Playing off the last chapter of her previous book, The Courage to Grow Old, well-beloved author Barbara Crafton looks at the world around us: what do we know about creation? What gift is there for us in the "also life" of stars and other organic and non-organic forms of existence? How might that shape the way we see our existence and the God who breathed that life into us? And what might life after death be like?
Bestselling author Jamie Kelly is back with an all-new, all-funny diary! But she has no idea that anybody is reading it. So please, please, please don't tell her.School's out for the summer, and that means no more Meat Loaf Thursdays, Sunday homework-cramming, or teachers (way way unsuccessfully) trying to act cool. It also means that certain Mackerel Middle Schoolers have a lot of time on their hands . . . and seriously empty pockets. Isabella is going to change all that. And Jamie and Angeline are going to help --- whether they like it or not. It's the best kind of teamwork: When a whole bunch of people work together to do something wrong, instead of doing it wrong one at a time.
When the author of this book has been absorbed in the elegant narratives of Washington Irving, reading and musing over Astoria and Bonneville, in the cozy quiet of a New York study, no prescient motion of the mind ever gave prophetic indication of that personal acquaintance which has since been formed with the scenes, and even with some of the characters which figure in the works just referred to. Yet so have events shaped themselves that to me Astoria is familiar ground; Forts Vancouver and Walla-Walla pictured forever in my memory; while such journeys as I have been enabled to make into the country east of the last named fort, have given me a fair insight into the characteristic features of its mountains and its plains. To-day, a railroad traverses the level stretch between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains, along which, thirty years ago, the fur-traders had worn a trail by their annual excursions with men, pack-horses, and sometimes wagons, destined to the Rocky Mountains. Then, they had to guard against the attacks of the Savages; and in this respect civilization is behind the railroad, for now, as then, it is not safe to travel without a sufficient escort. To-day, also, we have new Territories called by several names cut out of the identical hunting-grounds of the fur-traders of thirty years ago; and steamboats plying the rivers where the mountain-men came to set their traps for beaver; or cities growing up like mushrooms from a soil made quick by gold, where the hardy mountain-hunter pursued the buffalo herds in search of his winter's supply of food. The wonderful romance which once gave enchantment to stories of hardship and of daring deeds, suffered and done in these then distant wilds, is fast being dissipated by the rapid settlement of the new Territories, and by the familiarity of the public mind with tales of stirring adventure encountered in the search for glittering ores. It was, then, not without an emotion of pleased surprise that I first encountered in the fertile plains of Western Oregon the subject of this biography, a man fifty-eight years of age, of fine appearance and buoyant temper, full of anecdote, and with a memory well stored with personal recollections of all the men of note who have formerly visited the old Oregon Territory, when it comprised the whole country west of the Rocky Mountains lying north of California and south of the forty-ninth parallel. This man is Joseph L. Meek, to whose stories of mountain-life I have listened for days together; and who, after having figured conspicuously, and not without considerable fame, in the early history of Oregon, still prides himself most of all on having been a "mountain-man."
Often the difficulties in life, such as the death of a loved one or a heartbroken relationship, overwhelm us. Therefore, we do not live the productive life God has ordained that we live in fulfilling God's plans for us---plans God has made available to everyone due to His LOVE for everyone. In God's Plans for Our Lives...As Seen in Benny Link's Life Also, Randy Yost writes about the true story of Benny Link's and others' devastation and shows how they have overcome their hardship and are still living the God-ordained productive life. You will be encouraged by these true-life stories, and you will learn what you need to do to fulfill God's two plans for your life---two plans Randy wholeheartedly believes God has planned for EVERYONE due to His LOVE for EVERYONE.
