I know! I know! It has been 10 days since the new year started, and again I have allowed too many days to go by without a new entry. I fact, so much has been going on lately (including a computer virus), that I haven't thought much about my blog until today. I decided to check to see if anyone had checked my blog, and found that 13 of you checked it out just yesterday! Now you know that not many people read this blog, but I feel like I need to get "on the stick" and post some new things for those who do read it.
You all know that my main focus is to promote family values. I try to search the web to find ideas that will help fathers (including me...correction...especially me!) be the Christian heads of the family that they should be. One idea that I found was supposed to be done right around the beginning of the year, but we aren't too far away from that, so I thought I would still pass it on to you. I intend to sit down this next week and prayerfully go through it, so I'll let you know what happens. It's fairly long, but I think it is worth the read. I'll post part of it here and then give you the link to finish reading it if you are interested. It is from Doug Phillips', Vision Forum, blog.
Three of the Most Important Things You Can Do As You Begin 2009
Dear Friends:
Life moves fast. If we don?t take the time to chronicle the providences of God, we forget them. If we don?t take the time to say thank you to those who have invested in our lives, we actually cultivate a spirit of ingratitude in our own hearts. If we don?t stop and make sure that we have a spirit of forgiveness toward others, we grow bitter, we lose the capacity to move victoriously into the future, and our prayers are hindered.
Here is a little practice that I was taught and would like to share with you. As you start a new year, I would encourage you to do the following things.
I. Outline and Chronicle the Many Providences of God
Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. (Hab. 2:2)
First, using simple bullet points, outline the key events for every week of every month of the year. Take the time to do the research which will help jog your memory and allow you to make an accurate record. I find that reviewing bills, blogs, journals, newspaper headlines, letters, and even organizing my photographs chronologically are enormously helpful tools. Those individuals who were faithful to journal or keep a diary will have little problem reconstructing key events. Give yourself a good week to reconstruct your own outline of the year. Also, by making this a family project, you will not only build your list with greater speed and precision, but (in the hands of a loving patriarch) the very act of chronicling the providences of God in your life is a blessed tool for family discipleship.
Every family will have a different set of priorities directing what they should record. In addition to recording the key events and providences of the year chronologically, I try to take the time with my family to record some of the following information on separate bullet lists:
Where did I/we travel?
What were the titles and key texts of sermons I preached?
What books/articles did I write?
What significant household projects did we accomplish in 2008?
What were the most important meetings of the year?
What special friendships were made this year?
Which children lost teeth, and how many?
Who grew in physical stature, and how much did they grow?
Who learned to read this year?
What diet and physical exercise regimen did I maintain to honor ?my temple??
What books did I read? Did we read as a family? Did my children read?
What Scriptures did my family memorize?
What loved ones died this year?
What were the great personal/ministry/national tragedies and losses of the year?
What were the great personal/ministry/national blessings of the year?
What were my most significant failures for the year 2008?
What unresolved conflicts am I bringing into 2008?
What significant spiritual and practical victories did I experience?
In what tangible ways did I communicate gratitude to those who have blessed me and invested in my life?
What are the top ten themes of 2008 for my family?
I wanted to share an email that I just wrote to all of our supporters who are on our email list. Many of you all have expressed an interest in our ministry after reading my blog, so I decided to post it to you as well. Thank you all for your support since I started the Families Again blog. I have really enjoyed writing it and look forward to writing more and getting to know more of you in 2009. Until then, please have a very happy New Year. God bless all of you. Tim
Dear Family and Friends,
I hope that you all had a very Merry Christmas, and the rest of your holidays will be very blessed. God has richly blessed the Tinkel household this holiday season. Although the year has been a difficult one, the blessings that God has given us far outweigh the problems. Some of the greatest blessings that God has given are the faithful friends and family that have prayed, encouraged and supported us throughout this past year. There is no year, good or bad, that we could survive without you all. We thank God for you and pray for you all continuously.
Although you may not consider yourselves as such, you are a valuable part of the our team at Good News Mission. This past year we have strived to keep you better informed as to what is happening in our ministry. Sarah has tried to send our more frequent prayer letters, and I have begun my blog and begun to post our newsletters online. Please let us know if there is anything else we can do to keep you better informed.
This year our goal is to endeavor to serve you all better. You all have done so much for us, that we would like to do something for you. For those of you who live close by, please call us if there is anything that we can do for you. Be it physical help or prayer, we will do all that we can to assist you. For those of you who live far away from us, we could, at least, come along side of you in prayer. Please call, write, or email and let us know how we can help you.
As the new year approaches, please continue to be in prayer for our ministry here in Livingston. As Sarah has written in her newsletters, God has richly blessed Good News Mission. Our Sunday meal and Bible study has grown tremendously and our new ladies cooking class and kids Bible club have been well received. Our special events have also been very popular, and have allowed us to serve and get to know some individuals and families that don't usually attend our other mission functions.
We have many more plans for this coming year. As well as continuing the ministries that we already have, we hope to add afternoon tutoring for the kids and a craft class for Sarah's ladies. This summer, we are planning a community garden for folks who live in the neighborhood and perhaps expanding our summer ministry to the children of the area. These things, along with the our commitment to homeschooling and our children's Drs. visits, therapies, etc. add for very busy days and weeks. Please pray that we will schedule our time and use our time wisely.
One praise that we have is our finances. God has always abundantly supplied for all of our needs and this past year has continued to do so. Although our support has fluctuated we have ended the year with a plus in that area. One small prayer request in this area though. BCM has required that our support level be at $2000 a month before the end of 2009. Although God has richly blessed, we are not at that level yet. If you would like to know more about how to support us financially, or if you would like us to speak at your church, please let us know. Even a pledge of $5.00 a month would help. If you feel that you could give us an end of the year gift, it is not too late. Just send it to the BCM address below. Please make out the check to BCM and then attach a note saying it is for Tim and Sarah Tinkel, account number 642.
Thank you again for all that you do for us, and please let us know what we can do for you. We will be praying that God blesses you greatly in this coming year. We hope that you have a blessed rest of 2008 and an even greater 2009.
Families Again Freebies Topic: FamiliesAgain Freebies
Being homeschoolers, we are members of several online homeschool groups and receive many homeschool newsletters. One of the newsletters sends out a weekly email called "Freebie Fridays". I look forward to it every week, because it really does have some valuable online freebies for homeschoolers. Some of them I have passed on to you in the past.
I don't know if I want to commit to doing it weekly, but I do like the idea of passing on some freebies to you from time to time that promote family values. Since I'm not sure how often it will be, I'm calling my posts "Families Again Freebies". It may be every week, it may be a couple of times a week, or I may skip a week or so, but I hope to be fairly regular in passing on free websites and ideas that will help you in your journey of raising kids.
In one of my early posts I talked about Behemoth.com. I lamented that they had daily free downloads but required a credit card to set up an account. Since that post, we switched banks and now have a check card that I was able to use to register. I love it! They have historical talks, talks on family values, educational downloads etc. ... all from a Christian worldview. I look forward every day to see what the next thing is that I can download. I have listened to many of them, and have not been disappointed yet.
Another website that I have gone to a lot recently is DLTK crafts. Most of the crafts that were used for our Advent nights came from this site and I have even used some of their crafts for my Bible clubs. Everything is free and there is a ton of crafts that you can use for family craft nights. DTLK crafts is a family based site, so you shouldn't find anything too objectionable, but I did find one craft that involved Pokemon, so you do need to be careful.
Let me know what you think of these, and if you know of any good freebies that you think will meet this sites goal of strengthening the Christian family, please let me know and I may put it in a future FamiliesAgain Freebies post.
Well, the holidays are almost over and so are all of my great advent/holiday plans for the family. How did they go? You read about our first advent night in one of my previous posts. The others went a little better but not much. We made sure that our calender was clear for the second advent night, but we still started late, so Joshua still wasn't himself. He was quite during the start of our Bible reading, but then we were interupted and it went downhill from there. He lost focus for the rest of the Bible reading and then didn't want to do the craft. The third night was a little better, he did try the craft even after being antsy during the devotional time.
It is partly my fault. I should have been doing family devotions since all of the kids were little. I can't totally expect them to cooperate right from the start when they aren't used to it. But, that is about to end. I am commited to start daily family devotions beginning January 1st. Of course, we won't have the added crafts, and I will make sure that the devotions are "Joshua friendly". It should be interesting - I'll keep you posted.
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