Lots of Helpers

Our family's life in New Zealand

Book Review: Sermons From a Soapbox

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About the Book:

Book: Sermons from a Soapbox, Messages of Hope and Encouragement

Author: Ladonna Shanks

Genre: Devotional, based on personal experience; Memoir; Adult Nonfiction; “Life Lesson Essays”

Release Date: April 8, 2025

“What is God like?

Does He even exist, other than as a figment of the imagination?

Or is He real, a part of daily life and our world?

In Sermons from a Soapbox, Ladonna Shanks shares her personal spiritual journey of more than seventy-five years. “I cannot write what I have not experienced,” serves as the base of her easy-to-read, anecdotal essays. The short “sermons” challenge the reader to think, question, search, and consider living where God is . . . in the spiritual, long-term, instead of humankind’s physical, short-term.

My Thoughts:

I have not yet read all of this book, but I like what I have read. Each of the essays is inspiring, a bite-size piece of encouragement. I like the way this author has taken snippets of her life and drawn spiritual lessons from them. She talks a lot about the difference between knowing about God and actually knowing God.

Many essays begin with a dictionary definition of a particular word or term–I found that an effective way to make me stop and think more deeply about what she is talking about. I am looking forward to reading the rest of this book soon! (The reason I have not yet read it all is because it is the type of book I struggle to read on my Kindle, but the print copy will be arriving at my house in another week or two, so I will read it then, slowly enough to savor it. I read enough already, though, to know that I like it!)

I received a review copy of this book from the author, and these are my honest thoughts about it. Links may be affiliate links, which will benefit Esther’s website if purchases are made through them.

About the Author:

Ladonna Shanks was born and raised in Oregon’s lush Willamette Valley. During her several decades of life, she has been an entrepreneur, a small business owner, and, most recently, a writer. Her first book, Tidbits and Pearls, A Book of Essays on Living Everyday Life with God was published in 2019. Ladonna’s family, including five grandgirls, and her commitment to God serve as her priorities.

More from Ladonna:

The desire and passion to share God’s quest for friendship with humankind has driven me to write of my personal experiences with Him. “I cannot write what I have not experienced” is my mantra.

The easy-to-read anecdotal essays make up both of my books: Tidbits and Pearls, A Book of Essays on Living Everyday Life with God and my newly published Sermons from a Soapbox, Messages of Hope and Encouragement. (My editor calls them “Life’s Lessons Essays.)

I never preach, but I share my life. My desire is to challenge the reader to consider life in the long-term, eternal instead of the short-term, physical. I want them to think.

I am open, honest, and transparent as I present my weaknesses, failures, and inadequacies in contrast to God’s faithfulness, care, and love.

To purchase your copy, click here.

To visit more of the blog stops on this tour, click here.

To enter a fun giveaway, click here.

Pennsylvania and Last Days in Ohio

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When we left Michigan near the end of August, we went to Pennsylvania for a few days for Kingdom Fellowship Weekend, a gathering of 1-2,000 Anabaptists for teaching and fellowship. To say the least, it was a bit overwhelming! When a large gathering here is a hundred people, to be in the midst of that many people we didn’t know was challenging. We had some relatives there, though, and it was great to catch up with them, and we met up with several people we knew way back, before moving to New Zealand. That was good!

We spent about 12 hours on the road the day we traveled from Michigan to Pennsylvania. That was a long day! Most of it was quite boring, driving on the turnpike. We did spot a few interesting things, such as a few bald eagles. And, somewhere in southern Michigan, we saw this enormous beam being transported. The children were pretty impressed.

This woodpecker was outside our room at the camp. Because we had just been with my mom, who is quite a naturalist, we were all especially attuned to things like this.

Before breakfast on our first day there, I took the children exploring around the campground. They loved this bridge and tiny amphitheater! They spent some time running around the benches.

Another favorite place at the camp was the playground, where the girls made a lot of sand turtles one day and then wanted me to take a picture of them.

We had another long day of driving the day the camp ended, when we went back to western Ohio to Gayle’s dad’s house to prepare to fly home. This was the sunset that evening, somewhere between Columbus and Preble County.

These next three pictures were actually probably taken before we went to Michigan, the day that we sorted and did our preliminary packing. My sister-in-law was sorting through closets, and found a lot of dresses she and her sisters used to wear. She had fun dressing our girls up like herself! The quilt was hand-made by a great- or great-great grandmother, some hundred years ago or more.

When we got back to Grandpa’s house, the children were excited to find more kittens. This one was especially exciting because it looked “just like” the cat in a book we read at Grandma’s house in Michigan, The Almost All-White Rabbity Cat by Meindert de Jong (an author whose books are out of print but I want all of them!).

The children also had great fun hunting insects with a net. They got this grasshopper and butterfly, and wanted them recorded.

The very best find, however, was the snakeskin Mr. Imagination found at his aunt’s house. He was delighted!

More Michigan Pictures

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We enjoyed two weeks in Michigan, staying at my mom’s little house, just down the hill from the house in which I grew up. We helped her with a few little jobs. Gayle and Mr. Imagination cut down a few dead trees and cut them up for firewood for my sister who lives in the big house.

Miss Joy loved cuddling Johnny Cat, who hangs out at Grandma’s house most of the time, while she watched the tree-cutting operation.

I enjoyed seeing deer come close to the house a few mornings while I had my Bible time.

It’s hard to reconcile the way the land is now with the way I remember it. When I lived there, all this land was grazed by our herd of milk cows, but now it’s all overgrown! I had a hard time recognizing familiar spots.

We visited my dad’s grave on the way home from church one of the Sundays.

We enjoyed picking blueberries. We went just with Grandma once, then again several days later with many from the extended family. My sister and I went back another time, just the two of us, to get a few more. What fun!

We made a delicious fruit salad with the blueberries, strawberries and raspberries from Grandma’s garden, and some peaches that we bought. Yum!

One day, Grandma and I went shopping with the two girls. On the way home, we stopped at an overlook at the edge of the Pere Marquette River beside Ludington. What a view of the wetlands!

The children enjoyed Grandma’s marble roller.

On the day we went to the Otto Nature Preserve, we stopped in Silver Lake to get ice cream from the place where my niece works. The shop wasn’t open when we got there, but she was working and opened the window to sell us each a cone. I recommend The Other Place if you are in Silver Lake!

The children enjoyed putting together Grandma’s puzzles; Miss Joy wanted a picture of this floor puzzle after it was completed.

They enjoyed playing her games, too!

Mr. Imagination loved mowing Grandma’s lawn–and was especially delighted to find a couple of small snakes!

I had fun trying to get pictures of a few butterflies.

One morning, we noticed a huge flock of vultures wheeling overhead. Off to the east a short distance we could see another similar-sized flock, and there were many more perched on the power tower on the hill just to the north. I counted the ones in this flock and estimated that we could see around 60 vultures all at once!

Mr. Imagination had fun exploring the creek (changing clothes and showering afterward because of ticks and poison ivy!), and brought this frog up to show us one time.

Little Miss found this walking stick in Grandma’s garage.

Because Grandma loves nature, the children brought her anything interesting that they found. She put this caterpillar in a cage to see what it would turn into. Within a few days it was pupating.

Miss Joy asked me to french-braid her hair one day, then wanted a picture of it so she could see it.

New in the Library! October 2025

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I thought it would be hard to top the number of books we added to the library the end of August/beginning of September when we brought suitcases full of books from America. However, this year’s local Bookarama had around 44,000 books on offer, and we went twice. I won’t tell you how many books we brought home altogether (because I don’t know), but here are the ones that went directly onto the shelves. There are also stacks of them that we need to preview before adding them.

First up: The picture books. I was pleasantly surprised to find this Jungle Doctor Picture Fable. We now have three of them, and they are delightful! The Saggy Baggy Elephant is just a fun classic picture book. I had never read a Lighthouse Keeper book, but we all loved this one when I brought it home. It is funny! I Went to the Zoo is a fun story for young children; it’s along the lines of Jack in the Beanstalk, with something added to the story on each page. The Old Cattle Dog is a wonderful tribute to working dogs and their relationship with farmers. Another Amelia Bedelia book? Yes, please! And then, we found several more Lynley Dodd books that we didn’t have yet. Those are always fun to read aloud.

More picture books! All of my children have loved the Magic School Bus books, and while Blows Its Top and Hops Home are not as informative as the first set, they are still educational. Snow is a very easy reader. Lonesome George Finds His Friends is a beautiful easy reader about the Galapagos Islands. I don’t often find picture book biographies at places like this, so I was happy to find one, even though I had never heard of Louis Sockalexis before. The Bantam and the Soldier is a poignant glimpse into the Anzacs in World War I. I got Helping Paws for my dog-loving little girl. Look Out! is a very easy reader. We don’t have any other books about elephants, so I bought that one for the gorgeous pictures. I saw Let’s Find Out About Fishes in a box that someone was preparing to send to the dump–I quickly asked if I could have it! My youngest loves the Can You See What I See books. Where’s Wally actually didn’t come from the Bookarama; it was rescued from a burn pile last year but only now got added to the library.

Lucy & Tom’s Christmas is a gorgeous picture book of a family celebrating together. We had a different Little Yellow Digger book, but not the first one. My littlest loves the series that Grandpa Kangaroo is in. I think the stories are rather silly, but the photography is amazing. Ships and Seafarers of the South Pacific is a good addition to our Junior History Shelf. The Magic School Bus Inside a Beehive is one of the original, more informative series. Autumn Muster is a beautiful glimpse into high-country farming here in New Zealand.

I bought Skateboards, Scooters and Racers to add to the Art/Craft shelf. I had to reconstruct the back cover; it looked like it had caught fire! The Danger Zone books are intended as a humorous look at history. I had never come across a book about the Bediun people before finding B is for Bedu! What a fascinating peek into the lives of these nomads.

I also bought a number of classics. Isn’t this edition of A Tale of Two Cities beautiful? Notice the date on the label inside the front cover. I’ve been looking for an unabridged hardcover copy of Heidi for a long time, and finally found a beautiful one! I was delighted with these copies of The Swiss Family Robinson and Eight Cousins, as well. The Companion Library edition of Rip Van Winkle and Toby Tyler isn’t gorgeous, but I like Washington Irving’s stories pretty well, so I got it.

Window on the World is one of the books I sold about 10 years ago in a temporary fit of insanity and minimalism. This one is in nearly-new condition. I had been considering buying it new again to use with my youngest two daughters’ history/geography lessons. I bought Play It Again because sometimes we need ideas for new games. One of my children picked up Welsh Tales; she loves collections of stories.

These are some of the books we acquired earlier, and now have added to the shelves. I bought Baby Island because we love the author. It is perfect for baby-loving little girls who also like adventure stories! As I read it aloud, one of my younger boys was holding out for the cannibals to show up on the tropical island–what really happened was much better! We’ve read or listened to In the Presence of My Enemies several times, so when a copy was found at a secondhand shop, it was snatched up. I read The Trailblazing Life of Daniel Boone to my daughter for history. She was rather bored, but I liked the way it told the story of everything that happened in the colonies and the new United States during Daniel Boone’s life, rather like Genevieve Foster’s books.

My youngest has loved Lulu and the Dog From the Sea for a few years, requesting it to be read to her a couple of times, so when I saw two more Lulu books advertised on Facebook, I got them for her birthday. Then, I found another at the Bookarama! I’ve now read her two of them, and we’re halfway through the third. These are great for young animal lovers. They are on the Independent Readers shelf, for children who are transitioning from Easy Readers to longer books.

I’ve read The Love Dare on Kindle, and found it very good, so I got the copy I found at the Bookarama. I’ve been working on reading Astounding Truths of the Bible as a devotional for a long time, and finally finished it. I got Norman Rockwell’s American Family when I saw it on Facebook, and we all really enjoyed studying the pictures.

I’m hoping to find more of the spin-off books from the Little House series; my girls like them. So, I got On Top of Concord Hill. One of my boys, the only one who likes to collect books, picked up The Twelve Million Dollar Note at the Bookarama. He read it already and really enjoyed it. I found True Tales of Animal Heroes at a secondhand shop while we were in America, and read it to my littlest as a bedtime story; she loves this type of book. One of my girls actually bought Stories for Eight-Year-Olds a year ago, but somehow it never got entered into our library! Esther found Irma’s Big Lie some time ago, and finally read it. It sounds like one I would enjoy reading aloud. Apparently, the protagonist learns the value of honesty! We found a couple of Paddington books that we didn’t have. Esther is collecting those, so they came home with us to go on the Independent Readers shelf.

Some of my recent buys on Facebook included two Clyde Robert Bulla books for the Independent Readers shelf. We love his books! I remember reading these two when I was young. I was also able to complete my series of the Milly Molly Mandy books, more that my youngest loves. There is no real plot to them; they are simply lovely stories about a little girl and her friends. I also added A Girl of the Limberlost to the shelf for circulation, since we sourced dust jacket covers to protect the beautiful, but fragile, dust cover. And lastly, Indian Two Feet and His Horse, another lovely Easy Reader that I remember my siblings reading 30 odd years ago. It is delightful!

I spent a Sunday afternoon this month previewing some of the American Girls books I brought home from America. I remember reading and enjoying these books when they first came out, in the 1980s, so I bought some of them for my girls. I noticed that Molly had some bad attitudes, and treated others in ways that weren’t so nice, but each time she ended up seeing the error of her way and apologizing. About that same time I also preread these two new I Survived books. The American Revolution one is rather violent (quite realistic), but I really liked The Black Death–it’s probably my favorite in the series so far.

I found time to read a couple of books that have been here for several years without being read, as well. The Midnight Fox turned out to be a wonderfully heartwarming story of a boy who grew up one summer. The Boy on the Wooden Box is the story of a boy who was saved by Schindler, during the Holocaust. I read King George: What Was His Problem? to one of my children as part of our study of American History. It was a fresh, new look at the American Revolution; I liked the way the author wove the story of a particular soldier through the book. To Ride the Gods’ Own Stallion is one of the books I brought home from America, and so is The Ark. We just finished reading both of them out loud. The first is set in Ancient Assyria, so the violence that shows up is not surprising. For about half the way through the book, I was debating about keeping it, but by the time we reached the end, we knew it was a keeper. The changes that came about in the lives of the main characters were worth reading about. The Ark is one that I read some 30-35 years ago, from the library, and have wished to have on the shelf for many years. It has just been reprinted by Purple House Press, and they had a very good sale earlier this year. I loved having the chance to read this family story together–it’s special! I also brought The 40-Day Sugar Fast home with us from America. It is well worth reading and doing a fast, whether from sugar, or from books, as I did for 40 days after we came home.

And, to wrap up this month, here are a few more books from the Bookarama! I skimmed through these Magic School Bus books and then handed them to my 10-year-old, who loves them. She helped me to make sure we got all the evolutionary references marked out. And lastly, here is a hardcover copy of A Christmas Carol, which one of my boys picked up. It is a beautiful edition!

Wild Weather!

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The weather this week has been wild! On Tuesday, it started raining around midnight -1:00. I lay awake for an hour or so because the rain and wind were so loud. By about 8:00, we had received 96 mm of rain here (about 4 inches). All the ditches were full, and the corner creek in our paddock down the hill was overflowing. The cows were up here, so they were all right, and both pens of chickens happened to be on high enough ground that they were fine. About 10:00, a neighbor from down the hill stopped in to let us know that the paddock was flooding, in case we didn’t know already. He told us that the main creek down there was still rising. Mr. Imagination and I walked down to make sure the chickens were still all right. By then, the sun was shining brightly. This is what we saw. The first picture is our paddock, with water pouring into the corner creek (to the right) from the main creek from two directions: under the road, and beside the milking shed. There are normally two drainage ditches through the paddock, the one curving in the middle of this picture and the one to the left, but on this day, there was water everywhere it could be. The other two pictures show the neighbor’s paddocks across the road, where the floodwater from Orwell Creek was covering everything.

Here’s a video of what we were seeing.

After we returned to the house, Esther took the girls down to the river to see the flood there. There were trees down in the Domain. The second picture shows the Ahaura River, about as full as we’ve ever seen it. Then, they walked the other way, down in the direction of the confluence of the Grey and Ahaura Rivers. Obviously, there was no way to get close! The entire valley was under water.

After that, they walked down to our paddock. The water had dropped a bit, but was still pretty impressive!

The next day, Mr. Imagination took these video clips in the paddock. They’re not very easy to watch, but the footage of him petting an eel is pretty amazing!

Two days later, another storm came through. This one “only” gave us 60 mm (2 1/2 inches), but the wind! It was the worst wind we’ve experienced here. The children were doing school in the kitchen, and looked out just in time to see a huge tree across the road fall down! We were immediately thankful that our cattle were not there. They often graze there, and in fact, they’ll be there tomorrow! They would have been sheltering under the tree, and the entire herd would have been destroyed. It’s a little hard to see here, but the tree is laying on its side behind the electric pole.

This is the size of the rootball!

This is the kind of view we have had out our window many days this month!

Gales Pond and Otto Nature Preserve

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While we were in Michigan, we went with my mom to two of her favorite places. The first was Gales Pond County Park–a must-see when we are with her. It’s been a favorite place to take a walk all my life.

There were dragonflies all over as we walked across the boardwalk. They were sunning themselves in the last rays of the evening.

The children enjoyed seeing the results of a sapsucker’s visit!

It was a calm, beautiful evening.

A must-do at the dam is playing Pooh-sticks! First, sticks, or cattail fluff, or grass, or whatever comes to hand, gets dropped over the edge above. Then, everyone runs across the road to see the objects come through under the bridge, below.

I had never been to Otto Nature Preserve before. It’s out near the Lake, and must be fairly new. This is where most of the mushroom pictures in my last post were taken.

And when a child has the camera, you get pictures of caterpillars and slugs and a line-up of pretty leaves, too!

These are Indian Pipe. I had never seen them before, but they were common that day in the preserve. Despite their lack of chlorophyll, they are plants, not fungi.

The two older children got bored with our slow pace, so we sent them ahead to search for a geocache for which I knew the approximate location. They didn’t find it, though, until we arrived with the phone to find the exact place.

Miss Joy explored someone’s hut.

She also tried to fit inside a tree.

Back to Gales Pond! This was the evening we went out searching for several geocaches.

Mushrooms!

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My mom loves investigating mushrooms. It was rather funny to see her telling people about or showing them mushrooms a couple of times, and seeing their eyes glazing over. My children’s eyes did not glaze over! They were most enthusiastic partners in the Great Mushroom Investigation at two county parks that we visited. I allowed my girls to borrow my camera, and ended up with at least a hundred pictures of fungi, most of which I didn’t keep. I’ll post our other pictures from those parks in separate posts; this one will just be mushroom pictures, so if you are the kind of person whose eyes glaze over, just skip this post.

Isn’t our Creator’s imagination amazing! What a variety of shapes, sizes and colors, just in two small county parks in Western Michigan. (Before you mention it, Mom, I know that one picture likely shows slime mold rather than a mushroom. I just thought this was the most logical place to put that picture.) Now, I’m hoping that we can find a white-spotted red toadstool while Mom is here in the summer, because she’s never seen one in person. I’m afraid that will be the wrong time of year for them, though.

Geocaching!

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Several days after we arrived in Michigan, I read a blog post about someone going geocaching. That sounded like fun, so I ended up creating an account and downloaded the app. Then, we started looking for geocaches in my mom’s area. I won’t tell where these were located; just share the pictures of them. This was our first find. Most of us walked past it, and Little Miss was the only one who spotted it!

We nearly walked into this one.

We searched for about 10 minutes and were about ready to give up when I found this one. It’s the only one I’ve found myself; the children are much better spotters, and move faster, than me.

This one had a lot of items to trade. We didn’t have anything with us to exchange, but Miss Joy had to look through the entire picture book before we left!

This one was for premium members, which we are not, but we managed to find it anyway.

The one near this landmark was also a premium one. We couldn’t find it the first time we tried.

We saw this house just down the road, though! I had forgotten about it. When we still lived in Michigan, our house was just two miles from here. What a mansion!

To find this one, we had to drive down the road to where we got a cell signal, then get the navigation started on the Geocache app, then go back. That worked, and we quickly found it, as well as the next one, in another park around the corner.

A few days later, we went back to the Chief Cobmoosa site, and quickly found the cache. We discovered that we can locate those by using the website on a laptop to pinpoint the location.

We all agreed that geocaching is fun! We haven’t done much of it since returning home, though. One day on the way home from church the boys found a cache, and one of the older boys has stopped en route to or from work to find a few, but that’s all. One of these days, we will do more. There appear to be a lot of caches along the main routes we travel around here, so this would make a great way to take a break.

Silver Lake

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We arrived in Michigan the first week of August, during a heat wave. For the first few days, we rested and caught up with a few people, and went to church with my mom. Then, on Monday, we were ready to do something else. The heat wave had broken, and it was somewhat overcast that day, so we decided it was a good time to go to Silver Lake and show the children the sand dunes. We took two of my nephews along, and the children had great fun!

First glimpse of the dunes across Silver Lake. I’ve always loved this view!

Starting up to the top! This is a very steep climb, but the sand feels very nice between your toes. I had forgotten how fine and soft it is–such a contrast to our coarse sand here in New Zealand. When we came back down later, Gayle and I were about halfway down when the children reached the bottom. They turned around and raced back up so they could run down again! I took a video of that as they came towards me, but since it includes my nephews I can’t post it here.

At the top of the dunes. I always feel like I’m in the Sahara Desert when I get up there!

All the children had great fun jumping from the top of the ridge of sand and rolling down to the valley. We had great fun watching them!

After we played on the dunes for awhile, we went around to Little Sable Point lighthouse. I didn’t get a picture of the outside of it this time, but took these pictures from the top. If you go to this post from several years ago you can see the outside.

That was a fun afternoon!

Family!

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While we were in Michigan, we enjoyed spending time with almost my whole family. My children thoroughly enjoyed getting to know their cousins. In this picture, they were having an apple fight. The tree at the top of the hill was dropping thousands of small, green apples, so the children were pelting Mr. Imagination with them as he returned fire. They all loved it–we heard no complaints about getting hurt!

We often sat at my mom’s picnic table under the tree in front of her house to visit, so the children could play outside nearby while we talked. My little monkey loved the rock pile and the tree!

The girl cousins spent all of one hot afternoon playing with Grandma’s legos. They were building a candy store. The second picture shows some of the “cakes” they constructed and sold to each other and to us.

Another day we spent a couple of hours at Lake Michigan (aka The Lake). Unfortunately, the water near shore was saturated with algae. The children played in it for awhile anyway, but it looked nasty. They ended up having more fun playing in the sand.

Another evening at Grandma’s house! She wasn’t too happy about the barn kittens finding her house, but as close as she is to the barn, it was inevitable. The children loved it!

Lots of games were played on the concrete pad just up the hill. I never got a picture of the basketball hoop Mr. Imagination set up at one side, though.

We also went blueberry picking as a group one day. Miss Joy wanted me to take a picture of her under a bush.

They loved playing in my brother’s pond, too. This happened at least three times, but I only got pictures once.