Mountain Top Experiences

It's not every day you have mountain top experiences.

Sometimes the path is long and steep, and there are years in between climbs to the clouds.

Most of the time it seems like you have to pay just to park!

Sammy, Carrie and Rose had determined to climb Pikes Peak, and so after weeks of staying in shape with lots of walking,
they made the climb!
We joined them at the top a couple days before we took Crystal back to PA.
It had been maybe 10 or 12 years since we'd been up Pikes Peak.

Looking back over your life, you see a lot has happened.

A lot of twists and turns.

A few times when your head was in the clouds...

and many times when you were down in the "bottomless pit" of despair.

(On our way down Pikes Peak, we stopped at the "Bottomless Pit.")

And of course, there were all those times you wished you could crawl in a hole!

Also times when your horseless carriage slid into the ditch.

Much to your dismay!

There were times you thought your mind was the "Devil's Playground," when the storms came and lightning struck.

But then, still looking down from the mountaintop, you remember the gold mines.

Like these gold mines at Cripple Creek, there they are, standing out in your memory--

all those times the Lord came through for you.

All those times He helped you and sustained you and kept you and saved you and comforted you and blessed you and provided for you.

That gold mine is still operational, and so are the mercies of the Lord.

They are new every morning!

Great is His faithfulness!

Mountaintop experiences don't usually last long. Sometimes they leave you straining for air and with a bit of altitude sickness.

You have to come down.

Just come on down the mountainside.

It's good for us to not stay too high too long.

It's good for us to come down.

It's good for us to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God

so that He can exalt us in due time.

There are other treasures on the mountainside--like bolete mushrooms that you can eat!

We found some yummy ones.

It was so exciting finding these edible treasures coming down from Pikes Peak!

Danny was just reading me his reading lesson today, the story about King Midas and the golden touch and his little daughter who turned to gold when he touched her.

King Midas learned that there are things that are more valuable than gold--like the food on his plate which turned to gold when he tried to eat it, and a living daughter who would laugh and dance and hug him and tell him she loved him.

Cripple Creek has its gold mines, but it couldn't have made our children more excited than they were when they discovered more and more big and little bolete mushrooms!

Here were twins!

The best ones were the tiny ones, just popping up.

And often the best treasures in life are the small things--like a rainbow or a sunset or a flower or a fresh wild strawberry, or a bolete, or a smile or a hug or a kind word.

And so we come down from the mountain top experiences--
those times when our children make us proud, or our friends surround us with love and support,
or a time of fulfilling accomplishment,
and we come down--down to the prairie with its sunsets and rainbows and grasshoppers and wild asters--
and we look for the little treasures from His hand,
the mercies that are fresh and new, and the love that is ever there for us!

Work Days in Detroit!

Thursday and Friday were big work days. Everyone was supposed to wear their old paint clothes.

It looks like they did!

Girls and boys alike helped. My four kitchen helpers turned into painters, but I managed to get the meals on mostly by  myself since the menu was pretty simple and the girls would quickly help with some chopping or mixing before they left.

Above, Timmy is painting, and below Ezra is.

 Carrie and Candace painted the first coat on the doors.

Friday afternoon, Daniel Troyer brought several young people from OH to help, too. 

We had an enormous crew to make meals for, but thankfully I had simple food planned, like pasta salad and baked beans and frozen breaded chicken nuggets that I just had to pop in the oven.

These young people were a great help and inspiration.

The young people seemed tickled to meet a crew of families that were similar to theirs!

One sister and brother came from a family of 11 children!

Below, you can see Daniel Troyer to the far left, talking to a young man who showed up seemingly out of nowhere in the front yard of the main mission house where we stayed.

Here the boys are in line to get their food. That evening we had some of the best lasagna we've ever made. We even had to substitute provolone cheese for cheddar, but did it ever turn out yummy.

One of those days, our motor home turned into a cargo truck with all the doors and paint cans Jonathan purchased from Home Depot for the Sherman's house.

So you look one way and see paint cans and doors on top of the back bed, and then you look the other way and see more doors and whatever, with all the boys ready to leave for the 3 mile trip to the Sherman's house and work project.

Ezra squeezes in, too.

The one day, the girls were painting doors and trim in the basement.

I was trying to sweep up some of the dirt and dust, but Hannah insisted on sweeping herself!

She loved finding ways to help.

Danny had a great time helping wherever he could. Here he is sanding the drywall.

Carrie and Candace were scraping up drywall mud that had splattered and dried on the bathroom floor.

In between working, the boys tried climbing this big sycamore tree in the front yard.

The street was lined with sycamore trees!

Daniel Troyer had left a rope, and Timmy and Danny didn't have enough to do, so they invented this swing out of rope and a piece of cardboard.

Elon's crew had to leave about 10:00 Friday morning after two or three hours of work, and then the rest of us tried to shove off from the Sherman's house before  noon because we had to meet someone in Illinois on the way home to pick up a puppy Carrie had found out about for a good price.

I stashed tools in a bucket as we tried to clean up a bit.

Our crew, paint clothes and all, because that is what we were wearing!

Jonathan and Elon saying goodbye to each other.

Well, I guess these pictures are out of order, but oh well! The boys are wearing masks of dry wall dust!

And the girls had to paint each others' faces!

The one noontime when I drove lunch over to the work place instead of them coming to the main mission house where I was cooking, we ate outside wherever we could find a place to sit. As we gathered for lunch, I couldn't help noticing we had quite an audience of dark-skinned faces up and down the street. Neighbors all around were out, keeping an eye on our progress! So I got us all to gather in a circle and sing our meal blessing in 4-part harmony--something the watching neighbors seemed to like very much! Some of them clapped and hollered when we finished! To me, it's a delight to share the gift of music, and a way to share the joy our crew has in serving Jesus.

The crew worked till dark most evenings. Remember, no electricity except the extension cord from the neighbors. Neighbors, by the way, are only feet away.

Jonathan knocking down the texture.

Obviously, not many pictures were taken of me, but here is one. I have a bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough sitting on the counter.

Pearl and Candace painting.

Carrie painting.

Hannah helping herself to the food!

Our 21st Anniversary in Detroit

 Jonathan and I spent our 21st anniversary in Detroit. 

But we couldn't have been happier.

The girls and boys alike helped with whatever they could.

Even Hannah helped with scrubbing out paint brushes and mudding buckets.

My brother Elon helping Ezra put a piece of drywall up on the ceiling.

What they were using for a ladder

What you might see at any given moment--people in every room in the house!

Mudding the ceiling

They had to buy furnace duct and install it inside the bathroom closet before finishing the drywall.

I explored upstairs where the boys insisted I check out this window that they said somebody had shot through with probaby a BB gun.

A typical billboard you could see in Detroit.

This sign in a store window we passed every day says, "Say nice things about Detroit."

So the children tried to come up with nice things to say about Detroit.

They couldn't think of much!

The girls helped me so much with putting meals together. Usually the men and boys came back to this house to eat as there was no water, bathroom, tables or chairs where we were working.

Girls discussing things in the kitchen.

Jonathan and I didn't celebrate much on our anniversary (though we hope to later sometime) but we both felt so fulfilled and contented. 

Flowers could bloom at the porch step of a mission house right in the middle of Detroit, 

and joy can bloom on an anniversary spent in the same spot--working and serving together.

You can receive joy anywhere if you look for it.

Right there in an abandoned mission house, crammed with noisy teenagers playing Pit or other games after a long day of work, Jonathan and I go into our tiny bedroom where two layers of brown and then black curtains try to keep out the world of Detroit--and we look into each other's eyes--

and see joy there!

Total contentment--right in the dead center of God's will for us!

Right in the middle of the dirt and squalor and abandoned houses and broken glass and boarded up windows and hurting people, 

the eyes of faith can see something beautiful, something good.

All the confusion, God understood.

And all any of us have to offer Him 

Is brokenness and strife,

But He makes something beautiful of our life!