I don't want to be Chinese when I'm in heaven.

I don't want to be Chinese when I'm in heaven.
I don't want to be American when I'm in heaven.
I don't want to be Chinese American when I'm in heaven.

My broken Chinese is insufficient to worship God in heaven
or on this earth.
My English is grammatically incorrect when I talk to Jesus.
My Chinglish is only used when I want to tell my kids in public there will be discipline afterward.

Without my nationality, citizenship or language
does not imply that I will become "vanilla" or "Gasper" in heaven.

Revelation 7:8-10
a great multitude that no one could count,
from every nation, tribe, people and language,
standing before the throne and before the Lamb.
They were wearing white robes and
were holding palm branches in their hands.
And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”

IF I am Chinese American in heaven,
I would be a foreigner in heaven
from America and ethnically Chinese.
I want to be a citizen of God's kingdom/nation,
where my worship does not offend other,
where the name of Jesus is not a curse word,
but a sweet name of the one that gave me life.
And my dreams in heaven are INDESCRIBABLE
and incomparable to the 'American Dream'.

IN HEAVEN, I want to be God's people, God's family, God's culture.

I might be a Chinese girl grew up in Brooklyn, NY
and is now a legal residence of Massachusetts,
who dresses in mismatching outfits.

BUT IN HEAVEN,
I will be dressed in white robe and
holding palm branches that does not wilt,
unreservedly worshiping in spirit and in truth! LOUDLY!

“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”

**note-
This post has not been prof read by husband for grammar errors.... :\ just saying.

Spourts

It's been three weeks and I wanted to blog earlier. But I was waiting for the seeds to sprout and show some growth. We just came back after being away for three days and there were more seeds sprouted. It was such a welcome home surprise!
Here is all the Tomato plants.

Some Asian Veggie i.e. chinese cabbage and Pac Choi

And plants that are spread through vines

Here is a few more other seedlings

There are a few things that has showed little to nothing....

I've been watering diligently and allowing them to be expose to the sun daily. But there are seeds like Pepper, Eggplant and Mint that has shown no growth. There are many things in life that is like that; no growth even though it's been given the same effort and love as others. What do you think I should do? Should I sow more seed? should I wait and be more patient?

Here is what's going on outside...
The peas are growing and the rhubarbs are doing great I've also planted strawberries on the side garden between the rhubarbs.

This the Asian Pear tree. It's in full bloom! Beautiful!

Spring Break

This week is Spring Break for the local college students. We usually head down to Panama City Beach with the students for a conference. But since Phinehas is still working on sleeping schedule we stayed home. It's been a beautiful week so far. We've tried to catch up on some homeschool work and yard work.

I've started up some seeds indoor last week and I'm glad to see them germinating.

It's always exciting to sow seed and watching it starting to sprout and grow. It reminds me of this verse in the Bible John 12:24

"unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."(ESV)
"unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds."(NIV)

This verse gave me much comfort during a period of time in my life when my heart felt like dying. I gave my brokenness to God and He took my life from lifeless and alone to sprout and grow and became fruitful. If I had chosen otherwise, I would've still been alone in the darkness and bitter. Take the risk and give God your brokenness and pain. He will not be still or silent. It's amazing how many verses the Bible talks about seed!

We are also doing a number of out door plantings. I've planted three different kinds of peas on our side garden. I hope they will germinate as well. It's our first time growing vegetables there.

I've put up fences along the wall so the peas will grow and climb up the fence. It should be pretty with white flowers. The soil here is not so great. I think I will have to work on it alot.

The back yard looks like this before we started working.

Joe is working on fencing in the vegetable section of the garden. He had some helper.

I've started moving the strawberry to another bed. It was really hot today and Phinehas did not have good naps. So I didn't get as much done. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day. I'll take some pictures of it.

It's been hot but we have not been needing to mow the lawn. So we decided to mow Nathan's head. This ususally cause alot of tears and screaming. I guess Nathan has grown and no longer fear THE BUZZER.

Joe also took down the over head beams on the deck. It loos so much better now. We get none obstructed view of our back yard. Hooray!

Another season

Can't believe my last post was in may 2010!
Well, much has happen in this spot.
We been blessed with another child. Phine is 4 months old now.
He is just precious and beautiful! This summer we will be at home, so I hope to keep up the blog with gardening updates as well as the online class I'm planning to take. It's been an unusually warm winter and spring. I've so far planted three trays of seed. And this afternoon I've gone out and planted the sugar snap peas and moved the rhubarb from the raise bed to the side garden. This is the first year we are growing veggie on the side garden. I hope the rabbit and mice will stay away from it. We need to find a way to fence it in. I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow as I work on another section of the side garden. I feel like the ants when I till up the dirt a little section at a time.

Proverbs 30:24,25
“Four things on earth are small, yet they are extremely wise:
Ants are creatures of little strength,
yet they store up their food in the summer;"

My hopes are that our family will eat more veggie and become more healthy and fit physically. And we will grow deeper in our relationship with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit through more in depth study of the Bible this summer. I am pretty excited and looking forward to see what God will bring in this coming season.

The before... of the before and after of our garden.

I love before and after pictures of home improvements/gardens/makeovers. Since we are leaving for a few weeks, I took pictures of our veg garden as a record keeping of the BEFORE shot. We planted three Asian pear trees. We are so looking forward to some asian pear from our own yard.

They cost $25 for a dozen in NYC china town years ago. So if these trees produce a dozen or two each tree, we will earn our money back in two years.

Two friends gave us some raspberry bushes. Ever bearing and late season. I am so looking forward to it. I have learned that fresh raspberry are soooo goood. There are also four blue berry bushes from last year that we hope to cover with netting, so it won't be picked through by birds.

Strawberry plants are blooming and I hope we will be back in time for the berries. I am going to dedicate this whole bed for strawberry plants.

The cherry tomato plants I seeded and planted died after a really cold night last week. So I went out and bought some in a local farm for only $2.75. Makes me wonder why I went through all the troubles. I need to remember next year to not bother with all that work.

In this bed we have red onions, pok choi, and two different kinds of lettuce. Various herbs: dill, basil, mint, and chive. I would say this is the most exciting bed in the garden. I planted them early in spring, so they are really flourishing now.

This bed has zucchini, yellow squash, different kinds of peppers, spinach, carrots, and sugar snap peas. It also has four cherry tomato plants.

There are more sugar snap peas here and some more carrots. Most of the plants here are large climbing ones. Pumpkin, Butternut squash, Patty Pan, Cucumber and bush beans. All the plants are pretty young so it looks pretty bear now. But it will be pretty bushy and full when the summer heat kicks in.

Bobcat, Cherry Picker! Oh my!

It has been too long. My computer is partly back. Our lives have been so full that I even had a little melt down and some R&R to get back to norm. So we are going to skip all that and fast forward to some big things happening in our homestead. We hired THE stump man to come and take down a few trees. They bought over a BOBCAT, a CHERRY PICKER and a stump remover. Large equipments that my son adore. It was such an exciting day!

My husband is planning to build a tree house on/around this tree. We hope to build a platform later on in the summer. As we have more time later we'll add different things to it.... a swing ... rock climbing things ... a net. All in theory right now. Where are my structure engineering friends???

Waiting...

I have not been able to post for awhile because of several reasons. First, I was away for a week in Panama City, FL with all 300,000 spring break college students. (that in it self is a story to write about=). Second, I spend 3 hours on the phone with Dell and they have declared my hard drive to be on it's way out. Furthermore, I had a jiggly sound whenever I move/shake the computer. (we suspect that there was a small piece of toy inserted into my CD drive....humm... which of the three suspect do you think it might be?) So my laptop is at Dell Depot, hopefully all will return to normal in a few days. It's raining out, perfect weather for waiting...