Anna M. Aquino

  For my American readers this week marks Thanksgiving; for my Canadian ones sorry I know it was in October and for the other ones around the world humor me for a moment.   I’m an American girl (grin).   In the US, Thanksgiving kicks off a month of holiday fun and parties that leads into CHRISTmas (oh yes, I said it, grin) into the New Year.   This means a month of twinkling lights, Church specials, indulging a tad too much, and a load of gatherings that most likely will at least make you want to smack a few people once or twice (I always say family can bring out the best and worst in people).   I will only be writing one blog this week.   Enjoy your Thanksgiving.   However,   I must add a couple disclaimers here before I proceed in this blog: 1)   No we don’t celebrate Santa Clause in my house (ie the picture) it’s a personal choice and I really don’t need a dozen emails disagreeing with this picture that was very fitting to this topic...

I hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving weekend. We were a tad on the rough side at our house. I hardly ever get sick. I mean when I was a kid I got sick at every little thing, but when I was in college someone gave me a prophetic word that God was protecting me in the area of my health and from then on maybe I’ve gotten a cold a year, minus the health issues I had after my youngest was born. However the flu from HELL came through my house this last week like a tornado. Dan got it first, and then I did. I am praying the kids don’t get it. After a week of this junk, I’m much better though I probably need a few more naps. We keep standing on 1Peter 2:24 and Romans 8:11. My ‘Night before Thanksgiving’ consisted of me: hacking most of the night trying not to wake up the kids, trying to pray at 4 am when I couldn’t sleep, and boiling hot tea and settling down to drink it only to accidently dump it on my chest and burn myself in the early hours of the morning. While my family had vis...

Yesterday while in prayer I felt the Lord impress upon me to do a family activity. I thought I’d share the experience in light of Thanksgiving being Thursday. I cut five stripes of construction paper for each person and we all had to write on it five things we were thankful for and then share it with the family. As we went around the circle and shared the things we were thankful for, I took each strip of paper and added another link to a paper chain. Each thing we shared created awesome dialogue in the family of things we were grateful for, and our chain continued to grow. What I had felt the Lord saying to me is that this was a reminder that every time we are thankful about something it extends our reach out from just ourselves and into the world. When we start listing the things we are thankful for we stop focusing on the things that are frustrating us, and we can begin to focus outside of our own little bubbles. Jeremiah 30:19 (NIV) From them will come songs of thanksgiving ...