Category: Noah’s Archive Bookstore

We are so happy to have “our” dinosaur back, on loan from the Creation Museum! The Estemmenosuchus (which we affectionately named Esty) is a wonderful object lesson and conversation starter! Esty returned in time to be a delightful addition for the Peppermint walk. Hopefully he enjoyed all the attention he got, lol.

We overheard one boy asked his mom, “Did they shoot him?” =)

We have several small signs in front of Esty, teaching what the Bible says about dinosaurs. One of them explains,

“In the last several years a number of dinosaur bones have been found with actual blood cells and soft tissue still within them. It is a puzzle to evolutionary scientists how soft tissue could remain in bones for 70 million years but it is not a puzzle for the creation model…”

The Peppermint walk is something that downtown Marion organizes for families one night in Christmas. It’s a very festive time.

This year we rolled up lots of scrolls of the Christmas Story (the account told from various places in Scripture) and passed them out to the long lines in the town square. The families were very appreciative.

Lots of families also came into our store. It’s a nice spacious place for them to warm up.

We are very grateful for the Martin family’s DVDs on God’s incredible creation, which we keep playing throughout the evening.

Peppermint white hot chocolate, cookies, and various Christmas gospel tracts / pamphlets.

“Because of the tender mercy of our God, With which the Sunrise from on high will visit us, to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, To guide our feet into the way of peace.” Luke 1:78-79

My dad had an idea of how we could make better use of the large windows on our bookstore this Christmas season.

He came up with a plan and then recruited some help from Hannah and Shelby who help frequently at the Bright Lights office

Dad wanted to communicate concepts to make people think!

Some friends from church let us use their large Nativity set

Since there is a stoplight at the corner, often cars are slowing down or stopping as they pass our store, giving them more opportunity to see the ornaments. We also have a lot of people who walk by.

“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people” Luke 1:68

This morning we had a sweet group of homeschoolers come in to Noah’s Archive on a Field Trip. They are studying Noah’s Ark this week.

They had some cute things to ask and say after my dad’s little presentation:

“Did Noah use animals to build the ark?”
“Why did they use gopher wood?”
“Maybe they used gophers [to build the ark] because it was [made out of] gopher wood…”
“Maybe there isn’t gopher wood anymore because they used it all up to build the ark!”
“Could the dinosaurs break through the wood of the ark?”

Of course, the group also tackled some bigger questions such as, “Where did all the water come from?”, “Where did the water go?”, “What about the Ice Age after the flood?”, “How did all the animals fit on the ark?”, and “How do we know there were dinosaurs on the ark?”

It’s exciting that God has given us good answers to all of these questions.

Some projects are just extra hard to complete, and this sign was one of them! There seemed to be a new obstacle to work through at every step. But we saw many answers to prayer. Below are some pictures of the sign creating process.

Preparing to sandblast. Mike and our other friends from Wood Graphics down the street were GREAT to work with, and we’ve gotten very well acquainted because of all we’ve had to work through together. Lots of decisions; lots of discussion. They were very patient with us. 🙂

This man has been painting signs for over 50 years and he did a great job.

The engineering details of mounting the sign with the new wooden sign post cover

Installation!

Putting on the last end cap!

“Praise the LORD! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting.” (Psalm 147:1)