While reading the Quincy paper this week, I noted that Gary Robbins had passed away. This brought back some memories of Gary and my husband, Ben Gentry. One weekend, when we were going to Peoria to visit one of my college friends, we decided to take Gary along for a blind date with her. We concocted a story about Gary having plane trouble and that we found him hitch hiking along the road. Not long after that we saw a crumpled plane loaded on a flat bed truck and realized that Gary had been in a very bad plane crash, made even worse because his plane was fully loaded with chemical at the time. Gary was a crop duster in LaPrairie at the time. Our sympathy to his friends and family.
Last week I mentioned that Bruce Morton had released his third book on Forgottonia. I did not tell you that you can reach him at his website www.bruce-morton.net. It is a lovely book. I did not realize that there were M&M vending machines!
This week a lot of my free time was taken up with Bible School at Living Faith United Methodist Church in Bowen. Our pastor, Sheri Renner had a goal of 100 children. I thought we might have 20! Wow was I wrong. We had 67 registered by Monday and and had over 60 children attend every day. There are so many people who worked very hard to make this a success. I will mention only a few. First Pastor Sheri, who has been with us at Bowen just over a year, has done so much for our congregation. Shelby Bruenger took on the task of heading up the Bible School idea. She had wonderful help from Tad and Brenda Peters and the Vails who did the cooking every night. Feeding 60 plus children and helpers was no easy task and there was 30 minutes allotted to get every one fed. Bruce Morton was our official photographer. There were several “stations” available to each group each evening. They included games, imagination station, (science), crafts and Bible Discovery. The theme was “Shipwrecked, Rescued by Jesus”. I am sure the parents were delighted with the many things we at the imagination station sent home with them every night. First it was a box of kinetic sand, then a terrarium, a paper sack mushroom and lastly slime. Slime is just fine if the consistency is correct. It will not stick to hands, table tops and makes a really good gooey mess to play with. However if the consistency is not quite correct, it manages to get caught in hair, stick to hands, clothes and any other objects. I learned that you can even buy “glow in the dark” glue to make “glow in the dark” slime. One should learn something new every day-right? Sunday we had a special Bible School program at church and about 30 of the Bible School children attended and sang for us. Great event for our first week long Bible School happening. Good job every one!
Speaking of learning something new every day. Brent Engel came to the antique store on Saturday. I was looking at the Vishnu guest book which I recently got from Sullivan Auctioneers. Brent had not heard of Vishnu so he learned something new on Saturday. I suggested he research Vishnu and that perhaps he could write something about it.
If you watch the weather, you know that we are supposed to be in the midst of a meteor shower. There are supposed to be 50-60 meteors per hour visible with just your eyes. Went out for almost an hour Saturday night. Saw one good “shooting star” and one poor one. Saw several lightening bugs and one plane. Reminded me of the times when I was teaching. I would go out and sit in an open field half the night and would see few or no meteors and then a student who was up early to milk would come and tell me about the meteor shower they had seen that morning.
Tried an Amish recipe for cheesy noodles this week. Though the noodles were not that great I found the cooking method interesting. One brought the liquid to a boil, added the noodles and brought the mixture back to a boil then turned off the heat and let them sit for two hours to finish cooking. Did not have two hours so brought the mixture back to a boil and cooked them for a bit before turning off the heat and let them set for about an hour to finish cooking. They were very moist, were not broken from stirring and did not stick to the bottom of the pan. I will use this method for cooking noodles again.
Have a great week. Keep you friends and neighbors in you thoughts and prayers. Scatter Kindness.