Greetings from Austin St. via Starbucks. We still do not have internet, AT&T is still working on it!!)

Happy Monday! I hope this day finds all of you well. I taught school for the first time in a month today. My student teacher has been teaching for the last several weeks. It felt really good to teach again. And today I addressed most of the graduation announcements for Travis. The month of May is simply a month of check-off lists. One more thing on the to-do list has been done. Now we go to final concerts and awards assemblies and the big event in June. And the butterfly count is 18!!! And, I got a B on my paper and a B in the course. Praise God!!

Mark 4: 32, “Jesus said, A mustard seed grows up…and puts forth large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

I was blessed to grow up with my Mamo living close by. She was the most amazing woman. She made beautiful clothes. She made my school clothes throughout my school career and even made my wedding dress. Besides being a career seamstress, she was a gardener. She was so amazing that one time the small branches she used to stake out her tomato plants even budded out. That blew us all away. Anyway, one of my memories is of her garden. She could grow the most beautiful garden with the best vegetables and prettiest flowers ever. But mostly I remember her vegetable gardens. When I was little I would go with her to the back yard and help her plant the black-eyed peas, onions, radishes, green beans, tomato plants and mustard.

As a child, I remember that mustard was yellow and in the fridge, but Mamo planted mustard seed and grew the plant itself. It was the tiniest seed ever and it really did grow to make the largest bush in the garden. As it grew Mamo and I would go out to the garden and pinch off the young leaves and eat the mustard leaves right out of the garden. I thought that was totally cool. But that was not all my Mamo grew.

I can see Mamo now planting the rows in her garden, watering them, weeding and thinning out the plants so that there would be plenty of room for them to grow. And then I watched her go inside the house, complete in the knowledge that she had completed her task and that God would do the rest. Her mustard seed faith caused her garden to flourish every year. And I knew that before long the family lunch would be ready and the vegetables would be cooked to perfection and better than anything that we could ever buy at the store and that no matter how many were present for lunch; there would always be enough and leftovers to spare.

How big is our faith? God tells us in His Word that faith is one of His gifts to us and that it needs not be any bigger than that grain of mustard for God to act on our behalf and cause our faith to flourish to the size of the largest plant in the garden. So sometimes if our faith seems really small remember that God tells us that our faith can be small because His faithfulness to us is great. Trust in the One who gave us the gift and let Him grow His faith in each of us.

Take joy in the journey. Love you, Bruce, Gaylene, Geni and Travis.

Gcapplenotes@aol.com

I am not moved by by what I see. I am not moved by what I feel. I am moved only by what I believe and I believe God.