Dark Rooms and Mysteries, Tiny Rooms and Monsters

There was a small section near the front of this big old building we were gutting that turned out to be extremely unusual.

There were three tiny rooms there, one behind the other.

First of all, there was all this black paper underneath the boards we tore off the walls, underneath which was a dark brown, fibrous insulation that neither Jonathan nor anyone else had ever seen before.

 I looked it up online and thought maybe it was balsam insulation, but another man thought it looked more like coconut shell fibers.

After digging out bushels and bushels of this stuff from between the studs and throwing it in the dumpster, the guys bashed the studs down.

And then--

there were walls and walls of plaster and wire. The job of knocking those three tiny rooms turned into a monster that took almost as much time as gutting the rest of the building combined!

So there we were, knocking rooms and walls down one by one, and wondering what all the insulation and black paper was for.

I took one look at this room furthest back, and from my experience at 12 years old of helping to develop photos in my dad's dark room for our Old Fashioned Photos business in South Dakota,

I realized that this room had been an old dark room where students or staff had obviously developed photos for their newsletters, etc. in the olden days.

How interesting to see how the room had been painted totally black! There were sinks and counters and even this string there with clothespins still hanging on it, all looking so familiar to this girl who had enjoyed the mystery of the dark room in olden days, developing negatives with  my dad, or browning Polaroid photos of people dressed in old fashioned costumes in our little shop by the highway.

We had to knock out all the shelves, sink, counter, etc.

Loved this note penned on the wall:
"Darkroom Mascot
If all fails Ask Charlie
He probably knows
More than whoever asks him."

Here's Jonathan getting a photo of that before the shelves got ripped down.
I couldn't help thinking of the benefits of young people asking godly people, counselors, pastors, parents, teachers, mentors, for advice when all else fails.
"Charlie" might not know everything, but he probably knows more than we do.

We can listen and glean the good we can for help in our stuck places.
And of course, we must go to God ultimately. Because sometimes parents, pastors, mentors, and even godly counselors fail us. In our dark rooms where we don't know how the picture is going to turn out, we must turn to God for help and patience.

There are some mysteries that, like my mom says, she just has to put in a "mystery bag."
We will never the why or the wherefore.

 We may never know how that particular picture in our life is going to turn out--or even exactly what is the best choice for seeing that it develops just right the way we think it should.

 There may be small rooms hidden away in our lives that are little monsters when we try to deal with them.

Enslaving habits, addictions, negative thought patterns, habits of doubt rather than trust, bitterness, criticisms, cynicisms,  any  manner of dark old thing that needs to be removed from our lives.

Or it could be walls that other people have put up against us--complete with coconut shell fiber insulation stuffed between heavy studs holding up thick plaster over wire.
"A brother offended is harder to win than a strong city,
and contentions are like the bars of a castle." Prov. 18:19
Who doesn't know the heartbreak of the walls people have put up who have been close to us but have been offended? Who doesn't know how hard it is to win them back, or even to know for sure if it is worth trying?
Sometimes the offense is our fault, and sometimes it is just made out to be, but walls a person puts up are their walls, not yours.
We have to have the Lord's help to deal with the walls, because we can't do it on our own.
We can bash and push and pull and try so hard in our own strength to get personal strongholds or other people's brick walls in relationship removed.

Here Jonathan has been sawing all manner of boards above the darkroom and is trying to get the walls to come down!

He swings the sledgehammer as hard as he can in this little space.

Sam bashes at the walls with the sledgehammer after Jonathan comes down off the ceiling.

And finally, finally, FINALLY, just after we've passed our deadline for time to leave to get ready to catch our plane, Samuel pulls with all his  might, and the walls come tumbling down!

Praise God that God has a way of getting the walls down.
He shows the way to putting impossibilities into His hands, the way to  forgiveness, reconciliation, humility, letting go of little things that don't matter and agreeing to disagree over things that do matter.
Lord, you know about all the walls we face, the offenses and the offended, the struggles of life.

Please get rid of the things harbored behind coconut shell insulation and black-papered walls.

Show us Your light and Your truth and make new, beautiful, clean, restful rooms  

complete with Your presence and joy today!

Beautiful Room at Manor House Dedicated to Brent and Patricia Bigger

Before I proceed with  more posts about our work time in Florida, I want to share about the beautiful room at the newly renovated Manor House where FEA put us up for the four days we were there.

Of the three choices we were given, Jonathan and I chose this one before we realized it was a special one.

I was so surprised and touched when I saw on the wall (above) this beautiful picture dedicated to the memory of Brent and Patricia Bigger and their children, who went to be with the Lord about 9 years ago. There was a beautiful mural of sea gulls flying above them.

And there on the door it showed that this room, the "Bigger Family Suite"  was to be for our work team. 

I knew I would have to take several pictures of this beautiful place, especially for Patricia's mother who reads my blog and keeps in touch.

Outside the room is this lovely hall complete with a table and lamp, comfortable chairs, a few pretty magazines, and a few simple decorations.

I really like the flooring, which is the same in all the rooms as in the hall.

Inside by the door of the Bigger Suite is a comfy sofa with a seaside scene above it and a pretty, seashore clock on the wall. The sky blue and spring green colors of the room are refreshing and cool (in the right sense of the word!)

A comfy rocking chair sits underneath the photo and the sea gulls. A friend thought that perhaps Don Nichols had painted the gulls.

I would look and look at the sea gulls and at the picture of the little family that God chose to take to Himself nine years ago.

One corner scene.

And the other corner.

The bay window.

And as I crashed in bed that first night after a busy, dirty afternoon and sandy evening, I loved this pretty fan.

At first, I thought it was feathers, and I thought of how "He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust."

But then I realized it was palms, and I thought of "Palms of Victory."

"Jesus is Victor," Corrie ten Boom used to say all the time as she traveled the world telling her story of how God's love goes deeper than the deepest pit.

I was reading another part of Corrie's story on the airplane as we flew here, The Five Silent Years of Corrie ten Boom. My mom had sent me this book for my birthday, and I am deeply intrigued by the stories about Corrie. This one was of those last five years of her life after her strokes when she could not talk. I hadn't known about these years, but Corrie is one of my highest heroes of the faith.

Still in those silent years, God's love emanated from her spirit, her room, her home, and her helpers, and her story is an inspiration to me.
It inspired me after we had faced a disaster in the airport that evening on our way out of Colorado Springs, leaving us feeling stupid, idiotic, and vulnerable. It inspired me again as we looked at the huge, dirty job we were undertaking, something we hadn't expected to be doing. In all the uncertainty, we could put our trust in the Lord and know that if we did, He would redeem these situations and work for good. Jesus would be Victor!
Right outside the door of our room, this beautiful scene describes the "Legend of the Crucifix Fish."

As you can see, and as John Toftee told us, when this fish is cut in half, it looks like a crucifix, complete with Christ!
I wonder if that is one reason that the symbol of a fish stands for Christianity, thinking of this particular fish. I don't know, just wondering.

Here the boys are getting unpacked in the room across from us where there were beds for four.
They are pulling out all the tools and getting ready to head to work.

And so after setting our suitcases inside, settling in a bit and having lunch at the cafeteria, we headed off to this area of campus near the fountain.

"As for God, His way is perfect," said another plaque on the wall at Manor House. 

We don't always understand His ways, but they are perfect.

And one thing we know, if there are those who have gone on before to be with the Lord,

it is far better.

Patricia Bigger had kept a Gratitude Journal which her mother shared with me after her death.

But now she is with the One she was grateful to, and her songs of joy are perfect.

We will understand it better by and by.

Till then, we who are left behind here work and watch and pray and rejoice in the One we can trust with even the hard things.

Because "As for God, His way is perfect."

Demolition Derby at Finney Hall, Hobe Sound

Two weeks ago we had no idea that we were going to be spending this last weekend at Hobe Sound, Florida. Jonathan had planned for months to go down to Fort Myers Rescue Mission again to replace the dining hall roof damaged by Hurricane Irma. But just after he purchased tickets, we found out that Jerald Glick was already going down to do the job! We were thrilled that someone else was willing to pitch in for that job, but we wondered what we were going to do with our tickets now!

 Jonathan felt that the Lord had a reason for this to happen this way. He had found round trip, non-stop tickets very cheap from Colorado Springs to Orlando, FL, on Frontier Airlines. So he called John Dykes at FEA ministries and asked if there was any project needing done at the Spanish churches or anywhere else there in Florida, since we had our tickets already and would lose them if we didn't use them.

 John Dykes was excited! He said that just the week before, it had been discussed about this oldest building on campus that desperately needed to be gutted, in preparation for a remodel job of turning it into two suites for missionaries to stay in, but there was no one to do the job.

Would we be willing to do that? 

We were thrilled to be a help.

This was going to be different--to destruct instead of construct! 

But we had three young men who were strong and able.

We did have one roofer lined up to go with us to Fort Myers who had to back out for personal reasons, but our three boys and nephew Samuel Morley, who has been staying with us for several weeks to work for Jonathan, came with Jonathan and me to Hobe Sound.

Hidden behind some other beautiful buildings at the Florida Evangelistic Association and Hobe Sound Bible College was thie oldest building on campus--Finney Hall.

You can see the back of it right smack dab in the center of this picture behind bushes, tree, and an apartment building.

There was no question, upon closer scrutiny, that this building needed some help!
Here is a "before" picture as we get a tour through the building where our work is cut out for us.


It really needed to be totally torn down, but because of all the loops and hoops and red tape and years of paperwork and exorbitant fees to get permits to rebuild, it was decided to simply restore it from the inside out, since the building is an existing building and wouldn't take as much money to remodel it as to tear it down and start over--if that would even be allowed at all.

 This is what greeted our eyes from the front door of Finney Hall. It is one of three buildings on campus that used to be army barracks during World War II. After the war, the many barracks buildings were sold, and three of them were transported to Hobe Sound where they have been used for many different purposes through the years.

It was interesting to hear how this old building was used for everything from a dining hall to offices, to music hall, to finally a dorm for people who came to camp meeting or to visit.
In fact, I am quite sure that this building is where my family stayed about 35 years ago when we sang and played bells for a service or two at one of the camp meetings.

Now 35 years later, three days before I turn 52 and one day after Jonathan turns 51, we are busy together in this building in a sort of demolition derby!
With my love for working alongside my husband and children, I found plenty to do.
There were all manner of things that had just been left behind in this building as offices moved and updated. I am trashing the old computer, cords, and stuff from the drawers of this desk in preparation for the boys to bash the desk into sections to throw in the dumpster.

Ladies can do dirty work, too!

While the men bashed away with sledgehammers and yanked with crowbars, I would follow at a distance, pulling from underfoot boards with myriad nails sticking up and getting them safely stowed in the dumpters.

Praise God, due to a lot of care and hard work to keep boards with nails out of the way, we only had a couple accidents.
Timmy enjoyed getting the old light bulbs and light fixtures down from the ceiling, with Jonathan or me to help.

You can see in the background the different colors of paint where there were different dorm rooms.

There was one small room in the front that was piled with trash and scrap metal. I took this picture after we'd already gotten rid of some of it.

We had a ball laughing at some of the crazy things we found, like this broken keyboard.

And there was no end to the marvels we discovered in the attic,

 including dozens of very old canning jars,
which the boys were delighted to drop down one by one into this red trash can.

We found one antique after another, like this old 3-burner stove,

and several of these things which we think were also some kind of burner for heating food.

All the rafters and ceiling came down,

and stay tuned for more.