The ads and the people they are catering to have driven me away.
I came back Just to Say Hi, and to read what had been posted about the 23rd psalm, one of my most favortie passages. I feel like the chapter has been well treated here.
The ad and the people they cater to are an abomination unto the Lord.

For the last two weeks the sermon has centered around Psalm 23:
1. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup Runneth over.
6. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
There have been two deaths in our church in the last two weeks. Our Pastor has preached at both of the funerals. His funeral sermons seem to have spilled over to our Sunday services. I took the time to commit this Psalm to memory while I was at the Mission. It seems to me to be one of the shining lights from God’s Word. The pastor was able to point out things about the psalm that I had not seen. I look at the words as one who has had charge over a large flock of sheep. I think of it as a shepherd would, as the people it was written to might think of it. Today, with sheep all but gone from the countryside, people think of it in other terms. The meaning seems to have changed.
This Psalm is the promise of a Lord. My Lord!

Here in Western Maryland where the weather is never quite what I would have it be, we have three inches of ice pellets this morning with the temperatures coming up all day. Yesterday morning we had a red flag high wind advisory with a temperature reading of just 10 degrees F. Today they are calling for the ice pellets to change to a steady rain at some point in the day. My trip to work , 60 miles away, should be a most interesting one this morning.
I pray that everyone who comes to this page will have a blessed day. I pray that God Himself will be able to find some use for you today.

Chocolate
Shortly after Laurie and I got married, I considered it quality time with my new bride to take her along with me up to the livestock Auction in Thetford Vermont. The Gray's Auction house had a weekly auction. At that auction they sold livestock. The farmer and/or anyone could bring their animals up to the auction house on a Monday, and starting at two in the afternoon, the animals would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. The auction would go on until everything had been auctioned off. The sale always went until at least ten in the evening, and if there were a large number of animals that week, it could go to two or three in the morning. Herb Gray would make an announcement at the start of each auction, I don't remember the whole of it, but the gist was that they would sell most any and all animals with the exception of reptiles, cats, dogs and small children.
There was also a selection of .... stuff. (Junk I would call it) They would sell anything that had to do with life on the farm. This might include fence posts, saddles, cream separators, horse blankets, tools, I even saw shaving cream sold up there on Monday afternoon. It all has something to do with life on the farm.
I had been making it a part of my week to go up there and spend my Mondays at the auction house. When I got married, my auction going days diminished. But if I didn't have other work to do, Laurie and I would get into whatever vehicle she had running that week, and we would make the minimum of a two hour drive up to the auction house.
It was on one such trip to the Thetford auction that Chocolate came into my life. Chocolate was a dark brown cow, just about the color of chocolate.
As a customer, buyer, seller, spectator, at the auction, there are bleachers to sit on. The animals come through the sales ring and are auctioned off in front of you. Some animals come though in lots. The auctioneer, Herb Gray will announce in his loud voice what the deal is as each lot is sold. A common way they did it was to bring in four to a lot. The first time he would say "Choice.” This meant you could choose witch animal you wanted out of the lot. Then he would say "Buy the peace and take two" In which case the winner would pick two from the group and he would own them for twice the price he won the bidding at. Most lots finished with "buy the peace and take the lot" This would usually bring a lower bid and the winner would have to take all the remaining critters from the lot, each costing whatever they had bid.
Al would do some of the calling. Herb was the ringmaster, calling the shots. Becky, Herb’s wife with bright red hair and a bright smile would document each sale. Herb's three Kids would shuffle the animals around, bringing the lots though the ring, and putting them in pens where they could be found by their new owners after they were sold.
I had found out a long time ago, that I liked to do more then just sit in the stands and watch the animals go by. I would stand out where the animals arrived. There was a paid auction worker who would tag each animal as it came in. He would then tell the seller where the animal had to be penned. There were usually two pens for pigs, a sheep and goat pen, Heifer calf pen, bob calf pen, the old milking parlor in the auction barn was used to keep the dairy cows and bulls ready to be sold. This collection of pens was very fluid and dynamic. It would change not only from week to week as different animals came into season, but as the sale went on, the pens would change from animals for sale, to sold animals waiting to be picked up.
If there was something being sold in the sale ring that I was not interested in, I could be found out where the small animals came in. After they were tagged, they needed to go in the correct pen. There were gates to be opened and piglets to be carried. Gates to be closed and bystanders to be separated so the animal could get through. Sheep could be a challenge to get into the pen where you wanted them. Goats could be fun as well. It sometimes came down to a bit of a competition to see who was better at getting the animals to go where they needed to be.
I enjoyed the work, and Laurie always had a good time when she would come along as well. Working to make sure the animals are put where they need to go gives you a good chance to get a close up look at the animals. You see who brought them in, what they looked like coming off the truck (or out of the back seat of a car).
Most weeks I would bring something up, to pay for the day. However, I would also usually end up as the highest bidder for something, and I would have something to take back home. Rusty was Herb's youngest boy. He was sort of in charge of what came into the ring next. If he wanted five sheep, he would get in the pen and shoo the five he wanted as a lot out into the corridor, then I would help get them through the gates needed to get them to the ring. He liked to keep the pace up, always have something in the ring to be sold off. After they were sold they would come back, we tried to keep from having two-way traffic in a corridor, they would go out one way and come in another. There were many gates to be manned and an occasional slow critter to be helped along. This was all strictly voluntary, but it often had its benefits. Sometimes the caller would sell a critter for a low price, by just taking the bid of the person who opened the bidding in hopes he would get people to bid better/faster.
Laurie and I unloaded Chocolate out of the little pick-up she had come up in. She was the color of milk chocolate, she had some Brown Swiss in her and she was as cute as a button. Laurie found out she was over ten days old and she had been on her Mom for all that time. This meant she had had her Mom's Colostrum and would be well started and ready to be bottle fed. Rusty was right there and Laurie expressed to him that we would like this calf. We penned her with the other heifer calves waiting to be sold.
After the dinner break is when the heifer calves are sold. Laurie and I were in the stands waiting for this cute little calf to come through. We waited and waited, and they kept selling lot after lot, but the one we were waiting for didn't seem to come. I would sometimes start the bidding. This would start the bidding going and I seldom ended up with the winning bid. If I did get it, the animal was sold to me for far less than I felt it should have sold for. We watched and waited for the tag number 23 we knew had been put on the calf we wanted, but she didn't show. I began to think that maybe I had missed her somehow. When all the heifer calves had sold I went back to the calf pens and looked, there she was, laying down in the corner. Rusty was just passing the pen, I hailed him and said we have one more heifer calf here, she isn't marked as sold. He muttered that she had been sold.
The cows all go in the early evening. I am not going to buy a cow, so I help move them from pen to pen as that part of the sale is going on, opening and closing gates and getting them to move along.
Late in the night it got so the only thing left to be sold were the bob calves. I didn't want a steer or a beef animal, I certainly didn't ever want to raise a bull, so I was behind the scenes moving the calves about. I checked over in what had been the heifer pen earlier in the day, there was the milk chocolate colored heifer calf. They needed to use that pen for the sold bob calves. One of the workers went out and checked with Becky to see who had bought the heifer, to see if they could get her out. Becky said "No, That number has not come through."
I was aware of all of this, and I went out to see when the calf went. I figured they would announce that it was a heifer calf, and auction it off. Rusty was up on the lectern, and he wanted to get the sale going. Chocolate was in the first lot of six bob calves to come out.
"Ok, we'll do choice one time and who will get us started at fifty dollars, fifty, fifty do I have fifty, fifty, fifty, fifty, Twenty-five anywhere? Ok do I see five dollars to get us started? ” I signaled.
"Sold! To JB Brown down in the front row. You want them all JB?"
"No, I want the Swiss one, number 23, the brown one right there."
Well, you can bet that next time the people in the stands were a bit closer to the edge of their seats and ready to signal, hoping that Rusty would slide them a quick one.
To be continued....

How to get out of a Thai jail.
One thought that kept going around and around in JB’s mind as the time past in the Jail in Bangkok Thailand was that no one on the outside either knew or cared that he was in jail. JB had been working loosely with the American company Air America, but they had told him, that if he got in a pinch, they didn’t want to hear from him. JB had no way to contact anyone there anyway. He had no phone numbers. He would just go back to Hue every time he needed to get an extension on his visa. There an extension would be arranged when he combined that with a trip down to Bangkok to the appropriate embassy. JB had a visa application in to go to Australia, but that was going to depend on him getting a valid US passport. He had a valid visa to be in Thailand for just 21 days. Four of those days had already gone by when he was locked up. Before that 21days was up he was going to have to get up to Hue and back down to Bangkok to the Laotian or Cambodian embassy and arrange for a visa to be in the country for a limited time. With the heroin and narcotic trade in this part of the world, no country wanted to give permission to be in their country for any more than just a short time. Then you had to stay out for at least an equal amount of time. JB had been visa/country hopping for about 8 months. Each time he went to the embassy, they would give him a shorter time on his visa in their country. Malaysia had all but shut him off. He had spent 21 days down there. He had gone back for a second stay and when he left, he was told not to come back. They do not like people who have spent time in the opium growing areas coming down to their country. He now had to stay out of Malaysia for six months. Cambodia would let him in for about 10 days, and Laos would still let him come there for two weeks if he was willing to pay a substantial payment to them.
All this was rolling around in JB’s mind as the days ticked by and he sat in jail. The time for him to have to leave Thailand was approaching. The man he dealt with up in Hue would be expecting him to come for a new extension. If he didn’t come, forgetting JB would be just a matter of placing a small folder in the trash.
JB’s best chance of getting word to the outside world was to get word to one of the travelers staying at the Hotel Pepsi. They didn’t know JB well, but they might be willing to do a favor for him.
O Boy had a sister who would come to see him. JB communicated with the deaf boy who he called O Boy using a combination of homemade signs, drawing pictures, charades and writing things down. Talking to a deaf boy who was raised in a foreign speaking country was a challenge. But O Boy seemed to have become JB’s friend. They spent quite a bit of time trying to exchange ideas and information. JB asked if O Boy could ask his sister when she next came, if she would go to the Hotel Pepsi and ask for the red haired girl from Sweden. JB didn’t even know the girl’s name, but he had become friendly with her in the coffee shop on the ground floor of the Hotel Pepsi. If contact was going to be made with the outside world, she seemed to be JB’s best shot. It was a long shot.
A week had passed and O Boy’s sister finally came for her second visit. JB knew that the way the visa market went, the red haired girl from Sweden would not be staying in Bangkok for too long. Each day that went by made the chances that she would still be at the Hotel Pepsi slimmer.
When word came that O Boy had a visitor JB reminded O Boy that he wanted to get his sister to go to the Hotel Pepsi for him.
O Boy came back from his time with his sister. JB could see that he had been crying. It was a very intense time for JB. He wanted information on what he had been able to tell his sister. He wanted to know if she was going to be going to the Hotel Pepsi for him. O Boy had been given some sort of bad news. JB was not able to decipher what the bad news he had gotten was. He was not sure if O Boy had been told he was going to be staying in jail longer, or if he was going to be executed, or if the news had been something altogether of another realm. O Boy wanted to get word to the guards that he wanted to have his sister come an extra time. That was the best JB could make out. With the help of the old Momason in the cell across the way, JB was able to help O Boy get some sort of garbled message to the uncaring guards. The response that came back from the guards was like most responses from them, it was not pleasant.
The evening after O Boy’s sister had come the night guard came to the cell that JB and O Boy shared with five others. He said that JB was going to be allowed to leave at noon the next day. He had been told this one time before, and it had been merely a trick. JB was hesitant to believe the good news. He wanted to get out. He kept wondering what had happened to his friend Henry Woodward from Cleveland the first day he had been in jail. The guard was insistent with a very friendly believable expression that JB was going to be released at noon the next day. The other inmates didn’t seem to be laughing the way they had been the first time this trick had been played. JB wanted to think that this time the guard was telling him the truth. The hope of getting word to the outside had faded with the tearful visit from O Boy’s sister. JB was almost certain that with all that was said, nothing had been mentioned about her going to the Hotel Pepsi for him. Communication between O Boy and his sister was a mystery to JB. O Boy had several things he used as homemade signs, but he wondered just how his hearing sister was able to communicate with her deaf sibling. JB had lost hope of getting word to the outside.
That night was another long night. He lay awake most of the dark hours, wondering what the next day would bring. JB prayed. He was not a born again believer, but he did know god. His prayer was that whatever happened, that JB would be the only one to suffer and that if it was His will, this time in jail would somehow work out to be a blessing to someone.
Morning was a long time in coming. JB had developed a case of diarrhea that made it so he had to make frequent trips to the latrine at the back of the jail section. He had not been eating very much, just the rice and the rice cakes in the morning. He seemed to have to defecate every hour even with his stomach being all but empty. Sleep would not come. He kept trying to think what he would do when he got out, if he got out.
Morning finally came with the usual fair of rice cakes and strong tea. JB felt sick. The lack of sleep didn’t help him to feel any better. The one thing that kept him going was the hope that maybe the guard the night before had not been tricking him again. With the daylight and the new day crew on, the likelihood of JB going free seemed to have faded. JB did not hold much hope.
At some point in the morning, when the cells were open and not everyone was locked down in the cell, JB went to his place in his cell and tried to set down some of his thoughts in the margin of his navel, The Lord of the Rings. His notes briefly outlined the promise of release and his feelings that it was again a trick. JB fell asleep with the pencil in his hand and the novel on his lap.
He was awoke by O Boy. The young deaf boy was very insistent that JB come up to the front. JB was blurry eyed, but knew right away that some big event was happening. He hoped above all things that he was going to be allowed to go free.
He got to the front just in time to see a westerner going into the commandant’s office off to the left. JB did not get a good look. He asked O Boy if it had been a white girl with red hair. From what JB could learn from O Boy, it had not been his friend from the Hotel Pepsi. JB was still at the bars when the guard came and singled him out, told him to stand right up to the gate and the others all had to move back way from the gate. This was how they did it when they were going to take someone out.
JB was shown into the Commandant’s office. In there was a girl JB had seen at the Hotel Pepsi but had not talked to. She was from Melbourne Australia and talked with the now familiar Australian heavy accent. She seemed to be willing to do what she could for JB.
She had gotten to know the red haired girl from Sweden. JB’s visitor told JB that the Swedish girl had left for Laos and would not be back until her visa required her to come back to Bangkok. That would most likely be either a month, if she had not been up there before, or two weeks if she had. This girl asked what she could do for JB. JB gave her all the money he had on him, about $200 in American cash and about half that much in Baht, the local Thai currency. He asked her, if she would be good enough to buy some diarrhea medicine and a good meal from one of the street vendors and came back with the meal. He asked her to buy enough so everyone in the jail could share in the meal.
It had been a surprise out of the blue that JB had had this chance to contact the outside world. His mind raced as he tried to think who he could get word to that he was in jail. So far the best he could think to ask for was a good meal. JB hurriedly penciled his father’s address in Thetford Vermont on a clear piece of the margin of the Lord of the Rings and gave it to the girl. He asked that she send that to him as quickly as he could. Maybe his father would be able to do something. This was the best option JB could come up with for who to get hold of.
When the time for the visit was over, JB was led back to the jail section. His new friend was shown to the front of the jail where she could go free. It was hard to go back to the jail and watch her walk free. JB started to wonder as soon as he heard the lock slam shut if he was ever going to see that Australian girl again.

JAIL, BANGKOK.
Jail
Time moves very slowly in jail. For JB, the time he spent in jail in
Bangkok, was anxious time. The first night in jail was a painfully long night for
JB. The other inmates knew he had money, the guard had told everyone he had it
and what pocket it was in. JB did take it out of the back pocket and put it in a
front pocket. He was hoping he would be able to feel anyone trying to take it.
The cells were crowded. The floor space was eight and a half feet from bars to
the back wall and six feet from the wall towards the entrance of the jail to the
back wall towards the latrine. With six grownups all wanting to lay down, there
wasn't much room.
JB was second from the back wall. There was one man lying at his feet, so he
couldn't straighten out, and five laying parallel to him. The man behind him
kept trying to get his money, the floor was hard, and to roll over everyone had
to change position. JB stayed awake most of the night thinking about where he
was and what was going to happen to him, wondering what had happened to Henry
Woodward and wondering when he would get out. How was he going to eat, the food here was inedible. The night was a waking nightmare. If he did doze off he
would feel the hands on him trying to take his money. It was a very long night,
one filled with pain, discomfort and fear. The long ark night dragged on and on. It was only midnight when the guards finally changed, and JB was hoping it was morning. The night guard came in and looked along the cells, noted that there was a new arrival. It was a long night.
The next day JB read a lot in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and he started
writing with a short pencil in the margins. He had been writing and now in jail
he didn't have his typewriter, so he started writing in the margins of the novel
they let him bring with him. Time crept every so slowly by.
With the language barrier JB wasn't able to talk to the other inmates much. Old mamason could speak the best English, but she didn't have a lot to say. The deaf mute boy would be friendly and they did a lot of charade type communicating. O Boy was JB’s name for him. They had introduced themselves to each other, using
sign language, and the best JB could understand of his name was O Boy, he was
deaf so he wouldn't answer to this or anything easily, he had to be tapped on
the shoulder to get his attention.
The second day JB was there, O Boy came hurrying in the cell, and begged JB to
come with him, quickly, come. O Boy made it clear he wanted JB to come see
something. He led JB in a hurry out to the bars looking out front, and pointed
into the room over to their left, where JB had been taken when he first came
into the jail. JB waited to see what it was all about. He could hear people
talking over in the other room, it was all in Thai or some language JB couldn’t
understand. The talking in the other room went on for quite some time, and then a man emerged from the commandant’s office room. It was a Chinaman! The Chinaman JB had seen up river in Laos then again in Luang Probang and then again had seen in the bus station in Bangkok. It was the same Chinaman he had followed up to Vientiane Laos. He had the "V" shaped scare on his cheek.
O Boy made it clear that he had been talking to the general, and that he had
been arranging to pay for JB’s stay here in the jail. The Chinaman went out and
down the front steps, and left JB with a lot of wonder and doubt as to what was
going to happen to him.
The meal came in everyday at about an hour before sundown. The fair was always the same, rice with the juice of dead fish over it. JB would just get the rice and
eat it, the juice was the really bad part and he would go without that. The
morning meal was better, although not much, it was lukewarm tea and a dried rice
cake.
O Boy had a visitor the third day, his sister came to see him. O Boy was taken
out and allowed to talk to his sister. When he came back he was full of news,
and spent the rest of the day trying to tell JB about his sister. It was during
all this that JB started asking if she could get a message out to a friend. If O
boy's sister could get a message back to a girl JB knew at the Hotel Pepsi.
The second night JB was trying to get some sleep. He had slept a bit during the
day, there was more room during the day, the doors where opened to the cells and
not all the people were in the cell. So JB had fallen asleep while reading, and
while he had fallen asleep one of the boys from the front right cell had come and
tried to get in his pocket to get his money. JB had woken with a hand in his
pocket and had grabbed the arm. A fight started, JB won. The addict wasn't
strong, he was strong willed but his body was run down, JB was able to wrestle
with him and get him in a hold where he said the Thai word for “uncle”. When JB
let him go he got a fist to the groin and the fight started anew. JB won the
battle but it was hard, he suffered a lot of pain. He was able to keep his
money.
So the second night, as the guards where changing at midnight, the guard came to JB’s cell and got his attention. He told JB with gestures that the next day at
noon he would be free to go. He said he had been told that the next day JB was
going to be set free at noon.
Well JB was elated. He was going to get out of here. He slept better the second
half of that night knowing that in the morning, or at noon he was going to be
set free.
When the day guard came in the cells where opened. JB went to the front to
ask about being set free, the day guards just waved him off. JB went back to
read and write in the margin and wait for noon. Noon came and he went up to the
front bars, called the guard over, and asked, "I go free?” The answer he got was
that he was never going to go free, he would die in here....

I asked my Pastor/friend about these two after i had done a search in the Bible for them. When I first asked him he gave me a blank look. Later he came back to me and said much as Britty has done, that they are a couple worth emulating. My asking him about these two had led him to go search them out as well. I believe that is a good thing.
JB

Everyone ready for chapter 10?

Happy Ground hog day! “Half your grain and half your hay by Ground Hog Day”. We have come at least half way through the winter now. We should all have half our hey left in the barn.
The good Lord gives us time, how we use that time He seems to leave up to us. I feel like I have squandered a goodly portion of the time I have been blessed with. Today I spent most of the day working on a profile for another dating site. I worked hard to give the best possible answers and to be honest and truthful. When I was all done and had my profile completed, I felt like I had done a good day’s worth of writing. I went to search on that site and was told I needed to pay up if I wanted to use the site. Call me cheap, but I am not going to pay for a web site to meet people. It just rubs me the wrong way.
That was how I came to find Just Say Hi in the first place. I did a profile on Yahoo, which back years ago used to be free, and was told I needed to pay up if I wanted to use it.
The thrill of the match making thread seems to have died down some. All the people who I enjoyed hearing from and wrote to I guess have found others to converse with. My email box is empty, as I guess it should be. I have a rather large thing I am working on writing, I need to spend what little time I have working on that and not off chasing something that might not even exist.
I ask for prayer that I might know the Lord’s will and be able to do His calling. I pray for wisdom to know what the Lord would have me do.

If any would like to see funches' face, simply click in his icon. In his profile the face appears.

Everyone who has been assigned to write to me, write agin.

JBTHEMILKER e-mail

crackerjack123 page 3

dreamsforuandme page 5

AnnG1959 page 8

Emails written and sent. In emergency medicine we would call these ladies unresponsive.

“So briefly tell everyone a little bit about you and your life!!!!”

I would like to BREIFLY tell something about the picture I have posted. That is me in a foreground and those are the flock I am charge over behind me. Ruth Priest of Fort Collins Colorado had a hobby that she had out grown. He husband was on his death bed and she had about 700 sheep she was raising to try to establish a new breed. She was looking to establish a bread of sheep for meat that would bread out of season. She also wanted to breed out some other characteristics.
I had a poster at the local livestock auction house saying that I was available to work on a farm. The dairy heard that I had been milking had been sold along with the farm for real estate. I needed to find some new place to live and work.
Ruth was at wits end when I met her. Her flock of sheep had all just lambed, (in season) and she now had about three times as many sheep as she had had a year before. (Each sheep that is a keeper, will bare twin lambs.) She needed some help.
I signed on with her explaining that I was EMT, CNA, and a farm hand all rolled into one. I could maybe help some with her ailing husband and also work the flock for her. She had a nice small ranch of just over 900 acres right at the base of the Rocky Mountains.
I took control of the sheep and started a selective breeding system that would weed out some of the traits she wanted to get rid of. There was no way to make a breed that would breed out of season. God has a set way of making sheep, and nothing man can do will change that. The best I could do was to try to selectively breed her sheep to eliminate the things she did not want. I stayed with her flock for a summer and a winter. I stayed through the lambing time. (Most sheep are born between the first of the year and Valentine’s day) She had an old Winnebago that I would drive out to the range and I would stay with the sheep through the summer. That was an enjoyable summer, just me and the flock.
That summer as a shepherd gave me a firsthand knowledge of what it was like to be abiding in the field keeping watch over the flock by night. I also find that I can identify with David.

Are there any left to be matched after 400 plus pages? I am still looking.

I saw I was mentioned, not by name but just described
"they are real, sweet, kind, and not a cheat in the bunch.."

To the ladies asking for assignments... Write me. I will not bite.

Here in Maryland if you are willing to drive 40 miles, they have gas for 30 cents cheaper. I live outside of Hagerstown. Here the price is still over the three dollar mark. In Frederick where I usually work, they have gas over there at some of the cheap stations for $2.78. I fill up when I am over there, even if I have part of a tank. It pays off. I have seen in the last ten days the price has started to slowly come down.

Deuteronomy 25
14. Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, a great and a small.
15. But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

Proverbs 11: 1
A False balance is abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is his delight.

Proverbs 16:11.
A just weight and balance are the Lord's: all the weights of the bag are his work.