Easy Cobbler

Frozen berries, dry cake mix, and 1 can of sprite. yummy cobbler. It sounds so easy – and it is good and weight watcher friendly! Ingredients
Two 12-oz bags frozen mixed berries
1 box white cake mix (no pudding)
1 can of diet 7-up or sierra mist (clear soda)Instructions
Place frozen fruit in a 9×13 baking dish. Add dry cake mix over the top. Pour soda slowly over cake mix. DO NOT stir the cake mix and the pop – this will give you a ‘crust’. If you stir the two, you will hsve a cake like topping.

Bake 350 for 45-50 min.

You may be able to use frozen peaches instead of mixed berries.

Note: My cousin, Brenda made it using:
 I used Dole’s Wildly Nutritious Signature Blends…Mixed Berries (sliced cranberries, blackberries, blueberries & raspberries)…2 12-oz bags from Walmart! It’s very easy! And yummy!

Meet Our New Bestie, Ms. Lillian

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I was born in Belize when the country was under the British rule and was formerly known as British Honduras. I lived in a very little town called Stan Creek. My family was a his, hers, and theirs family. There were eleven children and my mom was the sole disciplinarian of our family. My grandfather was a Methodist minister. We went to church and Sunday School every Sunday without fail. When I was very young a Revival was held in a tent on the beach. The minister who spoke was very powerful and moving in the spirit of the Lord. When he gave the altar call, I went down. I can’t remember if my family went with me or not. I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior.

The thing I remember most was attending HARVEST at a Methodist Church. I had a basket filled with all kinds fruits, vegetables, and homemade pastries and bread. My mom stuff the basket full to overflowing. I would go down the church aisle and place the basket on the altar.

My momma and daddy were very loving. They wanted the best education for their children as they only had a second grade education. They educated themselves and where able to come to America for their permanent residence and children’s education.

I was baptized when I was 16 in the Baptist Church in Tampa, Florida. As a teenager sitting in church and growing up poor I went to a women who had worn the same dress twice and they were appalled. I knew that I did not have a closet full of dresses. I was so shocked by their comment about the women I determined I would not go to church again if these were Christian women. I loved Christ just not the attitude of the women I had heard. I regret that I did not raise my children in the church to absorb the
teachings of Jesus. My mother-in-law was always putting little notes with scripture verses when she came to visit or sent a note to any of us. Her comment to us was that you all have to come to heaven, because I want to see you there.

When my husband who was quite a writer was about to die he told me to write this down, “Happy birthday, Satan. Eat of your cake with the knowledge that it will lead to your demise. Then step aside for those of us who will enjoy it. I saw Satan, I did not see God. HE is TOO big.”

Who are you holding onto?

Rena Oynes: rkoynes@gmail.com

All my life I have held on to Jesus’ hand, once in a while letting go, but this picking his hand back up again.  This season I have particularly held on tight.  He is/was the only one I could trust.  My closest friends all pointed to Jesus, as the situations were tough.  Many earnestly prayed.  One knew my calling and knew I had been called to children ever since I was a small child.  When I was twelve I was asked to assist in the children’s department of my church.  This was my first experience and I just loved it.  Years came and went as my Mother also loved children’s ministry and was very creative using her crafting talents to tell stories.  She would often place flannel graph characters on the back of the sofa and then retell the story.  We were so fortunate to hear her stories over and over again.  As year went by I got to teach Sunday School myself and Vacation Bible School.  I was lucky to direct Vacation Bible School and get other young people involved in acting, teaching, and or assisting in handing out snacks or playing games with the little ones.

Later I took up education.  I knew God’s hand was in it.  At the time Reading/Writing Workshop was not being taught as a college subject, but God’s hand had me work in this area and many creative talents flowed through the students.  I also taught Sunday school at the same time and used my creative talents like my mother had role modeled for me.  I loved writing and dramatizing the scriptures.

I moved to Virginia and was out of teaching Sunday school as the wonderful home church I was a part of did not have a children’s program at the time.  Little did I know that this small church would be instrumental in bringing out the hidden sorrows of a brokenness of heart in order to bring healing for the next stage of my life.

After moving back to Mandeville and now retired from teaching, I thought of attending Bible Study Fellowship.  I had tried to attend many, many years prior but had gotten a call to be a full time teacher.

It use to be located in Slidell which is about a half hour away, but to my surprise I found from my internet search that they had relocated to First Baptist of Mandeville which was right next to me.  I signed up immediately and started attending right away, not believing it was my good luck, not luck really, God’s hand was in it.

Many weeks passed and I had signed up to help in the preschool program but had not been called.   I had prayed to God, “God you know I love working with children, it’s my heart throb.  If you could, would you open an area with children for me? The next week my team leader said to me, “Can you talk to me after the lecture?”  “Surely, I said, wondering what she wanted to talk to me about.

She said, “Rena I have been praying for you since the beginning of the BSF year, and I feel that the Lord is calling you to children’s ministry here at BSF.  I would like you to think it over and pray it through and then give me a call with your answer.  I couldn’t hardly believe that God had answered my prayer so quickly.  I asked if I could have a good friend here at thedailylily pray with me.  We did and I accepted the call.  I am in training now and can hardly wait to start singing, telling stories of Jesus, and pouring the words into the children.  I know God will provide all that is needed for this CALL. And, yours!

A Good Deed!

As I moved today through a long drive thru line at Chick-Fil-A and having just ordered large thinking the snow might block me in for days; I heard a young man say, “the lady before you paid your bill.” Whoa, humbling and I cried. I’ve heard of this but to emotionally feel the joy of heart and hand touched me in a special way. I had just worked with my friend, Debi, packaging and sending via Fedex- fresh fruit and other to another state where someone is struggling with chemo and seemed to be growing weary. I had them in my heart and prayers wishing healing and cure for cancer would be today. The emotion was hurting me deep when the good deed gave me relief. I sure wish I could of said, thank you, but she drove away. So thank you to all that touched another today.

Did you notice the  graces that were woven through your day today?

By Rena Oynes:

My friend, Dale loaned me this book and with the booming thunder, and flashing lighting, and pouring rain I opened it up.  What a delightful book about quilting and friends.  I’m about half way through and couldn’t help but to read the last chapter which I always enjoy doing.   I thought you might like this direct quote from the author Marie Bostwick Skinner on page 327-328.  “Quilts are made of broken lines, just like life.  Over and over again, we try to walk a straight path but run into dead ends, sharp corners, and uneven ground that cut us off and forces us to change direction.  Sometimes it’s painful, other times joyful.  But it isn’t until you take a moment to stand still, step off the line, and back away that you finally see the truth.  Those unexpected turns and startling about-faces, the path?  It wasn’t chaotic at all.  When you step back to see where you’ve been, you discover the shape, the reason, the intricately beautiful pattern and vivid colors of a life stitched together from what, at one point, had seemed nothing more than mismatched scraps and broken lines.  Stepping back, you see there has been a design all along, and a designer.

 
At that moment, standing in a shaft of late-day sunlight that bounced beams of light off the sparkling windowpanes, and made the paint on the door glow a brighter shade of red.  I was happy.  I turned around and looked up into the sky. “Thanks,” I said, “For all of it.”
 
 I wouldn’t always be happy; I knew that.  Things would change whether I wanted them to or not.  My line would be broken again and again.  But now my line intersected with others.  I had companions for the journey, and whatever we faced in the future, we would face together, each a part of a bigger design, bound by a single -thread.”
 
ImageMary, Dale and me

What’s on your mind today?

My, son Christopher recently sent me this article by David Burns:

By David B. Burns
“Isidor I. Rabi, the 1944 Nobel Prize winner in physics was once asked, ”Why did you become a 
scientist, rather than a doctor or lawyer, like the other kids in your neighborhood?”
”My mother made me a scientist.  Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child 
after school: ‘So? Did you learn anything today?’ Not my mother. She always asked me a 
different question. ‘Izzy,’ she would say, ‘did you ask a good question today?’ That difference 
made me a scientist.”
Isidor Rabi wasn’t just any scientist.  He was in the top one-percent.  In addition to his Nobel 
Prize, his work contributed to the invention of radar, the atomic bomb, the laser and the atomic 
clock. His excellence stemmed from asking good questions.  And he is not alone in 
understanding that success is driven by asking good questions.”
It’s never too late to ask the right questions? Whoa, when we hold those little ones so close and drive them back and forth to school, church, sports, music or vacation what are we asking? How have their lives answered us?

What’s on my mind today? As we look down the highway what will we see when we turn the curves of life each and everyday? Will I see an Engineer? A Statesman? Or, will I see my questions were in gear just to please me?

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Lent!

DSCN0450(a Valentine gift from my son 2013)

“Sarah Parsons (Bio) recently completed a master’s degree at the University of Tennessee College of Social Work and intends to become a psychotherapist. She holds a BA in Religious Studies from Yale University and a master of divinity degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School.”

Impressive, don’t you think? I do! I love the words she shared recently in one of my devotions:

“Lent…The goal is to make a change that sinks deeply into life, drawing us closer to self, others, and God. Lent is about intentionally opening ourselves, preparing to receive God’s goodness.”

I paused to reflect early this Saturday in the dark and cold of the morn and thought about Sarah’s words I shared above. I know little about Lent. But, I desire to know more about “drawing closer to self, others and God.”

I thought about my two last posts here. First,  writing mine… and then asking others to tell their story of ‘what they wanted to be when they grew up.’ Secondly, share and give a yell out to someone(s) a written line of Valentine Love.

I had to struggle a little, sure not thinking of lent, just a struggle to express something! I was asked by a stranger on another website to tell my story.  I had to share story to myself and then to others and if and when I did I knew deep within it would draw me closer to God and give me a deeper recognition of Him. My story might show that I could be a little angry with Him, and that being God. Or, I might find He was even greater than my finite mind thought since I had to open my heart to acknowledge Him.

I overcame my struggles and wrote my little simple words and I have been in awe from responses of those I know and those I know not.  And, so amazing how goodness and mercy surely have followed my words.  I am in awe of a stranger, Sarah Parsons, whom I have never read to my remembrance had a line just for me on this cold and dim Saturday AM!

Hope you will find the blogs below and write your story and show your love. It’s never too late in the seasons of life to live out a lent of giving up a little of the old self (maybe shelf)  life for the divine!