The Lord Builds the House!

Heidi-Mari and I made another scrapbook double page!  

Since December, Heidi-Mari takes part in the Friday Sketchers Challenge and we are making cards on our Monday nights together.  We enjoy the card making so much.  In contrast to making a scrapbook double page that normally took us 4-6 weeks to complete, we can finish a card every Monday night! It is also nice to have hand made cards ready for birthdays, special occasions and saying thank you.

But I’ve missed making scrapbook pages, so when it was certain Christo is moving the Health shop to bigger premises, we started to plan a new double page of the family for his office.  

Eighteen months ago we’ve made a double page of the then, seven children.  

Daniel was only 2 months old at that stage.  

That double page was outdated with Michael’s arrival and Christo asked us several times when we were going to make him a new double page. The move was the ideal opportunity!

Since it was made as a surprise and we couldn’t ask Christo to help with the print of the photo’s (it was the first time I printed photo’s from my MAC Book Pro) we had a few challenges!  But with LOTS of prayer we’ve managed. 

The past three weeks Christo and the two big boys, worked late almost every evening, doing the shop fitting of the new shop themselves.  We’ve missed them a lot, especially the little ones, since they didn’t understand where daddy or their older brothers were. 

But it gave Heidi-Mari and me the change to work on the double page, without Christo expecting anything.

I love Ps 127 and decided to give this double page a title from this beautiful psalm on the family.  

The title: The Lord builds the House.

“Unless the Lord builds the house,

They labor in vain who build it;

Unless the Lord guard the city,

The watchman stays awake in vain.

It is in vain for you to rise up early,

To sit up late,

To eat the bread of sorrows;

For so He gives His beloved sleep.

Behold children are a heritage from

the Lord.”

In our family this verse is the testimony of our lives!  It isn’t Christo and I who are providing for our children, it is the Lord!  We’ve experienced with the addition of every child how the Lord was enlarging our territory, giving us more influence and blessed us more financially!  

As photo’s on the double page, we’ve used the first picture taken of our eight children, the day after Michael’s birth; 

Our first family photo taken on my birthday and 

Eight single photo’s of each child.  When I chose each child’s photo, I tried to capture each child’s personality in the expression on their face. 

We didn’t need to buy anything for this double page!  All the pages we’ve used was beautiful pages we’ve bought over a period of time.  We enjoyed making it so much and it felt like old times again!

On Friday night, the shop fitting was finished and Christo and the boys where home for dinner.  How I’ve missed the dinner table this last few weeks!  It is so easy to take it for granted.  The dinner table is truly a place far more than just feeding our physical bodies.  It is a place to feed us emotionally and spiritually too.  Although I’ve still prepared dinner as usual  (I took the men’s supper to the shop every evening) and could still feed the children without dad, it wasn’t possible for me to feed them emotionally and spiritually, as we are used to. The Man of the house and their daddy, was not at the dinner table. 

Just before dinner on Friday night, when Christo sat with the boys on his lap, Heidi-Mari gave him the double page.  

Over this weekend they are moving the shop and 

On Monday morning they will open the new shop’s doors!  Then the new double page will hang in Christo’s office.

He likes it, and it will fit perfectly in his new office, serving as a reminder of how much we love him, how proud we are that he is our daddy and my husband and how thankful we are for the hours he works very hard to look after us!