years old. She had turned her back not only on her mother and father, but on the God she had once loved. “My daughter didn’t get in touch, and we didn’t know whether she was alive or dead,” the woman wrote. She went on to tell me that every night, as she and her husband turned off the lights before they went to bed, she would always say to him, “Leave the porch light on.” And every Christmas, she would put a little Christmas tree in the front of the house, its lights shining, just as she used to when her daughter was at home.

After six years, her daughter suddenly came home—and not just to her mother and father, but to God. When she did, she told her mother a remarkable story: “Mom, I so often wanted to come home, but I was too ashamed. Sometimes, in the early hours of the morning, I would drive my car onto your street and just sit there. I used to gaze at the houses and every one of them was dark apart from our house: you always left a light on. And at Christmas I would do the same: just sit there in the darkness and look at the Christmas tree you had put outside—I knew it was for me.”

I have never been able to get that mother out of my mind. She seems to me to symbolize the hopes, fears, and prayers of millions across the world whose hearts are breaking for their prodigals. But this is not just a message for them; in fact Bringing Home the Prodigals is not just about praying for our prodigals to come home. It is about asking us to consider the characters of our local churches. Is it possible that by our attitudes, our concern with rules and regulations that are not on God’s heart, or by our ingrained spirit of the elder brother (or sister!) we have made it easy for some to leave? Perhaps we have kept them out of mind while they are gone and tragically made it harder for them to return. Could it be that inadvertently we have “created” prodigals?

This is a theme that should catch the imagination of all who care about evangelism. The truth is, most of us know ten people who may have never been to church whom we’d like to invite to an evangelistic service—but we all know a hundred prodigals. The numbers are enormous. When the prodigals come home we are going to have to pull down our old church buildings and use aircraft hangers. If you care about church growth, then care about this message. There is nothing as frustrating as seeing people come to Christ through the front door of the church and losing others in almost the same proportion out the door in the back.

All over the world I have cried with parents for their prodigals. There is no more fervent prayer in homes today than, “Father, bring our prodigal home.” I have concentrated in this book on those who have children, of whatever age, who are prodigals, but of course there are many kinds of prodigals—brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, and friends. I hope with all my heart that for whomever you are concerned, you will find something here to encourage you and keep the flames of hope alight.

This book is not written principally to give advice, although I will share with you the lessons I have learned from many whose hearts have cried out to God for those they love. My hope is that it will be a book that will release us from false guilt, bring us hope, and above all, lead us to prayer. At the end of every chapter is a prayer and reflection; each one is written by someone who has cried for a prodigal and who has come to believe that, ultimately, God is our only hope. At the very end of the book we will each bring our prodigals to the cross of Christ.

And we should not pray just for our prodigals, but for ourselves as well. We can pray that we will catch the Father’s heart for the prodigals—the outrageous grace of the One who, even as we stumble down the long road home, runs to throw a robe on our back, put a ring on our finger, and put shoes on our feet. And if we do change, if we can catch something of that father-heart of God, then it may be that, in his great mercy, he will touch the lives of thousands of our prodigals—and bring them home.

CLICK HERE to BUY NOW!

CONTEST DETAILS:

One blessed blog reader (Canada or U.S.) will win one copy of Bringing Home the Prodigals by Rob Parsons.

To enter:

1. Leave a comment on this post for one entry (open to all, bloggers and non-bloggers, just leave a valid email address or blog site with your entry so that I can contact you).

2. Join the email list for updates to this blog, you can sign up in the top of the right hand sidebar. You will need to confirm your membership to activate it. This will count for a second entry. Please leave a second comment saying you have joined the list, or if you are already a list member, leave a second comment to that effect.

3. For a third entry blog about this contest with a link back to this post. Leave a third comment with a link to your blog post.

Contest entries will be open from May 26th - June 02nd at midnight M.S.T. when I will close the comments. A winner will be drawn from a bowl randomly by one of my little helpers here! I will email the winner, or post a comment on their blog. Winners must contact me within 3 days with their mailing address, or a new winner will be chosen.

Thanks for playing!

CONTEST CLOSED - thanks for entering! Our Winner is Peggy Gorman! Congratulations Peggy!

Quick note: Are you a homeschooler in Canada?  If so, you should visit the Canadian Home Educators Blog Carnival!  Their blog features a weekly visit through Canadian homeschooling blogs.  This week the deadline for submissions is May 26th, so head on over :).

On to the post!

Here in the province of Alberta we are blessed to receive funding from the provincial government for our children’s education if we choose to home educate.  In Canada education is governed provincially, and the regulations are different from province to province.  I think this is similar to the U.S. where the individual States get to make decisions regarding education.

In Alberta we are required by law to register our children with a school board, whether or not they attend a physical school.  So, willing non-resident school boards have been established specifically for homeschoolers to register their children with.  A facilitator from the school board normally meets with your family twice a year to monitor progress. This meeting can be in your home, or at their office, depending upon your board.  Funding levels also vary from board to board and option to option.

In Alberta you can register your children as ‘fully provided’, meaning that you are striving to meet the provincial educational standards and guidelines in your homeschool.  Legally, this is the same as if your children were attending school, and you were their teacher.  You are required to help them meet the Alberta standards.  You can register as ‘blended’, similar to fully, but more flexible, you do not need to meet the Alberta standards in every subject area.  Or you can register as ‘traditional’ - this means that you are not necessarily trying to meet the standards of the province, but rather are home educating your children as you see fit.  Legally this is the true, classical idea of homeschooling, and your rights can be defended as a homeschooler legally by an association such as HSLDA (Canada).  As you can imagine, registering as ‘traditional’ allows you the greatest freedom in your homeschool, facilitator evaluations will be much more flexible and casual etc.

Now, all this being said, we aren’t yet registered with a school board.  Our oldest daughter, K, was 5 in April, but in order to receive funding for her, she would have needed to be 5 at the end of February.  Sorry K - you’ll have to wait until next year for those funds!  For some reason I was under the impression (last year) that we could qualify for funding this year.  Sadly, I was wrong!  What can I say, I am gung-ho to buy neat resources for my daughter!  Of course we still spend money on educational materials for our children regardless of funding!  We do have a board I’m keeping in mind for next year though - Education Unlimited.  They support parental choices and sovereignty in their child’s education, I’m all for that.  In case you are wondering, this year funding is around $700/eligible child that is registered as ‘traditional’.  ‘Fully provided’ students can receive $900/eligible child with some boards.  However, that $200 isn’t worth the compromise of my own plans (and Christ’s!) in my children’s education.

Likely more than you ever wanted to know about Alberta homeschooling regulations, but there you go!

For the past few weeks I have been wondering about the hummingbirds. When are they coming back? Should I put out the nectar for them? When should I prepare for their arrival. Well - today was the day! Most of my readers live further south than we do, so they likely have their hummingbirds back already.

So this morning, shortly after breakfast, who did we see out our window? (Our house is designed for passive solar, so all of our windows are on the south side -long side- of our home and are quite large, we hang our feeder outside of one of the large windows in our kitchen.) It was one of the mamma ruby throated hummingbirds from last year!

How could I tell she was a repeat customer? Well she flew up to the window the feeder normally hangs at, buzzed around for a time, looking at us inside the house it seemed, then she flew to the next window, buzzed around and looked at us again before flying away.

So - I knew it was time to pull out the feeder at long last. I’m just glad she came by to announce her return! I actually felt flattered that she remembered us, er, our feeder. Last year we had two - three hummingbird couples feeding at our house - not many, but enough to entertain our little ones. I have stayed in places where they have a dozen or more regular hummingbird customers at their hanging restaurant.

So, here’s how we do it, if you’ve never fed hummingbirds before:

1. Buy yourself a feeder, the cheap red plastic ones are fine, that’s what we have!

2. Boil 1 cup of water.

3. Dissolve 1/4 cup of white sugar in the water (we buy it just for the birds, we normally eat the unbleached oranic type ourselves).

4. Wait for the syrup to cool.

5. Pour into your feeder with a funnel.

6. Hang!

It may take the birds awhile to find your feeder, and you might not even know if hummingbirds are in your area until you put one out. But if there are hummingbirds anywhere around, they will certainly find you! We don’t have a flower garden yet, or else I would be providing appealing nectar providing plants for the birds as well. As it is, the syrup is a supplement to their diet, they know where the flowers are ;). This is a good activity for urban homesteaders as well, you don’t need much space, all you need are the birds.

The third in a series of articles on writing online book reviews. Click here for Part 1 and Part 2. Today’s article presents the opportunity of reviewing Christian children’s picture books (no blog required), as well as advice for new reviewers.

I have recently been blessed with the opportunity to write some reviews for Christian Children’s Book Review (CCBR). This is a group book review blog with several contributors (and you can see a photo of me with my two girls in the right hand sidebar there!). There are currently six contributing book reviewers on the site, all Christian mothers with a passion for Christian children’s picture books. Most of the mothers also maintain their own websites and/or blogs, but not all do, nor is it a requirement of participation in the reviewers group.

I stumbled across the CCBR a couple of months ago and was struck by the clear and simple design of the blog, as well as the group review format. There are many sites that review Christian fiction for adults, but the Christian children’s picture book market is often under-represented.

From Christian Children’s Book Review:

For those of us with small children, a review site such as this is a true boon. The blog was also awarded the Litty Award for Best Christian Litblogger in 2007. They are always open to inquiries from those interested in writing reviews for them.

This review site works a little differently than some of the others I know of and have participated in. Some review copies of books are available as they come in, other titles will need to be provided by the reviewers themselves. I found that I already had a number of books on the shelf that had not yet been reviewed on the site, so I am working on those reviews to start with. After that it will be off to the library! Reviewers are also entitled to the earnings from the affiliate links from their own reviews on the site. Desired participation from reviewers is 3 new reviews each month. I have found that this should be easily attainable, as picture books are very quick to read, and my children love to help by listening! There are many other details available in a pdf file ( a fabulous introduction to reviewing for CCBR, frequently asked questions, how to put reviews together, how the site works, photo tutorials on submitting reviews etc.) by emailing the blog founder and co-ordinator, Kristina using the contact information on this page. It is a good idea to have some examples of your writing (as discussed in Part 1 of this series) that you can send to Kristina to show the quality of your work. These can either be emailed, or displayed on your blog.

CCBR reviews are held to the certain standards including: proper English grammar, word usage and spelling. Don’t let this intimidate you though - Kristina is happy to assist with editing your first few reviews to help with this aspect of review writing for the site.

Here is her advice for new book reviewers:

First and foremost, take your writing seriously. Too many reviews are poorly written. Read lots of books about good writing and editing; you may not be a novelist, but your skill as a writer does count. Also, never be afraid to write a negative review. You don’t have to be mean, of course, but you should always be honest. In fact, readers will trust your opinions more if you occasionally offer negative critiques. If all your reviews are positive, you will come across more as a salesperson than a true reviewer.

She also highly recommends the following two titles for book reviewers looking to hone their craft:

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White

Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King
(Kristina’s note: Even though the latter is targeted toward fiction writers, there’s a lot for nonfiction writers in this book, too.)

My experience to date with Christian Children’s Book Review has been very informative. All of my questions have been answered thoroughly and excellent support for the reviewers is provided. I look forward to writing many more reviews for this site! Visit Christian Children’s Book Review to read my reviews there, or visit my Book Reviews page (links to other review sites are marked with a *).

Please sign up for updates to the blog (in the upper right hand corner) to read the rest of this upcoming series, featuring interviews with established online book reviewers, more opportunities to review books online (both with and without a blog) and advice for new reviewers.

It’s likely that when you think about learning your history lessons in school the words: dry, boring and unmemorable come to mine. When I was in school the subject was called Social Studies, and those are the words that definitely come to mine for me. I would memorize some facts, some dates, and some supporting data for long enough to take the examinations, and as soon as they were over, I promptly forgot everything I had ‘learned’. As a result I feel rather unequipped to teach history to my children as a homeschooler, and it is the one subject that I have more questions about being able to teach successfully than any other.

I want my children to have a good understanding of how Biblical history integrates with the rest of world history. I want them to read engaging and stimulating books that teach them history chronologically, while leaving a lasting impression, leading to a deep and rich understanding of the history of our world. I want them to engage in hands on activities that delight them, to integrate maps so that my little ones can visualize where these events are taking place. It’s no small undertaking is it? How do we pull everything together? How do we make it all fit?

How To Create Your Own History Curriculum is an essential resource for tying together all of the elements of a vibrant and interesting history program that your children will consider fun, while still providing a complete and balanced history education! It is hard to know where to start – this short (66 page guide) is packed full of practical, step by step information on how to plan your history studies, both short term and long term. Author Carol Henderson of the website, A Book In Time, has years of history teaching experience in a homeschooling environment that she brings to her work. Homeschooling her children for 17 years, and teaching several history classes for the last 5 years in a large homeschooling co-op have honed her history sleuthing skills, and she is now able to present a comprehensive planning system as well as oodles of resource locations for us to benefit from.

I do believe that everything needed to plan a successful history curriculum for your children is included in this e-book. Readers are guided through all of the steps necessary to plan their curriculum for the year on a weekly basis, and to pull all the needed resources together: textbooks, timelines, maps, crafts and projects and additional reading. Suggestions are given on: how to utilize all of these elements, evaluating your priorities and plans, different methods of teaching history, how to integrate World and American History, teaching multiple students etc. Imminently useful for both Christian and secular homeschoolers, the planning information in this book are useful for any and all homeschooling families. Some of the content (resources, forms etc.) is specifically focused on American History and isn’t too applicable for those of us who live outside of the U.S. and need to substitute our own countries history instead (we live in Canada). Those of us who do live outside of the U.S. will have a bit more digging to do to find resources for the history of our own country.

At a low price of $8.99 (click here to buy), the suggestions and instructions for finding and using online resources for timelines, maps, crafts etc. are well worth the price of the book alone. Taking some time and the author’s simple suggestions and linked resources will save a great deal of money. The links to the comprehensive resource listings that can be found for free at A Book In Time are priceless in themselves; for exploring your options (Christian and secular provided), finding additional reading material for your students and some free resources available for teaching history.

I highly recommend this title as a first choice to anyone who is faced with planning a complete history curriculum for her children and is wondering how to achieve her family’s goals.

In my ongoing search to learn more about the blogosphere I joined Entrecard today.  Simply said, Entrecard is a blogging network designed to exchange free advertising between blogs, drive traffic to your blog, encourage comments between bloggers and to meet others throughout the blogosphere.

I had noticed those little Entrecard boxes in the sidebars of blogs but never knew what they were about until I headed over to the site and took the tour.  I’m still experimenting with it and learning my way around, but so far it seems fun - and there are quite a few Christian/homeschooling type blogs that participate if you dig for them.

Today Entrecard announced the release of their free e-book for Entrecarder’s; free for anybody to download, explaining the ins, outs and basics of carding at http://entrecard.com/static/entrecard_official_ebook.pdf.  To quote their blog:

Our free ebook has arrived for everyone to download! If you’re new to Entrecard, and wondering what to do first, this E-Book will guide you along the way. And if you’re an intermediate or advanced user, it’s packed full of strategies you can use to get the absolute most from our service. Download from the link above.

They have also newly introduced the ability to add multiple blogs to the same account (we only have one so far).  Sounds easy to do, and I actually saw the link in my own dashboard, AND if you do add additional blogs the good folks at Entrecard will enter you in their prize contest of 15,000 Entrecard credits - woohoo, think of the advertising you could do then!

Here’s what they have to say:

Today we rolled out a feature everyone has been asking us for since we launched:
the ability to add more than one blog to an account!

Starting today, you can add all your blogs to Entrecard simply by going to your Dashboard and clicking “Linked Blogs” in your Dashboard navigation.

You will be able to choose whether to link your account with another EXISTING account, or to register a NEW BLOG with Entrecard, and automatically link it to your account.

You can switch from one blog to another, and drop or advertise as either one, from the very top right of your Entrecard screen. Where your email address is displayed there will be a link to “switch” to another account of yours.

Add just one more blog to your account, and you’re automatically entered to win 15,000 credits!

So, if you decide to start Entrecarding, look me up and we can exchange “drops”, and I’ll add you to my favourites!

Welcome to the 50th Homesteading Carnival - Getting the Garden In! This is my first time hosting a carnival, and on a bit of short notice, so please bear with me! I feel so humbled to be able to host the big #50 - a milestone of a marker!

Here in Alberta, Canada it is finally planting season! You should see the big snow we had here in late April. Planting season comes a bit later than in other parts of North America, so many of you likely have gardens in already. However, it does seem that the theme of the submissions for the week is Getting the Garden In.

Thanks to everyone for participating in this week’s carnival! Don’t forget to link to this post on your blog and let your readers know to head on over here for some great homesteading blog posts!

Laura Williams presents Plantin’ Season around the Ol’ Homestead posted at Laura Williams’ Musings. Laura is busy cleaning up her garden beds and making plans for the upcoming growing season.

Sheri presents Dandelions posted at Shades of Pink. A nature study on dandelions, great for homeschoolers! Directions for making dandelion chains! We don’t have any here yet, but they are in town now, so we should have some soon.

Carole DeJarnatt presents The Basics Needed for Raising Baby Chicks posted at Fowl Visions. Baby chicks are so sweet, our girls just love them, find out some of the basics of baby chick care in this post.

Penny Raine presents tackle it tuesday- WFMW- instant garden posted at pennyraine.com. Photo’s of Penny’s new garden making efforts.

Grandma Rosie presents Grandma Rosie’s Texas Home - Recipe for soap spray……….From OHG Files posted at Grandma Rosie’s Texas Home. Recipes for soap spray, hot stuff spray and *shiver* bug juice spray!

Miss Amanda presents My Learning Experience - How Great Are His Works posted at My Learning Experience. Beautiful photographs of God’s handiwork in nature.

Dora Renee’ Wilkerson presents Y-2K Hippie: 05/07/08 posted at Y-2K Hippie. A neat project to do with honeysuckle! I was always trying to figure out lotions and potions to make out of flowers as a child, this looks like fun to do with your little ones.

Miss Jocelyn presents The Homesteading Carnival - ELDERBERRY RECIPES posted at The Homesteading Carnival. Oh, these sound so yummy! I look forward to having some fruit producing plants here on our homestead.

Becca Beardx presents Mission of Motherhood - Uses for Breastmilk posted at The Mission Of Motherhood.  Yep, I’ve used breastmilk in some of these ways too - particularly in the eyes!  Great list of breastmilk uses.

Peach presents Using Organic Fertilizers For A Healthy Lawn | Spring Lawn Care - Lawn Care Tips posted at Hobby Lawn Care.  Why you DON’T want to use synthetic chemicals on your lawn, and some suggestions for natural alternatives.

And then there’s me, Jennifer Bogart presents We ARE Going To Have a Garden This Year posted at Quiverfullfamily.com Blog. Our garden defeats in past years, and our determination to have a garden this year. Just to clarify, we have had many, many gardens in years past in different locations, but this patch of sod is proving hard to break in.

Thanks for visiting the Homesteading Carnival for this week! Don’t forget to submit your posts for next week’s carnival, to be held at Grandma Rosie’s Texas Home.

Hello fellow bloggers!

In a sudden change of plans next week’s Homesteading Carnival will be taking place right here on Monday, May 19th! If you have written any homesteading related posts in the past week, please submit them here.

Sorry for the short notice, but the lined up host for this coming week was unable to host :). Please submit your posts as soon as possible, and we’ll see you all back here (with links to all the posts) on Monday for a great Carnival! Hope you are all enjoying getting your gardens in!

Most of us know a family that is struggling with a prodigal child – seeking to draw their hearts back to Jesus. Watching these families and their grief over the children they love - the children they raised to seek Jesus – awoke a concern for my own wee ones in my heart. Though our children are still small: 5, 2, and one on the way – it is my heart’s desire for them all to come to know and love the Lord. As Christian parents this is the deepest desire of all of our hearts for our children. But what happens when they turn their back on Him and His ways despite our best efforts? What do we do when they become prodigals?

In Bringing Home the Prodigals author Rob Parsons addresses the heart of the issue of prodigal children. It may not be what you think the heart of this issue is either. Instead of focusing on the “why’s”, Parsons goes past the wondering “What did I do wrong? What could I have done differently?”, there are other titles available that focus on keeping our children’s hearts - Parsons is here to encourage. He focuses on what we can now do - as parents of these prodigals - to gently guide them home to us, and more importantly, to God.

Engagingly written, this short book of 119 pages can be read in a day, but it will bear re-reading at a slower, more devotional pace to reap the riches to be found here. Though I am not the parent of a prodigal, Parsons ponderings on how we deal with prodigals as individuals, and as a church led me to examine my own spiritual life and dealings with others. I thank Parsons for drawing us back to the heart of God for the lost as demonstrated in the parable of the prodigal son.

As much as I enjoyed reading this title, I would have enjoyed seeing some more scripture directly in the text – for a non-fiction Christian title there seemed to be relatively little scripture presented. The main scripture that the book is based on, the parable of the prodigal son is not once included in the text of the book, which did seem a bit odd. Most of the scripture presented is from the NIV, though some is also taken from The Message (which is not properly scripture, but rather – a paraphrase), and The Amplified Bible. Our family prefers the text of the KJV for accuracy and completeness, however it is becoming more and more difficult to find books that include KJV bible references. Due to the difficulty of finding authors who still work with the KJV I don’t choose my reading materials by this criteria, but I do read with my bible beside me.

Parsons writing voice is warm and encouraging; his years of walking with and teaching the relations of prodigals shine through in this book through the prayers, reflections and testimonies presented. I am thankful to have this book available to lend to the families I know who are dealing with this issue, to let them know that there is hope if we lay our prodigals at the feet of Jesus. Bringing Home the Prodigals encourages us to love, to pray, to stay open, to always be watching and to always keep a light on.

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Bringing Home the Prodigals will be on tour May 26th with FIRST Wild Card Tours. Keep an eye on this blog – you can subscribe at the top of the right hand sidebar – for the first chapter of this book, author information, and a chance to win a copy of Bringing Home the Prodigals. Stay tuned!

Well, we’ve been living here on our homestead for a couple of years, and so far, our garden attempts have been a failure.  The first year we tried we just hand-dug up a soddy patch (full of quack grass!) and planted it to onions, lettuce, carrots - pretty simple.  Unfortunately, after we double dug the bed (and just turned the sod over) the quack grass roots were a foot underneath the surface of the soil.  And of course, the grass came back - but there was no getting rid of it!  The roots were 1 foot underneat the surface, our little seedlings were growing, we were trying to build a house, the deer were eating the onion tops.  Well, I just let it go after valliantly trying to hand-weed that grass out of there, it was mission impossible.

The next year we purchased some weaner pigs and put them in a pen over where we wanted our garden to grow.  Ah-hah we thought, this will take care of that quack grass!  The pigs did root some, and ate some, and by the time we were done with pigs in that pen, the sod had been pretty well killed - or so it seemed on the surface.  Last summer it didn’t come back, the sod was pretty black, so we thought that we were triumphant!  However, we were away so much of last year with our fence building contract that we didn’t bother with a garden.

But THIS year we have a borrowed tractor, and a borrowed cultivator, so Larry has worked up that patch of ground.  Guess what we are finding today?  Quack grass roots ;).  They are hard to kill!  But…we’ll take out as many as we can find and just go ahead.  We MUST have a garden this year!  We have a rhubarb start, and a comfrey start that need homes ASAP!  We just picked them up yesterday from my sister-in-laws old place, I think it came with rhubarb when they bought it.  I just love rhubarb, and haven’t had any (in the garden) since my parents garden when I was a small child,s o this is very exciting!  Who knows what variety it is, but it’s heritage that’s for certain!  My husband insisted we get some from their place because it is sweeter than others he’s tried.   Mmmm, rhubarb!