HOPEful girl

  Jesus replied, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.  A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself.’ -Matthew 22:37-39 Have you ever been through a maze?  Some years ago, I remember going through a corn maze with my older two boys at the pumpkin patch by my under grad college, in California.  There are not very many pumpkin patches here in Hawaii unfortunately.  I had to really seek one out this year.  We do have a pineapple maze at the Dole pineapple Plantation that we all went through as a family one time.  For both mazes,  I recall walking through or running even at times just trying to keep up with my boys going ahead of me in fear that I would lose them.  If I couldn’t see them, then sure enough, one wrong turn and we’d be lost.  Those times I felt I had lost them, I would just start shouting their names and they woul...

  Time travel is a popular theme throughout the science fiction genre, in both literary AND cinematic works.   As a matter of fact, the shows I’m currently watching all have to do with time travel in their plot.     Thanks to Netflix, I finally finished watching Marvel's Agents of Shield series after the boys   lost interest 2 years and 2 seasons ago.   There’s the Loki series on Disney plus who’s fighting with this entity that controls the order of time.   My family and I just watched ‘the tomorrow war’ about traveling in time to stop a war in the future.   And of course there’s my coveted Outlander series,   books I’ve only been reading for the past ten years but I’m finally on the last book, a story where a woman gets sent to the past unwillingly through these magical stones where she finds love and all kinds of adventure.   Doesn't that sound romantic and fabulou s.   Anyway,  why are we so fascinated with time travel? I th...

  I know. I know. I said I was going to stop blogging and concentrate on my book.  Well this past month, I really didn’t get to my book as much as I intended.  I have been reading a few articles on the subject of writing a book (there I go on that slippery Pinterest slope again) and from that, I formulated a style in which I wish to write it in.  Baby steps right?  So I’m closing out my study of the book of James and I just couldn’t pass this opportunity to share with you what I learned.   Of course, there is nothing like getting into the Bible yourself, just face to face with the Word.  I highly encourage you to do so if you never have.  Don't be intimidated. The method I used from Jen Wilken's book, ‘Women of the Word’ was really helpful in getting started in this personal bible study.  So what did James teach me and help me in my walk with Christ this month?  So much! It is no coincidence that today’s Youversion verse of the day, came...

  Happy New Year!  So I was going to make this month’s blog a video blog , but I didn’t like the way I looked. I  kept having to start over again and I’m really a writer anyway so there then.   (I do have pics and a short video though) This got me thinking how most of us don’t like looking at ourselves in mirror or how we look on video.  I think some of us had to just get over this in this day and age  of zoom video and conference calls.  But seriously I’m not one to take selfies.  However, we really can not avoid looking in the mirror before leaving the house or just starting our day.  We need to.  I mean, how would we know how to fix ourselves or comb our hair or had something on our teeth.  And it wouldn’t make sense to just look in the mirror , see something wrong and not do anything about it.   James 1:23-25 says For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, w...