Meet Our Frugal Female!

I’d like for you to get to know this “back-to-natural,” “down-to -earth,” thrifty young wife and mother, ALYSSA MATHIS. She likes all things homemade, and practices as much self-sustaining living as she can.

Alyssa was born and raised in our neighboring state of Montana. Her mother died when Alyssa was only eight years old! She, along with her five brothers and one sister, lived with her father and stepmother on a hobby farm where Alyssa had the opportunity to learn to work hard. She had animal chores to do after school daily, come rain or shine. Her parents raised mainly sheep and chickens, and occasionally had horses, cows, and pigs. She enjoyed bottle feeding some lambs or calves and just loved it when the little lambs would follow her around outdoors.

Her father also had bees. I’d like to share this little incident with you readers. One time she and her brother wanted to watch their father take out the honey. They stayed in the truck parked on a hill, watching, and... getting bored. She started playing with the handle on the door and it opened. The bees came in and they went running home to their mom who put toothpaste on all of the stings!

One summer as a teenager, she worked for an irrigation company, moving long pipes. She also did a lot of cooking and cleaning. No wonder she is not afraid of physical work, and is so good at organizing her own home, with the girls having specific chores in addition to their homework and piano practice.

After graduating from high school, she joined the USAF where she held office jobs as a personnel specialist. While working for the Air Force at Grand Forks AFB, she met her future husband Dan, an Aircraft Electrician there. They were married in 1998 and now have five lovely daughters: Tanna and Natasha (who share the same birthday two years apart), Anya and Nadia (twins ), and Ariana. And...they are expecting child number 6 in September. Will it be another girl, or a boy???

This busy household is also home for their aging dog Toby.

Dan is no longer in the Air Force. He works as a mechanic on the oil rigs in western ND on an alternating schedule: two weeks at work, two weeks at home. He is also in the ND Air National Guard.

Alyssa likes to read, sew, walk, and garden. She publishes a monthly newsletter about their family, “The Mathis Tribe,” which is available via e-mail by request. She also writes for our NTBC blog in a column titled “Frugal Female.” Her homemade, fragrant, natural soaps can be ordered at alyssas.soap @ gmail.com.

Alyssa belongs to, and is the local delivery contact for the online company, Azure

Standard buying club where one can purchase organic foods in bulk. The Mathis’ have plenty of home preserved foods from the garden. She cooks ‘from scratch,’ and they get to eat some venison which Dan hunts and provides.

As if she doesn’t have enough to keep herself busy, she also takes the time to send out letters from our missionaries, to church members with e-mail addresses. She collects and coordinates box tops and food labels for our school to be used in purchasing equipment for the Christian school. She also volunteers at New Testament Baptist Christian School, helping with lunches and recess. She works in our church nursery, children’s church, and is an active member of the Dorcas missionary ladies group.

Alyssa enjoys our North Dakota summers and open spaces. She especially loves living in this area because this is where her church family is. She excitedly reports having learned some very important and life changing lessons from our Pastor’s wife, Mrs. Shaffer, whom she greatly admires. Alyssa says, “ One of the greatest life lessons I have learned happened while I was in Mrs. Shaffer’s ‘Biblical Helpmeet’ class. I learned that I was not being submissive to my husband and it was causing contention between us. The Lord helped me change my attitudes and actions. As a result, our marriage has been 100 times better. It also showed me that when I was willing to change, my husband voluntarily changed too, so I didn’t have to say a word.”

This is a Godly woman who desires to see each of her children saved in the Lord’s timing. She prays, and we can pray with her, that her daughters become virtuous women who are responsible, obedient, and love God and other people.

We love the Mathis family and are so thankful they are a part of our church family.