Golden Leaves Cling--While Hurricanes Whirl

 Yesterday as I worked down my to-do list and traveled to a lymphatic therapy appointment, I kept praying for the people of Jamaica where Cat 5 Hurricane Melissa was to hit today. Here on our little South Dakota property, golden leaves were still clinging to the twigs and branches of our elm that managed to survive the Dutch elm disease that killed other trees on our property. 

I seemed to need to just go out and look at the golden light of the sunshine glowing off the beautiful leaves, reminding myself that God didn't mean for me to carry the weight of the world, though of course, I ought to care and I ought to pray, and if possible, find a charitable organization to send a donation to in the future to help the needs there. 

But I, the weak human, have to cast the weight of it on the Almighty One.

Crystal and Danny had just read about the terrible poverty in Cuba already, about a pastor who uses up his meager pastoral stipend within the first 8 to 10 days of the month, and then they go without food most of the rest of the month, except for when a parishioner is able to share a few potatoes or something else. The pastor is often ministering on a stomach that has been empty for two or three days.

He and his wife pretend to have already eaten so that their children have a little food. 

Christian Aid Ministry, one of the highest ranked charitable organizations for financial integrity, was the organization telling that pastor's story. We get CAM's newsletter monthly and read it a lot.

https://christianaidministries.org/

 Last week everyone in the family contributed something so that Crystal could make out a check to CAM for world hunger relief. We don't often do that, because we attend two churches, one with morning service and one with evening service, and the churches need our tithe. And there are often needs right around us that need our help.

But last week, our hearts broke for Cuban pastors.

And now Cuba is hit with a hurricane and whole cities are under water--unlike our garden here which is dry as a withered corn husk. I stand wishing I could share our garden produce this year or breads from our shelves with Cuban pastors and the poor.
But then we hear that people who are SNAP recipients will not be getting their benefits in November, and that includes most of the natives on the rez. 

Eight showed up at church Sunday, likely for the meal afterward.

We expect more this coming Sunday.

Crystal is picking up marked down 29-cent/lb bananas at Wigwam today to make banana breads for Sunday. And I cooked a huge crockpot of beans from scratch to make chili or bean soup. 

It's easy to feel sorry for people in Cuba, while ignoring back yard needs. At the same time, the situation is entirely different. It's possible for people on the rez to work and earn their own money if they will do two simple things--1) show up sober, and 2) do the work. 

Groceries are available both at the natives' commodities and at the grocery store. 

But one thing we know, we are likely to have lots of extra people at church these next Sundays, and they will be hungry. 

So we want to have food to feed them. 

We will need wisdom to navigate November. 

Rooster at the Fire Station!

A couple evenings ago, on my way out to the barn to milk the goats (since Danny, who usually milks the goats was gone) I heard a rooster's crow from somewhere high off the ground.

 

Looking up, I discovered that our mottled gray and white rooster had decided to once again roost in his favorite spot in the scrub oak tree. Had he kept quiet, I would never have discovered his hiding place, but he just had to announce that he was king of the mountain. And I spied him. 

It reminds me of a rooster story that our pastor's wife, Mathel, told me a while back. Mathel used to serve as EMT for White River and surrounding areas. She has oodles of stories, but when I asked her for one from her EMT experiences, she said this one was the funniest (although, as you will see, it did not start off very funny). 

One very hot summer night, a call came for an emergency just outside of White River. An older couple had been traveling from Wyoming, and just outside town, the man slumped over like a sack of South Dakota wheat in the passenger seat. His wife managed to go on to town, pulling in at Thoroughbred Hotel and placing a 911 call. Mathel with a driver named Jeff ended up being the EMT to go check on the situation. 

 

Sure enough, as the woman had figured, the man was dead. There was nothing to be done except decide what to do with the body. Well, as I already said, it was very hot, and Mathel didn't want that body sitting in the vehicle the rest of the night and through whatever part of the day that they'd have to wait for the coroner/funeral home director who was always busy. She and the driver swathed the dead man in a body bag, zipped it up, and set it on the gurney just outside the fire station where it would be cool in the shade. Another volunteer at the station who worked at the town clinic took the bereaved wife to the clinic where she could place some calls to family.

Sometime early in the morning, both Mathel and Jeff noticed a rooster crowing. "Cock-a-doodle-do! Cock-a-doodle-do!" They looked at each other in astonishment. The rooster sounded like it was in the fire station, so Jeff went all around that station where the trucks were mashed in like the dill pickles Mathel squeezed into her pint jars. No rooster. Then he went all around the outside of the station, while the rooster continued to crow.

"I don't know of anybody around here who has a rooster!" Jeff said. 

Meanwhile, Mathel, who had also been looking, noticed that whenever she went near the gurney with the body bag, the crowing sounded louder. As she stopped stock still, so did Jeff. There was that crowing again! Jeff's eyes got as wide as Mathel's china turkey platter. He did not say a word. He just pointed desperately at the body bag with the [assumed] dead body in it.

Both Mathel and Jeff knew what the noise might possibly be. When a person is dying and struggling to breathe, they can make sounds that are similar to squeaks or crows, Mathel explained to me. Surely the EMTs had not wrapped up a dead body only to have it actually be alive? Or was it a ghost?

Jeff refused to come any closer to that horrible body bag. Mathel had to be the one to find out just what was going on. Gingerly she started to unzip the bag. And that is when a voice squeaked, "Good morning! Good morning! It's six o'clock!"

Mathel nearly jumped out of her skin! Had she not seen flashes going off at the same time, she would have probably run for cover, but luckily, she said, she saw flashes and realized they were from a watch the man was wearing. The man had a talking watch! At six in the morning, it told him the time by crowing.  

She and Jeff exchanged shaky laughs that soon became more laughter than shakes, especially when they told the story to others around. The best part was when Mathel was asking the man's wife if there was anything she needed from the man before the body was sent to the funeral home. Did she want any article of clothing, anything from his pockets?

"I'd like his watch," the lady said. "He's diabetic, he's an amputee, and he's blind. So he has a talking watch!"

"Let me tell you a story about the watch," Mathel said, and she told the story.

Despite her sorrow, the woman laughed outright. She could not help it. "He would have loved it!" she gasped. "He had the last laugh!"

And that is Mathel's story about the rooster's last laugh. 

Winning at Winner

"Has anyone had any wins this week?" interim president Mark Becker would ask at SIM staff meeting. 

A week or two ago, there was a big win as the old rickety deck and steps leading to the Montour Memorial Chapel in Winner, SD, was replaced with good concrete deck, steps, sidewalk and ramp!

At least three Native men helped Jonathan, Danny, and Tim Replogle with the project. 

Rare are the days when it rains or is misty here in South Dakota, but on the day they poured concrete? Mist hovered in the air, keeping the concrete from setting up and drying out well in order to finish the top. 

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Tim went to the store and purchased some chicken quarters to grill for the team's supper as they waited for the concrete to set up. 

But how wonderful it looked when the project was finished!

Danny is just learning to weld, and he spent an evening welding the railings while Crystal, Jonathan, and I were gone to Missouri. 

I like this picture!

And this one! 

This is how they set light poles on the rez!

Another snapshot of work going on. 

Pumpkins and Punkins

It's the time of year for pumpkins, elk hunting, and autumn winds! Right at this moment on Sunday afternoon, the electricity has been blinking off and on, as it has countless times in the last hour. I never experienced anything like it--apparently wind whipping lines into each other and shorting electricity. 

It was a delight to see our baby granddaughter getting all ready to go elk hunting with her mom and dad! Rose was given this matching set of hunter orange cap and booties at the baby shower at her church.

And here's to being limber enough to suck one's own toes!

I'm always delighted to see pictures of the children visiting their grandparents--this happened Tuesday when Carrie, Rose, Tom, Ellie, Sam, Caitlyn, and even Hannah who is there now, went to visit and have supper together.  

I think often of the Scripture that commands us to honor our father and mother--and that includes our grandfathers and grandmothers. I encourage my children to invite the grands and to stop in and see them as often as possible.  We hope to go down in a few weeks to see Daddy Lucas and Ruth, too, now that I am able to travel a little more.

Friday I spent hours cooking up three pumpkins grown in our own garden, and then blending the pulp in our blender and freezing the pumpkin. Yesterday I added a pint of pumpkin to my roll/bread recipe which always turns out so nice and golden, and I made two pumpkin raisin cakes for Sunday's meals. 

Eight extra native folk arrived for church today--and with four church ladies gone to a women's retreat in Montana, the cooking was up to Sally and Crystal and me. We were glad for everything we took--including part of a ham that Jonathan smoked yesterday from a pig we helped butcher last winter, garden veggies, and rolls and pumpkin cake. 

We are reading that natives are worried about whether their SNAP benefits are going to come to them as usual in November or not, what with the government shutdown. So we are bracing for lots of extra natives showing up at church just to get something to eat afterward. 

God can use this situation to turn hearts toward Him, but we will need wisdom. We will not be able to fix everyone's situation. 

 

Small World--Big God!

Nearly fifty years ago, our pastor here in White River began a ministry to the mentally disabled in --get this--Salem, Missouri, the same town near which four of my family members live! 

 

That ministry, now called Scenic Rivers Industries, is thriving to this day, despite a fire that destroyed their facility about a year ago. The temporary facility is pictured above. The workers there do such things as recycle cardboard and build bird houses. Jonathan, on his way to an errand or two, found these spots to take pictures for me to take back to our pastor as I knew it would mean so much to him. 

 

 Jonathan also took pictures of where SRI used to be but burnt. My nephew Jed had been one who ran the heavy equipment to clean up and level the mess left behind by the fire. 

To our amazement, it was my other nephews Daniel Hunter (by marriage) and Ethan Bradford who had wired the electrical in SRI's temporary building pictured above. The owner of a hardware store that had closed loaned the use of their building temporarily to SRI. 

 

My nepthews Daniel and Ethan are also slated to wire the next building SRI hopes to move to. This one pictured above is one of the largest facilities in Salem, and it will, Lord willing, house Scenic Rivers Industries, the ministry begun by Pastor Ambrose. 

 

Only a couple weeks ago, my niece Susanna attended a local banquet for Pregnancy Resources where some of the raffle gifts were bird houses from Scenic Rivers Industries! 

How amazing is it that a ministry envisioned and begun nearly 50 years ago by Harold and Mathel Ambrose in Salem, Missouri, would still be thriving, despite a destroying fire, with the recent help of several nephews of our family who is now attending Ambroses' church in South Dakota? It feels like we live in a small world with a big God!

Fatal Crashes--Taking Safe Travels for Granted

Do we take safe travels for granted? 

This week we've read of or been involved in several traumatic events.  

When I was growing up, my parents always prayed before leaving for anywhere in a vehicle, and I have maintained that habit. (Sometimes I remind my family that I need special guardian angels!)

We also try to thank God every day for the safety He gives us each day--and also thank Him even after we've had our share of accidents.

A pastor's wife in Rapid City messaged me earlier this week sharing the news of a wreck one of the church men had been in that morning. A pickup had crossed the median somewhere along the highway between Rapid City and Spearfish and hit the semi truck that Jason Nisen was driving. Jonathan knew Jason from the Bible Christian Church we've visited, and also because he hiked with him along the ridge of the Black Canyon during a Men Arise event in Colorado a year or two ago. 

 

The pickup driver was killed in the accident, but we are grateful that Jason's life was spared, though he is still in critical condition with a traumatic brain injury. Prognosis is hopeful at this point, for which his family is grateful.  

Then a day or two later, I received word that an old acquaintance from my childhood, Ethan Crouch, had died suddenly while jogging. (I guess we need to pray for safety while out jogging, too!) 

 For one lovely month, when I was eight years old, I attended the same Christian school Ethan and his siblings attended. His sister Bethany was in my second grade class, and she became my best friend. She had to wear only white blouses and plain dark blue or brown jumpers, and since I only had two or three outfits myself that were unusual, we connected immediately because of how different we were both expected to dress. Ethan was always a kind person, and he was a piano tuner. My youngest sister Kezia tells how he came to tune her piano there in Illinois two or three times in recent years, and he would always ask about our family. 

 

 Two nights ago, Danny got a fire call at midnight for a tire shop that was ablaze on the main street of Mission. We pass the place all the time and have done business there. Danny was planning to leave for Colorado in the morning to join the elk hunt, so he hastily grabbed the eggs and goat milk he was taking, along with all his duds, and took off. For five hours he fought fire, slept a couple hours, and drove on to Colorado. We were so thankful to hear he arrived safely after so little sleep. 

 And then this morning Jonathan was roused from sleep at 4:15 by Keith Lavery, a fellow missionary who is on the Mission fire department. There had been a terrible crash right on Rt. 83 between here and Mission. A pickup sideswiped a semi, the semi trailer came unattached, and the semi cab rolled in the ditch. Something caught fire and the two in the semi cab lost their lives, while the driver of the pickup had life-threatening injuries as well and was transported to Sioux Falls. The passenger of the pickup came out with few if any injuries--amazingly. 

The reason Keith was calling was that all kinds of stuff was on the road from the truck. Where was the  mission's skid steer and trailer when they were needed? Of course, they had to be all the way over in Winner at the moment. Jonathan could not get back to sleep for a long time after that. The road was closed for hours. 

We have so many things for which to be grateful, and to not take for granted. 

Thank You, Lord, for watching over us.

And please, tenderly care for those who have lost family to accidents and disease and crime in this world of sorrow and sin. Send Your angels to protect, to comfort, to sustain, and to touch with love and mercy each one who suffers this evening.  

Delightful Days in Missouri

     Last weekend we "killed several birds with one stone," as the saying goes. I had one more infusion coming up in Sioux Falls, and since the clinic is over a quarter of the way to Missouri, we decided to make a trip to Missouri and take in the infusion on our way back. 

 

 It had been over a year and a half since I'd seen my mom, ever since my niece Susanna's wedding. Last year about this time, neither she nor I thought we might ever see each other again--but there I was Sunday morning, sitting down beside my mom who immediately burst into tears as I hugged her.  She said she was sitting there just praising God as Crystal played the prelude. 

 

 

It had not been an easy trip for me. One hour on our way, I started to come down ill, and by evening when we stopped at the cheapest hotel we could find, I had a raging fever. Somehow, I managed to sleep anyway, though I nearly threw up in the morning and blacked out about five o'clock. Jonathan let me sleep till nearly 8, and my fever had broken by then, but above my lymph node area (now minus four main lymph nodes) was terribly swollen and painful with backed up lymph. I don't know if this illness was side effects of the last infusion or the bug going around or a combination. Either way it was miserable and very painful. 

 

I made a bed with the quilt I had thankfully brought along and the three pillows, and covered up with jackets as we went on our way to Ava, MO, first, where Crystal had to close her bank account there and see her former students that she taught three years. I had to stop every hour and struggle into strange restrooms, but we made it, and we had supper with Ward and Naomi French. I forgot how awful I felt as I frantically jotted down notes as she went back memory lane to fill me in on some of the details of her life. I have been writing stories that Ward has shared with me and now it is Naomi's turn for her part of the stories! 

"Johnny Cash told me I should write a book," Naomi recalled. 

"Your stories have value," I told her. "Your life has value."

Her first marriage was one of great pain but also of victory through the grace of God.  

 I meant what I said. My copious notes proved it. I want to help her by writing her book for her. (Today I started to write some of those notes into two different chapters.) 

 

Mom had come with us Saturday when we spent time with my brother Elon and Anita over lunch and the afternoon. As usual, Anita was in the middle of at least one or two or three projects and got us all busy assembling 180 Samaritans Purse Christmas boxes. I helped until I just was too weak and shaky and had to collapse on the couch--so not like me. I did manage to sit up later and talk to my brother, as you can see in the above photo Crystal took.

 

It was a delight to see Amaris had improved so very much since the last time we saw her--able to move a little now and feed herself and even beautifully color many pictures and cards--with her left hand since her right hand is still almost paralyzed. One of these cards, with a message from Amaris as well, is going into each of the children's Christmas boxes.  Anita also sent home with me three boxes of blankets, laptop type quilts, stuffed animals and other items for my Christmas care packages for the elderly at the White River Care Center. 

Saturday evening, Mom and we three had supper at my brother Fain's place, where Natasha stir fried broccoli, cabbage, peppers and other veggies from their own garden. She told us how the meat market where she works sells a couple meats especially for people suffering with Alpha Gal syndrome, a disease from ticks that keeps them from being able to digest red meat.

 These special meats are OSTRICH and ALLIGATOR! Yes. Ostrich sells for about $34 a pound, cut thinly into steaks. It is the closest in taste and color to beef steak of any non-red meat. I wanted so badly to stop at the meat market and take a photo. Maybe Natasha will do that sometime for me!

We stayed overnights at my sister Joella's and Craig's home. They are always so hospitable. Joella doctored me with all I needed for an onion poultice which I thought soothed the terribly swollen and painful lymph area. Little by little over the next couple days, that improved. 

Craig got out the dulcimer our pastor's wife had given him last year when they sang at our church. 

This Sunday we worshipped in the pole barn that Craig's family and relatives had remodeled from a meth house into a house of worship! We had seen that place before the Bradfords rehabilitated it, charred from no less than three fires, says the local sheriff, and full of trash and graffiti and black, devilish stuff. They cleared it out and got rid of the charred mess and completely redid one whole wall. 

Now it is a beautiful church with a sign out front--"Wayside Bible Chapel."

Don't you love transformations like that? 

Such are not just in the past but in the present--even if it is back in the boonies of backwoods Missouri!

 

 

 We took a walk Sunday afternoon to Welch Spring, enjoying the sunshine and the water flowing from deep underground, coming out at 50,000 gallons every little while. 

I discovered a violet that thought it was springtime! Lilacs were blooming everywhere from South Dakota to Nebraska to Missouri. 

Crystal made friends with Susanna's and Daniel's little boy Titus.

Crystal and Susanna

 

  

And just before leaving, I got this quick picture with my mother. 

 

It was a comfort that ours are not the only naughty goats that like to get into roses and things!

Just had to get a picture of Craig and Joella's naughty goat that was out just before we left Monday morning! 

 

When the World Slings Mud, Give Flowers

Despite the frost we had here two nights ago, I am surprised to find our flowers still blooming! A couple weeks ago, I went out to the garden on a sunny morning and just watched the dozens of butterflies fluttering about the flowers. It brought my heart a measure of peace. 

And while the world slings mud, I give flowers.

While Democrat Congressmen continue to sling worse and worse mud at the Republicans for refusing to buckle to their hypocritical demands that are going to put our nation into even more heinous debt trying to fund healthcare for illegal aliens and abortion while ignoring the needs of unpaid military servicemen and other essential government workers, an ordinary non-government person like me finds comfort in going outside to our garden and gathering flowers to give.

It doesn't help to read today that Chuck Schumer is calling for Americans to "forcefully rise up" against Trump's administration, and I wonder why is Mr. Schumer not promptly arrested? And my mom writes that a "No Kin gs" rally is happening right in their neck of the woods in Missouri this weekend. But instead of bellyaching all day, I gather flowers into a carton and make my way up the dirt streets of White River to the Care Center. 

When I signed my name at the visitor register book, a new nurse asked me whom I was visiting. As I explained that I visit any of the ladies, especially Stella, another nurse who has been there a while added, "She brings flowers!"

I loved that. 

"She brings flowers."

I never got to do such a thing before in my life, but thanks to Hannah's loving work and careful research about flowers, I am still picking flowers in the middle of October and handing them out at the Care Center. 

That's where today after I let Stella choose which flowers she wants from my carton to replenish her vase, Stella asked me to pray for the five people who perished in the terrible car wreck that burst into flames a week or so ago on our own Rt. 44 that leads out of White River to Rapid City. At least one or two children were involved in that wreck, and Stella is related to at least one of the victims. The tragedy has been much talked about in our area.

So I prayed for the families of the deceased, and I prayed for Stella. I also prayed with Bonnie.

Another lady to whom I gave a flower and asked if she'd like me to pray with her told me, "No, I don't have time. Maybe tomorrow."

I wasn't sure she knew what she was saying, but I respected her wishes. I did not pray with her, but later I pray for her. She wanted a flower, and asked me to put it in her room. So I did. Maybe the flower will open the door to prayer. 

 Last week when I had some flowers left over after visiting the care center, I took what were left to a neighbor who just lost both a younger sister and an aunt within days of each other. She texted later, "Thank you so much for the flowers...Feeling lonely..." 

For one more week, while the world slings mud, I get to give flowers.