Tori's Stories

What is happening? What is going on? Innocent people are dying every day. Everyday-for various reasons. Massacres, drunk driving, stupid mistakes, murders, and who knows what else. Many people think the world will end on December 21 st Sometimes, I wish it would. Can this tragedy just end? But, these people, these beautiful creations don’t know our God. These people do not know how to show their beauty because they are afraid of the God who created them. These people who do all these things—they need to be loved. They need to be shown Jesus in ways they have never been. Too often we turn away because it’s a “helpless cause”, but we know the one who can help Can we fall to our knees and pray? Can we ask God to show us how to be Jesus in this dark and fallen world? Can we fight for justice and peace by showing love? Can we accept everyone because of who they are? Innocent lives are taken all over the world— Some unexplainable, some ...

I don’t know if you remember or not, but I wrote a post about our newest little admit the day after Thanksgiving. This is a follow up of that. If you want, read that first here http://torirayle.blogspot.com/2012/11/our-newest-little-arrival-and-how-hes.html . Well, he stayed with me the rest of that week. For seven days I bathed, fed, changed, and loved him at all hours of the day and night (except when I was teaching preschool). He was such an easy going baby (besides waking up a lot in the night). He would be content sitting in the Bumbo or laying on the floor if other things needed to get done. He loved being tickled—especially under his chin. I could tell from the first time I met him he was a special baby—I couldn’t see why his mom would have left such a cute little bundle alone at the hospital. He had big handsome eyes and looked cute in just about any outfit I would put him in (of course I picked out all the cute ones).   He ate well and seemed very happy. The next F...

Today is December 6 th . Not a spectacular day by any means, but it means Christmas is approaching. Its hard to be in shorts and t-shirts and knowing Christmas is so close. It doesn’t make sense. When we were little we had to bundle up by this time putting on many layers of clothes and we may of even had a snow day or two. We would see Christmas displays in stores and when driving at night my siblings and I would have contests to see who could count the houses with the most Christmas lights (I’m still convinced my one older brother would count each porch light because he always seemed to win). Some volunteers that where here last week found some Christmas lights and put those up and I’ve been talking about Christmas a lot in preschool. How do you explain Christmas to kids who have no concept of what it is? They aren’t anticipating Santa coming down the chimney (nor am I encouraging that), they don’t see the lights as they travel, they don’t know what “marvels” stores hold, they ...

Every little girl dreams of being a princess. Whether it is because they want that night in shinning armor, to ride horseback to their castle, to have someone to do all the work for them, so they can be in charge, or just to “be beautiful”, it’s the dream of them all, right? What if there are girls who don’t know what being a princess means? There are ones who cannot even imagine what that is like because they have so few things. There are girls who have never seen a movie with a princess in it or read a book about a princess. There are little girls who do not have these dreams because their dreams are too filled with good food and just one beautiful dress to wear to church. Today in preschool, for various reasons, we only had the girls in class.   One of the girls is a missionary family’s daughter and when I told her mom what the class would be made up of she suggested bringing dress up to class. I (of course) loved that idea and had already been planning to bring out the b...