Begin at home!

Let thy religion begin at home. Many tradesmen export their best commodities—the Christian should not. He should have all his conversation everywhere of the best savour; but let him have a care to put forth the sweetest fruit of spiritual life and testimony in his own family…Ah! dear friend, you little know the possibilities which are in you. You may but speak a word to a child, and in that child there may be slumbering a noble heart which shall stir the Christian church in years to come.

-- Charles Spurgeon

The trip continues - Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum

We enjoyed beautiful skies and wonderful bus window views.  We were in the general neighborhood of Yellowstone National Park, though we didn't make it there for a visit.

Our destination was the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum, in Glendive, Montana.  

The museum was right next door to a cowboy museum, and while we were there, we witnessed a lady who accidentally went to the wrong one... 

…kind of hard to figure out how she missed that...

...maybe they need to identify the building better.

We got to meet the founder of the museum, paleontologist Otis Kline.  (We didn't tell him he was spelling Klein wrong.)

Glendive, Montana, is a hot bed of fossil beds.  That is what brought Otis here.

Otis is convinced that evolution is for the birds, which he does not believe evolved from dinosaurs.

Otis's family started the museum over a four year period, after a significant investment of their own and much support from others.  It is currently staffed largely by local volunteers from several area churches.

They don't call it a dinosaur and fossil museum for nothing.

The museum is blessed with the talents of a wonderful volunteer artist, who not only works on many of their exhibits, but does a beautiful job painting special effects throughout.  The exhibits were really stunning, and having Otis explain as we went was super helpful.

The museum also included information from many cultures showing ancient people had seen animals which we now know as dinosaurs (a word invented in 1841 by Sir Richard Owen).   Marco Polo, in his non-fiction work covering his travels, wrote extensively about such creatures.  The Chinese zodiac features animals all known to have lived with man, including the "dragon".  And recent findings of dinosaur bones with red blood cells (which cannot possibly survive millions of years) throws a lot of doubt to their going extinct way before man came on the scene.

One of the most interesting exhibits for the Kleins was the one referring to Mount St. Helens.  Mount St. Helens is another wrench in the idea of needing millions of years to form rock layers and canyons.

There it is!  Daniel-sized!

Mount St Helens shows how rock layers can form rapidly, in hours.

Mudflows following the eruption eroded canyons with the same features seen at Grand Canyon.  It took hours, not millions of years.  That's a fact.

We left Glendive excited about this great resource for pointing people to the Bible.   If you happen to be passing through Interstate 94, you would really enjoy it!

"There is 

no wisdom 

or understanding 

or counsel 

against the Lord."

Proverbs 21:30

Here In The Morning

The moon is fading fainter still 

And as the sun wakes to the day

The clouds cling over tree and hill

Till the sun’s light melts them away

The swallows chase each other round

While hummingbirds fly in my face

And the flowers peek above the ground

Still sleepy from their resting place

The morning’s glory fills my eyes

And shines and takes my breath away

I look up to the morning skies

And watch You bring in a new day

And all the beauty that I see

Remains a token of Your grace

That made all this beauty for me

Now in the light I see Your face

You give this day into my hand

Wrapped in the glory of the dawn

I take this gift, as here I stand

And watch the rising sun shine on

And here in the morning

I will seek You

-- photo and poem by Hannah Rose Klein, 

from Silverlake, Washington

The trip continues - to Montana

The purpose of the travel update is not to make the reader aware of every aspect of our trip, as that would be pretty long and tiring...

We passed a lot of landscape, but most of it went unnoticed, either in the night hours, or because of our propensity for reading, occasionally on paper...

We are trying to just recall the pleasant or challenging parts of our trip.  Already we are finding we have forgot stuff!  So back to our story....

We just sooooo enjoyed the wonderful take out containers that our neighbors blessed us with, so much more practical than paper plates.  When he dropped them off, we kind of wondered if they would be just baggage, but we have used almost all of them up!

We scored some broccoli slaw and added various extras and dressings.  Broccoli slaw is healthy, full of fiber, and yummy; it is basically all the stuff they would normally throw away after processing broccoli!   Very easy to mix up a salad and eat on the road.  Yummy!

As we traveled along the northern tier states towards Washington, our next big destination was the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum, in Glendive, Montana.  So, we found a very practical mobile home for rent for a night, and bolstered the local economy by cleaning out the deli's chicken tenders for making some tacos!

After a few days driving in the bus, a mobile sure seemed stable beneath our feet.  The area was experiencing heavy rain, and, surprise, severe storms!

Wow -- a washer and dryer!  We kept this pair humming all night!  What a blessing!

The only hitch was that there was no dry path to and from the bus, so we tracked a ton of Yellowstone mud into the bus and mobile home.   We did our best to leave things tidy....  we had scheduled a tour with Mr. Otis Kline (note spelling), founder and curator of the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum.  So, that was our next stop!

The trip begins - Wisconsin

We are safe and sound in Silverlake, Washington, the doormat of Mount St Helens.  Today is one of several relatively clear days, on which you can see the peak from the property of the 7Wonders Museum.  We are still settling in, with occasional aftershocks from the main shake of last Saturday.  Seismologists have noted that this end of Washington has slightly sank.

Our Wisconsin trip was wonderful.  It was about a week full of fellowship, fun, the occasional tick and the occasional severe storm warning.  Actually, we arrived on the heels of severe storms in the Madison area, and storms were forecast our first night camping.  

Actually, our original departure time was Sunday, and, unlike most of our trips, we went to bed at a decent hour Saturday, with everything packed but the toothbrushes.  I mean, that is not our norm.  But we were ready.  However, we knew the weather for Madison was looking kind of colorful, radar-wise.  We decided to see what the forecast was for Sunday night.  

So we rose early Sunday morning, all ready for our last meeting with the saints at Emmaus.  Like I said, we were ready.  But the weather looked pretty firmly unpredictable, leaning towards bad.  This was kind of a weird situation, because we had no groceries, no paper products, all clothes packed, you get the picture.  The one consolation was we decided to have friends over for lunch afterwards, and the Lord gave us a wonderful going away visit with extended goodbye time.  

Monday was still looking iffy, weather-wise, but we figured it was now or never.

So, once we were on the road, we made arrangements with dear friends to use the building our Madison fellowship met in, just in case the weather deteriorated suddenly.... 

....which it did NOT.  

It would have been beautiful out!  But, we had a great time in doors anyway...

We were blessed by friends far and near who gathered to chow and chat.

A last-minute surprise pre-birthday for Sarah was quickly converged with much assistance....

The Schaefers family contributed a deluxe dessert they had up their sleeve!

Yum!

Here she is, mustering up her best surprised look!

Before our departure from St Louis, a neighbor blessed us with a whole case of take out food boxes and bundles of plastic ware and napkins!

Catching up... with ketchup.

Pen pals in person.

Our dear friends in Wisconsin, the Canos, came several hours for the camping trip and were up to weather the storm.  They arrived the stormy night before we did, but some special friends of ours in Madison opened their home to their little family at the last minute, praise the Lord!  They had a great visit.

Daniel warmed up to all the "strangers" right away.

Game time.

Our fellowship lasted into the late evening, and as we cleaned up and said goodbye, many people commented on the ominous forecast, and suggested back up plans if a storm descended on our campground.  The sky was clear, but the Canos noticed some rain passing them as they drove to the campground.  We arrived several hours later, still no rain, but we checked weather frequently.

Even though we were in a severe storm watch, we never got a drop!  At about 2 am, we saw this on the  weather radar.

(We were in the dry, green dot!)

Morning Bible time after a peaceful night.

That day, we had the opposite of rain -- sunshine!  So we devised a shade system for our unshaded campsite.

The temperature was nice, though the breeze began to tweak our tarps.

The Kohrts popped in and brought pizza!


The playground was nearly empty.

As is the custom, we had a bit of drizzle the day we packed up to head to the Wisconsin homeschool conference.  We had intended to camp until the morning of, but decided it would be less hectic to arrive the day before.  And it was!

With a propensity for Ps, the sPeaker imPressed us with Practical Principles.  Israel Wayne stated:  "If one christian has one dollar, and another has a million dollars, who has more?  Answer:  Neither -- it  all belongs to God!"

Cutie!

Lots of good convos at our table.

The Klein ladies did a session on modesty, aka, looking weird in the eyes of the world.

Closing song:

I don't want to be, I don't want to be a casual Christian
I don't want to live a lukewarm life
I want to light up the night with an everlasting light
I don't want to live a casual christian life.

Dave met a lot of dads this year... it was a good turnout of dads!

Volleyball -- without all the normal broccoli!  : )  Miss you Mayos!!

Keeping Kayln in shape for a new little brother or sister!  Praise the Lord!

Discussions.

Friends -  a happy time of year!

Some of the guys.

Some of the girls.

Please keep off the grass.

Coming up in due time:  our sojourn west!