A brother in Christ gave me the website for Charity Ministries. There are a lot of free sermons but I am especially interested in The Godly Home. It is about 20 hours of sermons on how to build a godly home. It covers all aspect of how to train and bring up a child, how to build a home strictly according to Scriptures and how to keep your children’s hearts, etc…. I highly recommend you to take time and listen to them.

The Maxwell Family held a conference at Lighthouse Gospel Church in Port Burwell along Lake Erie during the weekend. It is a 3-hour drive for us and we were managed to stay at a B&B in town. Believe it or not, this is my first time driving a trip that long. Before that was 2-hour drive to Marineland.
Port Burwell has a windfarm and a beautiful beach. Although it is cool in the fall, we still headed out to the beach and let the kids play sand.
About 400-500 people showed up at the conference. Friday night was concert by the Maxwell family. They have 8 children aging from 12-31 (only 7 were there because the eldest is married). They all play at least 2 different kind of instruments. Wow. Steve talked about vision for the family after the concert.
Saturday was full of individual session for dads, mums and teenagers. What a blessing. I learned that everything the happens in the house is the father’s responsibility. I have to admit that I focus on my kids’ physicall need more than their spiritual need. I pray to God that He will teach me and guide me to be a better leader for my home. I especially like one of the session “Keeping our children’s heart”. Tiffany is almost 8 now and I feel that if I don’t do something, I will lose her heart to the world. So I am going to read this book and work on this. It is the same idea as Michael Perl’s Jumping Ship articles.
In the conference, we met some new families and saw some families with 8 or 10 children. All of a sudden having 5 kids do not seem that many. My father-in-law and my mother always speak against us having more kids. But we believe that we should let God to decide this, if we call him Lord. If God gives us a child, we believe He will also give us the energy and resource to train and feed him/her. The Maxwell family cleary demonstrates that the whole family can be part of a ministry altogether. They show that a large familly can be debt free, run a home-based business, helping other families that struggle while spreading the Gospel at the same time.
I have been troubled by working in the corporate world for some time. Everyday I cannot have breakfast and lunch with my kids. I drive to work, stare the computer for 4 hours, take a lunch break and then another 4 hours before going home. I thank God for giving me this job to support my family, however, I think having a home-based business where parent and child working together is the best model. How else can I better understand their physical and spiritual need without spending time with them?
Since the kids are older and more capable in helping around the house, I think it is now a time to sit down and seriously consider quitting my job and start a family business. The only thing that draws mean back is the money. I have passion for farming/gardening/building things. I learn woodworking,wiring and plumbing by myself and from friends. I enjoy working with my hands. But my job does pay a decent salary with benefit. Unless I am fired, I don’t know if I have the courage to let go all of that and dive into a new world.
I will continue to pray about this because I don’t want to make hasty decision. I thank God that my wife supports me in all these areas. I am sure when our parents learn what I am going to do, they will jump and say I am crazy and being illogical.

We do everything we can to avoid our children from jumping ship to the world when they get older. We homeschool them, throw the TV out of the house, stay away from rock and roll popular music, bring them to conservative churches, read them the Bible, have family worship everyday, let them play with well-mannered children, provide them with old fashioned character building/christian value oriented story books…..the list goes on and on. The question is, do all these GUARANTEE our children will not depart from the truth when they grow up?

Have you ever wondered what will possibly make our children drifted away? Is it destiny? Or is it in God’s hands? If it’s in God’s hands, are we responsible for anything? Or are we too limited? However, didn’t God entrust us with these little souls? Didn’t God say in Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”?

The following articles from No Greater Joy ministry are a MUST read. They remind us about what we could have missed when we raise our children. I included these articles under our Resources:Child Training Articles section.

Jumping Ship
Jumping Ship (Part Two)
Jumping Ship (Part Three)
Jumping Ship (Part Four)
Jumped Ship (Part Five)

When you look at this picture, what do you see? Freedom? Getaway? Great Escape? Or feeling relax with a gentle breeze running through your hair? My little girl Viviana (will be 3 in two weeks) sadly said to me last night, “This horse is looking for her mommy and daddy! She’s afraid, she’s all by herself. She’s looking for her mommy and daddy!” We were not talking about any stories at that time. Viviana was just looking at the books by herself, and then she came to me with this picture and the comments.

I was surprised at first by her comments, then I realized me, my hubby and this family, means the whole world to her at this stage of her life. There are people who claim that separation anxiety is caused by the child doesn’t have enough sense of security or the child doesn’t get chances to see enough people in their daily life. It sounds like separation anxiety indicates something is wrong. I always wonder why it would be wrong for a 2 years old child not feeling comfortable when mommy and daddy is not around. Have you ever seen a baby beluga swimming around its mother all the time? Have you ever seen a colt resting happily under its mother or running with her? Have you ever seen a baby sloth just hanging on its mother so tightly no matter where its mother goes? Have you ever seen ducklings following their mother all the time? These are all beautiful pictures of the nature, of this God created world. If there’s anything wrong with separation anxiety, it would be the absence of the parents. And the child is simply expressing his/her needs of “looking for mommy and daddy”, since the child “is afraid, she is all by herself”. Viviana said it all.

When our first born child Tiffany was 2 years old, we tried to enroll her to children Sunday school. She cried when I left the room. That’s normal I believe. Then the teachers and other mothers told me, “it’s OK, she’s OK, just let her cry, it will only be a few minutes. And after a few more times, she will get used to it and enjoy the class.” These comments sound common. I doubted if this is the way to work but I did follow the advice. For a few weeks, the situation did not get better, and Tiffany cried through the whole section until she’s too exhausted and fell asleep. I was frustrated. And the teacher explained to me since my child did not attend day care, thus she’s lack of exposure. And since Odelia was only 1 year old at that time, I must be too busy to give Tiffany enough attention and thus this separation anxiety. I felt bad, as it did sound like I didn’t raise up my child properly like I didn’t put her in a daycare. Therefore, I was determined to find out whether it was a “must” thing for Tiffany to enjoy that Sunday school at that age. Did she really miss something not going to a daycare?

God led me to a few ministries, people and books. I came to realize there’s nothing wrong for a child to cling to his/her parents. It’s a beautiful picture. The child offers his whole heart to his parents to keep from day 1. You should see the response Shoshana (1) has when she sees me walk into her sight. She rejoices with her whole body and face. Parents are where the child’s heart is, therefore, the child has to cling to his parents. Biblically, parents and children have to stay together all the time, In Deuteronomy 6, we are instructed to “And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” So you see, to us, homeschooling is not an option. Some people put their children to babysitters when the baby is not even one yet. I understand that sometimes life is cruel and there’s no choice. But if there’s a choice, please don’t be deceived and believe that the babysitter will raise up your child better than you do. It might seem like the baby eats more when the babysitter feeds her, or the babysitter knows more about toilet training. But she’s not the mother.

Mothers, please put our children’s delicate hearts in a safe precious place, they love to see us with their hearts, they just love us, even when we don’t deserve their love sometimes. Don’t break their hearts. Let the whole beautiful hearts be ready for our children to take them back when their wings are ready to fly, when they know where the Lord wants their hearts to be.

Thanks to Sutton Fair! We had a lot of crafts done the past few weeks as the children were so motivated to show their creations at the Sutton Fair the coming weekend. Since we homeschool, we do need to find audience for our children, as they don’t have much chance to show their creativity in a public place, to receive comments from someone who doesn’t belong to the family, and to experience win & lost.

Here, let me present their entries this year :

Tiffany (7) created a cow from recycled products, a LEGO cow, a truck made of pasta, a drawing of dolphins, a heart shape pillow, an embroidery picture saying “Derek’s Hammer”, a photo of chickens and a photo of baby pepper plant, a decorated box. She’s also showing the peas and zucchini that she planted and a piece of creative writing.

Odelia (6) created a LEGO house, a marshmallow robot, a butterfly pillow, decorated a box with dried flowers, a photo of our pool, and a picture that she made with beans and grains called “My Country Home”.

Sonia (4) also made a LEGO house, and a drawing of a farm, a marshmallow cow, and will show the potatoes that she planted.

Viviana (3 at the end of the month) made a LEGO barn, and a marshmallow barn.

Our Bible curriculum is our Authorized King James Version Bible and our Chinese Union Bible. The KJV is our authority; the Chinese Union Bible is the best Chinese version we can get, but we do not believe it holds the whole truth. We only use the Bible as we want to focus on God’s words but not men’s ideas.

During our morning Bible time (Mon to Fri), I will read a whole chapter directly from the Bible to our children. If the chapter is too short, I will read more than one. I started from Genesis 1, and now we are at Proverbs 28. The children (except the baby) are expected to sit still like they do in the Sunday service, so this is like a training section for the Sunday Service too! We do not use children Bibles at Bible time as they are not God’s words. We want them to know God’s words in English only come from the KJV Bible. That’s the Words they should live by. Children Bibles can be used as leisure readings. Although they cannot fully understand what I read to them, they get a whole picture of who God is. They hear every word strictly from the Bible.

Besides Bible reading, I will ask them to follow me reading a passage sentence by sentence. The same Bible passage will be used for one to two weeks. Tiffany and Odelia can usually memorize that passage by that time. We encourage memorizing a whole Bible passage rather than just one Bible verse, as the meaning of a Bible verse can be easily altered when taken out from the context.

At the end of the morning Bible time, we will take turn to pray. Monday will start with Tiffany, our eldest. Tuesday will start with Odelia, our 2nd eldest, and so on.

Evening Bible time is lead by daddy. All our children will have a KJV Bible as their 6 year old birthday present. And they are expected to bring that with them during Bible time with daddy. Daddy will choose a book to study with them, a few verses per night. And the children take turns to read. Now we are studying the book of Romans. And we sing a hymn to end this section.

Every Saturday morning, we have our family Bible sharing time. Each of us will take turns standing in front of others to read a Bible passage and share the things we learned from that passage. We have big papers with Bible passages written on it. Even our two-year-old loves to choose a Bible passage and use a long wooden stick pointing at the words while we help her read them out. She will lead us a song after her “presentation”. =)

A few days ago, we visited a church with quite a lot of homeschool families. I talked with a few ladies whom already finished homeschooling as their children are already in college or apprenticeship programs. They said it’s quite a change since suddenly, they didn’t know what to do! One of them said it’s pretty sad to see her little ones don’t need her anymore. The other one said she thought she could get many things done after she finished homeschooling her children, like getting some painting done, volunteering, trying new things….but no, she did nothing in the first year. She guess that year was like a transitional period…getting used to the “new” life style.

Wow! For me, I don’t have room to picture or plan for all those years yet! My eldest is just doing Grade 1 and Grade 2 stuff, and I still haven’t finished deciding all the elementary materials that I would use, not to mention the high school curriculum! And I’m still trying to figure out how to schedule my 6 years old girl with some formal schooling! And I’m even still struggling with the crawling issue of my 1 year old baby who cannot crawl yet! I just know……I still have a looooong way to go!!!

I pray that I will not let these precious homeschooling years slip by too fast without enjoying and making the best out of them!

Every morning after breakfast, I will show my appreciation to my girls for being good helpers the day before. Each of them are supposed to get 10 rasins! On our rasins board, you can see 10 circles for each of the 4 colors representing Tiffany, Odelia, Sonia and Viviana. (Shoshana is too young for this now =P) However, when one fails to do a good job like the dishes are not clean enough, or forgetting to clear the table, then one circle will be moved up to the upper section, which means she will has one rasin less the next morning. O-Oh…!

This is our little treasure bucket filled with many little items from dollar store, like cute wooden clips, ribbons, cute erasers, pens, necklaces, cute hair bands, metal stickers..…etc. Yes, many girly stuff, since we have girls only so far =P There are also coupons of $.25 value. If one collects 4 of them, can get $1 to choose whatever she likes in the dollar store!

Whenever any one of our children can memorize 5 passages of Scriptures that I assigned or can dictate about 15 Chinese words, then she can get a chance to pick anything she likes in this bucket! We believe that it’s very important for anyone to memorize as many Scriptures as one can, since you never know when the Bible will be banned from any country! Also, as a Chinese, we do expect our children to read and write Chinese like us even that they were born in Canada. It’s so hard to motivate them to put effort to do these things as they do not understand the importance of such at this age. However, this little treasure bucket works well so far =) For Tiffany, she can already memorize passages like Psalm 1, 8, 23, 100, 121…..etc! And when she can memorize the passage in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, it counts triple =)

They have many good books that I think are pretty different from the mainstream “kids’ books” in the world today. Some of the books they carry are at least 50 years old (some over 100 years old), when the old-fashion, conservative and true Chrisitan values were upheld. For example, the KOF believes we should avoid books about “talking animals”, i.e. Winnie-the-Pooth, Disney stuff and “fairy-tales”, i.e. Peter-Pan, Cinderalla. Simply because they are not true. As Chrisitans we know that our God is the truth. Jesus said in John 14:6:“I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE.”

While I do not 100% agree on avoiding all “talking animal” books, but I think it is wise to keep it to minimal.

On a side note, we believe being more conservative than liberal is better for our children in the long-run. Many people think that being conservative equals boring and dull. Well, we think that there can be a lot of fun living according to the boundaries that are setup by God. If there are no rules, there will be chaos. Look at the Toronto public school systems. Violence, guns, drugs, sexual abuse and gangsters are spreading to every corner. Chrisitian schools are better but are not exempt. Now the government want to put more police patrol in the schools. Folks, it WILL NOT HELP. Look at the U.S. and you will know how effective these measures are.

The only way, in my opinion, is to bring the Lord and Bible back to school. The teenageers have no fear of the law and authortiy and that is the problem. When the Lord’s Prayer was taken away and praying was banned from school, the crime rate skyrocketed. If a person fears the Lord and know Him, he would respect the law and people around him. No matter how much money the government pump into the system, as long as God is taken out of the picture, it will fail.

Parents, try your best to homeschool your children and fellowship with like-minded families. Stay pure and ask God for wisdom in creating lots of good activites with your kids. Stay away from TV, Hollywood and sensual magazines. Spend time with your kids and spouse rather than in front of a TV. Don’t go fishing alone or with your buddies (once in a while is OK). Wherever you go somewhere, try to bring one of your children with you.

I don’t believe that teenagers have to be rebellious. I have read and seen teenagers that are pure, confident, smart and most important, have good relationship and trust in their parents. I do fear that I will fail in this area, that my kids will jump ship some days. There are so much to do on the farm that I am always exhausted and when things don’t get done, I become grumpy and then my wife suffers. When my wife suffers, my kids suffer. So this year I have learned to relax more. If something can’t be done, so be it. If something goes wrong, I pray first and ask God for help. And I thank God for my wonderful Kay, who keeps us in good health and always supports me on my country dream. I pray that my daughters will become a virtuous woman like my wife some day.

Anyway, go visit http://www.keepersofthefaith.com/