A picture is worth a thousand words!!!!!

Hope you enjoy these photos. I have (not this time)...had it that I lose pictures if I mess around too much ...so I am just going to let you enjoy them. These are sweet kids!! Keep them in your prayers....I think the pictures speak for themselves. The photo of the things on the wall are our Bible Verses ....we cover our walls with them :-)
Love to all!!!! Gary and Barb

Our "Herd"

We wanted to share our "herd" with you.
Gary was given a cow (actually a heifer
ready to calf) for a Christmas gift -- in
thanks for the work he does on the
ranch. Gary picked a nice looking heifer
---- good and fat so that he knew she
would have a calf soon :) . Well shortly
after telling Dwight which heifer he had
picked -- Dwight told him our herd had
doubled....we had a nice little heifer calf.
WOW---- COOL!! So the picture on the
right is our little #015. She has a nice
telling mark on the right side of her face
...that brown spot that you can see. She's a
real perky little thing -- head up, checking
things out---running all over the place.

The other day Hazel and I --- Gary's sister Hazel
and her husband Paul were out for a weekend
visit as they headed home to Michigan after wintering in Arizona ----- Anyway, Hazel and I went to the pasture to find and photo #015 and her Mama. Well, we found the calf --- now where is the mother. Just like that a cow mooed and off ran #015 (no we won't be naming them) to get a milk shake. So we drove over to the pair. Something was wrong!!!! That cow had the wrong number ----this cow was 8104 ---- mama should have been 8208. What's up?!?!?! So we went off to find the real mama. Where in the world could she be?? We finally found her way across the pasture laying down in the shade.

We are still wondering about the whole thing
--- but meanwhile we have decided that we
have a smart little thing. Not only is she getting
plenty of milk --- if she's fudging off another cow
---- but she's keeping the numbers good -- you
know 8104 - 8208. We are wondering though
if a couple of little ones have gotten their mothers mixed up.

This last photo is of the real mother coming out of the building where she had found some shade.

So there you have it --- we are proud owners of TWO. Good looking stock wouldn't you say?!?!

And now on to the more important things!!!!

Release Time continues to go good. We have to finish telling the Easter Story now - after Easter is over. But it doesn't seem to bother the kids. We can tell that they are retaining the lessons and that is great --- exactly what we are hoping for. We have been doing some spring - "God makes all things new" type of crafts. One of these days I will remember our camera and get a shot of what we did with the kids. Tomorrow we will have the K-2 group and the lesson will be on Jesus' Resurrection. The last time we had this group there were a lot of groans when we had to leave Jesus in the grave. So I think they will enjoy this lesson - - finding out how happy Mary Magdalene was when Jesus said "Mary".

JDC also continues on positive notes. The group has gotten very large --- 36 kids total in the building but 31 that came to the Bible Study time. There are 3 in "max" and 2 in "booking". When a young person is in "max" they are not allowed to come.....they can have visitors (parents) on Sunday but that's all. We visited with 10 young people - one on one - Sunday. It hurts when a sweet young man tells you "I feel ugly inside".....because no family member has visited him for 5 weeks now. These kids are hurting and we feel honored that they have come to trust us enough to share their inner feelings like that. We really can't do anything more than give them our love and time and prayers. We also had the honor and privilege to pray the sinners prayer with a young man Sunday afternoon.

The Lakeview Church met there this past Sunday evening also. When numbers are this large we do lessons twice. The kids were very attentive for Pastor Tom and we had 9 in our group from Lakeview - including Hazel and Paul. Pastor Tom usually relates his messages to the Lakota people and he really does a good job. We had a good time visiting with the kids afterwords too.

Gary and Barb

Boston and a PhD

We are back from a trip to Boston. We had a fun time....Boston (Bahstan) is a nice place to visit...lots of history. It is also quite easy to get around in --- if you can figure out the trains. We had our "kids" along so we let them lead us around.

We were there for our son Ricks' PhD dissertation defense....(I think that's how you state it.) Any way you see the first photo of Rick. :-) Oh! he says suspenders are the "in" thing..... Well he also got to shed his jacket - thanks to Dr. Neville. It was a very warm day and Rick was nervous and the sweat was pouring off him like rain! The Religion building is a beautiful but old building. We
had the windows open (I repeat - it was a lovely
warm day) but the noise from the traffic made it
necessary to close the windows.......and so Dr.
Neville (he's the one with the long beard) said
"I think we can all remove our jackets". I'm sure
he was sympathetic to Ricks situation. The 2nd
picture is the reason for Ricks' nervousness. The
three on the right were the ones who would determine if he "passed" or not.

The whole two hours went way over our heads but we could tell by the smiles and heads nodding
that all was going well. At the close of the meeting we were all asked to leave the room....
including Rick. It really didn't take long and we
were invited back in.....and Dr. Neville greeted
Rick with "Congratulations Dr. Peters".....

And so ole' Mom and Dad Peters now have two Doctors in the family....Marti Peters-Sparling, MD and Richard Peters, PhD. And we also have a
farmer Michael Peters and a stay at home mama Holly Kroeze. We are proud of them ALL!!!

And we are now back in the prairies doing our thing. We had Release Time yesterday and it went great again. The older groups are SO attentive to our lessons. They are really a blessing! Our lessons have been on the Easter Story. We totally missed Easter (we were in the air all day)....and Easter is technically over. But that's what it is all about ----Jesus' willingness to suffer the rejection of His Father for us. We will finish the resurrection story in a couple of weeks but that's OK (the kids groaned when we didn't finish the story ----leaving Jesus in the grave).

I think we have some cattle work tomorrow......moving some cows to a corn circle. The corn was just picked this past week and so there is a lot of downed corn for the cows to clean up on.

I started more garden seeds today in little starter pots. Our tomato seeds have already sprouted (we started them before leaving for Boston). We are getting excited to plant our garden here. We tilled the ground last week. It was an area of sod and weeds so we know that we will need to work it a while before we plant it.

May God bless you in this springtime of the year...... God makes all things new.

Love, Gary and Barb