Blessed By Another

I go to a wonderful church where God dwells and along with God are many people that are filled with love for others who go about doing good and spreading love and cheer around.

It is a wonderful church to attend and I highly recommend it to others. They do have a web site where our awesome pastors post Pod casts of his sermons and I would suggest you go there and listen as you will be filled full of the Word better than you ever hoped for. The web site is : alfcdc.com. Go there, I promise it will enrich your life!

Now to get on with my story. There is a wonderful lady that goes to this church and she likes to do special things to bless others. She often buys birthday gifts or just out of the blue she will give you a book to read or a DVD to watch. Many times she will just give them to you but sometimes she is just sharing them with you to watch and then give back so she can share with others. We will call her Ruth as she is very humble and does not want her name put out there.

Ruth likes giving and sharing. She goes about doing good and spreading cheer wherever she goes. One day while driving around town Ruth spied a stone burro in someones yard. This burro was missing a leg and an ear and was quite dilapidated. The paint had chipped off over the years and much of the cement it was constructed of was torn away. Most would have thrown away such a statue but it was still standing in the yard barely by the three legs left.

Something bubbled up in Ruth's heart and she felt led to rescue this burro. Of course, she didn't just take the burro as it belonged to someone else. After talking about it with her husband she impressed upon his heart how she was impelled to rescue this dilapidated burrow and he agreed that he could help her with that.

She went to the home and asked if she could have the burro telling them what her intentions were. They were touched by her story and gave her the burro. They had no use for it and didn't desire to fix it themselves. They were happy to have it taken out of their yard. Ruth and husband ( we will call him Boaz ) picked up the burro and took it home.

Boaz proceeded to scrape down the burro using a metal scrubber for cement. This was attached to a DeWalt drill which carries a lot of power behind it and soon he had the burro ready to fill in the missing parts. With the cement mix he carefully shaped the legs for the burro. The cement dried so quickly that Ruth had to help him with her visual perception as he could not see what he was doing while shaping the leg. She would guide him by telling him when to make a curve or when to make a swell in the leg until they shaped it just right. This is kind of like how it is when we follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we are blind to what needs to happen and we have to step out in faith using the gentle guiding of the Holy Spirit step by step until we have exactly what the Lord intended.

Soon the burro was finished and looking healthy with all four legs, two ears and a tail. Boaz smooth down the body after the cement was dry preparing the surface for painting. Once this was complete the painting began creating life in a stone burro that was long gone years ago.

The first burro they called Salvation which was pretty fitting if you think about it. He was saved from death and given back life once again. John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everylasting life KJV.

Once the burro was complete Ruth began to notice other burro's around town that were in sad shape and so began a collection of burro's some with carts and some alone. After Salvation came Hershey and Strawberry Fields. Strawberry Fields was painted a pink and white color that is very dainty and looks just like its name.

Ruth was showing pictures of these burro's her and her husband had rescued and restored at church and I became fascinated by what the Holy Spirit had led this wonderful giving woman to do. It amazed me and I wasn't sure what the purpose of all this was. I still am not sure but I know there will be a reason behind it for God always has a purpose. Romans 8:28, And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose. The Lexham English Bible.

The next week I am at work and my cell phone rings. It is Ruth and she has a new burro with cart she has uncovered and wants to know if I want the burro. I was ecstatic. Yes I wanted the burro. I wanted to be a part of this exciting adventure. This burro was in pretty good shape. No missing parts were involved with this burro only a crack or two here and there. Arrangements were made the very next day and my husband met Ruth at the house where the burro was standing and brought the burro home.

I can't wait until I have some time off where I can begin to work on the restoration of my burro. Excitement and anticipation followed me the next two days until I could get to work. As soon as I had a day off my husband and I headed down to True Value to purchase a grinder for the power drill. I had a small metal grinder in mind about three inches in diameter with a short stubby metal brush of about a half inch long.

Another encounter guided by the Holy Spirit, Boaz showed up at True Value the very day and time that I did getting ready for his annual trip to Sturgis. He saw what I was purchasing and commented it would not do. He showed me the large jangly metal head that I needed for the drill and suggested a De Walt drill rather than the small hand drill I had planned on using. Thank God he showed up when he did as I would have wasted my money.

He was right on as to what I needed and once home I began to clean up the burro. My husband watched with a wary eye as I took on the powerful drill and treacherous head to grind smooth the rough patches on the burro and take off the old paint. He was just sure I would slip and cut myself up and his pacing was making me nervous so I handed the drill over to him and let him have a try.

A couple of hours later he had the majority of it done and was ready to let me take over. I like to get into the middle of my projects so was eager to try.

After grinding down all the old paint and the rough spots we discovered a few holes and cracks in the burro that needed patched. We borrowed some of the cement patch that Boaz used on his burro's and began to patch Blessing.

This was not as easy as I thought and I had to work very fast as this cement dried very quickly. Once you mixed up the cement you had about thirty seconds to a minute to make the shape you needed or it was dry. A person has to know exactly where they are going with it in order to get it done prior to drying. I learned to work very fast in shaping and developing the small spots that needed filled in.

Soon the burro was smooth and ready to dry.

Adding color to any work of art is the most fun to the project. Painting this burro was no exception. I had a color scheme in mind with Blessing ( by the name Blessing was the name I gave to my burro ). I planned to under-paint Blessing with a burnt red color to begin with and then follow with brown color for shadows. I then painted over the red with a clay yellow color giving the color of Blessing a whole new look. By the time I had the burro painted with the under painting I had come up with a whole new direction.

I painted over the colors with a burro creme grey color. A total contrast to what I had been painting but the underpainting showed through giving depth to the burro's coat. More and more as I layered the paint on the burro she began to take a real live cast to her and she became a real live Blessing before my very eyes.

I added brown to the hooves and inner parts of the ears. The tail and the main needed brown tips so I added this as well. The nose needed brought out so I painted a brown under color and dry brushed the creme grey color over the top once it had dried. I liked the look I achieved with this that I added a few dry brush strokes to the tail and the main as well.

Blessing was taking shape and looking like she could take off running any minute. My husband insisted at this point that I paint her eyes so I found a metallic bronze color and painted in the eye section with this color. This made her take on a surrealistic look to her which gave my husband the creeps. I laughed at him. He watched way to many Sci Fi movies!

I then colored in the iris of the eye, outlined the whole eye with a light brown color and the pupil in black. A few eye lashes to add a feminine touch to her since she became female while I was working on her. Because she was a Blessing I added a few dry brush strokes of the metallic bronze to the hooves, the main and the tail which gave her a heavenly look and a blessed appeal.

Blessing was beginning to take on a live look and we both thought she might just run off the entry way of the house. Next I began painting the wheels of the cart and the cart itself. The wheels needed a lot of dressing up so I painted the wheel and spokes in brown and the rivets in and wheel Hub in the metallic bronze color. This was exactly the zing that the cart needed.

I decided if the Blessing was indeed a blessing then she needed to look like a Heavenly Blessing and she did indeed.