Sit down in my kitchen and have a cup of coffee...

When waking up on the farm in Northern Missouri as a child, I would see my father putting coal into the stove to heat the small house. I would smell the coffee my mother was already making on the wood cook stove in the kitchen. And I would hear the radio playing country music, the only kind that was ever played in my childhood home.

If it was Monday morning and the weather was suitable I would soon be preparing to walk with my sister two miles up and down the hills to the one room country school we attended. If the weather was extreme we rode in an old covered buggy my father had covered with plywood. My mother would place a pan of hot coals on the floor to keep us warm. The buggy is in the background of this picture. We are standing in front of the smoke house my father and grandfather built.

My school teacher was a contradiction of ideas. We would read a Bible verse, sing hymns and she would than read to us from a book about some children in the Soviet Union who were gaining a better life because of their communist government.

But that's off my subject which is simply to start another Monday morning with joy in the Lord and some good memories of the way God has blessed. So at my invitation have a strong cup of coffee, and enjoy some good country music. I have a lot of work to do this week so it may be like this all week long.