No Greater Love--and He Blew Himself Up

"Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend,"

Jesus said.

It is the ultimate love, the ultimate sacrifice. 

It's what Jesus did.

 And it's what a young Ukrainian man did just a couple days ago as the R u s s i a n army was advancing toward a bridge to come and take over another section of Ukraine.

This young man was the one to set up the explosives, and the last his comrades heard from him was that it was too late to escape himself. He said he was going to detonate.

And he did. 

He gave up his life for his friends, his country, his cause. 

He was quickly dubbed a hero. 

Back in Amish country where I spent several years of my life, and where my son Tim is living right now while attending Penn View Bible Institute, the Amish and Mennonites are taught not to take part in war. 

Not to take up arms.

To be non-resistant. 

What this Ukrainian young man did was probably not something the non-resistant folk would consider heroism.

I respect their views, but I also respect this young man's courage. 

It made a difference. 

I don't know if this young man had a moment to cry out to God at the end of his life. 

I hope he did.
I hope he didn't go to his death cursing and swearing like so many soldiers in today's armies.

Alone.  

I hope somewhere in his life He had heard about the One Who gave Himself up to the cross,

Who chose to die even when He could have called ten thousand angels to deliver Him from the whole rotten mess. 

We want to hope that God will deliver Ukraine, and save the innocent and the believers, 

but Jesus went to the cross even when His disciples didn't think He should.

He died even when they wanted Him instead to become King.

Lord, Your great love led You to the cross.

If Your love leads us to a cross, too, help us to carry it bravely. 

Dust Storm--and the Heaviness of War

Tuesday during our week in New Mexico, wind kicked up and brought a big weather change, complete with a dust storm and then snow.

Out by the water pump where the chickens came for water, I just couldn't resist taking this picture of chicken feet (and boots) in the sand! 

(This was after the dust storm was over!)

 As you can see, there was practically nothing but dirt around the mission ground in Navajo land.

 The only thing to mark the dirt road onto which we had to turn to get to the mission was a bent orange barrel on some kind of post.

A very barren land.

  Wind blew dust into the crews' faces if they were working outside, and through the window if they had it open to work on the new windows.

Inside the temporary schoolroom (i.e. the missionary's mobile home) the school children and Melody and I sang while we watched dust billowing for miles around. 

 It was "The Lord Knows the Way Through the Wilderness."

"All I have to do is follow." 

 But does the Lord know the way through the wilderness of the war beginning in Ukraine?

The war that has already hit a kindergarten and orphanage?

Already inflicted many casualties on both sides?

Does He know the way? 

I messaged our dear pastor Roman in Kenyazachee, whom we last heard from last Sunday,

one week after Sunday evening in this little New Mexico chapel, 

that is heated with wood heat.

And my phone doesn't show that he has read my message many hours later. I wonder if phone service has been shut down.  

Jonathan was in tears over and over reading articles and posts from friends and others in our beloved Ukraine. 

While we got a little school ready for Navajo children, Ukraine was preparing for they knew not what.  

Hanging on the wall of the New Mexico mission home was this picture of the Navajo code talkers who helped make the difference in World War II. The monument to their honor is only about 25 miles away from the mission. Who will make the difference in this war in Ukraine? The church people who spent Sunday a week ago fasting and praying? The ones down in their church basements praying this weekend? The ones accepting guns and learning to use them? The ones confronting R u s s i a n tanks which have run out of fuel, and drivers who don't know where they are going?

While Navajo school children helped carry flooring into the new building, children in Ukraine were having their last few days of peaceful school. 

While our sixteen-year-old Danny showed a Navajo boy how to caulk cracks in the wall, sixteen-year-old boys in Ukraine had no idea that only a week or so later they would suddenly be called into military service for their country.  

While young Navajo children eagerly stood in line to help carry flooring in to the new school, little children in Ukraine enjoyed a few more days of peace.

  While Jonathan drove down the road a little ways to check out the damaged roof of a dear old grandpa who lives near the mission, people in Ukraine had no idea how much damage would soon be happening in their nation.

The man's roof was a mess, and Jonathan tried to estimate roughly what he thought a reasonable price would be for the man to have someone fix it. 

But who can calculate the cost to fix a broken world and broken hearts and damaged people?

Does the Lord really know the way through the dust storms in the wilderness? 

Is it really safe to follow Him?

The believers in Ukraine are saying "Yes."

All you need to do is follow. 

Jesus, I pray that our fellow brothers and sisters in Ukraine, young and old, men and women, rich and poor, will be given clear direction as to how to best follow You through this tragic storm called war.

The Devil in the Navajo Frybread--and Black Potatoes in the Soup

The grandma of seven of the children who attend Calvary Indian School near Coal Mine, NM, was to make frybread for the crew and school children for lunch Wednesday. 

For whatever reason, her lard gave her a time.

"The devil was in it!" was the only explanation she and her granddaughter could come up with.

It just didn't heat right, and it seemed diabolical.

That wasn't the only diabolical thing that happened. 

We have come to expect many things to go wrong when we go on Mission Helps trips--sometimes diabolically so. 

No sooner did the crew arrive from Pennsylvania about 4 a.m. than the electricity promptly went off!

Just as there was no reason for the lard to not heat right, there did not seem to be any reason for the electricity outage. Seth wondered if an owl had gotten into the transformer and shorted it out.

Jonathan and the boys and I woke up freezing in our travel trailer we had brought along to help out with beds. The furnace had not run for a while.

 We couldn't use our plumbing because of the freezing temperatures, so when I ran into the Yates' mobile home in the morning, it was cold, too. The pellet stove runs on electricity.

A one hour delay was called for the school children, and Seth lugged in a propane heater, which he turned on just in time for the electricity to come back on!

Thank You, Lord!

While several of the teenage boys on the crew, including our Sam, dug about 100 feet of ditch 18 inches deep to lay electric wire, we ladies tried to manage 11 school children around the long table and keep meals on for 29 to 30 people. 

School had been in the little trailer that had been given to the PA crew to sleep in, so the school children spent the day around Melody's long table.

 As I wrote in the last post, Carrie had diced up a bunch of potatoes for soup the next day. Melody told her how to blanch them for 10 minutes in the microwave, which would keep them from blackening.

The only trouble was, those potatoes blackened anyway.

Poor Melody! The next day as she put all the soup ingredients together, the edges of the potatoes were black! But there was no time to make something else. Nearly 30 people were hungry for lunch. Some of the school children come to school without breakfast, and the hardworking men needed a good lunch on time.

So, black potatoes or not, the soup was served. And not one person made a single complaint. 

Nobody peered into their soup and said, "Oh, yuck! What are these black things?" They just ate and were thankful and didn't complain. The soup was good, black potatoes and all. And life went on at the pace of a racehorse or a lightning bolt or a whirlwind of some sort.

Sam worked on the wiring with his dad. 

A six-year-old boy worked right alongside his father putting down flooring.

 

The father is in the left corner.

 I encouraged the students to go over and see what was happening. I loved how the bigger boys carried the little ones on their shoulders. Those kids try to take care of each other. 

Such special children!

One older girl lost her father to cancer last October and her mother has taken to drink. 

Most of them come from broken and dysfunctional homes. 

But how happy they were to help lug in boxes of flooring panels. 

The chapel is in the background, with our travel trailer parked near it.  

Below, the men are putting up the --I want to call it baseboard but it has a special name as it is vinyl.

Yes, despite the devil in the frybread, a dust storm, kitchen catastrophes, and other kinks,

God helped us all, and we accomplished all that had been planned and a little more. 

Jesus is always Victor, as Corrie ten Boom would say. 

More pictures in the next post. 

Valentines Day in the Dust of New Mexico--Where Love Happened

 Last week it seemed like Valentines Day got left somewhere in the dust of New Mexico where we were on a Mission Helps trip to renovate a new school building for Calvary Indian Mission.

That is, if Valentines Day means eating out and getting fancy gifts and cards for each other and swooning around in the moonlight. 

It just didn't happen. 

But love did. 

Love happened.

At Smiths grocery store somewhere near Gallup, I had never seen this many flowers and balloons in one spot before.

Jonathan thought maybe it was because this was one of the only grocery stores for many miles around. 

Jonathan had brought me an early Valentines Day gift just before we left for New Mexico--

a purple hyacinth not quite in bloom. 

Purple, in memory of his mother. 

We had hoped to eat out on our way to New Mexico, maybe a Mexican meal in Santa Fe, just for special for Valentines Day weekend and because it would give me a little break about fixing a meal to take along,  but the time crept away from us and we were two or three hours behind by the time we arrived in Santa Fe.

Instead, I went back to our travel trailer and pulled out a bag of sandwich fixings that Carrie had wisely put together for us four--Carrie, Hannah, Jonathan and me. 

And we ate sandwiches I made in my lap as we traveled on to Albuquerque.

And we decided to just make the best of it--because that is what love does.

 This is where we stayed overnight at the Rock of Ages Bible Holiness Church. 

This is where we worshiped Sunday morning, with  David and Lisa Howard Wiseman.

I knew Lisa way back when I was about ten years old when we and Lisa and her sisters played together at the Mitchell Campmeeting in South Dakota.

Now we meet together again, Lisa's husband, a mechanic/preacher, with Lisa playing so pleasantly at the piano, her grown son leading singing for Sunday School.  

These crocuses were peeking through by the empty parsonage where we ate a fast lunch I'd brought along in the crockpot. 

They weren't roses but they were flowers, and they were pretty!

We drove on from there to attend the evening service at Calvary Indian Mission where Seth and Melody Yates minister. Miriam Yates was also there.

And then Monday morning, Valentines Day, came. While I took Seth's place helping teach the preschool children and listen to other students try to read, Carrie spent the morning helping Melody make umpteen pizzas for a Valentines Day pizza lunch around a very extended Amish-style table.  

Melody had a pretty tablecloth and lots of little treats.

I spent the morning helping school children around the table. Most of them have not arrived yet in the above picture.

In the afternoon, I scrubbed a whole sink full of potatoes that the Yates had gotten when they were up at Northwest Indian Bible School in Montana last fall. One potato was the shape of a heart!

A heart shaped potato for Valentines Day!

Carrie diced up those potatoes and we prepared lots of them and a huge bag of carrots for soup for about 29 people the next day--a Mission Helps crew of 16, 11 children, and Seth and Melody.  

 

Hannah enjoyed playing matching games with the preschoolers, especially a dear 5-year-old named Noel. 

Noel and her little cousin were in an orphanage for the first few years of their lives till their grandma finally got custody of them. They came out malnourished, with swollen bellies and skinny arms and legs. Their grandma keeps seven grandchildren and brings them to school each day from ten miles away. 

But when we reached out to hug these children, they just hugged us back and 

jumped right into our hearts!

On Valentines Day, Jonathan and I were so busy we hardly saw each other, but we loved on the children and worked on a new school building for them.

And love happened. 

 

Jonathan was gone all evening, shopping for materials and taking Carrie and Hannah back to Grant, NM, to meet Sam and Danny who were trading places. Carrie and Hannah, after a day of skiing at Angel Fire, NM, went home to take care of chores since Rose is gone from dawn till past dark to the farrier school here in Colorado.  

But Sam and Danny joined our crew for the rest of the time we were there. 

And all week long love happened. 

Jonathan and I didn't have a Valentines Day Night Out,

 but there was love all week at a little mission way back in the boonies and dust of New Mexico. 

And there will be more in another post later.

"I Feel Love Here"--The Realtor's Valentine's Day Special

We're in the middle of packing for our trip to New Mexico to head up a big work crew driving in from dear old Pennsylvania (thinking of the trees and flowers and fields and farms, not the traffic and politics and that stuff! :)

They're coming in to remodel an empty office building donated to a Navajo mission for a new schoolroom.

Every once in a while, I have to stop in the middle of packing Sunday clothes and toothbrushes and stories for devotionals for the school children all next week

to catch my breath.

 

So I write.  

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”

Jonathan and I are seldom happier than when we are in ministry together--even if that means working with our hands--and it's exciting to see it coming together again!

Yesterday a realtor that Jonathan knows came to have a look at our house and property so we could have some idea what we need to update and what we may as well leave as is.

He said right now in El Paso County, with population of 720,000, there are only some over 400 houses total (including townhomes, etc)  available, as of yesterday. Just one week ago, there were over 800. This is bad for his business, because he has a business of selling houses, and if there are hardly any to sell, he's in trouble. He says right now a house is usually on the market only 24 hours to 72 hours before it is under contract. The longest most places are on the market is 17 days.

He would like us to do some preliminary cleanup, and then do a test run to see what kind of interest there would be for our property. Although the house needs a lot of remodeling and updating (needs new kitchen cabinets and counter, new flooring, new paint throughout, etc.) he says the real value comes from the fact that it has 5 acres of land to go with it. He was amazed at what we've done with the property, calling it a "farm farm!" He was so curious about everything that he could hardly keep his mind on what he actually came for.

The trouble as I see it is that I am afraid the test run will sell our house, and then where would we live? I feel sure there are people out there who would like this unique place. Besides acreage, it has a barn, loafing shed, chicken coops, bee house, fodder house, and greenhouse. There is a lot of fencing already done. We will probably leave some of the firewood. The realtor felt we could work it out with whoever buys it that we would be able to rent it back for a few months till we move to SD. None of us wants to think about having to move twice...

We were pretty encouraged about this realtor's thoughts. As soon as he came in he sniffed and said, "This smells nice!" Hannah had been burning a few candles. Then after looking through the whole house, even after seeing all the use and storage downstairs and the not-so-perfect upkeep, he sat there trying to find the right word for this particular house. Cozy? No, he just couldn't quite get it. "I feel love here," he said, still searching for the word he wanted.

Of course, when you are trying to sell a house, you want to have it "staged," having it all cleaned up, all clutter and personal items out, so it looks inviting, lovely, and spacious. But even with all our big family and home schooling stuff, the realtor was struggling to say the positive sense he was trying to put in words about our home.

"I feel love here," he managed to say.

There is clutter, but there is love.

There are outdated kitchen cabinets and chipped paint and crooked decor, but there is love.

There is a worn out carpet and flooring, but there is love. 

Coming up on Valentine's Day, and  knowing what God's Word says about the value of love, that was special to me.