Q&A with Priscilla Shirer, Kay Arthur, and Beth

Closing out in praise

…was a very bad dog named Beckham Jones. We’d had one fiasco after another just trying to get to the park, including him getting out of his collar while I was being a good neighbor (picking up his business from someone’s yard). Then he took off after two squirrels and I went airborne before skiing behind him through some wet grass. When we finally got to the swing set, all the children in the park squealed in unison and came RUNNING over to visit with him. They were sitting all around him, which is why I didn’t have many pictures of Beckham to choose from for the blog. Here you have it – the Vice President of the Bad Club. Beanie is the President Emeritus.

Specializing in nap management and creative dressing solutions. Additional services include hair styling, preoccupying Baby in the car, allowing Mom to eat her meal while it is still hot, changing atomic diapers, teaching Baby new tricks, and being the human swing. References available.

Pebbles for Granny.

Pebbles in the air.

Pebbles everywhere.

Recently I talked about one of those times when it’s hard being Beth Moore’s daughter. But 99.9% of the time it is a huge blessing. For example, I have literally been all over the world with my mom because of this ministry. Last weekend Jackson and I got to go with her to San Francisco for the Deeper Still conference. San Francisco is the most beautiful city I’ve ever laid eyes on. My spirit was in perpetual praise the entire 36 hours because everywhere I looked the glory of God was shouting out at me. From the blue sky to the green mountains, the beautiful architecture to the sparkling ocean, it was magnificent.

Jackson and I did not get to spend much time at the conference because let’s face it, a twelve-month-old is not going to sit there while Priscilla Shirer, Kay Arthur, and his grandma bring it for an hour and a half or more. But from what I heard, they brought it and most importantly, the Lord brought Himself. My mom couldn’t say enough about how much she loved getting to partner with Priscilla and Kay. They each taught on a different season in the life of David. Kay really bragged on the ladies at the end because they had been so willing to forgo doing the light thing and instead dive into some serious Bible study. The last session was a Q&A with the three speakers. Travis Cottrell pushed my little guy around in the stroller so I could listen. They got to lighten up quite a bit during that session. There was, of course, a lengthy discussion on lipstick. My favorite moment was when Kay said it was a sin. A sin not to wear lipstick.

San Francisco girls, we’d love to hear from you!

Golden Gate Bridge

Jackson and our friend Amy underneath the bridge

Jackson waving at the surfers

Some very sophisticated art

Lombard Street

At the Japanese Tea Garden

NANNY’S CHICKEN AND DUMPLINGS

Gently boil five large chicken breasts with the skin on until cooked. Season the water lightly with salt and pepper. A bay leaf added to the water gives an even better flavor. Turn off the heat, remove the chicken breasts to cool but leave the broth in the pan. Draw out a cup of broth (making sure you get plenty of the fat in it for tender dumplings). After the cup of broth cools to lukewarm, pour it in a large mixing bowl and add three large eggs to it. Salt and pepper the mixture and then begin adding flour to it until it starts to get manageable. The consistency of the dumplings dough should be like bread dough: tender but neither sticky nor dry.

Bring the broth back to a gentle rolling boil. Roll out handfuls of dough to about a fourth inch thickness. Cut in strips of an inch or so wide and three or four inches long. Drop in boiling broth and stir gently to keep them from sticking on the bottom.

When all the dumplings are in the broth and cooked (only takes a few minutes), add one can of cream of chicken soup and about 1/4 can of cream of celery soup. Much of your salt will come from the soups so please don’t over salt your broth. Add pepper to taste.

Remove skin from cooling chicken, cut into chunks and add to the broth and dumplings. Stir and cook only a few more minutes. Overcooking will disintegrate the dumplings!

Serve and enjoy.

Y’all, the eagle has almost landed. They made it onto their connecting flight from Newark. Praise the Lord.

I’m about to do some laundry (fun!) and watch One Night With the King. It’s a new movie about Esther. Maybe it can hold us over until the study comes out. I’ve heard it’s great!

My parents will be at the airport in a few hours and start the journey home. Yay! After a layover at Newark Airport they will arrive in Houston around 10:30 Tuesday night. My dad will be very happy to be back in Texas. He doesn’t like to be gone from his roots very long. He actually called me today because “My Papa Was a Rolling Stone” was being played in the streets during the festival. That’s one of our songs. I’m not sure why, other than that he used to sing it a lot when I was growing up. And also “You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd.” He always has a strange song in his head. I don’t really have a good grasp of what has been going on for the last two days, so we’ll have to wait and hear it from Bethie. It’s a good thing I’ll be with her in person next week because I have to wade through tons of questions about Jackson before I ever extract one story from her! These things take time!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for praying. May God bless you and your precious families for interceding for my parents and the film crew. And for all of you who woke up to pray in the middle of the night, I really wish I could take you to Starbucks and get you a good caffeinated drink.

All this talk of chicken and dumplings is reminding me of a not-so-shining moment I had while pregnant. I say “This is my favorite thing my mom makes,” about several different things, but this is the real deal. I mean it this time! It fills not only my stomach but also my love tank. (Any fans of The 5 Love Languages?)

So we were in the mountains for Thanksgiving ’05. It was perfect weather for “C’s and D’s” and my parents were cooking up a storm. Mind you, I was like 7 months pregnant and had been smelling the aroma of the soup cooking for a long time before it was ready. I was anticipating having several bowls of it. You know, I only get it once or twice a year, so I have to make the most of my chance. Then my mom gets a phone call and says we have some guests coming over and they may be staying for dinner. What?!?! Her exact words were, “You can each have a mug full.” That’s not what I wanted to hear.

So I looked in the cabinet and found the biggest mug of all time. For you Sonic fans, it was the Route 44 of all mugs. It could probably hold 3 cups of soup. And I filled it to the brim. I had to walk very carefully to keep it from spilling over. I was that selfish. And the worst part was I didn’t feel bad about it at all. I thought someone else, maybe a couple of someone elses, should give up their portion for the poor pregnant lady who spends all year looking forward to this one meal. I totally got caught on my way to the table. Everyone shouted in unison, “That’s not a mug!” I should have just gone down to the basement and eaten it in secret. But that would have signaled that I had a problem. So mom made me pour a third of it back into the pot. And even then I had twice as much as everyone else. I promise I was not bitter at all.

We didn’t end up having to share the soup. In the end, the pregnant lady got her fill. But she will never live that one down.

*Update: I do not have the recipe but I might be able to post it when I’m home with my parents next week.

Did someone say chicken and dumplings? Don’t make me have a craving for my favorite winter food! Well, spring is going to be here any minute. At least in Texas. My oak trees are already budding and we’ve had the AC on for the greater part of the last two weeks. Although now it’s back to being cold again. Last week I decided to make my other favorite winter food one last time before winter is gone for good. If you don’t have a recipe for Winter White Chili, this is a good one.

What do you like to make when it’s cold? Feel free to post your recipes. Don’t forget to save them in Word before you submit your comment!

Uncle Wayne’s Winter White Chili
1 tablespoon of oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon of cumin
3 chicken breasts, boned, skinned and cut into bite size pieces (already cooked)
2 cans of white beans (about 14 oz. each)
1 can of white corn (about 12 oz.)
1 can of cream corn (white, if possible, about 12 oz.)
1 can of chopped mild green chiles (4 oz.)
2 cups of chicken stock
1 tablespoon of died oregano
1 tablespoon of chili powder
1 can of redi-cut tomatoes (15 oz.)
3 or 4 tablespoons of mild salsa verde (or to taste)

Optional garnishes:
Sour cream, chopped cilantro, shredded cheddar (smoked cheddar’s great) or jack cheese, tortillas or tortilla chips

Cook onion, garlic, and cumin in hot oil in a dutch oven, uncovered over medium heat. When onion and garlic are tender, stir in chicken. Then add the whole list of other ingredients down through salsa verde, and stir to blend. Cover and cook over low heat until flavors blend, about 30 minutes. Put the garnishes on the table and let everybody dig in.

Mom sounded great when I talked to her today. I think they are well adjusted to the time change and have caught up on their sleep. She said they are all much more energized. They officially finished Psalms of Ascent and will begin Esther in the morning (which is about 1 hour from right now). She said God has been doing all sorts of neat things and going out of His way to say, “I love y’all. Keep it up!” On day three they filmed out in the wilderness, which my mom said was a really cool experience. She imagined David on the run, Jesus being tempted, and all the things that pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem would have experienced there. They filmed on the Mount of Olives that evening and the Lord painted a fabulous sunset for them. My mom gets to jazzed about sunsets, so it was not wasted on her!

I’ll go ahead and talk a little about the comments in this post. As some of you mentioned, definitely look for it to say, “Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval.” Let me know if you’re seeing that and your comments still aren’t showing up. I’m sorry y’all are having to enter the code multiple times. I know it’s a pain. It would be so nice not to have to use that and comment moderation. But the alternative is very explicit spam (which we used to deal with on our guest book before we implemented the code) and other tackiness. But please don’t be paranoid about me thinking your comment is tacky. What I meant was if you leave a comment that says something ugly about my mom I will have great joy deleting it into oblivion. Was that tacky? Y’all know how it is with family. If you do have something to say that a daughter might not want to read, you can send it through the LPM contact page. Thanks so much!

This is random, but we invited the whole Saturday service crowd to dinner at Fuddrucker’s tonight. We were all crammed into a long table in the back room. There was a family we didn’t know sitting right behind us. Then a guy who has been visiting our church for the last couple of months came to join us. Seeing that there were no seats left, he took the chair next to the dad behind us, turned it around and sat next to him. You should have seen the look on the dad’s face! Curt said, “Dude, we don’t know them. They’re not with us.” Bless his heart! Would you not have just died?