More His Ranch Pictures

A big thanks to my new buddy, T'kya Hoerr, for taking these pictures of me and my girls first official "on tour road trip!"  The first picture is Missy and me (duh).  I'm telling them that my horse shouldn't ever move while on the pedestal until I let them.  I made some corny jokes like telling them that if you wanted to stay dry in a rainstorm just lean against there front feet (for your backrest) and stay under their next to keep dry!  It works every time!  : )

Next is Missy taking a bow

Kitty on the pedestal with all 4 feet!  They loved this one!  This was only about the fourth time for her!  Way to go Kitty!  You made me look good!  

Look how quiet my Missy is!  

Kitty bowing with rider!

Kitty "acting ashamed"

Kitty was very curious to everything and decided to do something she knew--the pedestal!  She was so cute!  We all went out to eat and when we came back she was performing without me!  She stood there all on her own for at least 15 to 20 minutes!  She is DEDICATED, folks!  : )  Missy must have messed up my tarp....oh, well!  Glad she had fun!  

Another rearing picture of Kitty...why not?

Kitty on the pedestal

I had loads of fun and appreciate the opportunity to "show off" my horsey talents with the kids and those at His Ranch.  btw, just so ya know...my horses can do many more tricks than the ones show here....so if you all know of anyone/camps who would appreciate something like this-let me know!  Thanks!

His Ranch a Success!

Ariel Libbman, a full-time staff member at His Ranch, took this excellent picture with her phone camera!  Thanks so much Ariel for sharing this AWESOME picture of Kitty and I in action!  A big thanks to His Ranch and Shannon and Susan for letting me come out and share my trick horses and give me an opportunity to show in front of an audience.  If you don't know what His Ranch is all about feel free to look them up on facebook or website www.hisranch.org.  They reach out to anyone-adults and children giving lessons, sharing the gospel and various other activities.  As most of you know, God spoke to me and I would like to start a mini horse ministry of my own going to a few ranches like His Ranch or Summer camps to share the gospel through horseback riding and trick training manuevers.  

This year has been a very HOT year and Taylor, Missouri was even hotter so I decided to stay 2 days instead of 4.  I arrived Wed. morning and left Fri. morning, but I had a great time!  It was a good 3 and a half hour truck and trailer drive for me, but hey, I got there all by myself!  I admit I had one or two jumbles along the way, but nothing major like getting lost or popped tires or wrecks and stuff so God heard my prayers and your prayers so thanks for praying for me!  I got to meet a ton of cool people, kids included of course!  

I stayed at Shannon's parents house.  The basement of their house is is where the full-time staff that are girls stay-the full-time boys stay, I think, at Shannon's brothers house.  Anyway, I got to have a big room all to myself.  They called the room where I stayed the Dungeon!  This is a room that has no windows and has foam all over it so as not to hurt yourself!  However since it stays dark 100% all day and all night if nobody turns the light on, I learned the hard way at night to have a flashlight handy while trying to find the bathroom in the dark.  Otherwise you end up running into stuff like a couch or a chair or something-good thing those walls were foam!  haha! 

Since the heat and humidity was quite gross, riding lessons were done by noon while I was there.  Thursday, a Princeville group volunteered to come out and clean the barns, water troughs, etc.  Here was my opportunity to "show off" my horses tricks to a big crowd which is another reason that I wanted to go to His Ranch.  I want my horses to be able to show off despite large groups of people.  Kitty, my buckskin, is half-Arab and you could tell-she is not a crowd horse so I was not able to do all of her tricks since she had her own personal bubble going on, but I was able to show off most of her tricks so I was overall pleased with her performance.  Missy, my grulla paint, went head to head with the crowd and was even willing to sign autographs!  I was very pleased with her performance also!  In fact, she was so relaxed at some points I could make mu lousy jokes.  My only complaint was that the heat made her tire out faster than usual (this is  my horse with respiratory problems, allergies, etc.) so I didn't even attempt any cantering stuff with her in my demo.  Overall, I was pleased with me and my horses first performance in front of a crowd at a unusual place!  Yes, I still have a lot to work on, but seems like we're on the right track!  Hope to have more pictures as soon as I can get them!  I forgot to hand someone my camera so I'm relying on my His Ranch friends or audience to sends me a few more!  : )

   

Hot trainer, hot horses!

Wow!  Is anybody else not liking this heat and humidity?!  Tomorrow was my big day to travel to His Ranch, but the weather is calling for temps over 100 degrees which with this humidity will feel more like around 115 degrees!   Meaning I don't want to travel in the heat or wake up at 4:00 a.m. to beat the worst of the heat.  I decided to leave earlyish on Wednesday morning since it's only gonna be 99 degrees (cooler here) in Taylor, Missouri-why are you guys in the South of MS?  Don't you know North is cooler?  : ) Let's just say the whole week looks HOT!  Any of you who want too can CERTAINLY pray for me and my horses!  Pray that we can all stay healthy and happy in this weather and have safe travelling both ways.  Thanks!

Despite this loss, I think I should have loads of fun on my ONE WHOLE WEEK OFF!!! : )  Yep, I'm excited!  Mother and I are going horse supply shopping tomorrow since I don't want to travel to MS in the heat with a horse who has allergies and a girl who doesn't want to change any tires!

Monica had 2 work buddies come out to see her Friesian horse, Eisis, on Sunday.  I took this as a good opportunity to "show off" my horses tricks!  While Monica was getting Eisis ready to ride, I gave a little trick horse presentation!  Missy and Kitty did GREAT!   However, Mother dear was in the house with the camera so I have to pics of Kitty or Missy, but I can tell you that they are inspiring me to do His plan!  I was debating with God the other night as to am I good enough to be "showing off my horses." I haven't been able to practice much at all since it's HOT HOT HOT!  I don't want to show my horses to prove to everyone that I'm good with horses or have some special talent I want to do this to glorify my God and put a smile on people's faces.  I was beginning to think I was failing God somehow for trying to put off His Mission yet another year.  However, when I was doubting most, and ready to call it off yet another year, God taught me another lesson.  While I was horse training for going to His Ranch, I was getting discouraged with myself for not being able to better my horses-stupid weather!  I decided to see if my horses would remember a trick I had only worked on for a few scattered weeks.  Wow!  They more than knew it they almost overdid everything!  They inspired me to Press On towards the mark of my high calling!  So, here we go!  Ready or not here we come!

Rest in the Lord.

Our extended family on my mother's side always gets together once every year to spend some quality family time.  For the last 3 years, we have been going to Portage, IN to swim in Lake Michigan and run up and down the sand dunes-which is tiring, but fun!  One thing I really enjoy about the weekend is our womens Bible study.  The topic for this year was Psalm 37:1-7.  So if you haven't looked up those verses yet, I'll give you an overview.  This section talks about not worrying about anything!  That we need to commit everything to God and TRUST that He has everything in control so all we really have to do is rest and wait patiently for His instructions.  It is easy to rest in the Lord when life is going great and everything seems to be going our way, but when things get out of our control it can be hard to "let go and let God."  I found this topic very good for me this year.  If you haven't heard, my sister is engaged to a wonderful guy, Karl Kirsch.  I am really happy for her!  Really!  I am!  It's just that when your use to living with your sister your whole life, you get use to having her around!  So...yes, I'm a little scared of this new adjustment so what am I suppose to do? Let God know about it and be assured that He is with me and he'll help me with this new adjustment.  Another thing that just struck me with some more restlessness is that a good friend of mine is going to be music ministrying (if that's a word) in Haiti for a year.  So this weekend was turning out to be a restless/worrysome weekend until I let God take over.  The Bible study brought up some really good points for me to think about when I worry.  And if your like me, you always have something to worry about whether it's the everyday minor things or the occasional major things, however, it was brought up that worry is like rocking back and forth in a rocking chair-"it (worry) keeps you busy, but doesn't get you anywhere!"  So true!  When does worrying ever help a situation?  What we need to do when we worry is tell God the instant something worries us so he can fill us with His strength and peace.  No, I don't think you can expect to never worry about your problem once you hand it over to God-we are human, but you can know that the problem is now in God's hands and He will help you deal or overcome this problem if you let Him so just sit back, rest, and wait patiently for His healing power.  Piece of cake, right?  Ha!  I wish.  Worry is a life-long battle that happens everyday in your life, but wouldn't you rather let someone else worry about your worries?