More than a week ago, I called the office of our congressman here in our city. I talked to the secretary who is in charge of the immigration paper works. I asked her to follow up in the office of the USCIS when will be the schedule of my oath ceremony. It’s been 3 months since I had my citizenship interview and I passed it. I already submitted all the police clearance from the 3 cities where I resided for the past 5 years that they required me to submit since the FBI can’t read my finger prints. But I haven’t heard from the USCIS since then. It’s not my fault that they can’t read it after two times of going to their office to have my finger prints taken. Maybe they need to update their computers so they will have no problem. It had caused me delay to swear in. The long wait was killing me.

This morning, I heard the postman dropped the mails in the mailbox on our porch so I went out to get them. Most were shopping catalogs, I got 3 of them mind you. These companies want my money and they are enticing me to shop from them online. Well, I got some mails too and guess what? I was so happy when I saw the mail from the USCIS. I quickly went inside and opened the mail. It was written there the schedule of my oath ceremony! At last, after a very long wait, I will finally swear in as a US Citizen on October 2 at Arlington, more than 2 hours drive from our place. I called my hubby right away and informed him about it. Both of us were so happy. Then I called the secretary of our congressman and thank her for helping me follow up my papers. I was so grateful to her and she was so happy for me too. I called her September 16 to follow-up my case and the letter from the USCIS was dated September 19. It was so quick, huh! I told the secretary that I should have called her earlier so I didn’t have to wait that long. This is the 2nd time that she helped me. The first time was 3 years ago when I was waiting for the approval of the the removal of my conditional status. It took me forever to wait that time but after I called the congressman’s secretary, it didn’t take long and then I received the approval of my application.

My hubby and I have been praying daily that I will get my naturalization certificate soon and God answered our prayers. After I will get my citizenship certificate, I will apply for a US passport. Next I’m going to apply for a dual citizenship and then we’ll go back to the Philippines and start a ministry there for the Lord. Hubby and I believe with all our hearts that God will grant us our hearts’ desire in His perfect time. We are also praying that God will send us a buyer of our house. I believe that all things work together for good, to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

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We had been having lots of rain here in Texas lately. For the past few days, it’s been raining and I was so glad because we really needed the rain. My vegetables in my garden had perked up after the rain. In fact I harvested lots of okra lately and also my ampalaya have more leaves now and starting to bear more fruits. I gathered some camote tops and I boiled it, dipped it with patis and vinegar. Also the saluyot that I planted got more leaves so I gathered it and cooked it with the squash flowers, okra and mixed it with fried fish. Yummy! It’s like I’m in the Philippines when I eat these vegetables. I just wish I have some bamboo shoots too. Anyways, I thank God for the rain. It really helped us a lot.

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Our pastor and his wife are out of the state so he assigned my hubby and other preachers to preach in his absence. This morning, it was Bro. Allen who preached and the title of his message was Saving Our Children. I enjoyed listening to his message. He’s a good and lively preacher with a good sense of humor.

Tonight, it was my hubby’s turn to preach. He’s been preparing for it and I’ve been praying for him since I’ve learned that our dear pastor assigned him to preach for tonight. Before we left the house we prayed together that God will bless his message and God will speak through him as he brings his message. I know my hubby is a little bit nervous because he’s not been preaching that often. When he was in the Philippines, he preached many times in our church there so he gained confidence. Here in the US, it’s only once in a while that he preaches.

While my hubby was preaching, I was busy in my seat praying for him. I prayed that God will give him heavenly wisdom, clarity of thoughts and loosen the stummering tongue. I’m the number 1 critic of my hubby and I give him some suggestions on how to improve the way he delivers his message. I suggested to him to speak louder and not to pause for a long period of time. I told him to just keep on talking so the audience will not be bored. So far he delivered his message well tonight. His message by the way was entitled Why Praise God and his text verse was found in Psalm 92:1 which says, "It is good to give thanks to the LORD, and to sing praises to thy name O Most High."

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Another year has just been added in my life and I’m so grateful to the good Lord for His never ending blessings and provisions. For all these years since He created me in this vast world, He was always with me whether in times of joy, troubles or trials. Most of you know that I’ve been to a lot of trials in my life. It was during those times that I held on to God’s promises and my faith in Him was strengthened. God never failed me and I just want to thank and praise His Holy name. I thank God for my life and for the joy of my salvation. I thank God for giving me a loving husband whom I love dearly. I thank God for my family and friends who stood with me during those times that I needed them. I thank God for sending His dear Son Jesus Christ who died in the cross for my sins so that I would be reconciled with Him and be with Him in heaven someday. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you God and I praise your holy name. Bless the Lord O my soul.

I received a lot of birthday greetings from my friends and loved ones. Friends from the church and my friends in Friendster sent me good wishes. My siblings in the Philippines sent me text messages and greeted me a happy birthday. I am so thankful for all those who remembered me. Your thoughtfulness touched my heart. To celebrate my birthday, I cooked meatloaf, pancit and lumpia. I didn’t invite anybody. It’s just me and my hubby who ate what I cooked and it made me happy that he always love to eat the foods that I cooked. The meatloaf was gone before I had time to take a photo so it’s not in the picture. My hubby gave me my birthday presents a day before my birthday. Wanna know what did he gave me? See the photos HERE. I blogged about it in my other site.

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As a blogger, a good and fast computer is so helpful especially when chasing opps. My laptop has those features but I’ve read that it’s not recommended to use it for a long period of time because it has some adverse side effects. So I decided to buy a new desktop PC since I spend most of my time in front of the computer. My old desktop is so slow and sometimes it hang. It needs to be upgraded but I don’t want to spend money for that old PC. I prefer to buy a brand new one. Since I won $100 in the contest, I just added it with my earnings from blogging and bought me a brand new PC at Best Buy, my favorite electronic store. This is where I bought my laptop a few months ago. I earned points when I buy there because I have my reward zone card.

I’m contented with my purchase and my hubby was the one who did all the connections and now I’m using it while writing this. My desktop has a 17" widescreen LCD monitor with ultrafast 8 ms response time and antiglare screen treatment and adjustable-tilt display stand. Like my laptop, it has also a CD & DVD burner and label flash to make label prints for CDs and DVDs. It also came with a free Compact Canon PIXMA photo printer so I have another one to print our photos. It’s still in the box though. See some photos below.

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I have posted in my other blog My Online Journal some of the places we’ve visited in Oklahoma City. Aside from the Bricktown Canal, we visited the National Memorial, Myriad Botanical Garden and Crystal Bridge and the last was the Cowboy Museum. I'll post some here too.

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My hubby and I had a mini vacation in Oklahoma City for 3 days and 2 nights. Hubby didn’t like to go there because he wanted to go back to San Antonio but I told him that we can go there next time. We’ve been there last year so I’m not really that interested to go back unless we have to. I want to see places that I’ve never seen before. We’ve passed by OKC many times but I haven’t seen the tourist attractions there. I heard that OKC has a lot of tourist attractions that are worth visiting. So I searched the internet of the things to do in OKC. I even printed the directions going to those places from Mapquest because we don’t have a GPS. I also searched for a good hotel to stay and read the reviews in the internet.

So last Thursday, we went to OKC and checked in to a hotel which is close to the tourist spots. After we ate our lunch at Denny’s which is just next to our hotel, we went to Bricktown Canal and we rode the Water Taxi. This place is a copycat of the River Walk in San Antonio. It’s nice there but there’s not as many attractions as in the River Walk because Bricktown Canal was only constructed a few years ago. The place is not as crowded as the River Walk although there are many tourists there too. When hubby paid for our tickets, the sales lady put a badge in our wrists and she said we can ride the water taxi as many times as we want to during that day but we only rode once. I enjoyed the ride and of course I took a lot of photos and video. Then we went back to our hotel to rest and that ended our activities in day one in OKC.

My hubby took some stolen shots and he caught me off guard. He kept laughing and I didn’t know what he was laughing about so I laughed with him while he took my photos only to find out later that this photo that he took made him laughed. He told me not to delete it.


But I have some good poses though to redeem myself from those bad stolen shots. I just love to pose.

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It was raining this morning but hubby and I decided to go to Ann’s house in Burkburnett inspite of the rain. I already told Ann yesterday that we gonna go to their house and visit her. She told me she’s going to cook and we’ll have lunch in her place. When we reached Burkburnett, it wasn’t raining. Hubby said that people there must not be living righteously, he-he! Anyways, when we reached Burk, hubby and I can’t find Ann’s house. It’s my hubby’s first time to go there and it’s only my 2nd time. He kept driving until I noticed that we’ve already gone far. We had to go back and then I called Ann for directions. We were not far from her place she said and she went out in the street so we can see her. So we went to her house and lunch was ready. I brought lumpia and she just fried it. She cooked chicken adobo and spaghetti, pinoy style. It was so good and Ann gave me some to take home. Hubby doesn’t like spaghetti so he just ate rice, adobo and lumpia. By the way, Ann’s hubby Jeff was at work.

Ann had shown us her baby’s room and it’s ready. Her mom-in-law decorated the room. Everything matched and the theme of the room is baby cowgirl, color is brown and pink. Her mom-in-law was so creative and she did good in the decorations. Ann’s baby, Caroline Lyn is due next month.

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