Well, the Texas book tour is done, the retreat over and the research completed. I had such a great time and God blessed me in so many ways. One of the things I really enjoyed was time to get a feel for the history of Texas. I learned some pretty fascinating tidbits related to Texas. Texas is the only state …

I love that Jesus encouraged us to go to lonely places and get quiet with our Heavenly Father. The last couple of weeks have been intense with bookstores, speaking events and signing and meeting all sorts of new folks. It was its own kind of blessing, but so too is being called apart to get quiet with God. Although – …

Oh we are having great fun in Texas. We have been speaking at numerous libraries and enjoying ourselves enormously. I think I’ve driven about 9 million miles, but it hasn’t been too difficult and God has really been watching over us. Thanks for the prayers. Cathy and I have known each other long enough to be able to chatter away …

Well, we’re off and running on our Texas Booktour. Cathy Hake and I met up with Noelle Buss, our fearless publicity gal from Bethany House and hit the road this morning. Because of bad weather, our first stop cancelled, so we had to suffer by stopping in Spring, TX and enjoy their historic district. We walked around for a while …

Yes, I’m going on a book tour and my dear friend Cathy Marie Hake is coming with me. She says she does this because someone has to keep me in line. I’ve done book tours in the past with our own Judy Miller and Kim Sawyer, as well. We always have great fun – and they always have to keep …

Sunday we had a guest pastor since our regular pastor is in Israel learning all sorts of neat things to teach us. Anyway, the pastor spoke on Romans 15:13 and the hope we have in God. He said that the translation for that word HOPE could be correctly explained as “confident expectation”. I was so blessed by that. We can …

It’s great to be back. Thanks to Tammy and the others who helped me out and filled in while I was sick. I’m happy to say I’m pretty much back to normal. We had a lovely ice fog the other day and snapped a few photos I thought you might enjoy. I was hoping to find the spider frozen in …

We went to Kansas a couple of weeks back so I could work with Judy Miller on our next book. We also got to be with the grandkids and kids to celebrate Christmas. I grew up in Topeka, Kansas and lived there most of my first 40 some years. I enjoyed a couple of years in the Dallas area and …

Christmas is a time of year when I really miss black walnuts. Having grown up in Kansas, we were blessed to have a huge black walnut tree in my grandmother’s front yard. Later we bought her house and it became our tree.From the time I was able to walk, I learned about the walnut stomp. If it happened to be …

Remember that old hymn? Written in the 1870’s by Frances “Fanny” Crosby – that awesome woman who wrote over 8,000 hymns and poems to declare her faith in Jesus. She was blind from infancy, not born that way, but blinded due to a botched medical procedure for an inflammation in her eyes. Her father died when she was a year …