Happy New Year! 2026 is Here!

Is There Room in Your Heart?

Conrad and I have had a good year this 2025. We are thankful every day for good health and for each other. Graduations filled up our May. Our sweet Anna graduated from KU and is teaching high school art in Great Bend. Willow graduated from Flower Mound High and is going to Boston University in a few weeks. Asa graduated from Rawlins County High and is now at KSU in computer science. We now have two grandsons at KSU with another planning to join them next fall.

A new knee was in store for grandpa in May. He tried physical therapy and decided to go ahead with a new knee. He has done very well with his new knee and was very faithful to do all of the physical therapy carefully. This did put a crimp in Pam’s plans this summer. Travel was curtailed for a bit and Pam had to mow and trim this whole place. Wouldn’t you know this would be the year it would rain and the grass would keep growing until frost! I love green grass and rain so no real complaints from this girl.

We were unable to go on a SOWER mission this year due to the knee replacement. This mission was missed very much by both of us. We are hopeful to return to this ministry soon. We miss our friends and the couples we have worked with.

I-70 has been a well-traveled road for us this fall. With two grandsons in Manhattan and four grandchildren in Olathe, we have seen a lot of this road. We also made it to St. Paul, Minnesota to watch Josh play football there with UNW. Our grandchildren are growing up quickly now and the realization has hit that they are on their own pursuits all over the USA right now and it will be more so in the future. I wonder if we will make it to Boston University?

Conrad and I are enjoying retirement. We are not retired we are refired! We’ve been really enjoying our church and we have had many opportunities to teach Bible studies in the last few years. We rejoice in our Savior and His goodness to us.

Will we make room for God to write His story in our lives?

God bless you all dear friends! HAPPY 2026 Conrad and Pam Popp

Grandma’s Quilt Block

The fabric scraps she cut with care.
All sorts of shapes placed here and there
to form a block, then two, then three…
Put them together- a quilt for me.
Unknown

Our community’s historical society has some quilts that women in the years gone by have made. They brought them to the quilt club that I attend. Some were made at the turn of the century and some in the early 1900’s. Some were family quilts that were made by several different members of that family. Some were made with feed sacks as that is what they had and some were made by churches and clubs in the community. Women would gather together to stitch and chatter and make something useful for someone in need.

“Behind every quilter is a big pile of fabric.” So true

I was delighted to see on one of the quilts the handiwork of my grandmother Mable. She moved to the community as a young bride and her applique skills were evident. The women embroidered their names on the block that they completed and then all the blocks were sewn together and quilted. This grandmother was well known for her knitting skills. I still have the vests that she knitted for my children when they were young. As a young girl she tried her best to teach me to knit and I did learn the process well. However, I started making a sweater that quickly turned into a dog sweater and then a kitty sweater and then it was never completed. I was a bit of a disappointment to her in that regard.

I have quilts in my home that were made by the hands of my Granny, my dear mother-in-law, a niece and by me. I found when I retired from working that quilting was intriguing to me, unlike the knitting. I have made a king sized quilt for all four of my children and am now working on a quilt for our bed. Some of the quilts at my house are machine quilted and some are tied.

“When you are quilting up a life, you sometimes got to start with any piece you can get your hands on.”

Jonathan Odel

I live in the house that my grandmother, Mable lived in. She and my grandfather had this house moved onto our farm in the 1940’s. I love to think of her sitting in her chair and knitting a sweater or preparing my grandpop a delicious meal of fried chicken. She had a huge garden and raised four children here on this place. It was so sweet to see that block in the quilt she made so many years ago and to think of the very special friends that gathered to chatter and create with their hands.

“Our lives are like quilts – bits and pieces, joy and sorrow, stitched with love.”

Family, Fabric, Farmer and Flies

The Farmer and I traveled to Wisconsin for a great nephew’s wedding in June. It was a wonderful family time with the Farmer’s sister and lots of nieces and nephews. His three brothers have graduated to heaven. He is the only brother left. He still has all three sisters. Being with his family has become so much more precious due to this. That’s one reason we decided to make the trip.

It was a beautiful wedding in some amazing country and scenery. We were on a lake and only a short distance from Lake Superior. One day after the wedding we took a boat trip to Apostle Islands. The Farmer who always wears cowboy boots decided the day of the boat ride to wear sandals. MISTAKE! The black flies were awful on the boat and nearly ate us alive. They were fighting with vengeance. We had to warp the Farmer’s legs with this sweatshirt. The scenery was delightful but those flies!! Yikes!

“An optimist is one who believes that a fly is looking for a way to get out.”

“But on that day I will deal differently with the land of Goshen, where my people live; no swarms of flies will be there, so that you will know that I, the Lord, am in this land.“

-Exodus 8:22

We saw some wonderful scenery, lighthouses, rock formations, and ships on Lake Superior. We saw quilt shops and fabric shops. We were so fortunate to hit the corner of Michigan at their time of Quilt Hop Shop. Wow, God is so good. As I was driving back to our daughter’s house in Kansas City, I saw a sign for Missouri Star Quilt Company. It was 15 miles in the wrong direction but the car just turned that way. It was a thrill to see it and it fills up the whole town of Hamilton, MO. Of course, I had to buy some fabric. It was a wonderful little trip.

Family, Fabric, Farmer!! And Flies! Memorable!