Family Photos

 Recently on a Sunday afternoon, Alanna Lavery drove out to take some family photos for us.

SIM is making prayer cards for the missionaries and needed a family photo.  

We tried a couple different backgrounds on the same section of old road. 

Us ladies. 

Another view.

The girls wore the western blouses they had worn as bridesmaids at Rose's wedding this summer. 

My sweetheart and me

One of those in-between moments that are really fun to put on the blog. 

The three siblings.

Behind them fly several flags up at the veteran's memorial at the White River Cemetery. 

When Your Favorite Blouse (and Other Worn Out Things) Must Go

 It had been my favorite top for years--this cozy blue and white cotton floral top with pretty scalloped crocheted lace edging around the wrists and waist.  I had found it at a very small thrift shop somewhere up in the mountains where I had gone with Jonathan when he had a job in the mountains of Colorado.

Inside it was fuzzy soft, and outside it was sturdy and resistant to dirt. But little by little, it had become worn, faded, and dingy, and finally there were slight stains that just would not quite come out. 

It was time to say goodbye to my beloved blouse. I cut it up into pieces for rags so I would not second guess myself, and also so that it would not seem that I just threw it away. The pretty blue and white floral pieces would still be useful.

I've thrown a shirt or two of Jonathan's away recently, maybe a pair of jeans, and another one or two of my skirts and tops. 
It was just time--time to let go of our favorite, worn out articles of clothing. 

"There is a time for every purpose under heaven," Ecclesiastes tells us. There is a time to gather, and a time to throw away. 

For worn out clothes and unnecessary items in our home, the time has come. 

It's hard to let go of things--unless you love being a minimalist. It feels wasteful. You think about poor people in Africa, refugees, and others who would welcome an old top, a shirt with a worn collar, or holey jeans.

Also, if you live in South Dakota where you must travel sometimes hours to get anywhere to shop, it is downright scary to get rid of things. What if you need them later on? 

What if the economy crashes and you wish you had kept all those sawed-off parts of plumbing pipes and scraps of electrical wire and boxes of leftover stuff from jobs that were finished and had to be cleaned up?

What if you end up needing the chain saw that doesn't work and the tool that is missing a part and one of the very out-of-date stories that you've saved all these years for Sunday School?

 But sometimes hanging on to things hampers our life. We spend an awful lot of time hunting through our stuffed closet for a blouse or skirt or shirt or pants appropriate for whatever occasion while several totes of clothing are stowed away in the attic.

Our mission director's wife was telling me tonight about how her brother (the dad of these children above to whom Crystal read stories during staff meeting recently) is clearing most of the "stuff" out of the huge shop/barn that belongs to the mission, to make room for what is really needed, including activities that need space. 

It's kind of scary, watching all those things go.

It's a good thing, but a painful experience. Seeing a special memento leaving for good can be hurt, just like saying goodbye to my favorite blouse was seriously painful.

But because space, dignity, and self-respect are important, I will decide that it's just time.

The stained and worn top, however loved, must go. 

The worn out hankie must become a rag. 

And the holey jeans, too worn for denim crafts, must find a hideout in the wastebasket. 

It must go and make space for the new and better.

It's time has come. 

Apple Schnitz--and Stuffed Jalapenos

 I'm at it again--finding ways to use or put away the bushels of apples the children picked a couple weeks ago. (Well, that's been a few weeks ago by now.)

Some of the best apples are stored in the basement, but the ones with bad spots, squirrel bites, or bruises I have been cutting up little by little.  .

I layer them on the plastic racks of my dehydrator and dry them overnight or all day long, hoping they'll come out as yummy as the apple snitz made by our old friends the Guenthers, an old order Mennonite family who made friends with our family way back in the Dark Ages when I was about 12 years old. 

That wonderful family (with whom we still keep in touch by hand-written letters) shared bags of apple snitz with us, dried in their ovens, and those were such delectable treats to a family of eight children  at that time, who didn't have many treats. 

I do have to keep an eye on the snitz I make here, though, because Danny likes them too much.

I also slice or dice apples to freeze, bag after bag in our freezer, for future apple crisps and apple cakes.  

Unsprayed apples are one of the healthiest things I can feed my family and myself

So are jalapenos, I suppose. My brother Fain who arrived yesterday from Missouri for a few days, brought a whole slew of these hot delectables from his garden. 

He made his own recipe of cheese-stuffed jalapenos for the evening meal after evening church at Mission tonight...

while his wife Regina and I started a puzzle that my brother Hoshea had in that sunshine basket. 

Regina enjoys puzzles on a Sunday afternoon, and Hannah and I joined her. 

I'm not a puzzle person, but I don't mind finding a few pieces, especially if it means spending meaningful time with a sister-in-law whom I first met in Honduras 32 years ago when Fain was starting to be sweet on her. 

But I better close this post while it focuses on mere apples, jalapenos, and puzzles--

before I start into another love story.

Orange Lips--Trying to Compensate

One morning (while I still had some hair left) I was running around the house looking like this (maybe minus the smile). I don't remember whether I discovered the orange lips when I looked in the mirror or if my youngest daughter came on the scene and looked a bit scandalized, or just what.

 

Either way, I came to realize that my lips looked a bit--shall we say, unusually gorgeous (if you agree that lips this orange are gorgeous.) Or maybe I was just trying to match the elk hunters going out in their orange gear.  

The orange culprit was not lipstick. It was my astaxanthan supplement. (And if you can't pronounce that, don't worry. I couldn't at first either.) But the point is, that supplement is a very dark red, oily substance, and I am supposed to eat ten drops of it a day. It is an anti-inflammatory, anti-this and anti-that supplement that cured somebody and maybe a lot of somebodies of cancer. I don't expect it to cure mine, but I figured it might help at least in the battle. So I choose to eat it with a few bites of my scrambled egg and avocado for breakfast, and if I'm not super careful, my lips end up like this without me knowing it till I look in the mirror.

I asked myself if the orange "lipstick" would make up for my future lack of hair, to compensate, you know! 

I am not sure what Mr. Elk's opinion was of the matter, but I was having way too much fun with these pictures (taken several weeks ago by now).

Yes, definitely having way, way too much fun with these pictures!

 

My Newest Book--Number Seven!

 Last week I was excited to receive by UPS three boxes of new books--my seventh.

 

It is the story of the trip my brother and I took with a team to the land of the dragon in the year 1 9 8 9. 

We were there during the famous (or rather infamous) Tia nan men Square Mass acre in the capitol of the country. 

Yes, that event did drastically affect our trip, even though we were a thousand miles away.

Under His Wings in China  has finally been published after months of trying to squeeze in finishing final formatting and editing details. I wrote the stories in a matter of about three weeks, as I combed through the very tiny handwriting in my brother Elon's old journal and mine of those very full two weeks of taking the gospel in unconventional and quiet ways. Writing the stories was the fun part. Then comes the working through the manuscript, editing, considering whether to leave in certain questionable or controversial or personal parts. Most or all of those were scratched!

Meanwhile, a couple weeks ago I filled most of a box with several each of my other books to send to an address that will get the books to a Christian bookstore in Mexico. A Mennonite lady who met my brother Elon's family in Mexico when my niece Amaris was at a clinic in Mexico was given a book of mine and wants more for her bookstore. The one book she already has of mine has gone from one hand to another there, being read to a dying  relative and to a lady who was unable to read herself.  

I am so happy to hear stories of my books being read and enjoyed.  

So I keep writing.

North Dakota Socks for South Dakota Missionary

Wednesday night Jonathan and I arrived in Rapid City about 10 o'clock our time and 9 o'clock Rapid City time. In the parking lot on our way to the motor home that was to be our home for the next two nights during my chemo treatment, we passed the well-lit windows of Bible Christian Church where people were sitting listening to a revival message of Rev. John Brewer.

I tried not to feel too guilty for not arriving early enough to attend, but Jonathan had worked all day, we had struggled to get packed and on our way by seven our time for the 2 1/4 hour drive, and I am usually staying away from most populated situations except our little church Sunday morning and quick excursions.

As we got out of our warm van into the cold outdoors, I found myself feeling worn out, cold, and a little blue (and still feeling guilty). I wasn't sure what this different motor home was going to be like, since the evangelist and his wife were staying in the RV that Jonathan and I usually stayed in. 

But what should meet my astonished eyes inside but this sunshine basket with a card on top that said it was for me!

All thoughts of cold and guilt vanished with the warmth of this generous and beautiful surprise that I assumed was from someone in the church, because someone in the church had left a bag of edible treats for us another time. 

Whoever packed this basket must have known some things about me, because first of all, the basket was a clothes basket and who knew I needed a new clothes basket? This was the very best color for a clothes basket for me! Snuggled in with a fluffy antique rose blanket and a lush gray bath towel were extra virgin olive oil, pistachios, sunflower seeds, a pretty apron, Pioneer Woman dish towels (to replace some very worn out ones I have) french fried onions, some illustrated children's songs, a bath mat, and more.

What puzzled me most was the socks.  I could not understand why a South Dakota person would give a South Dakota missionary and cancer patient socks from North Dakota. That seemed most unusual. 

Until I opened the card and discovered to my surprise that the basket had come from my brother Hoshea and wife Laurie who are fellow missionaries to the Native Americans but clear up in North Dakota near the Canadian border, on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation.

Aha! 

Suddenly the socks held a meaning hitherto hidden, like the meaning one might discover at times behind unusual Christmas or birthday  gifts that one is tempted to only think about in relation to its usefulness to oneself, or the pleasure it might bring to oneself, with little to no thought of the giver's attitude, place in life, or motive.

Gracious receivers will value the giver more than the gift.

After reading that card signed by my dear sister-in-law Laurie, I looked again at the socks. 

Suddenly, North Dakota socks became meaningful to a South Dakota missionary lady. When I texted Hoshea and Laurie, I learned that they had sent the basket down with their son Andrew and his wife when the two came to the Black Hills for vacation recently.

The basket, with its North Dakota socks, had been sent with love from a brother and sister-in-law all the way down here to Rapid City.

Because of who the gift of socks was from and the love that sent them, this South Dakota lady will proudly wear those soft and cozy North Dakota bison socks!

A Girl Named Hopeful

Day after tomorrow, I am to get my third chemo infusion, but if you ever start feeling sorry for yourself, it is a good idea to go to a clinic or hospital or institution or nursing home where you will discover someone in worse shape than yourself. 

Today at the Divinity Wellness Clinic in Sioux Falls today where I went for a blood test and a Vitamin C IV, other patients were in the same room, including a father and daughter from Yankton. It was obvious that the girl was facing severe disabilities, including twisted feet and hands, not being able to talk or communicate in much of any way. Her eyes looked blank most of the time, except when the intravenous needle was pulled out of her arm. At that point, her face puckered, but the rest of the time, she lay with hardly a movement in her special wheel chair during her IV. Although I found a few subjects to discuss in a friendly manner with the nurse and the father, I did not ask any nosy questions in front of the girl.

"Had she been born this way, suffered a disease or an injury?" I wondered inside. 

And then, as the nurse spoke to the girl and called her by name for a second time, I knew I had heard correctly the first time. The girl's name was Hopeful! 

"Hopeful!" I exclaimed. "That is a beautiful name!"

Even in the face of whatever it was that she was facing, I thought, it was a beautiful name. The nurse said the names of the girl's siblings were also beautiful, so I asked what they were, and the father recited them for me, down a list of about six or seven names! 

"Big family!" I commented. "I have seven children, too!" 

Right at that moment, the father was wheeling the girl out of the room, but as she came by me, those same eyes that had seemed so blank, were suddenly large and bright. She was actually looking at me! I had not seen her looking at either the nurse or anyone else. But those eyes were looking at me, eyes that weren't quite coordinated, but one was looking straight at me!

"See you, Hopeful!" I said, touching her arm as she glided by me in her wheel chair. "Have a wonderful day!"

The nurse and father had been talking about therapies being done with the girl, and how she was being worked with to use her eyes to communicate. I don't know what the girl may have been trying to communicate, or if she was at all, but there was something about those eyes that were suddenly luminous as she was wheeled past me. Had she understood what I said, that her name was beautiful? Was she just glad to be leaving that room of IVs? Or was it something the Lord allowed to happen, to speak to my own heart--allowing a girl named Hopeful to look me in the eye, a lady in the middle of a cancer fight, wondering how long I have hope?

Either way, it was special to me, the large, beautiful eyes of a girl  named Hopeful. I learned later from the nurse, when I asked, that the girl had been in an accident a couple years ago, but the therapies that the family is finding for her here are making a difference in her improvement. 

I pray that hope will refresh the hearts of the girl and her family as they continue to work through the struggles and the caregiving. May there always be someone to speak a kind word to lift their spirits. And may we all have a wonderful day because of hope, and the God of hope, and His kindness to all of us in our troubles and heartaches.