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.

A Stirring in an Amish Valley--and a Possible Move for Us

 When Timmy called to talk to me a couple days ago (which he did for 45 minutes!), he said that Sunday morning an Amish family with seven children showed up at church! The parents had been converted, and consequently were excommunicated from their Amish church. 

But another man in church who is involved with the Amish up "in the valley" near that area says he feels there is a stirring of the Spirit in that valley.

And this Amish family at church, converted and excommunicated, are a testimony to that stirring!  

We have been hearing the same thing about Native American ministry, into which we are traveling in just a few days, down to New Mexico to head up a crew remodeling an empty office building into a school for missionaries to the Navajo near Grant,

since the present school building is bursting at its seams.

Despite the inroads and waves of c o v i d decimating some of the Native American population,

it may be creating more openness and hunger for God

as people look at unexpected losses, death, and eternity

straight in the eye. 

A stirring among the Native Americans...

                                          and a stirring in our own hearts in relation to that.

It looks like there may be some upcoming changes in our lives. In recent years, we've been making  Mission Helps trips to South Dakota to work at various missions under Society of Indian Missions. SIM used to have seven missions, and another mission under All Tribes in New Mexico just joined. We visited that one in New Mexico a year and a half ago, a mission founded by our friend Ward French back in the 1960's. Ward and Naomi French are on one or more boards in these missions.

The President of SIM, Keith Lavery, is son-in-law to Dale and Judy Sherman who used to be president of SIM till Dale died of cancer two years ago. Keith became president after that and had been after Jonathan for years about coming up and being maintenance director for the mission. And every time we'd go up there, I would wonder if we were a fit there.

When Jonathan first brought this possibility up to me, I was both shocked and not at all surprised. I had been feeling restless, like a change was coming, and had long been wondering about moving to South Dakota and helping SIM up there. I was shocked because I didn't think Jonathan would ever move or sell this house that he worked a year and a half to build, but I was not surprised to hear him ask me about going back into missions again.

 

Without hesitation, my answer was yes.

 

We drove up to South Dakota a couple weeks ago to meet with staff and spend the weekend helping, and I loved the native American colors even in the towels and wash cloths of one of the missionary's homes. Keith Lavery gave us applications to fill out. Those were sent in this week, and we are waiting for approval.

 

Although Jonathan wishes we could move right away, he has a contract of sorts to finish four stick-built houses, and so we wouldn't be able to move until late this year. Still, we are starting to make plans that direction. I have already sold a heavy armoire (a huge cabinet with doors and shelves and drawers) that I didn't want to take with us, but the only trouble is that now I am running all over the house trying to find the things I used to have safely stowed in that armoire!

Some of our family is leaving Saturday, Lord willing, for a week in New Mexico heading up a crew remodeling an empty office building into a school for a little Navajo mission school that Seth and Melody Yates said was bursting at the seams. 

 

There is a stirring in Amish valleys, among native Americans, and in our own hearts.

Stir on, precious Wind of the Spirit of God!

Stir on!

Crystal and Timmy--the Away Children

Crystal talked to me on the phone last Saturday and then sent me this photo of her later.

Am I just biased or is she really just as beautiful as I thought she was? 

And then she sent me a picture of a couple cousins with her, but I hope it is okay that I kept looking at my own sweet daughter! 

She had a few days off of school for sickness and then for snow days, and was up with her relatives over the weekend.

And then I got a phone call this morning from our Timmy who is now in Bible College, but who, in the photo above, was only 11 years old. 

I guess I actually taught him some piano lessons so he would know a little about reading music.

He took Elements of Music I last semester at Penn View and enjoyed it, even if he did have to get up in front of his class and direct a song a time or two! 

Now Timmy is pleased to be taking guitar lessons this semester under Jeffrey Anderson, who used to be the bass singer in the Penn View quartet, and is now on staff at Penn View and one of the song leaders at Beavertown Church. 

Timmy also told me that since Blake Cassady, who used to be freshman class president, stepped down due to being so busy with PR work now, Ryan Hoffman was voted in as class president for this semester, and Timmy was voted in as vice-president.  

Our country boy says he had no idea how to be president!

He's learning a lot. He's loving speech class, where he has already had to get up in front of class and have three speeches--an introduction to himself, a personal experience, and a pet peeve. He chose to talk about rain in winter for his pet peeve!

Since this particular speech did not have time limits, other students were going on and on for 8 to 10 minutes, and all 16 or however many students had to give their speeches in a one hour and twenty minute class! So Timmy got up and talked for just two minutes! 

"I didn't really have a lot to say, anyway!" he admitted.

I guess others did indeed have a lot to say.

But I'm thankful Timmy could decide to keep his pet peeve short. 

It is good to keep our pet peeves under control--to minimize their significance in our lives,

and to focus on positive things.  

Timmy also is loving his Gospels II class taught by Stefan Paulus. 

This week his assignment is to write a 2-page paper about what the gospel is.

He was discovering that putting into words what the gospel is, something that ought to be rather simple, was not something he felt confident about, and he was happy to be learning to do just that.

Timmy also has to prepare a 30-35 minute presentation with a power point for World Religions class under Michael Mason about a major world religion. For whatever reason, Timmy ended up with the choice of Taoism, a religion he knows nothing about! 

If any of my blog readers have had any friends or acquaintances who were Taoist, or who have any stories to relate having to do with Taoism, let me know!

It was just great hearing Timmy's eager and happy voice again! 

God, I Don't Want Your Grace to Be Sufficient! (Reposted from 2014)

 Dear God,

I don't want Your grace to be sufficient.

I just want this pain to go away.

I don't want Your grace, I just want this situation to get fixed.

 I just want this problem to resolve.

I just want this annoying person out of my life.

Dear God, I don't want your grace or anything.

 I just don't want to have to practice or have to take lessons.

I just want to play pretty music automatically.

I just want to always do everything right.

 I don't want lessons in character building or patience or humility or relationships.

I just want everyone to like me and approve of me--without me having to go out of my way to be friendly or act nice or speak to them kindly or forgive anyone or cooperate with people I don't like. 

 I just want cookies and cranberry bread and pretty red ribbons and sparkly stars. 

I don't want to go out in the cold and sing for people suffering from arthritis--

especially when my own heart is aching inside.

 I just want to stay home and listen to my favorite music.

I don't want to go sing for someone who can't get out of her chair on her own.

That would just add to my list of woes in my life.

Dear God, 

I don't want to suddenly go out of my designated, planned way 

to Christmas carol to old people sitting outside that nursing home smoking. Phew! It stinks. 

Dear God, people just stink!  

Why can't I be a hermit?

 Dear God, I don't want you to prune my bare, brown, dead branches.

Can't you see how ugly I appear when you do that?

 Don't you understand that it hurts when you cut parts of me off?

Dear God, why can't a second work of grace cure all my problems?

Why do you have to keep pruning and clipping--and making me cry?

 Dear God, why do I have to face temptation? Why am I tempted to be bitter about that person who has hurt me so bad?

Do I have to search for that way of escape, 

in order to bear it?

I don't want a way of escape. I'd rather not have to actually 

bear something. 

 Dear God, I guess I've made up my mind. 

I don't want Your grace.

I just want my comfort zone.

 But, God, I- I have to admit,

I'm finding it hard to say Amen.

 I'm a little afraid to say Amen, God.

I'm a little afraid that if that is really what I want, I'll be walking this long, lonely path

called life

all by myself.

I can't afford to walk this path alone, Lord.

And maybe, walking it with You means that I'll have to attend lessons in humility, and practice sessions in forgiveness and love, and lessons in what it means to walk in the other person's shoes 

until I understand where they are coming from. 

Maybe walking this path with You will mean that I will have to submit to things I won't like

or enjoy.

 Maybe it will mean ongoing pain.

Maybe it will mean that I will have to let go of my ongoing prayers for release from this ongoing pain, and instead get a grip on Your promise of

sufficient grace.

 Maybe it will mean that I will have to gulp back tears when I read this verse in Jeremiah 66:9 NCV),

"I will not cause pain without allowing something new to be born,"

says the Lord.

Dear God,

is the something new that you want to be born,

is it a new me in some area of my life that needs to be remade?

Dear God, I can't remake myself into someone who is just a little more

like Christ,

without Your grace.

Dear God, I'm willing to stop focusing on all this pain,

and instead look for the way of escape in order to bear it.

Dear God, I am willing to learn to lean harder on 

Your grace.

You said it would be sufficient.

God, can Your sufficient grace be sufficient for even this?

Dear God,  You said it would be. 

And now, Amen. 

Prayers for Ukraine

Just as I am finishing getting Treasures in the Sawdust in Ukraine ready for publishing, 

we keep hearing rumblings about the escalating tensions between R u s s i a and its neighbor Ukraine.

There were more than one prayer this morning in church for Ukraine and for God's hand to be over everything happening over there. 

We have personal friends there, including a special pastor, Pastor Roman and his wife Nadia and family. Roman had just called Jonathan a week ago.

Last Sunday, Jonathan and I and three of our children had the privilege of visiting a Slavic church near Denver. Back in October at the Denver Airport on our way to Salem, OH, we met several men from this church. After hearing them talking in Russian and seing one praying over his food,Jonathan had greeted them in Russian, and of course, they clustered around and we got just a bit acquainted before they had to leave for their flight. But we had asked them about their church, given them one of my new books, and now we finally had a chance to visit the church.

 

Inside we were welcomed and told that it was a "special service," i.e. the monthly communion service. I thought that most Slavic churches have communion the first Sunday of the month, which is one reason we picked this last Sunday of the month to go up. I knew communion services are extra long!

The church provides ear phones for guests who need someone to translate. So we were led up to about the fourth row of seats from the front, and then given 5 sets of ear phones. This church has a choir which filed in just before service.

There was a beautiful shiny black grand piano, and wonderful musicians, as well as singers. You can pretty much count on beautiful music at a Slavic church of any size. They sang with piano some, and some a capella. Two songs were familiar, including "Near the Cross," which was familiar enough that Jonathan and I were able to follow the Russian words on the screen and sing along. I was transported back to Kiev where we used to sing that song a lot in Ukraine, especially on communion Sundays. Carrie noticed the minor chords in most of the Russian songs. The two choir songs were beautiful.

But what brought tears to my eyes was when the congregation, after praying aloud together (they all lifted in prayer together rather than one praying while others were quiet as was typical in Ukraine) began to quote the Lord's prayer together in Russian. All of a sudden, I understood the words and was able pray along with most of it, if I could stop crying long enough. It was so precious to hear our dear brothers and sisters in Christ praying in our beloved (albeit difficult)  Russian language.

 

There were at least four or five men who spoke in some way up front, usually with prayer and a song in between. Hannah counted that we prayed nine times! The pulpit was over to the side, as usual, in Slavic churches. One leading man came back and let Jonathan know that if our hearts were ready, we could participate in the communion service.

 Anyway, then there was a final prayer, and I thought the service was over, but  then everyone sat down. There was more speaking, and more singing, and then there was another prayer, with everyone kneeling, facing forward instead of burying their heads in the chairs, just as they did in Ukraine. At one point there was a benediction, but then we sat down again. Then there was a long, long, long list of announcements. And then anyone who had greetings to share from other churches or people could do so. Then  final prayer. And then FINALLY, about 12:30, we were actually dismissed.

 The three children who went with us got a real taste of what a Russian-speaking service is like.

And I got a little taste of my beloved Russian-speaking brothers and sisters in Christ once again.

Pray with us for the safety, courage, and peace of our brothers and sisters in Christ in these Slavic nations.