So far, our time with Peter away has gone fairly smoothly. Yesterday we had a lazy day at home, reading, doing puzzles, playing games and then the children did some painting in the afternoon. Last night, Joel’s bear-bear disappeared (again!) and we could not find him despite extensive hunting! Joel took awhile to fall asleep and woke up once in the night crying (he was probably missing bear-bear even though he couldn’t verbalize to me what was wrong) but actually took his nap OK today without his furry friend. We’ve been continuing to pray that he would turn up (Cast ALL your cares – including lost bear-bears – on Him for He cares for you.) Keep reading for the conclusion of the bear-bear saga . . .
This afternoon, Hannah and Aliyah took advantage of the sunny weather and decided to clean out the rabbits’ hutch. About 5pm when it was nearly dark, Aliyah appeared at the back door and shouted, “Dandy is gone! She’s run away!” Because there has been so much snow on the ground, the girls haven’t let the rabbits out in the garden much. So today when she let Dandelion (Dandy) out for a run, Dandy really ran! We have a fence panel missing between us and our neighbour’s garden and she has one missing between her and her neighbour’s garden! So Dandy took the quickest escape route she possibly could and ended up 3 gardens away. The end of that garden is very wild, filled with brambles and thick bushes AND a fox den – NOT a very safe place for a rabbit to hide. But that is exactly where she went. Hannah saw her disappear into the bushes. For the next hour, we shone flashlights all over the area. Dandy briefly reappeared at the end of the garden when a dog began barking like crazy (I ran like the wind to the neighbours to let them know what was going on and to ask them to bring their dog inside so it wouldn’t attack poor Dandy!) Those neighbours were very kind and ended up helping us catch her in the end. My next door neighbour was also very helpful. For most of the hour, we couldn’t see Dandy and didn’t know where she was – we just kept hoping she would come out of the dense brush and bushes. Many desperate prayers went up from two distraught little girls (and their worried mummy!) and God answered! What a relief. Dandy did not seem too happy to be rescued and nipped Hannah all the way back to the hutch. (Hmmm. How like Dandy are we sometimes when God rescues us from the messes we make? . . . point to ponder) We will not be letting Dandy out again until we get the fence panel replaced and/or build a run for the rabbits (project for Daddy when he comes home!)
Dinner was late because of Dandy’s adventures and I finally got the children in bed. Joel was not a happy boy without bear-bear. He ended up with another stuffed bear (Aliyah assured him the bear was bear-bear’s cousin), a stuffed frog, and a stuffed hippo. They were not cutting the mustard for Joel. After going in to their room several times to respond to various complaints and unhappiness, about 9pm I finally switched on the light and decided to have one last look for bear-bear. After a few minutes Hannah and Aliyah came running in because they heard my happy cry, “Here he is!!” He was on the top shelf in the closet on top of the spare blankets. Hannah looked a little sheepish and said, “Oh, that’s where I put him.” It turns out that she put him up there when she was trying to get Joel to put his pajamas on last night. All in a day’s work as a mum – catching rabbits, finding lost bears – did I sign up for this? (I wrote that with a smile, by the way!)
Now it’s time to get some sleep. Thanks for praying for us while Peter is gone. I just talked to him and he said it’s going very well and he had heard lots of encouraging feedback from his message this morning on “The Uniqueness of Christ.” All glory to Jesus . . . we press on for Him!
