Remembering Lost & Found

On April 12th, 4 years ago, we lost our baby due to an early miscarriage. After a few more years, we pretty much gave up. We felt like the time had passed for having any more kids.

Then the miracle--last April learning that Jennifer was pregnant again! Mercy had prayed almost every night for us to have a baby. But our worries were always just around the corner... would this one miscarry?

On January 1 this year, God gave us a healthy baby girl, whom we named Patience Abigail Huseland. I am lately amazed at how normal it feels to have a baby in the house again. When I see her, I tear up, thinking of how "remote" a chance there was for her to even exist. Yet in God's plan there is nothing remote or impossible, if He wills it. I want to stay grateful the rest of my life. God gave me 3 daughters with a wonderful wife. We lost a 4th little one but have found a fifth. What joy after sorrow.

Thank you, Father, for all the kindnesses we don't deserve. It's all grace.

Journal for Saturday, July 28

Watching Queen Elizabeth II open the London Olympics late at night

(I should have been packing)

The torch was passed from old to young athletes

 Sir Paul McCartney singing "Hey Jude"

Saturday early morning as I got ready to drive to Logan Airport,

I couldn't resist taking a few more pictures of the Sparrow House

It's the Oldest Standing Structure in Plymouth

 Town Brooke Pond

Walking Path Alongside Town Brooke 

 I was blessed with a meeting with a muskrat gathering grass for its den!

 Somewhere over New England or New York

Lake Michigan shoreline 

Beautiful Rocky Mountains 

 Lake Coeur D'Alene looking south towards Plummer and where I grew up in the Idaho hills

And thus I finally returned home after a busy, fulfilling week tracing my roots by foot, car, and bus. It's taken me 6 months to get this posted. Sheesh. It's almost the end of December!

Here's my last picture, from my day in Connecticut, in memory of the Newtown children.

This steel beam from the WTC sits outside a Middletown, CT rural fire station

My roots are Yankee roots, and I grieve for the children and teachers who tragically lost their lives this month. Only in heaven can we find an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade... or be taken from us ruthlessly by a violent madman. May our children discover this early, that in Christ alone my hope is found. May we as adults return to the God who made us, revealed in the Holy Bible. God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. We are estranged from Him because of our radically self-oriented nature. The gospel is God's message offering us reconciliation with this God who loved us enough to send His only Son to die on our behalf, which He did willingly to rescue us from an eternal lifetime of anguish, regret, and condemnation. We are called to repent from our old way of life and believe in the gospel to be saved and restored to a new life in Him by His Holy Spirit and expressed in belonging to a local body of believers.

May Christians humble themselves for their hypocrisy and lukewarmness, and awaken to a lively passion to live totally for God. May true and sincere revival come again. May unbelievers see in us hope, truth, and love, and desire a relationship with God as their Father with Christ as their Redeemer and Friend.

May God bless you all in 2013, with a renewed focus on reality and your life purpose!

Journal for Friday Afternoon, July 27

 Plimoth Plantation 1627 Reenactment Village

 Pilgrim Meetinghouse

Church Services Downstairs 

Looking Down the First Street

Going Upstairs

 Defense on Second Story

The 1627 Village 

Period Furniture 

The Hopkins house

simulating the first kind of home my ancestor Stephen Hopkins and his family lived in here 

The Hopkins' back yard, all vegetable garden 

Mint (and lots of happy insects) 

All the best dishes of the Hopkinses

(the wooden trenchers are missing) 

Some Pilgrim men taking a rest in the middle of the day. On the left is "Deacon Samuel Fuller".

 One of my wistful scenes

 The path from the bottom of the village up towards the meetinghouse

 My fellow Doane cousin Rob with "Goodwife Hicks".

 Myself next to the Ol' Homestead

 Another reenactor

 Leaving Plimoth Plantation

""Friend, if ever we make a plantation, God works a miracle, especially considering how 

scant we shall be of victuals, and most of all ununited amongst ourselves and devoid of good 

tutors and regiment…"  --Robert Cushman

The Eel River near the Plantation 

 Walkway to the Wampanoags

 Wampanoag Village

Wampanoag Tribal Member Burning a Dugout Canoe 

Afternoon Events of the Doane Family Association

Derek Done of England and Jim Doan of Florida 

Dick Doane of Texas and James Doane of Massachusetts

Journal for Friday morning, July 27

Plymouth Rock "Shrine"

Plymouth Rock with my student's stapler nearby

(I took it on my travels as a joke, and sent pictures of it

to her as a travelogue of its adventures)

Mayflower II at harbor

Top deck of Mayflower II

Captain Christopher Jones' cabin

The Geneva Bible on board

The navigational chart they used back then (reset each day after noting in Capt's log)

'Tween decks (Middle level) where the Pilgrims stayed on their journey

The massive beams required to support the masts and spars above ship

A privacy area built on the 'tween decks in order to accommodate a Pilgrim family's sleeping quarters 

and their few possessions