A Psalm of Life

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

   Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

   And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

   And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

   Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

   Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

   Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

   And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

   Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

   In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

   Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

   Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,— act in the living Present!

   Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

   We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

   Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

   With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

   Learn to labour and to wait.

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807–1882

Colouring Book ~ Walk with Me (The Life of William Branham)

   It is always so encouraging to find items to use with the children that support our Christian worldview.  We happened upon a colouring book recently that does just that,  Walk with Me, which details key events during Brother Branham's ministry.
This book would make an excellent go along to use with the Sunday School, or, homeschooling unit study on The 7th Church Age Messenger.
Walk with Me is a lovely activity/ colouring book with excellent illustrations that remind my daughter and I of the quality found in Dover colouring books.
The layout is clean and easy to use, with the book containing a total of 30 activity & colouring pages utilising a 2 page spread for each topic; a colour in page on the left side of the book and the corresponding message quote and and activity/puzzle on the right.

I couldn't find any other samples on line showing the inside of the book, so thought I'd post one here:

Click on picture to enlarge photo

Extra:
The book is printed by Believers International
Coordinated: George Smith
Illustrations & Editing:  Raul Lemus
(Also available in French, German, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish)

Seven Church Age Messengers ~ Unit Study

Over the last few years I have been trying to streamline the notebooking pages we have created to use as a unit study on The Seven Church Age Messengers, so that other families could use them too.
We originally created the Church Age Messengers unit study to compliment our history studies,  making sure we paused to use the the relevant church age and messenger unit that correlated to the era of history we were going through that year. ie:
Ancient History with  Paul the Apostle
Early Modern Times with John Wesley
Modern Times with William Branham  

End Time Message.Org has kindly offered to host the pdfs on their site.
Currently, only the following units are available for download, and use. 
Part A: Introduction to the Seven Church Age Messengers, and, Scripture Memorisation
Part B:  Paul
Part C: - Irenaeus  (coming in late October 2017)
Part D: - St. Martin  (currently in progress)
Part E: -
Part F: -
Part G: John Wesley
Part H: William Branham  

God willing, I'm really hoping to also get Units, C, D, and E finished before the end of this year too.
2017 update:  That never happened, we are still quietly pecking away at assembling these units for sharing; and, will have the Irenaeus Unit Study pages ready to share in late October 2017.

Many of the images that we would use in our own personal family study can not be included in the notebooking pages, as the images are copyright, or the timeline figure C/Ds we used would need to be purchased by each family separately.  That one portion of each unit takes the longest to work on, trying to find public domain images that we can include in each unit for others to use. 

We included Azusa Street revival timeline figure on our During Brother Branham's Lifetime" page; even though the revival was 3 years (approx) before Brother Branham was born, it was at the beginning of the Laodicean Age.

Completed Mapping Pages

One of the books we think has been informative, and very helpful, in our study of Brother Branham has been the Message Companion.  If you are able to procure a copy of it, do; we're sure you won't regret purchasing it.


One of the mapping pages inside the Message Companion



Part A Scripture Memorisation



  John Wesley Unit Study

Examples of Assembled, closed, Notecard & Lapfolds

Examples of Assembled, open, Notecard & Lapfold Mapping Pages

Example of Lapfold Page assembled

Students Lapfold Page Completed

Notebooking Page for Student to Complete as desired

Quotes and Copywork Pages

Doe Ye Nexte Thynge

From an old English parsonage down by the sea
There came in the twilight a message to me;
Its quaint Saxon legend, deeply engraven,
Hath, it seems to me, teaching from Heaven.
And on through the doors the quiet words ring
Like a low inspiration: “Doe ye nexte thynge.”

Many a questioning, many a fear,
Many a doubt, hath its quieting here.
Moment by moment, let down from Heaven,
Time, opportunity, and guidance are given.
Fear not tomorrows, child of the King,
Thrust them with Jesus, doe ye nexte thynge.

Do it immediately, do it with prayer;
Do it reliantly, casting all care;
Do it with reverence, tracing His hand
Who placed it before thee with earnest command.
Stayed on Omnipotence, safe ‘neath His wing,
Leave all results, doe ye nexte thynge

Looking for Jesus, ever serener,
Working or suffering, be thy demeanor;
In His dear presence, the rest of His calm,
The light of His countenance be thy psalm,
Strong in His faithfulness, praise and sing.
Then, as He beckons thee, doe ye nexte thynge.

Author unknown

Originally Sourced from Elisabeth Elliot

New to Homeschooling?

We've been educating our children at home for 11yrs and I often get asked by those new to homeschooling, or entertaining the thought of homeschooling, which sites/books I could recommend as they start their journey into educating at home.

Please note:  I’m neither condoning nor recommending all the content these sites ‘share’ – they are just links that may have items of interest for you and your family as you home educate.  There are so many sites for homeschoolers now, that it just a matter of finding one that caters to the things each mum is looking for.

  Adding this thought:   Children learn so much by osmosis which constantly has me beseeching God about the character I’m displaying, tone of voice I use, attitudes, etc … in short;  am I living daily before the children the life of a godly woman; not a perfect woman – no one is , but one who is endeavouring to portray the word of God we believe in, not just talking about it.    

  I’ve found that home education is, primarily, more about me and my relationship with Christ, after that it’s my relationship with my husband, then my children – and any academic achievements we may be making whilst educating at home are secondary.  For us the first lessons are always about character and relationships.  Academics follow that.

1:  This online magazine  maybe of help.

2:  Homeschooling for Beginners 

3:  About us, as mothers, while we teach.

Article 1

Article 2

 

4:  Other links that may be of interest, and don’t require payment to use their sites:

http://www.classical-homeschooling.org/celoop/1000.html

https://www.amblesideonline.org/New.shtml  

Audio Books   (click Search area and then browse through areas of interest for your children)

HS    Starfall    check content first – the site has developed hugely since we used it

5:  Some sites here are Payment Required:

HS     Book Depository (free post to most countries) this is a site I like to use to purchase homeschooling items – sorry,  some of the front page ads are yucky!

HS     Christian Book  another spot to purchase homeschool items (see side bar for categories) though often we’ll be able to source it at a better price through book depository.

HS     Rainbow Resource  (good site with lots of homeschool items.  It pays to work with overseas companies to ensure packages they send are broken down into smaller lots, so that the amounts listed on each parcels sending label do not exceed around $420 NZ – otherwise we get charged for importing tax (just as if we were a brick and mortar school or a business).  We weren’t aware of that the first time we purchased a big homeschooling package from overseas and we got stung with a hefty importing tax fee.

HS     Reading Eggs   Not 100% sure of the content here as I’ve never used this -  it came out after my children were already readers. However, other mum's who's opinions I appreciate do recommend it.

HS     Timberdoodle (the same comments as rainbow resource)

6: Other Sites

Applying for an Exemption to HS in NZ

Fractions - The Visual Way

Hands on Learning Extras

Homeschool For Free

Literature Unit Studies

7: A few books/links about homeschooling (mostly for earlier years) that I usually onshare to potential homeschoolers:

Season's of a Mother's Heart ~ Sally Clarkson 
For the Children’s Sake ~ Susan Macaulay   a gentle encouragement for earlier years
Things We Wished We’d Known ~ Diana Waring
Beyond Survival ~ Diana Waring      help filled for new home educators

Reaping the Harvest ~ Diana Waring   home educating at highschoolers
Laying Down the Rails ~ Simply Charlotte Mason  ~ Sonya Schafer

Homeschooling the Rebel ~ Deborah Wuehler  (article)

If I Could Do it All Over Again ~ Jessie Wise (audio download)

The Big WHAT NOW Book of Learning Styles ~ Carol Barnier  (linked to CBD -  for an inside visual)    This would be an excellent book for someone who is new/er to home educating , or is looking for ways to teach using their younger child’s learning strength.

Reading Aloud  (article)

I think one of the practical things that has helped me with our home educating journey was another home educator encouraging us to jot down our long term goals for our children.  The goals are not set in concrete and my husband & I prayerfully considered the general outline of those goals, and while a few have changed as we’ve gone alone most have remained the same.

These are the areas we created goals for:

 Bible and Message 

 Character
Emotionally  
Socially  

 English  (Language Arts)
Read
Write
Type

Math  
Basic accounting skills
Financially 

History

Science (& nature)
Computer skills

Music

Art 

                        
Handcrafts

Life Skills    

  © Mrs. D.R. Gilchrist 2015

Misunderstandings

As the sun makes ice melt,
kindness causes misunderstanding,
mistrust and hostility to evaporate.
Albert Schweitzer 1875 – 1965

If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding.
Zora Neale Hurston

You know, misunderstanding gets us in a lot of trouble. Many times that people say things that they repeat after somebody else, where they misunderstood them. That gets a person in trouble. I believe it would be good for us if we just, well, wait till we understood what we was talking about. Don't you think so? I know it would be for me, a very good for me to find out first and then say it. See? But we're always, seem to be, misunderstood.

Now, to misunderstand is just not to say, "Well, I didn't hear what he said," but to see something done and misunderstand what it's for, that's a--that's you're missing the boat all completely then.
Brother Branham

Proverbs 14:1

This is one of the scriptures I’ve been pondering on lately and I've listed some of the the questions I’ve been thinking about in relation to it.
PROVERBS 14:1
Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands.

• What characteristics does a wise woman have according to scripture?
• How does she ‘buildeth her house’?
• And, with what?
• What are the characteristic traits of a foolish woman, according to scripture?
• What actions (spoken, thoughts, outworking, things listened to & read) would a foolish woman portray, display or do to ‘pluck her house down’ ?
• Hands? What scriptural meaning does this have?
• How has God helped me to arrest times of foolish plucking in my life, before those times of plucking became a habit of ongoing destruction?

(Becoming physically separated from our family or spouse are not the only end results of foolish plucking. And, yes, we all have times in our lives where we have not been, or are not being, an edifying encourager in our home.)