Paid your Tithing Lately?

"Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it." Malachi 3:10 and 3 Nephi 24:10

It's been about a year since I became the food program coordinator for the state of Wyoming's Foster & Adoptive Parent Association. It has not been as bad as I thought it would be. There have been times when I had to rush to fix a situation or else someone in the state would end up without food, and there have been angry people to appease at times (when I returned home from having my hysterectomy there were several angry phone messages on our answering machine. I guess I should have left someone in charge while I was gone those few days!). But overall things have run smoothly. Luckily I have 3 ladies helping me who all do a good job with their portion of the state.

Since we were able to receive food again starting a year ago, we have been collecting quite a bit of food storage. So much, in fact, that our pantry was completely full and we didn't think anything else could possibly fit in there!

You'll remember that James built our pantry out of mid-air in the space that used to be above our stairs. One day I heard noise upstairs and ran up to find a huge hole in the kitchen wall. About a week later I had a full-functioning pantry! So naturally, knowing how talented James is at making magic happen at our house, I started to wonder where he might build me a second pantry to accommodate our ever-growing food supply. When I made suggestions he would reply that there was no space left. That is, until yesterday when he tried to find some peanut butter in our bursting-at-the-seams pantry. The next thing I knew, the pantry shelves were cleared and James had his power tools out on the back porch & was concocting a new magical solution to our "opened windows of Heaven" problem.

It was a brilliant scheme, and as you'll see from the photos below, we can now actually walk into & around in our pantry. He made rolling shelves for the cans and utilized the space behind the play room ladder for some wheat, oats, and paper towels. He also built a major-capacity can holder on one of my lower shelves. What a smart husband I married! I wonder what magical thing he'll think of to do next?