Total Stranger Pays for our Cartload of Groceries at Costco!

What are you supposed to do when your credit card is not being accepted at Costco, and your husband is hurrying out to the truck to get a checkbook, and you hear a kind voice saying, "Ma'am, would it be all right if I just paid your bill?"

That is what happened a few hours ago when Jonathan and I were checking out of Costco. Due to Jonathan never getting paid the last payment on that notorious job last month, we have been trying to figure out how to make it and how to pay for our bills, much less groceries. I discovered that I had an old credit card that we had quit using but that had reward points that must be used up soon. I wasn't about to lose those points, so I went with Jonathan today to work and errands, to see what the prices were like at Costco, where his business has a membership this year. I found a number of bulk items that were much better price than Walmart or even sale prices that I get elsewhere. So since I needed to buy a few hundred dollars worth of things before the reward points ran out, I had filled up the cart so full that Jonathan was having to push it for me when he got back from an errand he had run while I was busy price checking. Unfortunately, our credit card with the reward points wasn't the kind that was accepted at Costco! While Jonathan was trying to figure out what to do, I said we'd have to send the groceries back, because it was for $287, too much to figure out how to pay for some other way. Jonathan decided to run out for the checkbook, and I said we couldn't rack the bill up...

 And that was when I heard the voice. A young man offered to pay for me, and swiped his credit card, and before my unbelieving eyes, the clerks were letting him do it, and I was seeing a miracle. I offered that we could repay him with a check, and he shook his head. I told him a shocked thank you, received the receipt, he disappeared back the line, and the line behind me moved on while I pushed my heavy cart out to the door. 

This young man was not someone right behind us, but at least the second group back. I'm not sure he could even hear what we had said to each other, but--how can I explain? I have no explanation except to say God paid our grocery bill today.

 I waited at the exit door of Costco, after Jonathan heard the story and, dumbfounded, went to load the groceries in the truck. I wanted to say thankyou again. I told the young couple that my husband hadn't gotten paid on the last big job he did, that we had been scrabbling, and that I was using reward points to try to pay for the bill. 

The young man simply shook his head, and said, "We are blessed to do it. Be blessed!"
I walked to our truck crying. I have heard of such things happening. Today it happened to me!
When there are people who won't even pay what they owe, there are also those who pay what they do not owe just to lift the load for someone else!

Isn't God amazing?

God Provides Indian Corn and Free Hay!

Last week our children proudly and happily harvested their crop of Indian corn.

They had grown this corn in this little garden plot Timmy had tilled up this spring, and which later they had fenced and then covered with hail screen over top--because you may as well not plant garden out here without hailscreen over it.

In among the corn, there are pumpkins, squash, green beans, and morning glories!

Beautiful sky-blue morning glories--one of my favorite flowers!

One by one, the children picked the corn, pulling the husk aside to show the variegated colors of each cob.

Not one was exactly alike!

Every one was a delightful surprise--just like the children God gives us!

Not one the same as any other--each individual special and intricate and uniquely gifted.

The whole family except for Sam who had left for work early as usual was out there enjoying the harvest.

Small though our gardens have to be, having a garden is a great chance for the children to work with nature and discover its secrets,

enjoy its harvests, and do something productive rather than sitting in front of screens or playing on phones. 

They are so, so happy as they watch their gardens grow and produce.

And here is another way God provided for us recently--free hay!

Someone didn't think their huge bale of hay was good enough for their horses, and so they advertised it free on Craig's List, and one of our children happened to see the ad. Right away Jonathan said to call, so I called. Two other people had already called about it, but neither of them wanted to load it, and the lady had no way to load the big bale whole. She said it was a little moldy and she wasn't about to feed it to her horses.

Well, I told her I had several children, and we were willing to come that very evening and load it as best we could.

I was envisioning a bale that would take an hour and a half to pull apart and load.

Jonathan hitched up a trailer, and I drove the children and myself there, and in about five minutes we had that hay loaded. It separated into "flakes," as you call it, and was very easy to carry.

"See?" the lady urged me, as she pointed at the bad hay. She wanted me to see how bad it was.

I looked at it and tried hard to see what was bad about it. I could not see anything bad, but I figured I was not good at judging horse hay and I did not by any means want to appear ignorant. :)

Most people are picky about their horse hay, but we have goats and two calves right now that can eat less than perfect hay.

At home the next morning, we dumped the hay out of the dump trailer onto a tarp, and then we all helped wheelbarrow it to the barn and barn loft. We could not find anything wrong with that hay. Nothing wrong at all. 

We just figured God must have wanted to provide free hay for us!

Isn't it delightful how God takes care of us?

Crabapple Jelly and Crabapple Sauce

 Saturday afternoon on our way to take Danny fishing for his birthday, we stopped at a place where Jonathan is remodeling, where the owners said we could pick the crabapples. There were bushels of them--large, bright red crabapples!

It was as hot as a summer July, but we got busy and climbed ladders, picked crabapples and then shook branches till crabapples were raining down on our heads! I tried not to think about all the work we had ahead of us for preserving those things!

We must have gotten about three and a half bushels.Then we could forget about the future work for a few hours while we went for a little hike and the younger children fished at their favorite stream.

But the work cannot be forgotten forever! Crabapple jelly, here we come! Today we all got busy and now near the end of the day I am collapsing for a little while at my desk to write about it! 

We did up 38 pints or halfpints or other small size jars of beautiful red jelly, and then put the pulp through our Victorio strainer and got about 14 quarts of beautiful pink crabapple sauce. All you have to do, if you think the sauce is too tart, is add a little sugar, and you have delightful apple sauce! I had no idea you could do that. There is very, very little waste.

Besides all that which we canned or froze, there were about three quarts of crabapple sauce that the girls want to turn into crabapple butter, just like apple butter.

Crabapples are much smaller than regular apples, and more tart. 

It was a lot of work to do anything with them.

But I thought how the Lord made crabapples just like He made apples--both to be useful fruit and food for mankind. 

What if some of us are smaller and less significant than others?

What if some of us are skinny and not very beautiful and without very many talents or gifts, and peppered with lots of botches and spots?

A hungry family enjoyed doing up a bunch of those spotty, crabby little red crabapples into delightful jelly and sauce,

and God turns the least of us into something useful in His kingdom. 

Lord, maybe I am just one of Your crabapples, compared to some of Your wonderful apples. 

But just use me the way You want.

Cut out the black spots; cook in hot water until soft; then add lots of sugar and place on Your shelf--

not to be admired, but to be used!

When You Must Ignore the Chigger Bites

I already mentioned chigger bites in another post. But I wanted to say something more about them.
All at the same time that they can be maddeningly itchy if you scratch them, the best way I found to deal with them was to ignore them--except to apply balm.

Everything you read about chigger bites preps you to believe they are going to ruin your life with their awful itch, and to use everything from fingernail polish to alcohol to Chigarid to medicate the bites or suffocate the chiggers which are supposedly still inside the bite. Some articles say the chigger is still inside the bite, and some say they aren't. I really don't know who is right.

I just know that when we had a job to do in South Dakota, we couldn't afford to let chigger bites stop us.

Chigger bites was the price I paid, apparently,  for heading right into the tall weeds behind the property next to the church we were working on, to pick the wild plums that Mrs. Judy Sherman, Sr, wanted to turn into plum jam. We had secured permission to pick from Beth Montour, the kind lady who let our family stay in her little house by the church while we were there.

The next day or so, the bites started popping out and reddening and itching. I would have to tell myself not to scratch them, because as soon as I touched them, the itch was maddening.

But if I could make myself stop and just get through the next couple minutes, the itch would be bearable and I could go on with life.

 I thought how in life you wade into weedy situations that you have no idea what the results will be.

Maybe you wade in to mow.

Or maybe you wade in there to pick plums to make jam.

You mean well. You are just trying to help someone. You are using your time wisely, serving others, ministering, or whatever. And you end up attacked by nasty bites--

criticisms, disagreements, scorn, derision, backfires, backbiting, malice, misunderstandings.

They usually come after the fact, because typically people won't criticize you to your face, but behind your back, and the pain hits you later, like chigger bites. A delayed reaction.

You could start counting the issues, like I counted my bites.

Eighteen or more of them. (Last year Jonathan had about 80 or more.)

And you could start paying attention to them and scratching them, like that is going to help.

What I learned was that literally every touch made chigger bites worse.

The best way to deal with a pesky chigger bite was to ignore it--

to literally give your attention to NOT scratching that hurtful bite.

And very often the best way to deal with a criticism or scorn or obvious hurtful backbite of some kind is to leave it be.

The more you pay attention to it and react to it and scratch it and coddle your bitterness toward it, the worse it will get. It may even become infected.

The only kind of touch that helped my chigger bites was the touch of healing balm like olive oil or frankincense essential oil mixed with olive oil. That was the only thing that helped.

Not my own efforts at healing the pain, but applying balm, something outside myself.

It wasn't in my power to touch those nasty, itchy welts and make them feel better.

I suppose any smart reader can figure out where this is going--

We need the Balm of Gilead where the pain has been.

Otherwise, we'll find it true what Jonathan saw on Facebook a while back and told me about:

"If you never heal from what hurt you, you'll bleed on people who didn't cut you."

I write these kind of things not just to encourage or share with others, but sometimes because in the very act of writing these things, I find healing for hurts of my own.

Healing for inner pain I am completely unable to bear or medicate or suffocate on my own. 

Pain that requires the Balm of Gilead so that I don't "bleed on people who haven't cut me."

The Balm of Gilead Whose healing power makes it possible to forgive things in people who see no need to ask forgiveness, who are totally blind to the ways they have wounded or bitten in tender areas of "thin skin," like the chiggers do, finding areas behind knees or around ankles where the skin is thin, where it is easy to bite and the bite will be more irritable to the person;

and finding areas where the clothing fits tightly, such as the top of socks or around the waist--

places which we normally keep covered,

 areas of our lives that we just don't expose to others.

Those are great places for chiggers to make their low blows and leave you suffering.

When scratching, or ignoring, or leaving it be won't completely work,

my friend, you and I need the Balm of Gilead.

Chigger bites don't respond to preaching. Don't preach to chigger bites to just forgive and forget.

Apply Balm.

It just takes a drop on each bite.

Healing balm dropped in every drop of blood off Calvary's tree--the blood shed not just for our pardon, but for our healing.

Take time to dab a little on every single bite.

Take the chigger bites to Jesus. Name them one by one, and then just give Him the whole itchy, hot, maddening lot of them..

It is the Balm that works wonders.

Labor Day Re-enactment of the Civil War at Fort Kearney, Nebraska

On Labor Day, on our way home from South Dakota, we stopped through Kearney, Nebraska, to enjoy a Re-enactment of the Civil War that several of our Nebraska friends were involved in.

Because of rain, other volunteers had disappeared, but now that the weather was better, the leaders of the re-enactment were training these newbies for a while on how to march, how to respond to commands, and how to pretend to be soldiers in the Union or Confederate army.

One thing that stood out to me as the veteran "general" was explaining things to the men and boys, was what he said about how young men are trained during Boot Camp in the army. He said that there might be 20 officers yelling and shouting at you, telling you what to do, but you have to learn to listen for the voice of your own officer and know what to do.

That is to train the young men for the confusion of war, to teach them to pay attention, be alert, listen, and obey!

I thought how we have to have an ear to our heavenly "Officer." 

There are so many voices screaming for our attention, demanding that we do this or do that, please this one or please that one.

Bhere is only One Voice we are to listen to, and we must keep step with Him as we have been told and trained by His Word.

I thought it was very educational for the boys to hear these things. They may never join the army for real, but God's Word compares our spiritual life with warfare, and it never hurts for them to learn a few things about marching in step, keeping in step with others, listening for the bugle and drum, following the general, obeying orders.

It was discussed about the value of even the boys too young to fight. There were over 600,000 drummer boys in the Union Army alone during the Civil War! They wanted to help, but they were too young to fight, so they were trained to give signals with the drum and fife.

As I was sorting through some old books I'd gotten for myself and the children from the Shermans in South Dakota, I discovered a good old children's book called The Story of D-Day: June 6, 1944.

I looked inside it, and couldn't put it down till I had read most of it. 

The first chapter, called "The Great Assault," says, "The end of the Second World War began on June 6, 1944.

That was the day American, British and Canadian troops, who had sailed across the English Channel from England, invaded the continent of Europe. They attacked a fifty-mile strip of the coast of Normandy in German-held France. It was the greatest amphibious, or waterborne, assault in the history of warfare."

"Some few must be the first ashore.

They lead the way for all the others to follow. Those who land first have a particularly tough job.

In the minutes while they are leaving their boats and wading ashore [some in 5 feet of water while carrying a loaded gun over their head to keep it dry], they are exposed and almost helpless."

And the book, in simple language and photos, tells the story of the heroes who went first--most of whom didn't make it to or across the beach alive.

It told of those who stopped to help the wounded and who got shot doing it,

and of those who made it across to a bit of shelter at the base of the cliffs, and who were too stunned by the terrible losses all around them that they could not move.

It told of how in the terrible confusion after so many things went wrong in at least two areas of the landing, one man at a time would make the decision to stop doing nothing, and to do something.

It told the stories of some of the heroes who pointed out good guns lying on the beach and encouraged the stunned men to grab and clean them and start climbing the cliffs. 

One man went right out on the beach to point the way for big guns which were aiming the wrong way, so they could take out German guns he had spotted up high on the cliff.

The man gave his life for that act of bravery.

Another went first to throw a special kind of explosive under the huge loops of barbed wire, so that a way through could be made for the infantrymen. His grenade succeeded, but German guns shot him. 

His body helped to shelter the second soldier who took his place, throwing more explosives. The second man made it--

because the first made the way for him.

D-Day and its accomplishments were not done so much by an overwhelming number of soldiers and weapons, but by the courage of one soldier at a time, who in the loneliness and confusion and horror of those hours, when so many stood shell-shocked, 

"had refused to stop trying."

Not all their names, by any means, are known. Not all their actions were noticed or entered in the records.

"But wherever an advance was made, the pattern was much the same. The movement started when one man (or in some cases, several men) took the first step. Nothing, broadly speaking, went according to plan. New decisions had to be made on the beach.

"Omaha succeeded because a few leaders showed the others that something could be done. They led, more often than not, by being themselves the first to make the move."
Not every move succeeded in itself. But in the greater plan, every move accomplished something. It showed the one behind where to step or not step, where to shoot or not shoot, where to climb or not climb.
It showed the next person how to take another step.
And in the greater plan, each step moved forward toward victory.

"Few cared to think, when victory came, about the times when the assault sections on Omaha had stalled, and individual soldiers, of their own accord, had rescued the great invasion."
These thoughts meant so much to me that I wanted to share them.
Perhaps there may be just one of my blog readers who has tried to take a step, or do something, when it seemed that nothing could be done, and all around were in too much shell-shock to act.
Maybe your action failed. Maybe it backfired. Maybe you are in the middle of taking a step or moving forward in something alone, and you don't know how the others around you will take it.

I read a quote recently by Winston Churchill.

"You have enemies? Good.

That means you've stood up for something sometime in your life."

You might stand up for something, and be mowed down for it.
You might take a step and have a land mine tear you to pieces.
You might go out against the devil, and be shredded for it.
But keep in mind the greater scheme of things.
One soldier at a time became a leader in a moment of disaster and confusion. 

More often than not, that person was promptly killed, or stepped on a land mine, or was shot while pulling himself over the edge of the cliff, or while directing guns on the beach.

You pay a price to step out and be the only one, 

the first one,

the courageous one.

And you never really know how your step of courage will turn out,

whether it will succeed or not, whether you will survive or not, whether the enemy will give in or not, or whether even your own fellow soldiers will get in behind you or run for cover somewhere that they can hide.

You don't know if your name will go down in history or if you will be among those who disappeared in the water with only a close family to remember and mourn.
But keep in mind the great scheme of things, the cause for which you are fighting.
And take the next step!
Fight on, soldier, fight on!

The Strange Song in the Night that You Probably Didn't Want to Hear

"Did you know that you were singing in your sleep last night?" Jonathan asked me last Sunday morning as we were eating breakfast in the basement of the Lower Brule Holiness Church where we had been working on the foundation with a team from Mitchell Saturday.

No, I had no idea. It was absolutely the last thing that I would have expected of myself that night.
We had been sleeping all over the church--the boys up in front of the pulpit on cots,
 
Rose and Hannah downstairs in a basement room on cots,

and Jonathan and me in this room off the vestibule, a room so tiny that we couldn't even walk around the bed!

I wasn't sure what I might have been singing--and was afraid to ask!

Was it about our wonderful Savior...

or did I sound like one of the drunks of the town that we had been duly warned about from Brandie Eberhardt and told not to open the church door if they banged on it in the middle of the night?

Afraid of the latter, I wisely decided not to ask any more questions until later--but more about that later.

As I said, we were there at Lower Brule to try to repair the one foundation wall that was literally caving in.

 Jonathan had brought these three long steel rams that he put together and fastened to the floor at one end, while the other end pushed against steel plates that were pushing the cracking, bowing wall back into place. 

We had arrived Friday evening, and Brandie Eberhardt, the lady who drives 1 1/2 hrs. every weekend to keep this little mission church alive on the reservation, greeted us with lots of genuine appreciation, and loads of wonderful food!

I especially appreciated this wonderful fresh salad sent from the Staffords, with cucumbers, peppers and cherry tomatoes that Brandie said were from Pastor and Mrs. Stafford's garden at Mitchell.

Due to our worries about limiting chiggers and their bites, we finished jacking the rams against the cracked and bowing walls that first evening, and headed off for showers to try to wash off any chiggers we might have gotten that day at Winner. Jonathan was itching with a few bites, too, again, but not nearly as many as I was, thanks to plum picking!

We drove 15 minutes away to the Fort Thompson church and school where there is another mission on the reservation, one that Rev. Lindell Howard pastors.

It has this nice sanctuary 

and even a small school building which is being used for Sunday School classes...

 and rooms for some of the mission folk, to stay overnight, who drive a long ways out from Mitchell to help minister on Sunday.

There was a shower there, and we all took turns and then came back to Lower Brule and went to bed the first night.

Next morning we were up and at it. Bro. Matt Hunter had brought out his mini excavator to excavate the earth on the other side of that cracking wall, so that the wall could be successfully pushed back level. He had already done the excavating the morning before and Pastor Stafford from Mitchell had been on the other side, doing other earth moving.

Jonathan needed two spots especially cleared out in which to form up buttress walls to hold the wall in place.

Sam cut into the concrete basement wall, so that we could join the concrete buttresses into the wall.

Twelve men and boys came out from Mitchell to help! They were a wonderful crew. There were Hunter, Lyon, Duvall, and Light boys, Samuel Blowers, Sam Lyon, Matt Hunter, David Buchanan (president of Faith Bible School), and others whose names I didn't get.

They built forms for the buttress walls, mixed cement by hand and poured the walls, drilled holes through the concrete basement wall into which to put rebar to tie the wall together to the buttress walls.

Then they backfilled. They also mixed a little extra concrete to try to fix the uneven floor of the basement where it met at the crack, with one part about an inch or more higher and causing us to trip!

Meanwhile, Rose and I helped Brandie with setting meals on.

We so appreciated any of the fresh vegetables!

I also prepared a story for Sunday School, as Brandie had asked me on the phone a couple weeks earlier if I would share a story. 

I also tried to iron our Sunday clothes, ironing on an old piano bench sitting in the back of the church.

I first ironed right on the bench, but that was a disaster, because the top I was ironing stuck to the varnish on the bench!

It was my nice light green top, the nicest top I own, my favorite, one that actually isn't too big or too little and is the color Jonathan likes best on me, and that I wear under a lacy jacket, and it suddenly had brown varnish on the back of it! Oh, dear!! I hastily scrubbed my top with soap and water, and amazingly, most of the brown came out.

So I laid another clothing article down first and then ironed the Sunday clothes on top of that...

Then after the fun evening I posted about earlier, we went back to the school at Fort Thompson to shower again.
And that is where, while we took turns showering, Brandie told us her story about being bitten by a brown recluse spider, and the hole it made in her face before it healed up!

We shared our own horror story about my nephew's wife's sister who had been bitten by a copperhead snake on Wednesday of that week. And Brandie warned us not to take walks down the street the church was on, because a Sunday School child's grandmother had walked down the street very recently and had been attacked by three pit bull dogs!
So you can imagine what was running through my mind the night that Jonathan told me I was singing in my sleep!
Brown recluse spider bites, copperhead snakes, pit bulls attacking helpless grannies, and maddening chigger itches!
There I was, trying to sleep on a sagging mattress poked here and there with bed springs,
no curtains on the windows, no air conditioning, and dozens of spiders weaving their way around the front church door.
But right in the middle of that, when I gave Jonathan a goodnight hug and kiss, I had told him that I was so happy to get to come together with him on this trip!

 I had spent just a few minutes after lunch, getting in online on the very end of Paul and Jacinda [Edwards] Stetler's wedding that day.

 I just love weddings, and we were acquainted with both bride and groom a little, as one or the other or both have been out west here to our church different times in the last few years.
The wedding was the epitome of elegance and class. It was gorgeous, romantic, and fabulous, all at the same time that the bride was beautifully modest and her bridesmaids were so refreshingly modest.
And of course, after all these years, with Paul Stetler nearly 40, bride and groom seemed sooo happy!
And then I sat there and thought.
I thought about how I was happy for them, but--I was happy for me, too!
I was so happy right where I was in this little Native American church on a South Dakota reservation,

right in the middle of dirt and mouse droppings and anything-but-honeymoon sleeping arrangements,  

and would be right in the middle of a bunch of wild kids the next day when they got off the bus.

But I wasn't jealous of Paul and Jacinda's happiness.
I had my own happiness!
I still have my own husband after 24 years of wedded bliss (with a few misses in with the kisses),
and I was happy. 
In fact, I wasn't sure that Paul and Jacinda could be much happier than I was.
And perhaps that is where the strange song in the night came from.

 "You were humming at first," Jonathan told me, when I finally dared to ask what I was actually singing. "Then you were singing!"
"What was I singing?" I asked.
"I don't know," he admitted, "something unintelligible."
Something like a drunk, I suppose!
Still, I had to smile to myself.
Right in the middle of the dirt and the droppings and the dreary low-class environment of a reservation,
right in the middle of a sagging bed with chigger bites all over me, God had given me a song in the night.!