Category: singing (Page 4 of 5)

We are always grateful to the Lord for Him allowing us to gather together and sing the Psalms from the Bible! And this is the next set of Psalms from the psalter we use.

Previous Psalms singings:

Once again, we thank Him for His Word, and allowing us to learn it and sing His praises this way, and may His praises be from our hearts out of love for Him! May He glorify Himself and benefit His Church through this.

— David

It’s been a while since we have recorded our Psalms singing from the psalter we use, but this past Lord’s Day/Resurrection Day, we gathered together and recorded the next set of Psalms. As always, it is our prayer that God glorify Himself and that He benefit His Church through these:

Previous Psalms singings:

Once again, we are eternally grateful to the Lord for His Word, and this opportunity to sing it, and His praises. We thank Him for bringing circumstance in our lives so that the words have much more meaning, and we pray He hears these cries of our hearts, again for His glory and the praise of His name! Amen!

— David

We are grateful once again to be able to gather together in Christ’s name to sing the Psalms of His praises and His wonderful works in, and protection of, His children. Last Lord’s Day/Resurrection Day, we recorded the next set of Psalms after the previous Psalms recording. We pray God glorify Himself and that He benefit His Church through these:

Previous Psalms singings:

We again thank the Lord for His word and the opportunity to sing from it and learn it in this way. May He guide and strengthen our hearts by His Spirit, and may He write His law on our hearts that we might not sin against Him. May His great love, kindness and mercy toward His Church bring out from us love, kindness and mercy toward Him, His people and our neighbors.

— David

After our last fellowship time of recording Psalms from the psalter we use, we recorded the next set earlier this month, again so those who might be trying to learn them as well might have something to help them if needed.

And here is the next set:

Previous Psalms singings:

We are eternally grateful to the Lord for His word and the opportunity to sing it, learn it this way, and sing together in praise of His gloriousness, His mighty works, and His protecting hand. We again pray He glorifies Himself through this, and that He benefits and strengthens His Church through it.

— David

It’s been quite some time since we posted the recording of our first sets of Psalms we sing from our psalter, and recently we thought we’d continue on to the next set of Psalms, for those of you following along at home with your own psalter.

Previous Psalms singings:

We are thankful to God for His word and the opportunity to sing from it and learn it in this way, and we pray He glorifies Himself through this singing, that it might be of benefit to His Church, and that by it His word is hidden in our hearts that we might not sin against Him (Ps 119:11).

— David

Twice a year we gather as a community for a week to work on projects for our teacher, Mr. Bunker, and his family; and to provide an opportunity for guests to come by and help out and meet the folks here, etc.

And so, it was that time again for “Ranchfest” — Spring 2012!

The men had two projects they were working on throughout the week: building a cabin for Mr. Contra and Miss Tracy, who are betrothed; and doing finishing work on the inside of Mr. Bunker’s cottage.

The Cabin

For the Contra cabin, we started on Friday with a concrete slab pour. This was the group’s first real concrete pour on the land, and the guys did a lot of study and prep work in getting things ready. Here is the area formed with the rebar:

And here begins the concrete pour:

And more of the pouring and after “screeding” (or spreading) it out with the long 2×4 that spanned the whole width:

Here the concrete is tamped lightly by what they call a “jitterbug”, and a “bull float” is used to smooth out the concrete surface:

And then it was edged so the edges are rounded, to help keep them from chipping. One fellow also went around the sides with a hammer, lightly tapping the forms to help keep the concrete from “honeycombing”:

Here’s Mr. Contra and his improvised concrete texturizer:

And finally, the betrothed couple thought they’d mark a memory of the event:

Friday Night Sermon

On Friday evenings, Mr. Bunker is going through in an in-depth way the last chapters he included in his book “Modern Religious Idols,” which was an article series he wrote called “What is the Gospel?”:

Passover

Ranchfest times are often planned around the Passover time, which we observe as a teaching method for the children (and as a memorial for the adults) of the types and shadows used in the Passover feast representing Christ.

Here is the Passover “ceremony” time:

And the seder plate, with each food element representing some part of the event of the Passover time of the Hebrew people in and leaving Egypt:

We also sang Psalms 113-118 from our psalters, and here is a video of a few of those psalms being sung:

The Cottage

As I mentioned, the other project was working on the internals of Mr. Bunker’s cottage, putting up insulation and siding.

And here is some of the completed work:

Here are the men cutting the siding:

And here is some staining work of the siding being done:

More Cabin

Once the concrete slab was completed, it was time to build and raise the walls. Here’s the cabin with two of the walls raised:

And then with all four walls in place:

Apparently, the plan is to have a second story; and so, they are using a 10 inch I-beam spanning the width, which will be the support for the upper level floor:

More Cottage

Back at the cottage, after the siding was in place and stained or painted, the window sills and trim were cut, installed and painted with a clear wood protector:

And here are a couple of final pictures of the cottage work for the week:

Ladies Work

Besides all of the group meal preparations the ladies did for the week, they also had other projects, which this Ranchfest included sewing for the Bunkers and snapping mesquite pods, which they use for their mesquite coffee.

The main sewing project was for curtains for the cottage, although there was some clothing-making worked on. Here are some sewing preparations being done for some clothing:

And here, even the younger ones helped:

Seems to be a fun time too!

And here, Mrs. Sustaire is functioning as a seamstress and a lounge chair:

And finally, here are some of the ladies and children helping with the mesquite pods:

All in all, it was a very nice time of fellowship, community and work. It’s tiring, but rewarding as well. We did have a few guest families that visited this year, and it was a pleasure to see them again or meet them, and we thank them for the help and work they provided.

We are grateful to the Lord for the opportunity to gather in His name to work together, and we’re thankful for the teacher He has granted us.

— David

In a past blog post about fellowship activities around here, I mentioned the singing we do together on the Lord’s Day. We had recently gone through our “hymnal” (which is just a collections of hymns we had put together) and removed probably 2/3 of the hymns as they were either doctrinally incorrect or just fluff pieces with no real spiritual meat; and now, it seems over time we’re leaning more toward the singing of the Psalms from our psalter as our preferred song choices, given that they are based on God’s Word, where we believe God has dictated how He should be worshiped (see the regulative principle of worship).

In our singing of the Psalms, we’re also trying to learn them by heart so that when the Psalter is not around, either at times during the day now, or perhaps if we’re ever prohibited from having it, we will be able to continue to make a joyful noise unto the Lord.

We’ve recorded our Psalm singing a couple of times now (which we hope to continue to do), and since some of you might be learning from the same Psalter we are, or even if you’re not, I wanted to share them with you. I look forward to listening to them myself as hearing songs repeatedly helps me memorize them:

(This is not the performance-oriented “worship” that occurs in most “churches” today; it is just simple a capella Psalm singing.)

It is our prayer that God glorifies Himself through us, at times of singing His praises, and throughout our lives in any way He might.

— David