Stuck in South Dakota Blizzard!

A few weeks ago, Jonathan, Danny, Tim and I spent about ten days in South Dakota.

I already wrote about the first few days when we were working on our own house, but then we battened everything down and moved to the Rosebud parsonage where we were going to work during what was forecast to be a blizzard. 

And a blizzard it was, putting down a lot of snow, blowing like crazy, and leaving drifts several feet high. 

Inside, it felt like a dungeon. All the windows on both main floor and basement were boarded up to deter vandals--like the vandals who had already torn out a great deal of wiring and copper tubing a while back. We were supposed to get some of the mess cleaned up and some wiring done and planning toward a work team coming this next year.

I had been nervous about staying at this parsonage during a blizzard, especially if the electricity would go off. There was  no wood stove like we had back in Colorado--where we could both heat the house and do our cooking, as you can see in the picture! And at first, there was not even a fridge or cook stove! But at the last minute, we'd been able to get both a refrigerator and stove that Society of Indian Missions provided for the parsonage. The stove was on Facebook marketplace hardly out of our way to Rosebud. Jonathan and the boys loaded it onto the trailer, along with a fridge later, and so at least I was able to stock food and cook.

 Jonathan had a commercial size propane heater, and he fired that thing up, and in twenty minutes it would have a room heated up. He set it in the basement and fixed the furnace fan system to where he could turned on a fan which would blow the warm air through the house.

 Jonathan and Tim discovered that two of the heat registers had been covered up with flooring since the former occupants had used a wood stove, so Tim cut holes in the flooring so that we could heat the house.

  So most of the time I kept warm enough, and when I got too cold, I'd turn on the oven in the electric stove and open the door.

The worst thing we had to deal with was thousands of flies. 

And I'm not exaggerating when I say thousands. Maybe there were a million, but that might be an exaggeration! Flies were all over the one window that was not boarded up, and dead flies lay all over the sink and counter and floor! 

I swept up hundreds of flies upstairs, and Jonathan vacuumed up thousands more  two or three times a day down in the basement where flies covered certain beams in the ceiling so thick they were black!

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Blizzard or not, I was determined to have a clean window! And it's true that as soon as I killed all the flies I could, within an hour dozens more would be all over the window. But you don't just let the flies beat you! We kept at it, and by the end of the time we were there, most of the flies had been conquered!

Down in the "dungeon" of the basement, the boys tore down old drywall.

Jonathan gave the boys instructions before he set to work on wiring.

Upstairs he and the boys figured out which outlets and lights were on which circuits. 

And I put on a mask to go downstairs to help clean up some moldy drywall. 

This was a job I could do! 

Tim is not the kind to just put up with a dungeon if there is something that can be done about it.

There was this one single comfy chair already there, and we made a cozy little corner that helped us survive those days of South Dakota blizzard! It doesn't take much!

He found this little live edge shelf that he had built and we'd stored in this parsonage garage with the rest of our stuff we'd moved up here. And I found the lamp and a second corner shelf. 

The one day when the snow wasn't blowing too terribly, Tim dressed up warmly and decided to do a photo shoot. I had scrounged up a Christmas wreath from our Christmas bins in the garage, and he took that out with him.

It's true he had to make his own picture, but he did. 

With me kinda sneaking up behind to shoot the shoot.

I just love how Tim finds ways to make beauty out of ugliness.

 

And so here he is getting a really good shot--which ended up on a photo calendar later! 

 Meanwhile, indoors, I kept busy keeping food on for three hungry men, getting Christmas letters addressed, and writing on my Honduras missionary story that is supposed to become a book someday. 

At night, Tim couldn't bear the darkness, so this is what he found. He also found a little string of colored lights which we put around the one kitchen window that wasn't boarded up.

                                                                                                   Cozy!   The next post will tell about digging out.

 

When Your Work Doesn't Include Flowers

Sometimes one's work has less to do with flowers and more to do with mud. 

But I digress.

 The day before my dad's memorial service, Joella and I were at the florist shop where my nieces work. The manager was gone for a week or two, on vacation, and my niece was left to manage the shop while she was gone.

 

The nice thing was that my niece could allow her mom and aunt into the store by the back door!

We got to go into the walk-in cooler that housed all the fresh flowers.

We got to peruse the wall full of ribbons and even go back into a back room where they store everything from baskets to crosses, from vines to twigs, and from tablecloths to every color of fabric.

"The truck comes in every day with flowers," my niece explained. "And I just go out and pick what I want for the orders."

Oh my goodness! Every day, she gets to just go out into a truck and pick pretty flowers!

"Wouldn't it be fun to work in a florist shop!" I thought, with a little bit of envy,I suppose.

I mean, think of it! Just work with pretty flowers all day long!

You get to arrange and deliver bouquets and make people happy! 

How much nicer than cleaning up behind a litter of puppies! Or home schooling a teenager who thinks World History and American Literature and such ignorant subjects are the worst things ever!

No comparison, right?

Until you hear about the flower arrangements that were on order the next morning for an eighteen-year-old girl that got hit by a train nearby the day before.

"We have eight orders for flowers in already for her funeral," my niece let us know as I ran in for a last-minute order of a single rose. My niece was not feeling well at all that day, and I heard she would have to be up until late that night, to do all the arrangements. 

She would miss the fellowship with extended family at the Wilson Center which we had rented for all day. 

"People come in here crying," my niece added. "They tell me about how their son died or a friend passed away. And what are you supposed to say?" 

Hmm. Maybe it's not the funnest job in the world after all, the being a florist.  

It's a ministry, really. 

A heart-breaking ministry although with beautiful flowers.

Still, I had to take care not to be envious--and to choose contentment.

To go home and spend the day having Gabriel's little children help me move hundreds of books from a bedroom to another place in Mom's home so that there would be room for a guest bed.

I wasn't choosing flowers from a truck, but I was choosing contentment.

I didn't get to arrange bouquets, but I got to arrange books and furniture with the help of happy little ones.

And the days after the memorial service, it was true that my men were working in mud and worse under Mom's poor old trailer

  instead of poking ferns and roses into wet foam,

but neither were we looking into sets of weeping eyes and having to say, "I am so sorry for your loss."

God has given each of us a job to do, whether it's a florist or a garbage collector, 

a remodeler or an electrical engineer.  

When we can only peek into beautiful florist shops where relatives work, 

let us choose contentment with the task God has given us to do

and make that task beautiful with love!

When Weeds Become Centerpieces

 Long years ago when my family lived in South Dakota, my dad was entranced with the way someone went out and collected dried flowers and weeds from fields and roadsides to add to pictures and sell. He had us children go with him at times to help collect pretty dried weeds to try to do the same thing.

So when we knew he didn't want us spending money for flowers for his memorial service, a couple of us decided we would instead send some nieces and nephews out to the edges of their properties to try to find some pretty dried grasses or flowers or plants to make dried bouquets instead of fresh to decorate the tables at Wilson Memorial Center for the meal afterward. 

And the bouquets would all be free! 

Joella had Mason jars that we used, which the girls decorated with pieces of ribbon, raffia, or burlap bows. 

 I purchased some miniature chalkboards to which we clipped a few of Dad's common quotes or advices or photos. 

This one above was one Joella remembered Dad often saying, "A Christian is either up or getting up."

For this centerpiece I had found an old red jalopy pickup at Hobby Lobby, which reminded me of Dad's many old jalopies through the years, and his love of living in the country. 

When we children were very young, Dad tried his hand at photography, learning to develop all his own pictures, all of which were black and white at that time. He built his own "dark room." 

I also bought this little painted decoration at Hobby Lobby--"Forgiven." It was precious to me.

Joella chose to purchase a bundle of wheat instead of flowers, which she put together with a chalkboard with the verse, "Let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season, we shall reap, if we faint not."

She thought of the many good things Dad has reaped, especially a Christian family, 

eight of which were present at the memorial service. 

Sam's church in Colorado sent in this beautiful bouquet as well. 

 

But beneath the bouquet of flowers is the most important bouquet of all, a family photo of all the Morley clan who had gathered only four months earlier to celebrate Mom and Dad's 60th wedding anniversary. 

Although per Dad's own request we had to resort to dried weeds for centerpieces, in memory of a man who was a misfit in society and who had a heart for the down and out--

wife, children, spouses, and grands were Dad's memorial bouquet.

And what an amazing bouquet that is! 

Dad's Bouquet--Bells and Seeds

  Dad did not want flowers at his memorial service. "No money wasted on flowers!" he said.

That was the way Dad was, and we knew it.

Mom was determined to honor who he was and what he requested.

His memorial service needed to reflect who he was. 

But...

 

So what is a family to do to show love and respect?

Well, two of my nieces work at a florist shop, and the florist manager wanted to send a bouquet which we could not and did not refuse. 

So no, we did not spend any money on flowers. Per Dad's desires.

But yes, we had flowers.

They were our link between a one-of-a-kind father

and our real world where there are almost always flowers at funerals--at least funerals where people loved the departed.  

Joella and I were the two sisters combing the florist shop the day before the memorial service last week for what would represent Dad best in the bouquet that Susanna was going to make for him as a gift from her florist shop. 

Pink flowers--no. 

Expensive stuff-no. 

Red roses--well, no. 

Heart-shaped wreaths. No. 

Cross-shaped bouquets--no. "The cross Jesus died on was not frilly!" Dad said once when he saw a cross made of flowers on a church wall. He was not a bit happy about frilly crosses.

 

Dad was more concerned about not being a burden to family, not wanting them to spend a lot of money honoring him in the typical ways. He was far more concerned about leaving behind an honor of God and His Word.

So this is what we settled on, asking Susanna to add in some pretty brown grasses or stalks of some sort, to give the bouquet a little more masculine appearance. We loved how it turned out. 

Just this morning I read in Isaiah 40:8, "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand for ever."

We made God's Word a prominent place in the memorial service.

Susanna also found a cross made with moss (not flowers, mind you!) which another niece wound clear lights around. We all liked that as well. 

Dad was all about the "old rugged cross." 

Susanna put into the bouquet what are called Bells of Ireland, which I thought was extremely appropriate, since Dad is from Scotch-Irish stock. I believe his mother was Scotch-Irish while his father was English.

To say nothing about all the years that Dad took his family out playing bells and the way some of the family is still playing them!

And another appropriate addition Susanna made to the bouquet was this seed pod, which I thought was so appropriate for Dad. Dad is gone now, having lived his life just like the plant that left behind this pod. But Dad left behind a lot of seed.

Four sons.

Five daughters.

Fifty-four grandchildren.

Eight great-grandchildren with at least three more on the way at this moment. 

The church was nearly half filled with just Dad's own progeny, not counting friends and acquaintances who attended. 

This morning I couldn't help noticing with sadness how the flowers in the memorial bouquet are already wilting. Truly "the grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand for ever." 

Let's be true to the Word of God.