Knowing Your Neighbors

I bet I could write an excellent blog post about the importance of meeting and befriending your neighbors. How to get out and become a community with those who live in closest proximity to you. Yeah that would be a great post, it's just not this post.

I am talking about something completely different. I am talking about my WFMW neighbors. Each week I view some excellent posts about what works for others here in blog world. My problem is that so many of these posts I never get around to applying because of the enormity of fine posts each week. So I developed a system that helps me review past posts and save some of the good ones for posterity.

Here is what I do: Each week after I post my link, I mark the posts immediately before and behind mine as favorites and put them in a folder called "WFMW Neighbors." This is my 25th WFMW post and that means that after I link this up, I will have 50 neighbors in that folder.

After a few months I decided that I wanted to honor some of my favorite neighbors, so I reviewed all my neighbors and put the ones that I thought were best in a second folder called top 10 neighbors. Each subsequent week when I organized my neighbors I put the especially good ones in the top 10 list. My top 10 list often had more than ten items at a time but once a month or so I would weed it down. Today I would like to present you with my Top 10 Neighbors:

Starting us off at #10 is Lynn's Kitchen Adventures who introduced Frozen Hot Chocolate (July 09)

Speaking of neighbors, weighing in at #9 is Kristen's neighbor from Bake at 350 with Mini Moo Cards and coupon! (July 09)

How to Clean a Kitchen By Joyfully Retired (January 09) checks in at # 8.

Which brings us to #7 Protecting Your Marriage (and Money) with A Spending Communication Policy By Sarah @ Real Life (March 2009)

# 6 is Don't Bring Me Down by ELO. (Sorry my inner d.j. escaped for a moment.) Didn't mean to bring things down. It's time to Exhale. Return to Center as they What's Working: Our Mud Pit (May '09)

A Back Seat Boredom Buster is what awaits us at #5 found Inside the White Picket Fence. (July '09)

Momedy (Ba Ba Ba Ba Da) Momedy (Ba Ba Da Ba) presents Making Procrastination Work For You (April '09) at # 4.

At #3 we have Pause your Nose Again from Heavenly Homemakers dot com (February '09)

The Animator's Wife hits at #2 with Cheap Shots- Christmas (January '09).

And my #1. neighbor is A Simple Walk with her beautiful post, A Bag Full of Pennies (January '09)

Introducing My New Neighbors . . .

Tonight Kayren of Everthing's Coming up Daisies blogged about Getting Chewing Gum Out of My Dryer.

AND

Over at Blessed With Grace Lisa shared Things I Liked About Today ...

Welcome to the neighborhood!

Keeping tabs on my WFMW neighbors works for me. Thanks to all 50 of my neighbors for their excellent ideas. To see what works for others, bop on over to Kristen's at We Are That Family. A special shout out to Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer who got this party started. Many of my neighbors originally linked there.

Next Time: A Letter from the President

The Century Mark

My Father-in-law turned 70 today. This is of course a grand achievement in itself. But given his medical history in the past 18 months it is a remarkable one. He has had many sicknesses during that time and has been in hospitals and nursing homes for about 1/2 of the last 18 months. A few of those months he was in a coma like state. The past few months have been a time of remarkable recovery. His oldest son Mike spends 1/2 of the week doing rehab with his Dad. Every time I see him he is more and more active and vibrant than the next.

To celebrate his birthday Amy , her brothers and sisters planned a surprise party for Him. It was really the youngest sister Katie, who just found out she is expecting her first child, that did most of the planning and contacting.

Katie's 30th birthday happens to fall a week after her Dad's. Amy thought that since Katie was already getting the family together that she would work behind the scenes to make a double surprise party. So instead of celebrating Donn's 70th we celebrated Donn and Katie's 100th.

Every one had a fantastic time. So congratulations to Donn on seventy years and continued best wishes on a full recovery. Thanks to Mike for pouring so much of his time in working with His Dad. Best wishes to Katie on 30 years (I have shorts older than that), and congratulations to her and Danny as they eagerly expect their first child.

I will leave you with some research I conducted on what happened 100 years ago:

• There were 45 stars on the U.S. Flag



• The Roman Catholics made Joan of Arc (Not Joan Van Ark) a saint.



• Two cents was the cost of a postage stamp.



• The first race was run at the Indianapolis Motor Speed Way.



• The Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series.



• Las Vegas, NV Population:30

Next Time: Knowing Your Neighbors

Remembering Millard

Millard Posthuma 1916 -2009

Heaven centered living provides own eulogy.

I have recently discovered that there is a new blog carnival for Christian men. When I think of Christian men, I think of Dr. Millard Posthuma. So I am going to submit this post to the innaugural edition of the carnival. If they accept it instead of reading this sentence you will see a link to their carnival.

I first met Millard Posthuma at a prayer meeting on my university campus in 1990. Until he started attending regularly, I, at 24, was the oldest person at the meetings. Millard, then 74, changed all that. The retired surgeon was the father in law of our campus group's faculty advisor.

I remember one of the first conversations I had with Millard. I recognized his last name and asked him if he was related to Dan Posthuma who produced contemporary Christian music albums (Margaret Becker, Julie Miller among others.) It turns out that he was Dan's father. I followed that up with some question of how he must be proud to have such a famous son. His response was that he was very glad that all his children loved Jesus and were following Him.

Now, please don't imagine that comment coming as a rebuke. It was said with the same graciousness he said everything with. I am not sure that I have ever met as kind of a person before or since I met Millard. He was a regular at our prayer meetings and often attended and many times sang at our weekly meetings.

He was also the most active man in his seventies I ever met. He had a spry step and was involved in a plethora of activities: Rotary, Gideons, Pro Life rallies, etc. Anyone who has the caricature of an anti-abortion protester as a hate spewing unmerciful hypocrite in their mind, has never heard Millard present the Pro Life message. He gently stood up for the unborn fetus and used his medical background to provide evidence of where conception begins.

Millard had a great deal of influence on people my age. A friend 5 years my senior became involved in the Rotary because of Millard's leading. Another friend 5 years my junior had him as a groomsman in his wedding. A twenty two year old with a 76 year old groomsman! After I graduated in 1992 I spent two years as a missionary in Russia. Millard sent me a an encouraging letter while I was there mentioning meeting Russians when he was in WWII.

Most of all, I remember Millard loved his wife. He was always so tender and protective of her. I never heard him say one disparaging word about her. If you talked to Millard for 5 minutes, you would know 3 things about him 1: Jesus was his Savior, 2: He loved his wife and 3: He was genuinely interested in you.

When I was a younger man I read many books about dating, love, and marriage. One thing I read that stuck with me was: don't visit friends and relatives on your honeymoon. When Amy and I married in 1998 we honeymooned in the Smoky Mountains. We flew from Chicago to Louisville, Ky and drove to the Smokies. On the last day of our honeymoon we spent the day with Millard and Trudy in Louisville, where they had recently moved to. It was one piece of advice I am so glad I ignored. We had a wonderful visit, the couple married 1 week and the other married 57 years. It also turned out to be the last time we would see Millard alive. I found out a few weeks ago that he had passed away on May 31, 2009.

There is so much I would like you to know about Millard. I could start with his obituary, there are some things that I didn't even know. I knew he was in WWII but I had no idea that he was seriously injured in the Battle of the Bulge. Near the end of his life, Millard started blogging, he only posted three times but one of his posts was so Millard that I wanted to share it here:

A New President !! 11/04/08

A new president? Yes. and he will be receiving our prayers for God's guidance We asked for God to be incontrol in the election, and We trust that He was. Now we owe him our prayerful support. http://mposthumablog.blogspot.com/2008/11/new-president-110408.html

Millard in his unassuming way could so quickly get to the heart of a matter. The same precision God gave him with a scalpel was also evident in his communication.

In a way Millard speaks even though dead. His life speaks volumes and I'd like to leave you with the sound of his voice as featured in a Gaither and Friends album a few years back entitled appropriately enough: Heaven. (He is on the second to the last cut.) I guess there are advantages to having a son in the music industry.

Goodbye Millard, we miss you and look forward to singing with you again in Heaven.

For more of Six Word Saturday go to Show My Face dot com.

Next Time: The Century Mark.