Matthews Family Herald

"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" from Joshua 24:15

Hi family, friends, etc. I've mentioned before that we drive to a family farm in Mannheim about once per week in order to buy fresh, raw, unpasturized, etc., milk. Here's a picture of some of that delicious and fresh milk. Looks like something out of those old cartoons, huh?

I've mentioned that we draw water from various springs at the base of different mountains around where we live. Some springs flow more quickly than others. The one with the fastest water flow happens to also be the closest to our house. It's a very popular spring so I typically end up going at about 9 or 10pm. Here's a picture of the storage area we have. This lasts a little over a week. It is ice cold when first drawn, even in the summer and it is so very refreshing.

Micah decided to play the guitar that Rachel gave to him in a public are of the town in which we live. He had a lot of fun doing that. Later on, he and Jacob took turns hiding in trash cans and jumping out as people walked by. They also tied fishing string to a rubber snake and took turns hiding and pulling the string as a person walked by. They did surprise a few people and I believe they made someone a little upset, unfortunately. :)


Sweet Eden made a mess here. Isn't it strange how people love to take pictures of their kids making a mess!

We watched "Homesteading, Volume II" and were inspired in a number of ways. We are looking forward to the beginning of spring when we can go out and draw sap from nearby Maple trees and make our own syrup. But here is a picture of Eden making indentions with her fingers in the "Tea Cakes" that Heather and the kids made after watching the homesteading video. If you'd like to look at homesteading stuff, the folks that produced the video have a website: http://www.homesteadbeginners.info/ but we purchased it from Michael and Debi Pearl's No Greater Joy Ministries. http://www.nogreaterjoy.org/

Another shot of all the family working on those "Tea Cakes." I was busy making this blog post and Micah was "chilling out" beside me.


The kids and I made a snow igloo the other day. It was a full day's work, spread out over two days... Here is Micah working on it. To his right is his very good friend, Leon. He's really a good friend of the whole family. He's an excellent example of the wonderful people that most of the Deutschlanders we know are. He's very intelligent, creative, inventive, polite, respectful, and confident. He's been a good friend to Micah and together they are becoming fluent in one another's languages and sharing their cultural differences together. Hannah is seen here also with her new Raggedy Anne doll. She has one of each now, along with an old copy of the original Raggedy Anne and Andy stories. A bit different than what is out there now. The New World Order, global elite athiest assimilators would not allow this kind of book in the library as far as I can tell.


Here's Micah and Nathan together near the finished product. We learned how to make the snow igloo by reading a couple of different wilderness survival books. The little sticks that you can see in the igloo helped us not to dig too far into the walls as we cleared out the inside space.


Hannah is seen here inside the snow igloo. It was hard to get a good photo of it but Hannah's feet are there just inside the entrance and her head is seen way back there. I think Nathan or Jacob was the person sitting in there with her. When it was finished, they could not stand up in it but they could sit up. Three people could lie down in it fairly comfortably. Unfortunately, the next day the tempurature warmed back up and after three days, the thing had collapsed inside.

Here's another picture in the early stages of the snow house. Jacob is near the entrance this time.


All the kids received art supplies from our good family friends, the Bacherts. Micah has done some very nice pencil sketches and I wanted to share them here. Micah did this funny pose for your entertainment.


Here's a more serious shot of Micah at work.

Here's a scene that Micah did which was inspired by the beauty of Germany. Rolling hills of farmland. A church below. Castle wall in the distance. City factories spinkled here and there. A castle and a log cabin to the far right area (hard to see in this photograph, the fault lying with the camera.) An airplane in a beautiful sky above. (Click on the images to see a better and larger rendition.)


Also, here is Micah's pencil sketch of a log cabin. Heather's first reaction when seeing it was "Beautiful! I want to live there, Micah!" I really wish we could. Lord willing, we'll be in a place like this soon. Farmsteading, I mean. Another great example of the talent which the Lord has blessed Micah with.


Okay, I have to tell you how wonderful the meal was that my wife prepared for me. She prepared some very fine cuts of beef for me along with a sauteed vegetable medley on the right of the plate. The noodles were so delicious with buttery, baby shrimp throughout. The best part, though, was enjoying it as a little mini date with my Heather. I'm truly blessed!


We had our weekly family gathering time last week, which is the only body fellowship we have right now, and the Lord gave me the idea of using the "stone soup" example. We all got together and I brought a large pot in. I said, "We are having stone soup and everyone has to bring in something to make it good. But it must be stone soup. It cannot be stone soup without three things: A pot, water, and a stone inside."
So, I got out a pot and said "This is the Holy Bible" and I set the pot on top of a copy of the Holy Bible. "The water is the Holy Spirit. The Rock inside is Jesus Christ," I said and I placed the Rock in the pot first, pouring the water on top. "Without the Rock, it's not stone soup. Without the water, the food would burn up. (I thought of this also just now: The water brings out the nutrients and should be drank) The heat will not be distributed evenly as the items simmer together, and it just won't be soup. The pot, the Holy Bible, is the context that the soup is contained within. (I thought of this as well: You need the whole pot to hold the soup in. Leaving part of it out won't hold the soup in.) The constraints of the Holy Bible keep the soup in the form it belongs in and we would have no soup without the pot. Nothing would stay together.
I then went on to hand out plastic toy vegetables to each person in the room. I challenged them to "bring something." To "Think back through the week and tell something that God has done, an experience you had in the Lord Sing us a Holy song, read a passage the Lord led you to this week, something." Each person did so, one by one, and placed their items into the soup as they shared. Even the baby, Eden, sang us "This Little Light of Mine" and it was a blessing for all.
I also emphasized how dead attempts to do something in the Lord could be born out of one legitimate and God inspired event like this "Stone Soup" analogy. Whole demoniations are born out of things like this where, 20 years later, there's a still a silver pot by the alter. The congregation comes in, takes a plastic vegatable and sits down waiting for their turn. Trying to hold on to a point God was making and turn it into man's attempt to create God's movement over and over.
The family said it was likely one of the best family gatherings we'd had. I think the whole experience shares a lot about what body fellowship should be. What kind of soup have you been drinking? Make sure it's actually stone soup.












My wife was visiting with some German friends of ours and as they "got to talking" the subject of firewood came up. These friends have a beautiful fireplace in their home and a wall filled with firewood for the winter stacked outside (our family had the pleasure of helping them stack it there).

In Germany, you must first get a special license if you want to operate a chainsaw and cut down your own firewood, just as you would get a license to drive a vehicle. And yes, it's very expensive. At least a thousand dollars. To get the license, you must attend a special school and learn all about how to operate a chainsaw and how to cut down trees in an environmentally safe way. THEN, you have to first purchase special equipment and safety gear. AND IF THAT WERE NOT ENOUGH, you must pay the government thirty Euros per square meter of firewood that you actually cut down and bring home. And so it is much easier and likely much cheaper just to purchase your firewood from a commercial distrubutor. Gone here are the father/son times of going out and getting firewood for the family.

We were told that the German countryside is open to anyone and doesn't belong to anyone. Anytime, however, you get close to an area which is publicly owned (owned by the Government, I mean), it has a special triangular, green sign with the symbol of a flying eagle on it. The label on the sign translates roughly to "nature area" and there is a long list of things you can't do. No campfires, no tents, no hunting, no etc., etc., etc. Basically, if you'd like to do anything other than take a walk through it, you can't do it. A friend of ours from Germany who is presently visiting America was complaining on Facebook and saying how he missed the openness of the German wilderness and that there were fences everywhere in America where people claimed ownership of everything. My friend may have a point but I can't decide which is worse. In either case, you can't do it. Whatever you'd like to do, I mean.

Oh and goodness, if you would like to hunt or fish, you must pay huge fees in the three to five thousand Euro range, attend classes lasting months, and jump through many other hoops. If you are not 18 years old, you will not be allowed to hunt legally, period. Permit or not. You must be 18. Hard to transmit a way of life, knowledge, and values onto a child when you can't do that thing with them anymore. By the time they are 18, will they want to even do it? That's the point, I think. In order to fish, you must be 13 or 14, I'm not sure but no younger than that is allowed. If I recall correctly, you are never legally allowed to hunt anything by bow and arrow. I'd imagine trapping is illegal too.
But in looking around in Germany and learning, I can see that this must once have been the outdoorsman's paradise. Hunting, fishing, building, living, being! They must have been the happiest people alive at one point in history. That is, before the dark times...before the Empire. I don't mean what you might think when first reading this. I'm not referencing Hitler at all, although I definitely am not a Hitler fan by any means! I'm discussing the NWO. I wonder if Germany was a proving ground, of sorts. "If we can do this new way in Germany, likely the most conservative, most religious, most intelligent and hardy and family people likely in existence, and make it work, we can do it anywhere." is what I wonder was the thinking. I once heard that Planned Parenthood opened a headquarters in Waco, Texas, for example, by stating that it was indeed a bold ascertion and that if they could plant and sustain a Planned Parenthood clinic there, they could do it anywhere. (It's called "Pro Familia" in Germany, what a deceptive name and what a cover up for the real agenda. We are not a garden for others to weed and tend and certainly are we not livestock to tend and care for, nor are we populations of animals that at times overpopulate and must be thinned out "for our own safety and good." I just read of a government controlled rabbit hunt on a nearby installation for similar reasons and I couldn't help make the association between that event and the Planned Parenthood/Pro Familia agenda.)
Anyway, this posting has taken an interesting path but there is some food for thought as to the differences (and similarities) between the US and Germany/Europe and an idea for where these NWO planners might want to take us.

We would like to officially announce some wonderful news to all. Yep, you guessed it! We have a little bun in the oven, some 6 weeks now or so. Rachel, our oldest daughter married this past September, and her husband Tom are also expecting their first. Grandparents at 35! She is only a week or two behind me. We look foward to being sick and fat together. I don't know about her, but I am craving cucumber and tomato sandwiches, and artichokes! In fact I just had some( at 4:30 am).mmmmmm! James is wonderful and supportive as always and the kids are equally excited.
After reading and researching thoroughly(over the past year or so- yes, we helped plan this one. The real "planned parenthood"), we are planning to have a home birth assisted by a midwife this time. It is a common and accepted practice here in Germany and there are several midwifes nearby. Hopefully, we'll find one that speaks English( ha ha). Your prayers are much appreciated. Also we know many of you(because we've all been conditioned by society, which is motivated by money)may want to caution or dissuade us to have a homebirth out of your love and concern. Believe me, we have prayed and done our homework. We would just suggest that you alleviate your worries by reading or watching several of the wonderful (scientifically and statistically researched) books or dvds on home births available first. Remember, it is only in the last century or so that women have apparently lost their ability to naturally have a baby outside a "professional" doctor, staff, (interferring) equipmentladen foreign environment. But we do appreciate your concerns.
So a BIG CONGRATULATIONS(once again and twice over) to all you grandparents, great- grandparents, and great-great- grandparents, and aunt,uncles out there in the Matthews clan!

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