Market Survey

We are pleased to announce that Genevan Foundation will be releasing a new recording in the early part of 2007!! This piano accompaniment CD is designed to accompany your singing in family worship.

Many families want to grow in their ability to praise the Lord through song, but for a myriad of reasons don't feel comfortable singing. If your children don't have much experience on the piano, you have no clue how to play one yourself and you don't feel comfortable singing without music in the background, have no fear. Rebecca gives the introduction on the piano, plays each verse with the style fitting to the text of the hymn, and gives the closing for 15-20 common and not-so-common hymns. Just pop in the disc and sing along with the piano accompaniment.

This is where you come in. We are trying to choose a name for the project and need your opinion. Please consider taking the poll to give your input. Also, any additional comments are appreciated with your impressions of the names.

Recording starts Monday, December 4th, 2006. We'll put up some pictures of the process. We would appreciate your prayers as we endeavor to bring about this project.

Click here to give your input.

Autumn Days

Traipsing over the hill towards home.

Over the last part of the autumn, we enjoyed a wonderful 12 day visit from our dear friends Jenny and Julie Keulen. We've only got a few pictures up from the myriad of special days, but a few are better than none. : )


Ben, Beth, Jenny and Aunt Bea.


Lydia and Thelma Lou.



While the girls were here, we put them to work painting the basement. Here Beth and Julie start the painting process.



Since their visit we painted the stairwell area . . . a certain beautiful color. Can you guess what it is? It goes with the green color of the basement and the yellow upstairs. Leave a comment with your suggestion. : )

Harvest Time

Last month we harvested our first crop of sweet potatoes--75 lbs. to be exact. Our largest tuber weighed in at 3 lb. 12.25 oz, but of course Mrs. Renaud's beat ours with her largest potato weighing in at 17 lbs! That must be a world record somewhere. : )



We have enjoyed several delectable dishes made from the potatoes. Of course, there are your traditional baked sweet potatoes with cinnamon and butter spread upon it and Sweet Potato Casserole with Walnuts and Pecans (no marshmallows for us, thank you!). We did discover a fun new recipe courtesy of the Littman family. It's aptly titled "Two Potato Soup" and boasts regular potatoes and sweet potatoes. Excellent recipe for a cold autumn day.




Two Potato Soup

3 large Sweet Potatoes
2 cups chopped celery
2 cloves garlic
1 cup chopped carrots
2 T cream
1 pinch cayenne
3 large regular Potatoes
2 medium onions
1/2 c. fresh parsley or 3 T dried parsley
1 t each of thyme and marjoram
Celtic salt to taste
1 T. Serven's Famous Season Salt (leave a comment if you need the recipe--many of you already have this recipe)
1 T. dried basil and oregano

Cube potatoes and set aside. Finely chop celery, carrots, and onions. Saute. Crush garlic. Add all ingredients together except cream. Add distilled water to pot until it covers the vegetables and spices. Bring to a boil, turn to medium heat. Cook 45 minutes till tender. Use a blender on a stick to partially puree soup. Add cream. Stir well and enjoy.

Pre-release: The Eden Strings Quartet

Just saw that The Eden Strings Quartet: A Bountiful Blessing which we talked about here has been released at a special pre-order price of $16.95. Get your copy today!!

P. S. We had a glorious Thanksgiving Day full of God's blessings. How good is our Father who lavishes His love upon us, that we may be called children of God. Today we are witnessing the vows of Daniel Blanchard and Christa McDonald--we hope to take pictures of this blessed event and also catch up on with some additional longer blog posts.

Until then . . . May the Lord's mercy continue upon us,

Rebecca

The Pilgrim Fathers

The Thanksgiving table with all gathered round is a beautiful reminder of the goodly heritage with which the Lord has blessed us. Dad always favors us with poignant stories from the saints of the past, but in particular around this time of the year, he tells us tales of the Pilgrim Fathers. Enjoy this article and share with your family and friends over the Thanksgiving table.

"During the cool weeks of November that lead up to Thanksgiving Day there is great delight in many American homes when the exciting stories of the Pilgrims are read. Who were these people and what motivated them to endure such grievous hardships?" Read More >>

You might also enjoy last Thanksgiving's article on Squanto: A Special Instrument of God.

Film Shoot for Franklin Springs

Peter Serven--reporting from the field.

Keep a watch on www.franklinsprings.com for the release of this new film about Eden Strings!!


Setting up for the shoot.


Eden Strings, other wise known as the Miller sisters. TJ Draper helps in the backround.


Video Village: ably manned by Ken Carpenter and Mark Stubblefield.


Nathan Bollinger and the other camera guys.

Our Big Boy

Joel recently celebrated a birthday. He is quite the little man; hardly our "baby" anymore. How strange that he is growing older! We are so grateful to the Lord for putting him in our family.

Some of the middle kids had made a treasure hunt for Joel to discover his birthday present. The clues, of which I had meant to save and share with you all, were quite clever bits of poetry. Unfortunately, the slips of paper got mixed up with some of the wrappings and were inadvertently thrown away.


A clue in "The Cave" (a.k.a. Dad's study).


A clue in the kitchen cabinet.


Is this present a clue?


A new bike!!


Dad helping Joel ride the bike.

After opening presents with our family, we journeyed down to the city to have dinner with the Zes and Thomas families. We also saw Facing the Giants at the theatre--an excellent movie made by Christian Independent Film-makers. You should definitely support this film made by the Kendrick Brothers and their church in Georgia.


We were almost the only people in the theatre.


Rebekah Zes sets up the "birthday cake".


Blow them all out!!



Mr. and Mrs. Thomas and their fun family were traveling through Missouri from Massachusetts. We were delighted to get to know them better over the evening.


Chatting.



We discovered a rare common interest we share with the Thomases--sacred harp! It's basically southern white gospel from the 1700-1800's. Let's just say you don't run into fellow Sacred Harp enthusiasts everyday. : ) Here they are giving us an example of a song they learned.


Of course, we could not close the evening with out singing some Psalms . . .


. . . and Hymns.


The end of a perfect day--playing Lincoln Logs in the Zes's family room.

What a wonderful way to celebrate the life of little Joel. May the Lord bless him and grow him to be a mighty man of God.

Announcing the NEW Genevan Foundation Website!

Genevan Foundation for Cultural Renewal

Over the past several months, you may have noticed a significant decline in blog posts. One of the primary reasons was the effort we have been putting into redeveloping our Genevan Foundation for Cultural Renewal website.

In addition to getting a new "look", Genevan Foundation now carries the Psalter The Book of Psalms for Singing in addition to our two CDs, O Sing a New Psalm and Songs of the Remnant.

Without Dan and Laura Johnson and their sweet family, this new website would never have become reality. Laura gave countless hours of advice, expertise, and coaching. From errant meta tags to Illustrator nightmares, from cross browser inconsistencies to template design issues, Laura patiently instructed me and helped bring this project to completion. The Johnsons graciously opened their home as I came down many times over the last several months, welcoming me to spend the night, feeding me and my miscellaneous siblings that would tag along, and even letting me hold their precious baby boy. Thanks so very, very much. : )


Webmistresses extraordinaire: Rebecca and Laura

Special thanks goes to Jim Bob Howard who was so kind to look at our HTML and decipher some emergency cross platform problems the site was having. Mr. Howard, it did end up being the specified width that made all those weird columns! Who would have guessed?!

Also a thank you to Tami Hall who kindly lent her white box, camera, lights and computer services so we could take the product photographs. We love you Mrs. Hall. : )

Many thanks to all of you whose patience was tried as you have visited www.genevanfoundation.com over the past several weeks and encountered bizarre and strange things happening. The site is now up and running well. Hooray! God's goodness is evident--even to novice website designers.

Uniting Church and Home Conference

What a joy it was a few weeks ago to attend a conference in our very own town that we didn't have to drive a day away! Definitely one of the benefits of living in the middle of America. : )


We were honored to be able to help the Zes girls with registration--what fun to be a "face" for Vision Forum. It was quite a joy filled experience . . . I'm not sure exactly how to describe it.


Eating a sack dinner between registrations.


More registrations.


Beth and Jamie Billings.


Nolan Manteufel and Phillip Bradrick.


Peter worked with the Erbers at Resounding Voice.


We were so glad to get to know the Thomas family a little better! Here, Mom and Mrs. Thomas chat.


The dear Pine family from Tennessee--Victoria is one of my pen-pals. : )


Chad Roach, "personal assistancing".


The Evans from Samaritan Ministries came down from IL. Here they are talking with David Fry.


The making of an ENN video: the Meyers and Voddie Bacham.


Mom and Dad talking with our neighbors the Koenigs.


We were honored to host several people at our home during the conference. Here Phillip Bradrick and Nolan Manteufel join some of our guys in a midnight snack and discussion.


Early morning breakfast with the Erbers and Nolan.


Mom talking with Gail Smith.


Serven Kids talking with Mr. Erber.


Nathan always enjoys speaking with Arnold Pent. Mr. Pent, winsome and humble, is a true delight in the Lord.