Menno Simmons, Our New House, and Selling My First Plane

Menno Simmons, Our New House, and Selling My First Plane

Lately I've been curious about the origins of the movement encouraged by Menno Simmons. I've been very interested in the documents that came from the meetings of his peers whether Mennonite or Swiss Brethren. 

You can find links here to those documents.  

http://www.gameo.org/library

My deepest interest like I said is with the early history. I've tried reading a variety of Menno's early writings and I think I just haven't found the right ones yet. Most of what I have found so far has only been fluff meant to encourage his followers or has been brief paragraphs about "the ban".  His most thorough writing I've found thus far has been about the educating of children, there is no mention of college. Menno's educational references are all made towards the word of God. 

I've only begun to read, so if I find any interesting pieces I will bring them to your attention. 

Here is a link where you can specifically find Menno's writings. 

http://m.ccel.org/

Simply do a search for "Menno" and you will find anything you are looking for. 

Menno was known as a prolific writer, so there is a fair chance that I just haven't found his "meat and potatoes" yet.  

It's surprised me with what I have found that he can write so much and say nothing, but yet clearly he has had an enormous affect on Christian history. I'm certain there are writings I am missing or perhaps better translations. 

Our New House

Last weekend we received our appliances so now our house is a home! All of our furniture is in as well. Now we just need to take over the rest of our library and we will be set. 

I do unfortunately have to update that during the move Elizabeth Ann's loom was damaged and will not be usable until I am able to repair it. I'll try to remember to do a post on it. Including pictures. 

Hand Plane Making

I've not yet even begun to make and sell wooden hand planes yet, but I have already "sold" one to a good buddy of mine. It's a good motivation booster and also encourages me all the more to leave truck driving. 

Well with all things in our life, everything is very fluid. We'll try to keep you updated. 

Michael E McCartan

A Poor Update

A Poor Update

Alot has happened in the last 4 months. We've been so busy between my driving for a living, moving into our house, and everything else in-between. 

Elizabeth Ann is still healthy with our child. Everyone save a lone individual is certain that the gender is male. We'll see coming the first week of May or so. 

Elizabeth is eagerly looking forward to her homebirth. 

It seems that aside from one weeks break, all of my weeks driving have been spent going to Pennsylvania. Ordinarily I would enjoy this, but the routine has become less than pleasant due to weather and rushing to get home by the weekend. 

It looks like I'll be able to leave driving in another month. I'm hoping that I'll be able to finish by April 16th so that when I have to go renew my license I can have it changed to a civilian license instead of commercial. That way I won't be able to go back to driving. 

I'll be staying home to watch our child. It's not the way we prefer things to be, but being the first generation to convert requires us to make some sacrifices as our name's first plain family. 

My sons will not be put in this situation as they will have learned a trade before they marry. 

I have so much to tell about woodworking news that I am disappointed that I can't even leave a teaser! It would leave to many questions! 

Bottom line is that I've made many new and good connections and have also acquired many new books and tools. I will try so hard to keep an inventory for this blog once I am home fulltime. 

This blog will be much more active once I am home. 

I am very encouraged that I will have a two car garage to use as my woodworking shop. It will have all the room I'll need for anything I pursue.  

Elizabeth and I are not your typical plain people. I think as the blog goes along you will learn more about that. 

Just one unique example, Elizabeth and I both believe that through proper diet that the body is able to restore health to the teeth. 

We'll explain how and tell you about our discoveries/realizations as we have them. 

Elizabeth will be making some bone broth pretty soon, I'll try to get a blog entry out of it. The idea is to use the marrow to strengthen your own bones. 

There is much more to strengthening your teeth than this, but it is one example of a much greater picture.  

Orchard!

Our property has .8 of an acre. It's not alot but it is plenty of room to have a small orchard. Something great for us is that it already has a fruit bearing peach tree! We've not yet decided on what trees we will have but we will need to decide soon as the time to make an order has come!

A small update on our chickens. We've still got only two, both of which molted and are no longer producing eggs. Once I am home fulltime and we can let them out of the coop more, we will see if they resume laying eggs. If they don't, then their fate becomes questionable as chickens are not intended to be pets for anyone but children. 

We'll post some pictures of them, they are both very fat now and could use some good sunlight. 

We apologize for the absence of photos on our blog, it's not out of principal but rather that most times we are updating our blog from our cell phones which often causes us trouble. We have many photos we'd like to upload and will in due time once we figure out how to reliably. 

Lord Bless!

I've got several ideas for topics of theological discussion that I'd like to touch on. Once again, that may be a while. We'll see