"Self-control: the governing of one's desires; the ability to avoid excesses, to stay within reasonable bounds." "Self control is the exercise of inner strength under the direction of sound judgement that enables us to do, think, and say the things that are pleasing to God."

Sunday morning through a long train of events, some of them dramatic, I got to use the car again. I drove out to Columbia Evangelical Church, partly to meet Andrea, another Cadence missionary who is currently raising support for a two-year trip to Japan. And also partly because CEC is a Reformed church that the H's spoke well of(Reformed Churches for the win!). CEC is smaller than my church back home, and is situated next to several USC buildings. The church itself is made of a traditional sanctuary and then a Victorian-era house around the back that was converted to classrooms. I enjoyed the service and even more so the Sunday School. It didn't hurt any that our class was in one of the old bedrooms in the cool old house, with a really neat fireplace. Our Sunday school teacher spoke on Biblical Self-control, and I brought away two pages of great quotes and verses.

"Self control involves a much wider range of watchfulness than merely control of our bodily appetites and desires. We must also exercise self control of thoughts, emotions, and speech."

"The person without self control is easy prey to the invader: he yields himself to the first assault of his ungoverned passions, offering no resistance. Having no disciplines over himself, temptation becomes the occasion of sin, and hurries him on to fearful lengths that he has not contemplated."

Today's boring photo: Whether I travel across the ocean or just across the country, my dresser-top essentials stay the same.

By the time I got home Sunday, we were all pretty worn out from the weekend. Monday was only interesting in that Boy and Girl H were stressing over PSAT prep, the hot water heater broke, and the electricity went out. We also had surprise guests, which is, I keep reminding myself, normal.

My Third Weekend on the Ranch

Friday night the car was miraculously free, and the H's graciously let me use it to attend an English Country Dance in West Columbia. Call me pompous, but attending other dance groups just makes me fondly think that ours back home is the best! Legacy Dance group is older than ours but smaller. And there were a lot of girls vs. boys that particular night.

That's me in the picture. I'm still alive, I had no other pictures to post, and I absolutely cannot smile in self-photos.

So many people, mostly girls, came and went from the Ranch over the weekend that it would take a whole post just to list their names and connections to the Ranch. Suffice it to say, lots of females came and went. I even had a roommate for the weekend, and other than the time she talked in her sleep, that went well. Besides the girl crowd we had sixteen ladies from Ft. Jackson for the retreat on Saturday. They arrived before 10am and left at 7pm. Mrs. H led devotionals, we served lunch and dinner, and everyone had a relaxing time. I'm afraid I didn't take a single picture.

The lake by cloudlight

Most of the recruits seem to be just out of high school, or struggling with college expenses. Most of the girls who came on Saturday were joining the National Guard and not going active duty. Some of the more intense discussions I listened in on were from a very charismatic pentecostal from the inner city who thought all true Christians must speak in tongues; another woman had been raised in more than five foster homes and then abandoned by her real mother when she was sixteen. These girls were both eighteen.

Doings

Monday was a slow day. Tuesday was a rainy day, and our main job was to roast twelve chickens and de-bone them, in preparation for the upcoming retreat on Saturday. I cooked spaghetti for dinner, which was nice, because when I get to cook dinner I can arrange to have everyone sit at a set table and eat together, instead of everyone going every which way. Girl H has a very intense ballet schedule that involves five evenings classes a week, so dinners here tend to be a casual affair; I'm not used to that. I also had down-time to read a few chapters in my library book: "The Vikings" by Robert Ferguson. Vikings are so bloodthirstingly interesting, and I think the Viking conversion story is really neat.

Twelve little chickens, jumping in a pot. One fell out and lost it's skin. Mrs. H made me cut off the top of her head(just in the picture) because she said her hair was too messy. "Skinning chickens for Jesus" was Mrs. H's motivational mantra, since it's not her favorite thing to do.

Wednesday we spent a few hours at the SC State Fair. I'm not really a Fair person, but the weather was great. The girls went just for the food, and there really was a lot of food. They're planning to go back another day just for rides, which I will forgo. But there were at least thirty different food stands selling various types of deep-fat fried overpriced "food." They said the doughnut burger was good. I'm not sure I believe them.

Thursday was food bank and preparatory cooking for the female soldier's retreat on Saturday. Pictured above is the big kitchen on the ground floor. We made five Mexican layered casseroles and bean salad. Tomorrow we'll finish the desserts and housecleaning to be ready for whatever recruits end up coming.

Ahhh, the Weekend

So on Sunday I was determined to attend church despite my red face, especially since I missed last week's service due to the flu(yes, my life is a constant train of calamity). A very sweet family offered me a ride, and so I visited Heritage Fellowship, a moderately small family-integrated church in Sumter, SC. The order of service seemed rather unplanned and the singing was rather weak, but I enjoyed the sermon. There was a baptism that morning too, so this Presbyterian got to see a dunking.

Victory Ranch, looking down at the lake from the front porch.

Sunday afternoon we had a group of thirty sailors at Victory Ranch. They were all Navy Reserves who had been called up for overseas deployment and were here in SC for training. It was a very diverse group- guys and girls from college-aged up to middle-aged, from several ethnic backgrounds and mostly from the north-west US. We served them a snack, they had a short devotional from the Chaplain, and then they had free time to relax until dinner. Some went swimming, others just sat on the deck or watched football. I thought it was funny how all of our electrical outlets were taken for charging cells phones and laptops, like a hotel. We served a hot dinner, and after another short devotional they were bussed back to the barracks. It was my first time to see the Ranch in action, beyond giving away food to those in need. It was encouraging and fulfilling to see how grateful the sailors were for a home setting and good meal. I keep beating myself over the head, though, about my weak conversation skills. Must work on that!

Closing up the blogpost with the back-yard view from the Heyward-Washington house in Charleston. I'm telling you, it's beautiful.

Charleston

On Saturday we ladies visited Charleston. Mrs. H and I, and the other lady volunteer, who we'll call Miss ShR from this point on. Charleston is just under an easy two hour drive from our home spot.

"An easy distance do you call it? It is nearly fifty miles.''

"And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a day's journey. Yes, I call it a very easy distance.''

We started out walking down the large indoor-outdoor market. Everything in the market was pretty pricey. What a contrast from the Russian market! American vendors can be so placid in comparison to those Russians. From there we walked down church street and saw all the old churches and burying grounds. Sad to say they were all locked.

The French Huguenot Church was pink. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Everywhere we looked there were gorgeous homes and mansions dating from the colonial period on. There was a great deal of Victorian wrought iron, and brick and cobblestone streets. We walked up and down the historical section, which goes right up to the waterfront. I could see why people would move off plantations to Charleston in the summer; it was warm but there was a stiff breeze off the water.

Mrs. H celebrating history at the Nathaniel Russell house. We enjoyed the garden, but didn't have time for the tour.

When I have my own house, it will need to have a floor like this.

We did pay for the tour at the Exchange building and Provost dungeon. There are placards of information over the first and second floors, and then a guided tour of the "dungeon". The first floor had two 18th century dresses and several waistcoats on display. The second floor was used as a combined meeting room/social hall. George Washington was entertained here during his tour in 1791, and there was most certainly dancing here, too. The dungeon was basically a basement, built on top of the 17th Century waterfront wall. The brick ceiling of the dungeon was made of roman arches. Patriots were held here during the British occupation of Charleston, and pirates were held here during Blackbeard's time.

The pineapple water fountain. My time in Charleston convinced me that I need to take home a pineapple-engraved souvenir. I just haven't found one within my budget yet.

We had lunch at a local seafood restaurant. I had crab legs for the first time, and if you must know I didn't like them. I'm going to stick to shrimp from now on.

Our last stop was the Heyward-Washington house. I took the tour while Mrs. H and Miss ShR sat out back in the lovely formal English garden. The picture above is from the back of the house, with the garden, outhouse/shed, kitchen/slave quarters, and finally the house. It was a short tour but a beautiful house, with some truly amazing custom woodwork furniture done by local craftsmen in the 18th century.

At the end of the day, footsore and warm, we stopped at the beach on Sullivan's Island and dipped our toes in the water. This was what Miss ShR had been waiting for all day, and it made my dragging her all over historic Charleston worth it, I think. My story has rather a more sad ending- apparently my poison ivy hadn't quite healed up, and being out in the 90F sunny day brought back my rash. I have a red face again.

Goings On

Tuesday night turned out to be monthly poker night here at the Ranch. Men from church, mostly Baptist pastors and a few ladies with babies, came over for fellowship. We ladies watched a movie with popcorn, while the guys played poker. The winning pot was a gift card for the winner to take his wife out to dinner. There's a missionary couple raising support in the area who are staying here for a few days, too.

Wednesday's job was washing windows. The sunroom, which is the dining room for retreats, has four full glass double doors and at least a dozen windows besides. I gave them a touch-up.

One of the items you can buy in Mr. Bunky's restaurant/meat counter/thrift/hardware store, which is on the way to Columbia. They also allow dogs and have two birds inside, and the birds were supposedly quite mean and prone to bite.

Wednesday nights Mr. H takes part in a chapel service on post for Army recruits in training. I went along to see what it was all about. It was a smaller group than normal, apparently. The chaplains' wife just had a baby and some thought there wouldn't be service because he was taking this week off. We sang a few praise songs, had some prayer, and watched a video. It was a good opportunity and I think will be a good exercise for me in starting ministry-minded conversations with strangers, which is definitely my weak point. I did not know until now(Thank you, wikipedia) that the Ft. Jackson is responsible for training 70% of the Army's female recruits. Ft. Jackson is also a lot smaller than the other bases I've visited, namely Offut AFB and Ft. Bragg.

Thursday morning we went to the food bank. The food bank is where the Hs get a lot of their food for the retreats. Businesses donate old or damaged goods to the food bank, and the food bank distributes it to charitable organizations. Everything is divided into categories like produce, canned goods, drinks, etc, and there's a small per-pound fee. Since the donations change week by week one never knows what decent food will be there, and since they don't like you opening the boxes sometimes you don't even know what you're taking home! Last week we got a whole box of hostess twinkies. This week I managed to grab a mango and some juice, and we got pasta and two whole boxes of breakfast bars, and a bag of shampoo, among other things. When we get home we open up all the boxes to discover what we got(that's fun) and Mrs. H sorts out what we can keep and what to give away. The H's give foodstuffs to several families in need as well as the church food pantry.

Mrs. H at the food bank.

Tomorrow we'll be cleaning the Ranch house for the group coming on Sunday(we're expecting more than thirty sailors for dinner) and then Saturday is our day-trip to Charleston!

Marching Onward

I got up yesterday morning still exhausted and looking terribly haggard(I feel so sorry for the Hs)  and then discovered I have a rash. It's a good thing I'm not a hypochondriac, because if so I would really be freaking out right now. As it is, I'm just disgusted. For example, searching under fever, rash and headache illnesses, I found this: "Acute stress reaction: symptoms include shortness of breath, anxiety, nervousness, sense of doom and more." See, at least I don't have that.

Today, I'm still just super low on energy. The Hs graciously gave me light duties; I made twenty of these little zucchini loaves to freeze today.