By Sherry Hopkins

Community Columnist

I’m winning, Dear Don’s head is spinning, and my checking account is grinning! What’s up you say?

Let me explain. The near Biblical proportions of rain that fell in February has given us (and maybe you, too) serious cabin fever. When we had taken just about all the ambiance that comes with such days we decided to change up some of our time together.

Dear Don suggested instead of playing rummy, (you know we live a wild life but bear with me here), we would play a new made up game called Dummy Rummy. This game differs in that you can match any card in a running suit. So a king of diamonds would go with a queen of hearts and a jack of spades. We played this game for a couple of days, and he was still not winning. So he amped it up to an even “better” game of rummy.

This is called Extreme Dummy Rummy. In this game all bets are off. If you have three fours then you can add a five to one end and a three to the other and make a running suit from that. You can put a two on an ace that is part of an ace-king-queen suit from hearts, diamonds, clubs or spades. After a couple of things are laid down from each player it gets ridiculous after just a few minutes. Trust me.

So we played this game for a day or so and still he never came out on the winning end. He was frustrated and threw all 52 cards in the air and declared he had been beaten. So I am winning and happy about that. We will see what concoction of game he comes up with next. Don’t try to keep up; just go with it. You will find it exhausting to keep up.

Our checking account ended this month with $11 more than we took out. Gosh that is huge to us both. Seems like a nominal amount to most, but just having more in the black than the red is a blessing. I feel a $10 Tuesday movie day coming soon.

Because, following the rain, we never saw an ark filled with animals and humans or any other kind of ark, and we never saw a rainbow either, we figured we were safe from floods for now. At some point we saw a picture of a giant mudslide at the Enid Dam spillway. It was quite an impressive sight. Hopefully all poisonous snakes, armadillos, lady bugs and mosquitoes drowned in this epic rain event.

We had our taxes done and funny thing – if you don’t have an income, you don’t get a tax refund. Huh! But you still have to pay taxes if only a nominal amount. I’m just glad that hurdle is over.

We have a young woman in our church who is a missionary. She will be going to New York City in a week or so to witness and hand out Bibles on the street. Sounds exciting and frightening at the same time. But it is a part of what we are called to do as Christians and she has felt the call to be a missionary. Her ultimate goal is to travel overseas. What an adventure.

So the past couple of Sunday nights our GA girls have been writing letters to put in the Bibles that this young woman will be distributing. They were letters to strangers on how to be saved.

We have more than 20 letters to go to NYC. Now that, too, is exciting my friends. To witness from Mississippi to New York. Most of us will never get that chance.

So we talked a bit in class about witnessing or sharing the Gospel of Jesus. I took old clothes and hats, etc., for the girls to role play to get a better understanding of this command. One girl would be “saved” and witness to another girl dressed as a man who was unsaved. These young girls did an outstanding job and they know what they are talking about.

The raucous laughter for that portion of our class was hard to contain. We had a wonderful time and I hope they will remember this as they grow into their faith. Good job girls!

Stay tuned.