The Ohrvalls | The Life and Times of

This post is from an imaginative activity prompted from the book "Seated with Christ" by Heather Holleman.  The question posed was: "As an imaginative exercise, describe your seat in the heavenly realms with as precise and vivid detail as possible.  What do you see, hear, smell, taste and feel?  What are you wearing?  What are you experiencing in your mind?"  The following is my answer: I'm seated, comfortable and relaxed.  I have no worries.  All I can physically do is sit and stare at the majesty that is my most indescribable Lord that sits before me.  The most magnificent smells of the Earth can not compare to the wondrous smells that permeate the air here.  They remind me of some of my favorite smells on Earth such as lavender, the beach and pine wood needles; but there is something else entirely in the air that I can not put words to.  The songs of angels saturate the air but seem to fade into the background at the same time.  The music seems to reverbe

The following post is from a testimony that I shared with my MOPS group at Immanuel Church in Gurnee, IL in 2019. It is written to be spoken aloud infront of a group of moms of young children like myself. It is about the time that I spent mothering my two children solo while Matthew was deployed. It was our first deployment and a rough one for me. The following is some of the things that I learned from the experience. Hi ladies, most of you know me but incase you don’t, my name is Jennifer Ohrvall.  My husband, Matthew, and I have been married for over 9 years and we have two children:  Isabella who is 4 and conner who is 2. I’m here this morning to talk to you about the year that I’ve had.  I know this is the day of “tea and testimony” and usually when I think of telling someone my testimony it involves the entire lifetime story of what Christ has done in your life.  That is a long story!   So today I am going to focus on this past year because there have been a lot of st

It has been quite here again.  I promise there is a logical reason for that! With Matthew away on deployment the kids and I took an extended vacation down to NC for the holidays.  We were there for Thanksgiving, Christmas, the New Year and for Conner's birthday.  Of course we were looking forward to seeing all the family and letting the kids get to know everyone better.  One thing that I did not anticipate happening while we were there was all the very natural and frequent mention of my mother. You see my mom passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly 3 years ago.  With us being a military family, we aren't around our extended family very often.  My extended family are the people that knew my mother the best.  They hold her in their hearts daily as do I, but it is a little different in NC.  Different because they live in the same area that she lived and a lot of their surroundings can remind them of her. While I was in NC there were so many places, occurrences, people and c