Ark Valley News - The View from Sunflower Gardens

The View from Sunflower Gardens
By Marilyn Bentley
Last Updated: August 20, 2015

Among the dear hearts and gentle people who live here are new residents. Welcome to Donna and Marian and others.

Happy birthday to those with August birthdays.

Remember to keep all our troops and their families in prayer.

At least one of our residents is from Nebraska. A Nebraska writer, Phyllis Buell of the Lincoln, Neb.-area, wrote a commentary about our tomorrows. "Little Orphan Annie sang about tomorrow. It's just ‘a day away.' If I could see tomorrow what a wise girl I would be." If I could see the future ???? But we live for today.

In Kansas, we are blessed to have many new friends at our senior residence.

We like our coffee chats, Bible studies, potluck dinners, game nights, music concerts and sing-alongs.

It's back-to-school time for our grandkids and great-grandchildren.

School sports keep our families busy, and many activities.

Soon our Kansas State Fair will bring entertainment our way. There is always something to learn at Hutchinson on the fairgrounds, like new things in agricultures and advances in farm machinery. Some folks like the grandstand shows.

Thanks again for potatoes, tomatoes and cucumbers given to us by generous gardeners of our area.

Verse of the week: " What shall we say then to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)

We marvel at activity toward back-to-school shopping and for the students at the giveaways to help them — new backpacks, colors, scissors, tablets, notebooks, pens, pencils and some small computer gadgets. Kids love their new sneakers, jeans, T-shirts, etc. Local towns that help students are Valley Center, Wichita, Park City, Maize, Goddard, Haysville, Andover, Sedgwick and Bel Aire.

I still am amused at some towns of Kansas and their unusual names: Bird City, Antelope, Burr Oak, Buffalo, Bloom, Clearwater, Elk City, Goodland, Coffeyville, Garden City, Greenleaf, Haysville, Kingman, Tonganoxie and Kanorado.

In our Bible studies here every Tuesday morning, we learn of the geography and of the spread of Bible learning through the early Christian history to the modern era. St. Paul traveled by foot and by ship with followers to and from Jerusalem, Greece, Turkey and later to Rome.

Alexander the Great helped spread the Greek language to much of the known world of the Holy Land — to Greece, to Rome, to Africa.

The Romans in power kept the peace through military power and they built roads where people traveled to and from cities of trade and to the early Jewish cities, which had synagogues. Thus, learning spread and we are the better for it.

"Be kind, anyway." — Mother Teresa.