Pearls From Merle

Greetings From Snow Country!!

A drive-by of the frozen-over Lake Superior yielded us a delightful surprise this week!  Perched high in the branches of a tree were TWO HUGH bald eagles, side-by-side, their feathers puffed-up to keep warm.  After we gawked and whooped like we'd never seen real ones before -- well, we  hadn't except in aviaries -- we hung our heads in disappointment for having left the camera behind.  A Kodak moment, missed!!!!!!!!  (The royal pair loomed very large up there, and a friend here told us, "You know what they were doing, don't you?  'Looking for roadkill.") 

But...as somewhat of a consolation prize, we went to Houghton where....Michigan Tech University just had their Winter Carnival.  The students had engineered a few impressive snow and ice sculptures, all of them themed -- "An Icy Place Gets a Blast from Space."  Some of the displays took a full month to build. Here's three pictures of one. (Even men in black go white in the cold of Yooper Country!!!!!!)

The snow up here is like God's tender mercies -- new every morning!!  Thus far we've recorded 233 inches and we're still counting. January has been unusually frigid but other than being frozen in our house one day because of an iced-up door, we are not kept from our 'appointed rounds' because of it.  We see a certain beauty in the wintery wonderland.  The shoveling gets old, however. 

 Here's an update of the winter of 2008/2009:

 December 2008

  January 2009

 February 2009

Our roof has been shoveled off twice.  Notice the above picture shows the results of having both the house and garage roof shoveled last week. Pretty cool that I can now walk roof to roof between the garage and house. Pretty cool too that you can do snow angels --STANDING UP!!  This is one of the lazier ones in a flock that flew by our house on a Sunday afternoon. The other 3-4 were actually done straight up, in the 5-foot banks lining our driveway.

Grace Christian Fellowship members stay busy making the facility ready to serve others.  It is now wheel chair
accessible and a platform has been completed for the piano and someday a Worship Team. Our projector is mounted. We use it for the Sermons and special video clips. Perhaps the community will join us this summer when we do movies in the church!!

We have had small beginnings in community outreach by providing a place for parenting training by the Life Outreach Center. There's also a weekly study with Phoenix House members -- a Biblical perspective of the 12 Step Recovery Program.

Please continue to pray for us -- we will be taking a little reprieve from the snow by visiting our daughter in Atlanta for a week in February. Come Visit us Sometime!!

 In HIS Love,

The McGees