Molly's Manor Squeezed in for Belated Anniversary

This year our 32nd anniversary fell on the day between my trip to Rapid City for a PET scan and a second trip to Rapid City two days later for more chemo.

(Even though my PET came back 100% clear of cancer, the oncologist says it is because of the medicine and I must stay on it.)

We spent our anniversary at home eating green beans from our garden--a real treat, in case you were wondering. 

So no one needs to feel a bit sorry for us. 

However, Jonathan's dad and another lady from several states away gave us an anniversary gift of money, and with more dreaded procedures coming up for Jonathan in Sioux Falls, I came up with the idea of heading to Sioux Falls the evening ahead of time and finding a cute Bed & Breakfast on the way to belatedly celebrate our anniversary. Jonathan was quite agreeable to this and found one of the least expensive ones that was right on our way (we chose to go the back way from Winner where we stopped to meet Tim and Liz Wiford who were there for IHC service, and where we also got to meet Barry and Monica [Webb] Whitaker. Monica told me her family long years ago had enjoyed dinner with my family after I'd left home. So she knew my Morley family.)

Anyway, we enjoyed traveling through South Dakota countryside while it was still daylight and arrived to Molly's Manor Bed & Breakfast in Platte, South Dakota, which was right on our road to Sioux Falls. 

The most interesting lady met us, having grown up in Platte area but then spending 25 years of her life in Denver before moving back and purchasing this house that was well over 100 years old and renovating it into a delightful Bed and Breakfast. 

Years ago, the house had been the home of a doctor and his large family, and the lady thinks he must have met patients in this room that is now a sunroom/alcove. Now it houses a vintage hutch that belonged to her grandmother from Czechoslovakia long years ago. 

I'm quite sure these salt and pepper shakers were from Slovakia. 

This treadle sewing machine also belonged to her grandmother, who used to sew for many people to supplement their meager income as small farmers. Both grandparents had immigrated from Communist Czechoslovakia at that time, preferring the hardships and second language in western America, with freedom, to staying in familiar territory. 

I love hearing stories like these. After our hostess retired for the evening, leaving us to stroll about ourselves, we sat for a while on the quiet porch on the sky blue sofa that reminded me of Florida, with the scent of irrigated air coming to us. I wrote in my journal while Jonathan tried to help Danny figure out vehicle problems over the phone. 

Indoors, just outside our bedroom door, hung this cross-stitched pheasant inside a South Dakota-shaped mat. 

I enjoyed the star theme in another room. 

And this plaque: "I wish I were a kid so I could take a long nap and everybody would just be proud of me."

And this unique coat rack--with hooks screwed through vintage books such as one for Boy Scouts. I wondered if my dad used this book 80 years ago when he joined the Boy Scouts. 

More in another post. 

Before and After--Her Grateful Thanks

 Inept powers-that-be on the reservation recently suddenly remembered that many tens of thousands of dollars of government grant money were not going to be used up if remodel projects were not done soon on about 80 to 100 approved homes on the reservation. The projects had to be done by the end of September or the money would be lost. 

Enter Building Hope Enterprises.

Rather than wait for the notorious weeks or months it would take to go through all the red tape of doing things through SWA (a housing authority on the reservation), it was decided to do the work simply between BHE and the homeowner, bypassing the red tape but using the grant money. So BHE workers have been working tirelessly to bring relief to homes that have desperate needs. The one pictured is one of them.

Above is pictured what the kitchen looked like (minus a sort of portable sink that was sitting against this unfinished wall, with some sort of temporary plumbing under it that emptied into a bucket. There was no stove in the kitchen, just an air fryer! The guys put in this sink and set of cabinets both under, beside, and over the sink. A stove that had been sitting in the BHE shop since last year was donated to this cause, and now the lady of this home has a working kitchen!

This all happened in a matter of three days. 

Other people's floor is being patched, other kitchens are being repaired, new windows replacing old, broken ones, and many other improvements. 

"You probably feel like a whirlwind has come through," Jonathan said, as he watched a lady of the house sweep up behind the guys.

"Sort of," she admitted, "but I'm so grateful!"

BHE has until the end of September (when the time for the grant runs out) to improve as many homes as possible, in the amount of $15,000 per home. 

"The spider takes hold with her hands," the writer of Proverbs says, "and is in kings' palaces.'

If spiders like this one in Hannah's flower garden work hard, so can we. 

We may only be able to improve the homes of the poor rather than being in palaces, but after these kinds of improvements, the residents probably feel like they are living in palaces!

Pray for my guys working with Building Hope Enterprise as they not only improve homes and build relationships on the reservation, but also as they seek to build in God's kingdom. 

Stars Vs. Chicks

I wrote the poem below a few days ago after reading articles related to the death of Dolly Parton who had written hundreds of country songs that were incredibly popular in the world. The way she held sway over so many people through verse and music was astounding. She said she always wanted to be a star, and she pursued that goal and quickly became just that. 

I had to turn to my Bible because I was seeing someone who was idolized and loved and beloved by many, someone who was having an absolute blast doing what she was doing, 

and I was wishing we Christians could come up with some things that would have a big influence and that we could have an absolute blast doing what we do--only completely opposite ways. 

And yet, the Bible teaches that the world will love its own while hating those who reject the world for Christ. I was reading articles or posts even (astonishingly) by more than one friend of mine who were holding Dolly in high admiration, but the more I looked up about her and checked out some of her most popular quotes and watched clips of her in person, the more appalled I was that she was anyone Christian people would look up to. What I was seeing was full of off-color song and jokes if not full-blown sinful sensuality. The glamor, glitz, and ridiculousness (in her own words) of this "queen of country music," the sensuality, the sinful attire more like a prostitute than a Christian, and off-color words and music and behavior are neither to be admired nor emulated by those of us who follow God. 

One thing I read was that people loved Dolly, because she spoke with "no filter." She would just say the most ridiculous, uncanny, unexpected, hilarious, or silly thing that would pop into her mind and just knock people over with it, with no apology. 

 I'm not writing off all humor or even occasional funny blurts. 

But what does the Bible say about just blurting out whatever stupid or off color thing pops into one's mind? God's Word teaches us to think before we speak, and to speak wisely and purely, not foolishly and stupidly and immaturely--and certainly not with impure inuendos.

Proverbs tells us that words "fitly spoken" are like apples of gold in pictures of silver. 

We will give an account for even every idle word we speak.

 It doesn't matter if we live in the city or country, in the east or the west, our words, deeds, and attitudes ought to bring glory to God and not glory to ourselves. 

So I turned to the Bible, and I ended up in the book of Matthew where Jesus was lamenting over Jerusalem, saying how often He had wished to gather them, as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings--and they would not.  

I sat there, reading and pondering that.

Dolly Parton aspired to be a star--and she became one.

What if I aspired to be a chick--one of God's obedient chicks?

It's not as glamorous as a star, but--it's more acceptable to God. 

City Girls and Country Hen

Out among my feathered flock

I gaze with quiet eye,

How do the city folk relate

To country terms gone by?

How can they understand the words

Christ spoke in country lore,

How like a hen He'd gather them

If they'd only allow Him more?

Here on our turf of field and trees

The friendly hens peck grain,

Clucking with constant vigilance

To new-hatched chicks again.

 Wee balls of softest feathered fluff

Zip 'round the twigs and weeds,

While watchful mother eyes look out

For hawks and peck for seeds. 

And when some danger brings alarm,

Her brood the mother calls.

They whisk beneath her feathered wings,

In silent safety fall.

Not all may be a country girl,

But all this picture find--

A God Who like a country hen

Calls all His chicks to mind. 

Lord, whether country girl or not,

I pray I hear Your cluck, 

And run to the safety of Your wing

Where You forever tuck. 

What a Day May Bring Forth

One never knows what a day will bring forth. 

Sunday morning when I got up and came out to the kitchen, I discovered a message from Danny on our family chat--complete with pictures. 

He had rushed off before 6 to help fight another fire at the notorious Sunrise Apartments in Mission. This whole complex burned yesterday morning. 

Only two people were living in the whole complex, or at least that is all who were in the building when the fire chief evacuated them. We've heard the owners of the apartment complexes would just as soon the places burn because they aren't worth fixing up only to have bad renters who are into drugs, alcohol, and crime. 

Meanwhile at home, I discovered this scene outside our front window near the zinnia bed near our front deck. 

A good bit more peaceful than the chaotic scene Danny was involved in. 

At nine our time, I tuned in online to Beavertown God's Missionary Church where the Jeremy Reese family was one of the special singers today, singing "He Will Carry You."

Jeremy's dad, Bill, is supposed to be here in South Dakota this week at wakes and a funeral.

They did not know a "sister" (as the song says) in South Dakota was photographing them with her own face reflected behind them on the screen as she listened. 

There is no problem too big
God cannot solve it
There is no mountain too tall
God cannot move it

There is no storm too dark
God cannot calm it
There is no sorrow too deep
He cannot soothe it

Oh, if He carried the weight of the world upon His shoulders
I know my brother that He will carry you
Oh, if He carried the weight of the world upon His shoulders
I know my sister that He will carry you.

https://www.streetdirectory.com/lyricadvisor/song/clcfwe/he_will_carry_you/

A lot is happening this week, and we need to be carried by God!

That is why we humble ourselves each week to attend church and acknowledge God and our need of Him, for without Him, where would we be?

I heard Danny slip into the seat behind me about halfway through the morning service. He knew Pastor Ambrose wouldn't mind him showing up in the same clothes he'd fought fire in. Had he gone home to shower and change, service would have been over.

But I don't know that he was expecting Pastor to ask him to help serve Communion! I sneaked a peek at a lady across from me, and saw her smile as Danny strode up front, smoky pants and all! Pastor Ambrose, a former army vet and one of the humblest pastors I know, accepted bread from Danny's hand before prayer time. 

It is always a special time--communion Sunday. 

Ladies at the White River Care Center have been begging to go to church with us, and to have communion. So, armed with the leftover oyster cracker "bread" and grape juice, we took the elements with us to the care center and invited several who wanted to share in the service out to the front porch.

There the residents wheeled themselves or walked out and found seats on benches. Crystal, Hannah, and Jonathan and I sang, "What Can Wash Away My Sin?" and then Jonathan shared Scriptures before handing out the elements. Prayer was raised, and at the end, as our family began to sing the first of three verses of "He is Lord!" one of the ladies whom I had helped wheel outside melted into tears!

It was a precious time of beautiful music and melted hearts!

Reading this book last week about a minister whom Jonathan and I know and have met years ago was a help to me as we headed into a Sunday of ministry. Rowan Fay, a minister under the Pilgrim Holiness denomination, got "out of the box" and found many creative ways to share the gospel. We know that some of the people in this care center are more Catholic than anything, but if we waited until everything was perfect, we would never serve communion. 

This Sunday, God used communion to help someone connect with Him, I really believe that. 

Rather than worry whether someone might be receiving communion unworthily, we chose to look at it as a means of grace, which it most certainly is. Leaving themselves and God to be the judge about it, we simply presented the truth of the gospel and Christ's death and allowed whoever willed to take part in remembering that death.

And then we rejoiced together in His resurrection as we talked about that afterward and sang, "He is Lord!"

"Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess

That Jesus Christ is Lord!" we sang,

while a heart that had probably not received communion or connected with God in many months or years

wept silently. 

Rainbow and Random Encouragements

 "Thanks for not being like Job's wife," Jonathan told me appreciatively as I collapsed in bed beside him after our now nightly ritual of a poultice and bandage for the fistula issue he's battling.

"Sometimes I'm tempted," I admitted. "Not to say 'Curse God and die,' but to wonder if our efforts up here are worth it."

Is the mission God gave us worth all that it has cost us?

The couple years of planning, selling our home, buying a property up here, building our own home, starting to work for the mission, slowly getting Building Hope Enterprise on its feet--all while me fighting cancer and now him being heaped with possible cancer, perianal fistula, and Lyme all at once! 

(Which is why rainbows over roads ahead of us mean even more to us now than they did before. We watched this rainbow form over the road ahead of us as we arrived back to Colorado last Monday, and we had to stop and get a picture.)

At Ranch Haven, Kim Sayler told me that their son Hunter had different fistulas form in between surgeries for his cleft palate issues. It was comforting to hear about others and that they healed. Once God miraculously healed one of the fistulas. Others apparently required time or surgery.  

We have to keep up the home remedies until Jonathan's scheduled procedure next week, applying either charcoal or comfrey. Thanks to our home remedies, he is not suffering the terrible pain that many people go through with similar issues--no pain at all.

Jonathan reached for my hand and started praying. He was thanking God for the work that the crew got done that day at a reservation home in Spring Creek and for the gratitude the lady of the house showed where the crew worked. 

"You didn't tell me about the lady," I said after his Amen. 

"She and her daughter left soon after the crew got there this morning," Jonathan told me. "And I was gone for a while when she came back. But when I arrived back after the guys were done patching her floor (which had been about to fall through) and changing out her windows, she was sweeping and cleaning up. 

"I said, 'Does it feel like a whirlwind came through today?'"

"Well, kind of," she said, "but I'm so grateful!"

A little word of gratitude from a needy lady on the reservation whose house was falling apart was such an encouragement to both of us. There had been three native men working with Danny and Jonathan today on the job. 

"That's a different ratio than a while back," Jonathan mused, "when there were three white guys and often just one native!"

God has been helping the business and the men who work. Snippets of conversations come back to us through Danny especially, as the men work or eat lunch. 

It's not up to us to bring the harvest in. 

It is up to God, as we labor and pray. 

"It's not about the outcome," President Mark Becker of SIM reminded us at a staff zoom meeting recently. 

"It's about obedience."

Sometimes we just aren't able to do much--like this week post chemo. I am dealing with extreme fatigue, struggling just to get around. I was debating whether to try to go to White River Care Center to take flowers, crossword puzzles, and a bit of love

 when Crystal came home from being there to check her driving schedule and told me that Bonnie and Stella had met her in the hall. 

"My flowers died!" Stella let Crystal know. The ladies love for me to bring fresh flowers when I come. 
This time they had to make do with Crystal--without flowers--but not without love and the willingness to pray with them. 

"Can you pray for me?" Bonnie asked, reaching out to Crystal. 

And Crystal did. 

When she told me about this, I knew I did not need to walk the halls of White River Care Center that day. 

Jesus had walked the hall through my daughter, and God would bring the harvest in His own time and way. 

The World Stood Still for Dolly Parton--Please Not for Me!

I read headlines from Epoch Times nearly every day, and recently they have included news about the death of Dolly Parton, "Queen of Country Music." President Trump even ordered flags to be flown half mast for a whole week for her! Well, indeed! 

Since I don't watch TV or listen as a rule to country music, I barely recognized her name. (I know, I'm dreadfully out of touch.)

At first I snorted and snuffed, but then I got curious. 

I read article after article, post after post--by grieving fans to sarcastic critics to the President's comments. Dolly was not just famous but much loved. She obviously related to many people, and is there anything I can learn from her? Or what would the Lord like me to think as I ponder about the widespread mourning of her passing?

Upon reading various articles and thoughts about Dolly, (she met her husband just out of high school while she was at a laundromat!) I do not agree with everything she has said, sung, and done in her life, and, since I listen very little to country music, I don't know that I have ever even once in my life heard her sing. But I ponder her influence and have read a few articles about her and read a few of her most beloved lyrics in the last few days such as "Coat of Many Colors," about the patchwork coat her mother sewed for her when she was young (incredibly touching and gently triumphant). She composed hundreds of songs. With some of those in mind, and yet with the anchor of God's unchanging Word also in mind, ( here is an article I liked regarding how to exercise discernment about Dolly Parton's influence:   https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2026/09/01/lesson-dolly-partons-passing/

I wrote my own frail little poem. Here it is. 

Ponderings about a Kentucky Gal Who (for better or for worse) wrote songs from the heart that touched millions of people

The World Stood Still for Dolly

The world that stopped for Dolly

Has been a sphere less jolly

Remembering all that this gal had come to be.

She came from a Kentucky holler,

Full of both pride and squalor,

And kept that love throughout her life, you see. 

She dreamed and sang, she dared and died,

And when she did, the world cried,

For Dolly was a winner in their book.

She made top hits one after another,

Made proud her father and her mother,

And the world stood still when Dolly left her nook.

Even flags were lowered

And people online clustered,

Tributes to speak for Dolly and her ways. 

An icon in the country, 

"Big hair" that wooed the gentry, 

And news is full of Dolly every day. 

I'm not a Dolly Parton, 

Roosevelt, or Clara Barton,

I'm not a woman with any fancy name.

I'm not the wife of a president,

Or a country singer who's done her stent,

I'm not on any Music's Hall of Fame. 

I'm not even a nurse or teacher, 

Or cheerleader in the bleachers,

Nor secretary to a crabby, ornery boss.

I'm not a barrel rider

Or a legend with songs inside 'er,

Or even one who rides an old gray hoss. 

But the little world I live in

I hope will keep on goin'

When I leave my bit o' work and verse behind. 

I hope tears will stop flowin'

With all my world a'knowin' 

Where this old gal her last few steps has climbed. 

Whether from Kentucky holler

Or a Pennsylvania daughter,

Around each one of us a little world revolves. 

May our lives make it a bit sweeter

As we sing and smile and greet 'er 

And help at least some of its problems kindly solve. 

I am not a famous Dolly,

And I've done my share of folly,

But I know Who my All-great Forgiver is,

And when my road is finished,

My empty cup replenished,

I pray that world will fill with God's redeeming bliss. 

--Anna Lucas