Crystal Back at Penn View

This evening Crystal called to talk. She is busy in her first of week of classes back at college.

But while she was home, Rose taught her how to play the mountain dulcimer,

and just before she left from home to fly back to PA, she was so happy to get to play some music with her brother and sisters.

The girls' dulcimer teacher and husband asked the children to play at their church the Sunday evening before Crystal left for college.

They played about six songs together with their teacher, her husband and another boy who is learning banjo.

Here is Crystal with her dulcimer.

Crystal with the dulcimer teacher, who, by the way is deaf, but yet can play music.

She reads lips and listens to vibrations.

Crystal sewed one side of a dulcimer cover, and Rose sewed the other. This is Rose's side ready to be ironed.

"Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out." John Wooden

Crystal made this rice and stirfry meal for us the evening or so before she left.

It was just delightful. 

She was so thankful to the Lord that her litter of eight puppies sold within just one week,

paying her way through her final semester of college.

Crystal also sewed a warm nightgown while she was home.

We miss her, but are thankful she is doing her best to stay in the center of God's will. 

This week she worked two afternoons to clean and make beds in a home that will be keeping about 14 extra people during the youth convention at Beavertown God's Missionary Church. 

She has also been taking paces to finish supervisor training in ACE, a requirement for graduation.

She asks us to keep her cousin Amaris in our prayers, as Amaris can hardly walk anymore because of pain from the Lymes Disease, and nothing the doctors are doing (antibiotics galore, intravenous treatments, etc.) is helping.

Mission Field in Pueblo

If you want excitement, just move to or attend a city mission church!

After reconnecting with Maria Hunt at the ladies retreat in Denver yesterday, I asked Jonathan if we could go give her Sunday morning Sunday School in Pueblo a boost today. Maria is the sister of our former pastor, Derald Hunt, and had been caring for her parents on their pastorate in Pueblo for many years until both parents went to be with the Lord. 

Maria has continued to have Sunday School at church and Bible studies in homes after the death of her father. 

We had invited her for our Thanksgiving dinner in November, but that morning she was sick.

Then our family was planning to try to help her with Christmas caroling, but then we got sick. 

So finally we were able to get together.

I will always remember how Maria came to our home about ten years ago for the measurements of our girls and me so she could sew us matching peach jumpers which we wore just after the birth of Hannah.

Our family took along our meal as usual, and enjoyed sharing it with Maria  in her delightful home.

Her contribution of homemade ice cream went over extremely well, along with the chocolate cake Hannah made.

Cities in America are at least as dangerous a mission field as missions in foreign lands.

Maria regaled us with stories about how God has helped her and protected her in dangerous situations right in her own yard! God helped her to intervene in at least one situation where a woman was being attacked by a man right outside her window, and in another situation where a young man was about to be attacked by a Rottweiler. Maria simply commanded that Rottweiler to stop the barking.

"You are not in control of this alley way!" she told the vicious dog.

As the young man took a few more steps, the dog was about to bite him, and again Maria simply spoke with authority to the dog and the dog hung its head. When the man finally reached the street corner safely away, he waved a big thanks to Maria, who was amazed at how that dog sensed that she had no fear, and had obeyed her!

She gives God all the glory.

However, that was not the end of the stories. Maria is good at decorating the church tastefully, 

but she also faces spiritual opposition often in that drug-infested neighborhood.

Only a couple months ago, Maria was arriving at the home where she conducts Bible studies on Sunday afternoon. As she arrived, she felt a very heavy sense of evil hanging around her.

Two young men were hanging around and staring at her, and she refused to look at them as she parked her car. When she got out, they had disappeared, but five minutes after starting Bible study,

a knock came on the door.

Just outside the home, a young man had just been shot and murdered!

The Bible study was, needless to say, shot to pieces for a while as different ones in the family took it very hard, and Maria had to try to comfort children and help to keep people in one piece.

Police were swarming in a very short time. 

Yes, Maria lives in a dangerous place, but God is greater, and He gives her safety and a sense of peace and boldness at just the right times.

On our way home, we stopped at a park near the interstate where Danny and Hannah enjoyed the geese and ducks.

There were a couple old army cannons there at the park, reminding me of the spiritual warfare

missionaries face both at home and abroad,

for, as Maria said, we do not fight against flesh and blood, but against principalities and the prince of the power of the air.

"Do you feel safe there?" Maria keeps being asked.

"But where is safety?" Maria replies.

"Is it not in the center of God's will?"

Leaving Grand Bahama

Here is an aerial view of the project about half done.

You can see the two long buildings that were roofed--all in about three days' work.

Two of the young guys had taken drones and these aerial views give you a whole different perspective than what you can see from below.

Now it was Tuesday morning, and Jonathan was up about 5:20 a.m. to take two trips to the airport to take all the Pennsylvania crew guys and their luggage in the small church minivan.

When he arrived back, since we still had a couple hours before we had to head to the airport ourselves, he and I began to try to letter a new church sign.

The pastor had asked us to bring stencils from America, but we had no idea what size or style.

So instead we used the old church sign (you can see in the background) for our plan.

It would take me about as long to explain what we were doing as to do it.

Suffice to say that Sam measured from edges of the sign to edges of letters and we'd draw dots and lines.

The Pauluses, who were staying on in Bahamas for a couple more days of vacation after leaving that day, helped us finish the sign. Jeff painted it.

Jonathan had seen how intrigued the pastor was with the wonderful flashlight Jonathan had been wearing on his hat, so he clipped it on the pastor's visor and gave it to him.

He was happy!

We had to fly through Nassau again, and after the week's whirlwind of activity,

we took twenty minutes to sit by ourselves outside in a courtyard

to eat our sandwiches we had made for our lunches.

Coconut palms and flowering trees were so beautiful there in the sunshine.

The weather had been so beautiful, with very little rain.

Benjamin McDowell picked us up at Ft. Lauderdale to spend the night at Hobe Sound. Due to the airline messing up our flight schedule a couple weeks ago, it had been arranged for our family to fly out of Bahamas a day earlier than we had intended. This left us with nearly a whole day layover in Florida. Benjamin had met the first part of the crew earlier when they had a several hours layover.

I was able to do some laundry that evening, as we'd had no where to do laundry in the Bahamas and one suitcase was full of wet towels and dirty laundry!

Next morning after Jonathan and the children got back from fishing, we had just a little time in which to find our way over to visit widowed Kristin Bump, 

whose husband Lester was an old friend of Jonathan's ever since Lester was a little boy.

Kristin's baby Eden just smiled and smiled and laughed and laughed at me. She was such a dear!

Kristin had posted on Facebook that morning that she was having a difficult day of grief 

trying to finalize the wording on the gravestone.

We felt we needed to stop in and just let her know someone cared.

Her twins were in school, but Daniella and baby and her oldest daughter were at home. The oldest must have been shy and didn't come out to see us till just before we left! For support, Kristin has another lady staying with her right now, who took this picture for us.

Feast in Freeport, Grand Bahama

Monday was our last full day of work in Grand Bahama. Three of the young men rose by five or so to start tearing off the old shingles on the last half of the church roof so that the skilled roofers could begin roofing about six. They wanted to be finished by early afternoon so that we could go to the ocean again and have time to shower before the "feast" the church was going to have in the evening 

to celebrate the new roof being done.

Jonathan up measuring for siding for the gable ends

Working in the morning

Timmy, David and Tony Byers worked on the gable ends...

  while Jonathan marked and sawed the siding for them.

Carrie peeking over the roof.

While the guys were down for lunch, she climbed up!

Great experience for the young guys

Once when I went outside that morning, I discovered all these heads looking over the roof.

Then much to Becky Paulus's surprise, those heads started singing!

They sang her "Happy Birthday!"

She did record it, and did it ever sound hilarious, as roofers do not try very hard to sing on tune!

Her husband Jeff had bought her a beautiful cheese cake which they shared all around.

Sam and the other guys bringing scaffold and tools to the container and cleaning up.

While the others cleaned up, Jeff Paulus put up some new drywall in the ceiling of the bedroom of our next door neighbor, Ola, the pastor's elderly aunt who had water damage in her ceiling.

Jonathan hauling drywall.

Jeff had hung drywall in Ola's front room the night before. She was happy for the improvements.

We got a kick out of teasing Jonathan for just standing there handing Jeff nails while Jeff did the work!

The trash heap across the road from the front of the church

Drywall patching ready to happen in the church.

The "feast" was to start at seven, it had been announced, but that was Bahamian time. At seven, I went over to the church to see if we ladies could help, and there were three people struggling to figure out how to arrange things, and one or two of those people were deaf!

I got a few guys to help move tables and arrange chairs, and the deaf man gave me a thumbs up!

Before long, both food and people began to arrive, and since it had been drizzling outside, we had to arrange ourselves inside.

But first, said the pastor, we would have some songs of Thanksgiving.

The pastor wanted our team to sing something, so someone chose "Come and Dine."

Also we sang happy birthday to both  Becky and another Bahamian who both had birthday that day.

Finally at closer to 7:45 or 8:00, we could begin to feast.

There were BBQ chicken wings, spicy meatballs, Bahamian cheesy pasta, tossed salad, and pineapple upside down cake.

Jonathan had popped a huge foil tin full of popcorn.

With Pastor Harrison Pinder and his wife

Our dear, sweet neighbor Ola, who let us use her oven over and over and made our Sunday meal with enough rice and peas left over for three more meals!

 When the feast was over, a young Bahamian man showed the young people how to pull conch meat out of the shells they had found down in the ocean.

Yes, in  the ocean. 

They found those conchs with their feet!

The younger part of the crew had a BLAST with those conchs. (pronounced konks).
David and our Sam and perhaps others tried to eat a piece raw like the Bahamians do.

Until late in the evening, a bunch of us played various instruments and sang song after song.

Several of the team tried out the drum set, and I even tried out the tamborine!