What an interesting day.
For me interesting means thought provoking with lots of things that engaged my mind. If my body gets involved, so much the better.
This one checked all the boxes. (That's one of contemporary culture's overused and hackneyed expressions. Rates right up there with "unpacking" as it's used WAY too often in Bible studies.)
I went to the coffee shop to continue my work re-keying the first book and got a cal from my older brother in Spokane. We talked for about 30 minutes about a two or three important topics. Stimulating conversation.
One of my readers for the second book sent me his comments on the first two chapters. VERY helpful! I'll wait to make any changes until I have all the comments from all three of them, but if the other two come in anything like this I'm blessed to have their help.
Getting closer.
After lunch I mucked out the goat barn and the chicken coop.
We got down to 19 last night. Because the sun is so low in the sky and the trees all around us are so tall we never get any sunshine on that whole area of our property, so even in the middle of the day the water in their buckets had ice on top and Sundae's mash was a frozen block.
I just kept telling myself how fulfilling it is to raise our own food.
The herd dynamic is still....dysfunctional. Poor Dolly is taking the most harassment and I feel sorry for her. She spends all day either hiding out in the kidding area the two adults can't get to, or on high alert for a big doe trying to butt her into Linn County.
I'm BAD at checking our online banking accounts, all of which are with Wells Fargo. I typically (maybe) look at them to make sure our SSI deposits were made, both of which come near the end of the month. If I see them I quickly go to something exciting that I can understand and genuinely care about, like the current lineup of cars on Barn Finds.
A page full of numbers is the digital equivalent of BLAH, BLAH, BLAH BLAH, BLAH....
I don't remember why I looked at our online checking account Saturday. But what I saw made me sick in the pit of my stomach.
On the 5th two automatic debits occurred which together were just over $250. That's a huge amount of money for us. They were both from insurance companies - two different companies with very similar names. Thing is, we only have car insurance and MoHo insurance, both of those policies are with Allstate, and they come out on or about the 26th.
I started scrolling back and saw these same two auto debits, $250 every month between the 3rd and the 5th. I only went back as far as September. I couldn't bring myself to go back further. I was gonna puke.
This afternoon I called Wells Fargo. Trayvon (sp?) was very gracious and helpful.
I wondered if WF is extra eager to be nice to customers given their recent string of screw-ups.
He traced this as far back as April, all the further he could go on his screen.
He's filled out a formal fraud notice and passed it on to their fraud department. He said several times, "They're very good at what they do" and said they'd go a LONG way back. They'd also identify this "merchant," stop any further debits, and....
we'd get our money back!
I should hear from the fraud dept. in the next 5 days and no later than 10 business days. I had to swear I was telling the truth, hadn't signed up for any insurance (at our age???) and would testify against them if asked. Yep!
I don't know whether I feel stupid, angry, excited about a windfall, embarrassed, or.....
I think "all of the above."
OK, this one counts:
It is our great blessing to support the work of Geoff and Shannon Husa and their 4 kids in Papua New Guinea under the ministry of Ethnos360 (formerly known as New Tribes). What they have done and continue to do with the Mibu is the very definition of missions - in contrast to what too often and too casually gets called missions and is NOT missions.
Don't get me started.
The Mibu live on a mountain in PNG accessible only by a helicopter. When the Husas hiked in there 16 years ago - a 3-day walk - they and their partners, the Tartaglias, were the first white people the Mibu had ever seen. That group had no written language and had never heard the name Jesus.
The Husas work there new with another family, but they'll pull out in the next 18-24 months, going back only for occasional brief follow-up visits to offer any assistance they can. They've worked themselves out of a job.
At the beginning Geoff and Shannon built a house just like the Mibu live in, learned their language, created an alphabet for it, then taught the Mibu to read and write. During that time they also shared the gospel with them.
Now roughly 80% of the Mibu are believers.
Now the Mibu have their own church with their own leaders. All Geoff does is offer guidance, leadership training, and mostly work on translating the Bible into their language.
Now the Mibu are sending a small group of men over the mountain to tell the next tribe about Jesus.
Now the Mibu practice church discipline, teach their children about Jesus, and take care of each other.
Now the Mibu grieve together, including around the death of a 3-month old child of one of their members.
This picture makes me SO sad.
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