Memorial Day Connections

  Memorial Day Sunday was a blessed, profitable, and rewarding day, especially when we got to pick up a native family from White River to come to church with us in Mission that evening. It took two vehicles to get us all there, and it was raining, but it was incredibly rewarding to wheel a grandma up the new ramp by Hope Family Chapel in Mission.

This ramp had been built in the awful heat of last summer so that people who couldn't climb stairs could attend church, and so that coffins could be brought in for funerals.

 Sunday evening was the night we got to experience some fruit for our own labors as we helped a dear grandma who used to serve with her husband under SIM many years ago into her wheel chair to come to service.

Rev. Marc Sankey, staff pastor and SIM board member, sang with his wife and spoke in the service about Jesus meeting us in the storms in our lives. 

Earlier that day, thinking of Memorial Day and my own veteran father, Jonathan and I visited the White River Cemetery, where we had heard there was a grave of two Indian scouts. We couldn't find it, so will have to ask someone to show it to us.

 There was also a veterans' memorial.

That morning, since Hope Family Chapel only meets in the evening, we visited Lakota Community Chapel, begun by American Native Crusade many years ago. The pastor had stopped the week before to meet us, and we found out his son is dying with a brain tumor.  Interestingly, he and his wife have sons named David and Jonathan! We struck it up immediately and have stopped by twice because they live right by the road in our little town. Crystal and I took pumpkin cupcakes after a day of baking. I can't imagine being parents of a son dying of extreme pain with a brain tumor.

We were so grateful the one day when there was news that the son had an appetite and was eating and drinking.

After the morning service there was a fellowship meal, and I went home and brought our crockpot of elk and veggies which made a hit with natives there. We feel God is leading us with the many different people we are meeting. 

 

That includes the Cassalino family who came to help work at the Rosebud parsonage this last week. We had the six Casalinos, eight Troyers, and six of us for supper Saturday evening. The three Casalino boys got coaxed into carrying three Troyer little girls on their shoulders all around our place!

I loved the watermelon stars served Sunday evening at the chapel fellowship meal!

 

SIM Staff Picnic- and Star Quilting

Last week Society of Indian Missions had a staff picnic following the annual board meeting.

We were delighted to have some time again with our old friends Ward and Naomi French who make their home now practically next door to Crystal in Missouri.

Ward and Naomi both have spent years serving native American missions in South Dakota, New Mexico, Arizona, and who knows where else.

SIM honored Ward this year for his many years of service with SIM, more recently as a board member.

Nathan Becker, another board member, with Tovie Blackcalf, newest board member and Naomi's son, 

took part in the presentation of a beautiful star quilt. 

It was one of the happiest times in Naomi's life, I do believe, to see her own son take up the mantle of serving native American ministry for Christ as a board member.

Of course, Ward did not want to wear the quilt alone!

Naomi joins him under the quilt with their son. It's a great step forward to have a native American included on the SIM board.

Marsha Turner, who lost her first husband a while back and is now happily remarried, was honored next for 20 years of service with SIM. She is stepping down this year.

Judy Sherman was presented next with a star quilt by her daughter Tasbah, wife of President Keith Lavery, and Melodie Sankey, wife of board member and staff pastor Marc Sankey.  

 

It was a beautiful ending to a full day of board meeting. 

Jonathan and I met with the board for the first time that day. We couldn't ask for a more supportive and kind board, considering my situation with this cancer which is certain to affect our ministry here, especially timing of many things. Satan wishes it for bad, but God will work it all for good according to His good promises.

The staff picnic took place by the Missouri River. I loved the American flag and South Dakota state flag in the background.

 

Jonathan and I got a photo by this old cabin nearby.

 

Orange Papayas, White Eggs--God Provides for a Cancer Fighter

Over and over I have been just amazed at how God is providing for my “special needs” with my cancer regimen. (Jonathan says he has a “special needs” wife right now!) 

Here is some of what I wrote family one day:

"I used up the last of my fresh papaya today, which I eat each morning to keep my system going, but Carrie [who had come up from Colorado for Mother's Day] had brought me a fresh one. And here is how she’d gotten it. She was looking at the one solitary papaya at the grocery store, and it was either too small or too green or too something. And while she was contemplating what to do, a store worker who was off-duty asked if she needed anything, and Carrie mentioned about the papaya. So the worker hollers back to the other produce man and he goes back and brings a whole tote of papayas out! Carrie was able to find a ripe one just the right size. Had that off-duty worker not been there to notice Carrie’s predicament, I might not have a papaya. I felt like God had something to do with it. 

And then when I went to the outhouse this morning, a little white chicken peeked up at me from her quiet spot behind the wastebasket. I could tell she was nervous, but I crooned to her that it was okay, and very quietly sat down near the hen. The next thing I knew, that hen started bawking and squawking and fluffing up her feathers and scuttling over the wastebasket–very proud indeed of the feat she had just accomplished! There on the outhouse floor–just for me, it seemed–was a very fine, very warm, very white egg! Literally I felt as if God had let me know He was providing it–just for me!

Minutes later, I’m getting a call from a friend whose husband is fighting cancer with alternative remedies. I had to run up the hill to return the call where I had signal, and we caught up with each other. We hadn’t talked for several weeks. She is so excited to hear that I’m still staying as natural as possible. She and Philip are using fen ben da zole, too. When she mentioned about how I needed to take a whole scoop of the Juice Plus powder a day for better nutrition, I realized that tomorrow I was going to run out of the Juice Plus shake powder that I’ve been using that she orders for me, and so I was able to ask her to order me a bigger bag this time. Just when I needed it! I am having a hard time keeping up with these things, but when I need it, God has my friend call me, and I am able to make the order.

And while I was on the phone with her, the UPS truck comes bobbing over the hills and lumps of our driveway!! Yay! Our first UPS delivery! Guess what it was. You guessed it, something else God provided for me. All morning, I was seeing God supplying my needs, one after the other. And now He supplied a little time this afternoon to write.

 

 

Mothers Day Joy

 Carrie and Rose were not about to have their mother up in South Dakota on Mothers Day this year and not make the effort to be with her.

They traveled all the way up here--8 hours--even after a vehicle breakdown, which thankfully happened not far from their brother's place so he could come and tow the car back to his place. Rose's boyfriend loaned them his old car and after switching everything over to the new old car (except Carrie's Bible that contained Sam's "for sure mushy" Mother's Day card in it, Rose said apologetically) 

by hook or by crook, they came!

They brought garden plants for me and us, including this lush cilantro.

It was "pick it yourself" taco salad that day! 

 With the girls there to help with everything, we made pancakes one breakfast, complete with maple syrup my sister Iva sent back a few weeks ago with Tim who had gone camping for a night in Michigan with his cousin.

It was all finger-lickin' good, and when I said I wished I'd caught on camera when two people at once were licking their fingers, Tim made up for both of them!!  AFter all, he's the one who brought the homemade syrup from Michigan!

 

A neighbor was willing to plow a small garden for us, and that same evening we all planted it, and just like that, there was a garden! The boys had fenced it by the next morning.   

Rose had  learned some things from her boyfriend who was an electrical apprentice, and she helped the boys and Jonathan with getting the house ready for electrical inspection.

In the RV where we stay, Carrie cleaned and organized (her prowess) and Rose cleaned one set of kitchen cabinets.

Jonathan grilled homegrown steaks one evening.

 With the price of bread going through the roof, I made a batch of yummy homemade rolls.

And on Sunday, there was a bit of time to relax.

A Sister's Response in Poetry

 

In response to reading my blogpost about the yellow violet, my sister Dorcas composed this witty and very sweet poem!

I am a yellow violet in the gumbo

That knows I cannot be a jumbo

Cabbage rose or Calla lily—

That would definitely be silly. 

But I can let my yellow hue

In the coolness of the dew

Cheer mother who is mourning

With my special bright adorning. 

On my tiny little petals

I have let the sunshine settle

And reflect back to the sky

To that great all—seeing Eye. 

The One that sees each little bird

Can stop a storm with just a word.

And make a flower just like me 

To cheer a heart amazingly!

Love,

Dorcas

 

Yellow Violets-and Grieving Our Losses

When we first stepped foot on our land last year, we discovered yellow violets hidden here and there all over one spot of the hillside! I was enraptured! I LOVE violets! And yellow violets? I couldn’t believe it! It made me so happy to think that our new home would have yellow violets in its yard!

That was the hill side on which we chose to build our home. And guess what happened? The house went right where those yellow violets had been! The hillside was dug up, and instead of yellow violets this year, there is an unfinished house in the middle of a muddy hillside. 

 

Gumbo mud, no less. I know I should be grateful for the unfinished house.

And I am. 

And I should be grateful for the paschal flowers, early white flowers all over the place. And I am. But I am not particularly fond of paschal flowers. I miss the yellow violets, maybe because they reminded me of the beautiful woods of Pennsylvania where I grew up.

I mourned.

I know losing a few yellow violets shouldn’t be such a big thing. But to me, it was kind of a big thing. Jonathan suggested that maybe they just hadn’t bloomed yet. But I knew better. Those violets were gone for good, ever since the excavator had gobbled up the hillside. I looked and looked for yellow violets one evening, thinking that maybe I shouldn’t be feeling so sad, and yet there was a sense of grief that I just brought to the Lord. Only God knows how much I like small, humble, little, tender things–such as tiny, tender yellow violets. And how much it had meant to me to think that in our new home in the wilds of South Dakota (a place I had never dreamed of moving to) there would be yellow violets to cheer me.

But two mornings ago, on the very dewy path to the top of the hill where I had to go to get some signal for my phone, I saw something! It was a yellow flower! Opening to the morning sun was a tender yellow violet–right by the path! Just for me!

“Oh God!” I whispered, once again enraptured. This time I was not just enraptured by the sight of the tender violet, but by the thought that God cared enough about me to put that violet right by the path through the dewy grass–the path we’d created by walking to the top of the hill over and over for phone signal.

 And then later in the day, wouldn’t you know it, I suddenly found another plant with two violets! And then I discovered another one somewhere else. Jonathan might have been right after all. Perhaps after the late and deep snows, the violets just weren’t blooming as early as last year.

The apparent loss of the violets and then discovering them again brought a small grief and then a big joy to me. Lord, there are other griefs in our lives right now, and in the lives of our loved ones, so much bigger than not finding yellow violets anymore on our hillside. More than one marriage has been lost recently, health has been lost, souls are slipping over the brink into a Christless eternity. Lord, if You care about wee yellow violets on a grassy hillside, we know You care deeply about the needs that are so much greater. Please surprise Your people today with a turn-around in some grievous and seemingly hopeless circumstance! Let the sunny face of a yellow violet shimmering in the sunshine surprise someone with joy today!

My Sister Joella's Family With Us

Our last weekend in Colorado we were blessed to have my sister Joella's family staying with us.

They were finishing a concert tour throughout native ministries in Arizona and New Mexico. 

Sunday morning they sang and played at our friends the Johnsons' church in Lakewood, CO, and in the evening they were at Faith Covenant Bible Church in Colorado Springs. 

I can't begin to describe how stunning and beautiful their concerts are.

Ladies song 

Instrumental

Charity on the violin--"Amazing Grace"

Susanna on the harp 

 Bell song

 At the end of the service, the ladies played my favorite song, "His Eye Is on the Sparrow." Impromptu

That was so very special.

They brought me a birthday gift!

Thanks to my beautiful sister, Joella, born in Custer, SD, right near where we were this morning in Rapid City. 

I was ten when she was born.

We nearly lost my Mom that night, but thanks to a blood transfusion from Rapid City, SD, my mom made it.  

Between my son Sam, my husband, and a friend or two, look at the birthday bouquets!

I felt so very, very blessed!

Right in the middle of a harried and busy move, there were so many blessings!

 

Danny's graduation party--and the Cross in the Sky

As if we didn't have enough going on during the week and a half before our big move, we had four birthdays and an early graduation party for Danny!

 

We wanted to celebrate with the home school family friends we've had in his life the last several years before moving. Several families and friends joined us up at the park.

We didn't have any formalities except to ask Craig and Joella's family (who stayed that weekend on their music tour) to sing a couple songs. And Craig shared an impromptu word of encouragement and exhortation to the graduate and all of us.

Our dear friend Gordon, the best bass in the church choir and also a fellow Stage 4 cancer fighter (he's beaten it now for about 7 years) came. We got a picture of him and Danny together. 

And suddenly I noticed what was behind them. 

Up in the sky.  

Plain as day in the middle of the evening.

Others might have just seen chemical trails behind airplanes. 

I saw a cross. 

 Was it significant? Perhaps so, perhaps not. 

But the next morning in church, our last Sunday to attend before moving, one of the songs was "Lead On, O King Eternal." 

And this is what stood out to me . 

"Thy cross is lifted o'er us.

We journey in its light.

The crown awaits the conquest, 

Lead on O God of might."

 And while the young folks gathered to play games in the ball field that Saturday evening after the graduation party, this mom stood there, wondering and contemplating, and knowing that once again she must trust the life of her graduating son

and his future, and her own,

into the loving hands of a God Who knows all things,

and Who doeth all things well. 

"His cross," not a thing of beauty or comfort, but a thing of challenge and self-denial,

"is lifted o'er us," 

But while the cross may create a shadow in our lives, 

it sheds a glorious light to journey in.

A light to guide us exactly where God wants us to go. 

His crown awaits the conquest--and that means war.

Spiritual warfare--against the powers of darkness.

Jesus, we aren't strong enough for the warfare ahead of us; be our shield, our sword, and our great reward. Keep us, O Lord, and our sons and daughters, in Your holy care. 

So prays the mother standing under the fading chemical trails

crossing the sky above the ball field

while the dusk falls in the bluffs of the prairies of Colorado.