Crystal and Sewing Classes in Africa

Last Friday in South Africa, Crystal and Candace finished their one-week sewing class with nine ladies!

Here they are above, wearing the skirts each one made for herself and holding a sewing kit they were gifted. 

This photo was taken the day Crystal and her cousin arrived to South Africa to spend three weeks with Phil and Amrie Geise and their cousin Ezra Morley who is there as well. He is pictured to the right in the photo below. 

On the first day, Candace and Crystal taught the women how to use the sewing machine. The teenage son (boy in center with light colored pants) of one of the women helped to translate and was fascinated with the sewing machines. (You can also see him in the photo below to the right.)

Running a sewing machine was a feat in itself. It had not occurred to me that for women who didn't know how to sew, learning to operate the machine with foot pedal would be quite an accomplishment! Plus they had to learn how to thread the machine and thread the bobbin. 

Sometimes, Crystal messaged us, it was downright scary trying to help the ladies sew without sewing their finger under the needle! Learning hand/foot coordination was huge that first day. They used scrap fabric or even pieces of paper for the women to learn on.

Each day either Amrie or Crystal shared a devotional before the classes began. 

Here is the school building that the after-school sewing class was held inside. You can see that almost all the windows are broken out. 

After the first day of class, Candace got all the ladies' measurements and cut out skirt pieces for each of them. 

So here they are!

While I merely sew two missing buttons on to a blouse I wore recently!

Fawn's Frolics and God's "Perfectly Tailored Grace"

Not only is Fawn a joy to our family, but he makes a great conversation piece, which is always helpful when one is trying to reach out to others. He has learned to follow his instincts, and finds a place in or near the draw to the south to bed down most of the time, but then he comes back for milk two or three times a day, depending on the weather. 

For a while, Fawn, who is also called Bucky, (exhibiting our amazing creativity!) would show up in the corner of the flower garden, waiting for his milk. 

One of us would discover him and go for milk. That might be I, which doesn't sound right, but that is correct English, as Mom would say. And Bucky would follow me right into the house, where he would discover the  man of the house, or the other way around. 

And Hannah or I would get him to follow us back out of the house for his meal. It is better to have the milk bottle dripping outdoors rather than inside. Even Danny enjoys being part of some of the feedings. 

Thank You, Lord! You knew when we needed something totally unusual to cheer our days. 

"The Lord sent him to me," our native friend insisted, even though later she was told she was not allowed to keep him in native housing. 

That is when I offered dubiously, wondering if we could manage with everything else going on. But Bucky isn't much trouble--yet. 

And so the little delightful creatures wait expectantly for their food, given by goats and God. 

"What You give," the Scripture says, "they gather."

How we all do wait upon God to provide our needs!

Yet the birds must fly and look and nest and find insects and seeds for their babies, and man must labor until evening, and women must strain milk and make goat cheese every other day and gather eggs and fill the chicken pans, and do the dishes and cook the meals. 

And another little "fawn" finds food in a cereal box in a state a few hours away,

while the sun sets over the green hills of South Dakota.

And the prayer of a staff member of Samaritan Ministries Medical Sharing Program is answered, who prayed over the phone with me as I called with questions regarding new medical needs to share for Jonathan now, besides me, as she prayed and thanked God for His "perfectly tailored grace" for our needs. 

Before going to the next duty, I grabbed a scrap paper and wrote those words down, 

"perfectly tailored grace."

Who knew that part of that perfectly tailored grace would include precious new grandchildren whose photos brighten our days--

 and newborn fawns, once left abandoned in a ditch but coming with wet, black muzzle to beg for milk straight from our patient goats--and God!

Strawberries Homegrown and Cheering Test Results

 Little did I know that while Hannah was gone and I was busy keeping the home fires burning, or shall I say, the home fans blowing in this hot weather, that sweet little strawberries were ripening in the patch inside Hannah's flower garden!

While Jonathan and l were gone to Sioux Falls for medical appointments, Hannah arrived home and discovered them! And when we came home, we all tasted one or two apiece of those delectable berries. 

Each morning Hannah picks a few more berries--before the ants and birds and fawn eat them--because the fawn likes to nap in the corner of the flower garden, and if he ever gets a taste for strawberries, that will be the end of our homegrown treat!

I was so grateful to get to eat a strawberry that did not immediately create a mouth lesion. For years I haven't been able to eat strawberries from the store without almost instant mouth ulcers breaking out, thanks to pesticides, etc. 

God gave us more cheer yesterday after Jonathan's third PSA test and my PET scan results came back. The local doctor did not believe any of Jonathan's muscle pain and PSA test results were related to the spider bite, but we went to a doctor in Sioux Falls who had a second and opposite opinion and who was willing to order a 3rd PSA test as well as prescribe something to bring down the inflammation and help with the pain. Yesterday, to our utter amazement, (before even starting any of the medication) not only had the numbers come down, but they had come down by almost half of the number it had been a few weeks ago! This new number was lower than the original number two months ago!

We were both astounded.  

Jonathan had hit his situation with nearly everything we had ever learned about, (including the kitchen sink, he joked) to try to bring the numbers down and get rid of the concerning lesion. He had done a 48-hour fast a couple months ago, and a 72-hour fast a few weeks ago, even though it meant sacrificing a last meal with our children in Colorado before we left that day. He thought fasting while traveling was easier than fasting at home where he prowls hungry around the kitchen.  

(For the record, the last 24 hours of the 72 hour fast he ate small amounts of protein only, no carbs. The idea is to bring his body into ketosis so that it will "eat" up the rogue cells. When a person is starving, his body will first eat up bad cells before breaking down the healthy, good cells. It's amazing how God has made our bodies.

And he has been keeping close to a keto diet most of the time, (with a few exceptions) enjoying fish such as this short-nosed gar. 

(Though when Danny discovered the name of this fish, I thought, if this is a short-nosed gar, what would a long-nosed one be like?)

Jonathan has been taking all manner of supplements for prostate support and inflammation issues, such as turmeric. I've been making essiac tea from genuineessiac.com, and he's been drinking 3 oz. or more three times a day--at least when he can remember in the middle of his work days. 

(Meanwhile, pictures of a very dear strawberry girl come to my phone, cheering our days!)

Well, moving on from PSA test results to PET scan results, I was amazed to see that results that usually don't come in for at least a day or two or sometimes more were already posted about two hours after my scan. I was traveling home with Hannah at the wheel because I was so exhausted, hungry, and just down, that I thought I might faint. Before a PET scan, you are only allowed high protein, low carb, and I didn't think to take a snack or electrolytes in with me. Did I ever pay for it! 

However, the good news is that anything that was formerly cancer is showing "resolved," no cancer, but a very small nodule in my left lung is showing activity measuring .9 SUV, or less than 1. That is a very low number that is typically not indicative of cancer, as I understand, but it is concerning because it hasn't been there before and the number and size can of course, increase. 

(Rose and baby with cousin Charity whose music group from Penn View sang at Faith Covenant Bible Church in Colorado Springs last Sunday.)

I don't know what my oncologist will do with these numbers and news from the scan. I am to see her tomorrow, after one day break from traveling. We traveled all the way to Sioux Falls Monday, then Hannah and I went to Rapid City the other direction yesterday, and tomorrow back to Rapid City for scheduled chemo (unless my oncologist decides differently). 

On our way home from Sioux Falls medical appointments, Jonathan picked up items for the business or mission at Menards in Sioux Falls, then windows at a window shop in Mitchell. (He also chose some  discounted windows for the mission fellowship hall addition which the store manager, upon learning what they were for, told him were free for the mission!) Then at Menards again in Mitchell he had to pick up these four 10-ft ridge caps that someone called to say they needed on the job. 

I was beyond nervous about the sharp edges of the ridge cap between us, stretching from the back of the Honda to the windshield. 

"Any emergency and we could have our heads sliced off," I told Jonathan as the metal things slid by my neck clear up to the windshield where they stopped. 

Then my growing up years stepped up to my rescue. My dad could fix nearly any problem with duct tape and plastic, it seemed (though what the thing looked like in the end is beside the point). 

I suggested taping the edges of the four ridge caps to hold them together and dull the edges so if we came to a sudden stop or jerked sideways, they wouldn't immediately decapitate us. 

Jonathan went back into the store while I sat in the hot sun, and he bought duct tape which we applied to the sharp edges. 

I even took a turn driving on the way home that day--praying that the crazy things will end up well that we have to do in this third world situation where we have to travel so far to pick up any materials for the business and mission.

And so, until next post!

Angel in the Ditch--Unexpected Cheer in a Dark Time

When I very reluctantly agreed to take in the fawn my friend was no longer allowed to keep, (she was told she couldn't have it in native housing and was very upset because she had saved the little one's life after it had been found in a nearby ditch and, with the allowance of game commissions, had gotten very attached to it), I didn't know that I had just said yes to a lot of fun and joy along with the responsibility and work I knew we were in for. 

First of all, I had no idea how it would change the dynamics in our home that was very quiet with both Crystal gone to Africa and Hannah gone for a week and a half to Colorado for youth camp and time with siblings. Our home here was also full of quiet dread of future biopsies and diagnoses for Jonathan besides shock and sorrow over the tragic loss of Rob, Jonathan's youngest brother. I had never seen Jonathan so utterly low when he came home from work in the evenings--sitting bowed, silent and low, before and after supper.  

Let's just say it was a little bit awful. Until. 

Enter--Fawn!

Knowing of the fawn's arrival, when Jonathan and Danny arrived home from work Friday evening, Danny charged into the house with a face aglow with expectation of meeting the newest family addition. 

He was especially eager to see how the other farm animals would react to it. I had waited to let the fawn outside much before Danny was home to help me catch him if he got out of hand. 

I also had to temporarily keep the fawn away from our cat who had immediately and mercilessly attacked him like a tiger because my neighbor and I had first put the fawn in the garage where kitty and her one remaining kitten were. Kitty thought fawn was going to eat her kitten, and she decided to eat him first--and she probably would have if my friend and I had not rescued the poor fawn. He already had a bleeding nose and leg within the first half minute of being in my garage--so much for being responsible for him! :) :)

I put the poor thing in the mud room then where my friend said tearful goodbyes, with the fondest hug you ever saw a human being give a helpless animal. And then  bravely, my friend left, and I, a bit nervous about my added responsibilty, was in charge of baby fawn--all by myself at first. 

Now that Danny and Jonathan were home, we put the fawn out immediately and watched it quickly win over every last animal on the place--with his innocent meekness and charm.

Even Bell, our fiesty goat, ready at first to knock the fawn out, as you can see in the photo above, quickly realized fawn was not a challenge and just wanted to be friends. Bell never touched Fawn.

And so they were friends.

Even Kitty, once she was outside with Fawn with us closeby, quickly decided Fawn was not a menace after all. 

The next day Kitty was rubbing her face on Fawn's neck, a silent apology for her unwarranted behavior the day before--a mistake, just like we humans make sometimes,

thinking (from past bad experiences) something or somebody may be a terrible menace or enemy when in fact they soon show themselves to be a friend, or at least not out to hurt or destroy us. 

I watched Jonathan, who had been bowed and silent the day before, standing with a big smile, watching that charming baby that someone's loving heart had rescued. 

The baby fawn we'd helped rescue...

rescued us.

I think he was an angel covered with spotted, brown hide and a little, wet, black nose--found in the ditch up at the edge of Swift Bear Community. 

A spotted angel in a ditch.

Just like God to come up with something like that!! 

If God Cares About Grandpa Turtle

"Danny moved Grandpa off the road so he wouldn't get smashed," Jonathan said on our family chat, with the following picture attached. 

Wait. What?? It was a huge turtle, dubbed "Grandpa," by Jonathan, who has more humor in him than I usually realize.

Danny and he couldn't bear to drive by without rescuing the slow and lumbering creature from certain crushing by the monster vehicles that rumble by all day long. 

Meanwhile, my native friend had someone come to her home and give her a fawn they had seen lying in the ditch for two days. "I need goat milk ASAP," my friend texted. She called three game commissions, but was told they could not take the little creature and good luck. So she decided to try to save it herself. 

And she did. 

For a week, she coaxed that fawn to drink from a baby bottle, and soon he was dancing around her living room with her dogs and sleeping on a blanket in her bedroom and napping in his own cozy corner of her very small living room.

And speaking of babies, Danny found this baby bird at their job site. He tried to feed it worms, but it just didn't work too well.

At least he tried. 

"A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast," God's Word says. In other words, a righteous man takes responsibility for his animals, and cares about their health and comfort, at least as well as he is able. 

And if God looks after His creatures, and notes when a fawn is left in a ditch, a turtle is left on the road, or a bird falls from its nest, surely He cares even so much more for each of us His created beings. 

I felt myself strangely comforted as the washer in the laundry room whirred during its last spin--something familiar and routine versus the shock of the grief of losing Jonathan's brother and the dread--no matter how much we seek to trust it to God--of what the future holds regarding both Jonathan's and my health.

I find in these homey moments--the washer spinning, ingredients set out on the counter for pumpkin bread made with our own frozen garden pumpkin, and the clock ticking, 

it is good to remember that God cares.

That He will keep in perfect peace the one whose mind is stayed on Him. 

Because He cares for us. 

First Grandson--God's Gift in Sorrow

Emotions were mixed this last week as we not only endured the tragic loss of Jonathan's youngest brother, but then, on the heels of that, experienced a most amazing joy--the birth of our first grandson!

As Sam held his son close, my heart is holding them both close. To think that God planned this joy and the timing of it--right when we were going to be sorrowing--

to give us a lift from the mud of grief. 

Today Rose and Carrie plan to take meals to both Julie's family (Rob's wife) and Jonathan's sister Esther, who has been the main communicator with Julie since the accident. But before that, last night Rose and Tom went over to Sam and Caitlyn's home to meet the new baby. Little Ellie is going to be quite enamored, we can see already. It so reminds me of when Sam was born, and Crystal was so, so excited and thrilled with her new brother. 

Yes, (or should I say no?) Ellie is not going to be the only grandchild anymore! She must learn to share, says Rose, and that even includes her birthday! For wouldn't you know it, little Charles Jonathan was born on the same date as Ellie Rose!

He weighed 7 lbs 2 oz, and was 20 inches long for anyone who can't bear to do without stats. 

And speaking of babies, Danny found this baby bird at their job site. He tried to feed it worms, but it just didn't work too well. 

Someone on the family chat suggested that he chew the worms first! :) :)

I rather doubt he will do it. 

But it was fun, since we can't hold Baby Charlie, to hold a baby bird instead!

Anguished Waiting for the News--A Brother Killed in Biking Accident

Little did I know a week and a half ago when I took a picture of this statue with Pikes Peak in the background that only about a week later we would be waiting with anguish to learn the outcome of the accident Jonathan's younger brother was in while he was riding bike on Rampart Range Road somewhere in or near the mountains pictured below. 

Jonathan's sister Esther texted all his siblings with the alarming news of the accident, but details remained scant, and it was not known if Rob survived. If I was pacing the floor and praying in between trying to get a few odd jobs done, I couldn't imagine what Rob's wife and daughters were going through. 

Hour after hour went by, with hope growing thin to non-existent. I texted another sister-in-law, but we said little because there was so little to say while in such awful suspense. Our pastor's wife, who used to work as a first responder and EMT, bewailed the fact that nowadays even family isn't given many details about an accident, if any, until often hours later. Well, we were experiencing this for ourselves. 

I kept praying for Julie, who has faced more than one tragedy in her life already, and the girls. Sometimes the mountains one must climb are massive.

  

And sometimes the valleys are very dark. 

The Lucas families began to walk a very dark valley Saturday night. Not knowing how many more hours we'd be waiting, and so exhausted that I was almost sick, I went to bed along with Jonathan. But when I heard his text ding, I was up again. I think he couldn't bear to know, but I wanted to know. 

The text was very brief, three words. Quietly I brought the phone to Jonathan, and upon reading it, he instantly broke down in uncontrolled tears. 

He had lost a brother. They had just been together a week earlier--Rob standing right next to Jonathan in the snapshot of the immediate family at their father's 90th birthday. 

Nobody expected this to happen next. The 90-year-old grandfather was expected to go next. As his frail person trembled in the chilly air at the picnic table, someone wrapped his shoulders with a soft brown and white afghan, and others walked by him to steady his faltering footsteps if he needed an arm to lean on as he walked to and from the car. 

"Tell Rob I want to hug him," Jonathan's dad had said, low, to me as he was about to try to make his way back to the vehicle to go home after the picnic. He had hugged all the rest of his children except for his youngest, Rob. 

So I went over where Rob was visiting with another family member, and said, low to him, "Your dad wants to give you a hug."

And Rob went. 

And I glanced behind me just long enough to see the quiet arms around shoulders. 

That memory will stay riveted in my mind--a father and a son and a quiet hug. 

Because, even before knowing it was the last time, it meant the world to me, and now knowing it was the last time, it means more worlds.

It was so good to know that when two siblings and a father were on a three-way call about the awful news when it finally came, the father would know he had made a special point of hugging his boy. 

He had been afraid it would be his last time, perhaps, and he wanted a hug to be remembered. 

And it is. 

By me, and by angels, and by God.