Matthews Family Herald

We have next-door neighbors who are also followers of Jesus. They are not much younger than ourselves and the Dad, Matthew, is an E-5 in the Marine Corps. They have two kids which are very close in age to our two youngest kids, Nathan and Eden. We help one another out with various projects, like Matthew once dug a hole for a rose bush Heather wanted to plant while I was at a school. We take each other's trash in and out from the drive ways if one of us forgets. We share newspapers, magazines, and coupons. One of my favorite ways that we work together is that we share baked goods like cakes, pies, cobblers, and things like that. (Not to mention borrowing eggs, milk, and other ingredients when we are short of something for a recipe.)

Unfortunately, our neighbor had a family crisis and had to take off. So, our family is in charge of feeding their dog, watering their plants, and keeping a general "eye on the place" for them while they are away. (They gave us all their perishable foodstuffs while they left since it may be a little while that they are gone. This turned out to be a big blessing as we can never have too much food around with our family of eight)
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Micah stepped up and wanted to be in charge of this and so he takes care of everything each day and then I go behind him at the end of the day and make sure everything is locked up. Things tend to get misplaced in a big family like ours and so we have attached their set of house keys to a large hanger to make it easier to keep track of the keys.

But the silver lining in all of this (if having Godly and great neighbors isn't enough!) is that on the next day after they left, they called us up and were very excited to announce that they are again pregnant! We are very happy for them here at home as there could be no better gift that the Lord provides.