September, 2025

It’s time for the Sanders County Fair and Rodeo, and we were all in. This year, one of the praise teams from our church held a Christian music concert one of the nights after the rodeo. The equipment is top-notch, and the singing was great. Then on Sunday, all the evangelical churches in town joined in a worship service at the fairgrounds. A really good opportunity for people to wander by and be caught by the message of the gospel.

Opportunities! Floyd and I have both agreed to teach a class for the coming school year at the home-school co-op here in town. He will be teaching a history class to middle school kids, with a Christian world-view of select historical events.

I will introduce a new class to the high school: “Understand the Bible Better.” The director of the school feels that this will give the young people a skill for life and will also introduce the gospel to those who don’t yet know God. For a textbook, I updated and expanded my booklet I have been using over the years to teach Bible workshops. I changed the book’s name to a more manageable Understand the Bible Better. I’ll be walking the students through several psalms, the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, as well as dipping into the other genres in the Bible: Prophecy, History, Old Testament Law, the Epistles (Titus, in particular), and the Apocalyptic writings. My booklet is available on our website, if you’re interested. Floyd is getting better at formatting!

Understand the Bible Better

Although I am still watering our garden every day, there is already a tinge of autumn in the air. When the sun goes down, the temperature drops immediately. We are growing potatoes, and they are such a crop of faith. The plants come up, and then you’re supposed to heap more dirt around those leaves. You keep watering, and those plants grow higher. Flowers are supposed to bloom, and you keep watering. When the plants begin to wilt and turn brown and flop over, it’s time to stop watering and to harvest. Will there be potatoes under there? I’ll let you know.

So much in our lives are opportunities to practice faith. Going to sleep at night is one of the biggest. God really does watch over us. In Psalm 4:8, the psalmist tells us, “In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for You alone, O Lord, make me to dwell in safety.” A good verse to think about before drifting off to sleep.

Well, I need to go water the potatoes. . . and the tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, beans and hopefully winter squash. Blackberries are almost ripe.

Happy Trails!

Christine

DOROTHY'S GIFT

She was grinning and looking sheepish. “You’ll never guess what!”

“What?” I asked, thinking perhaps I already knew.

“I had a job interview this afternoon.”

“And?”

“I got the job! I couldn’t believe it but I got the job! Mr. Bauer – that’s the person in H.R. – he said that he talked to my boss at the casino, and, like, the work I was doing in reception was good – considering that I just started – so if I, like, wanted the job, I could have it!”

“What did your boss at the casino think? Was that a problem at work?”

“Nope. I gave him two weeks’ notice, and he said I could, like, go sooner if they needed me.” She leaned against the doorjamb and frowned. “Actually, that sounds as if he wants me to go.”

I shrugged. “Maybe he does, but you can’t have it both ways.”

She sighed and pushed away from the door to go downstairs. Thirty seconds later, she ran back up the stairs, gasping and wringing her hands. “Oh, Dorothy! There’s a – a mouse in my room!”

“Did you see it?”

“Of course, I saw it! How else would I know? I went into my room and it ran – joop! – along the wall and disappeared under my bed.” Her voice calmed, and she lowered her tone to say very seriously, “I’m not sleeping in there with a mouse.” I stood and dried my hands. “Can you show me where you saw him?”

She eyed me suspiciously. “How do you know it’s a ‘him’?”

I laughed. “I don’t.” I headed for the stairs. “Show me?”

She trailed behind me down the stairs. When I opened her door, I had to force it open.

“Here,” she said helpfully, “Let me. There are a few things in the way.”

The “few things” looked to me as if everything she owned was strewn about the room. The bed was unmade, several piles of clothes – dirty? clean? – were heaped in the center of the room. On her desk, surrounded by various containers of make-up, was a small pile of dirty dishes with uneaten food. No wonder the mouse had come: He had found paradise! A short wall of empty soda cans ran along the floor, the length of the bed. She was fortunate not to have ants too. The wastebasket overflowed with tissues and other unmentionable things. And the room smelled musty and unclean.

I turned around and just looked at her.

“I was going to clean my room,” she protested.

“I’m sure the mouse loves it. He – or she – has probably been here for some time.”

“I’m not sleeping in here with a mouse,” she repeated.

“I’ll take care of the mouse. I want this room clean before dinner.”

“I have to go to work.”

“When?”

She hung her head. “After supper.”

I started to go upstairs and had second thoughts and looked back into the room. “Do you need a list of how to clean this room?”

Her shoulders sagged. “Maybe.”

Cleaning the bathroom could wait; this was obviously much more urgent.

I gave her a few ideas of where to begin, but it became very clear that the poor child had never been taught anything about how to take care of her belongings. I had her collect the dirty clothes and put a small – small! – load in the washer.

While she was doing that, I texted my husband and asked him to bring a few cheap mousetraps home. “The kind that snap and kill the mouse instantly,” I told him.

Back in Bailey’s room, we tackled the clean clothes. No one had ever shown her how to fold her things and how to put them in drawers. She was still living out of her suitcases which were, of course, too small for all the things she had acquired since she had move in with us. Some of her “clean” clothes had sprinkles of mouse droppings, so we added them to the dirty clothes pile.

We found containers for the make-up, and put them and all her hair things in the bathroom across the hall. I had been cleaning it (for which I now was very glad), but now I realized that I needed to teach her how to clean a bathroom as well.

Bailey took the dirty dishes upstairs and hauled the trash to the garage. When she came back down, she stopped to lean on the doorframe, frowning at her stomach.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, suddenly afraid that I had made her work too hard.

“There’s this regular movement that won’t stop.”

“Does it hurt?”

“No. Just - blip - blip - blip.”

I smiled. “Your baby has the hiccups.”

“Hiccups?” She grinned. “That’s cute.”

While she folded clothes, I wiped every surface with a disinfectant. Finally, I vacuumed, moving all the furniture. Sure enough, that mouse ran from under the bed to under the dresser to avoid the noisy machine.

Bailey squealed and ran into the hallway. “I’m not sleeping in there with a mouse,” she warned.

“That’s fine. If we don’t catch him – her – tonight, then you can sleep on the couch.”

Gary brought home traps, and I set three in various spots in her room, baited with peanut butter. During supper we heard a loud snap, and the mouse was dead. We hoped it was the only mouse, but we didn’t say that to Bailey.

DOROTHY'S GIFT

The Bible Compass