Midnight Fire--and Midmorning Drunks--in the Church

I thought I detected something in Danny's eyes Sunday morning that meant he'd been on an adventure in the night. Sure enough, he'd gotten a fire call about half hour after midnight, right up in town on the west side of the road where a deserted Catholic church sits. I had noticed at least one tent and other belongings of homeless people sitting recently next to the church. Apparently someone had been inside trying to have a fire perhaps to cook, for a pew had burned near where some sort of heating apparatus was parked, and the fire had reached the wall by the time Danny and other fire crew arrived. 

He said that homeless people there had tried to put out the fire, someone said, but when the sheriff arrived, they all disappeared. Danny helped break through the boarded up windows and door to let out smoke and heat and put out the fire. 

Mathel Ambrose said this church had been moved up to this spot years ago, from the river bottom area, she said. 

It used to be a beautiful church. 

Our Lakota Community Chapel also has a history of being moved from some distance away to the foundation upon which it now sits. 

I asked Jonathan to drive down the road to take a look at the church after service and noon meal were over. It had been an extra busy day for us because we'd been making acquaintance with a recent resident at White River Care Center who wanted to come to church. We went up Saturday night to make final contact with both the man and on phone with his daughter to get her permission, as his guardian, to take him Sunday morning. 

Jonathan and I picked him up Sunday morning and brought him to church. Jonathan was in the middle of leading service when a couple ladies arrived late, one of them announcing that two tipsy men were in the basement! Since pastor struggles to get around even with his cane and Jonathan was behind the pulpit, Danny and I dashed downstairs where we came upon two men helping themselves to cups of coffee that had been prepared ahead of time for lunch. 

I find that a big smile, coupled with a no-nonsense invitation to come upstairs for the service, works wonderfully, and it did. The one younger man, who often comes to service but sometimes only to the meal afterward, bolted up the stairs as if his life depended on it, and the other, more tipsy and wobbly, followed suit, with Danny ahead of him and me behind him to make sure he did not change his mind and turn around back to the coffee--or fall down the stairs, though I have no idea how I would have caught him. 

We never know who will show up for church, but often there is someone new--or tipsy, or drugged. 

They all need the gospel and Jesus. 

And usually, they are grateful for a plate of food.

Sunday one of our contributions was fried rice with "cocktail" sausages, for which more than one person wanted the recipe--with quite a few rice grains ending up on the floor around the tipsy man's spot at the table.

I grabbed the broom and dustpan afterward.

Tipsy or not, he needs the Lord and love, and when he asked if he could take a plate home, we served up an extra plate of food wrapped with foil. 

In the evening we attended our usual service at Hope Family Chapel in Mission,

and so Danny ended up in three churches Sunday--

including the Catholic church with fire in the pew,

Lakota Chapel with tipsy men in the pews,

and Hope Family Chapel with chairs full of needs.

Lord, we need You in our churches, in the sanctuaries, in the fellowship halls.

Walk among us, draw people to Your self.

And set us on fire with love for you!

Patriotism, Quilt Blocks, and North Platte Inspiration

 This year is the 250th birthday of our great nation.

As I wrote in a recent post, I'm in the middle of reading the book Once Upon A Town, by Bob Greene,

about the unrivaled love, support, and patriotism that was exhibited during World War II by midwestern women in the state of Nebraska as they met train after train bringing troops through North Platte, Nebraska--just three hours south of us here in southern South Dakota. 

If they weren't pouring coffee, the women were serving pheasant sandwiches, boiled eggs, cold milk, fried chicken, cookies, doughnuts, or birthday cakes. Depending on the season, they would serve corn on the cob or popcorn balls (in some of which were hidden names and addresses of young women who were willing to write to a serviceman, and at least two women ended up marrying the young men who got acquainted through popcorn balls! Of course, there were the young women from families or churches who wouldn't dream of hiding a name and address in a popcorn ball, but then there were the others, and it took all of them to make North Platte Canteen what it was--a place so many servicemen remembered with emotions that could not be controlled--because there they felt a love they never felt anywhere else quite the same. 

I would read the book and put it down. It filled me with nostalgia, wishing for those "good old days" where simple country people were so willing to sacrifice so much for their boys and the cause of freedom. If anyone thinks prices and inflation is bad nowadays, you should read this book. During World War II, even sugar was rationed. People didn't go places just to go somewhere. They car pooled and only drove a vehicle when necessary, bringing gasoline in a can with them to help with the trip to the train station, and they rarely traveled, not just because gas was rationed, but to save the tires. 

"America got its rubber from Japan, and the government didn't want us to burn up the tires. That's why people weren't supposed to just drive around. But we would drive to North Platte, to the Canteen. And when the trains rolled in . . ."

I wondered what we could do that would even start to compare with what those groups of women did to serve so many thousands of troops on the trains. 

We can't. 

We can't compete with all that. We are in a different generation.

But when Mathel Ambrose asks if we ladies might be interested in helping embroider some patches for a quilt commemorating the 250th anniversary of our country, I could say yes. I finished the third and last patch Friday to take to Mathel to give the quilt lady. It wasn't much, but thinking about the women during World War II gave me the inspiration to keep embroidering even when my fingers ached after chemo. 

Our country still exists in freedom 250 years after its birth, and that is something to celebrate. 

We can make pies that nearly always get shared out with people around us. 

 We can go up like we did last week, to our pastor's wife's garden that she isn't able to plant anymore, and while I hoed, weeded, and mulched, Hannah operated the weedwhacker and got the edges of the yard and drive nice for the Ambroses who can hardly get around anymore. Later she did more and also mowed.

I didn't feel like doing all that garden work. I was getting more and more tired and stiff, but I kept at it. I think about women in olden times and other cultures, where hard garden work was and is a given just to survive. 

We listen to Mathel tell us that she doesn't want to move where she doesn't know anyone or have any friends or any ministry--just to be near family in their old age. And I know that means we will have to step up and help. Mr. Ambrose is a veteran. He came back from Vietnam with injuries that still affect him to this day. 

We can't serve American boys at North Platte Canteen anymore because it doesn't exist (Union Pacific Railroad Company tore the place down against the townspeople's wishes long years ago) but we can help serve and bless the elderly veterans who have served our country--including our own elderly pastor and his wife.

Pied Piper Mom Leaves Cares Behind

 When I go out to gather eggs and take our table scraps to the chickens each afternoon, I feel like Pied Piper.

As you can see, about four o'clock in the afternoon, goats and chickens alike seem to know that the mom of the place is about to bring out treats (i.e. table scraps) and, if the water pan is empty, will replenish the water.

I clink through the gate and hang the chain back on it...

...before starting across the bridge. I keep a wary alertness regarding Bell, the white horned goat, who has been known to rear up on her hind legs right in the middle of the bridge, the highest part above the gully below, and challenge me for some reason. 

So I keep very wary of her as I make my way across--if Heidi, the brown goat, will get her head out of the garbage pail and get out of my way. 

Some days it's all I can do to drag myself outside to go to the barn by that time of afternoon, but I still do it. I talk to the chickens and find their gift of eggs in the nests. 

And in a way, for a few brief moments, I leave my cares behind as I go out in the sunshine and fresh air, sensing that I am needed by our animals--and that they are very happy for my presence and gift of table scraps for them. 

On a day like today, I must go out in the very wet mud under drizzling clouds, but I am thankful for the rain and for a chance to leave my cares inside the house--including the new care after Jonathan sent me his MRI results--not the news we were hoping for.

But we don't need to cross bridges until we come to them, as the saying goes. And so we take one step at a time, and one day at a time. Tests and maybe a biopsy will be in his future, I suppose, and so he joins my crowd at the medical centers in Rapid City. 

Not what we had hoped for.

But I am grateful to just be making homemade laundry soap and homemade goat cheese, doing laundry and packaging books instead of sitting in a hospital today.

Almost three weeks post chemo, I have much to be thankful for, including a very good night's sleep for both of us and memories of a very fulfilling Lord's Day yesterday (more on that in another post, I hope). 

I clasp my Bible close and read Psalm 86 as my prayer for the day, put my trust in the Lord,

and head outdoors into the mud to gather eggs--and maybe cut some fresh rhubarb.

By God's grace, Pied Piper Mom can continue to live with a praise in her heart to the Lord. 

Bear Sausage--Are Bears Sacred?

"Here!" said Mathel as she headed across the yard toward me as I was finishing up mulching what we'd planted in the garden. "Snack time!"

I looked at the piece of sausage stick as I took it from her. 

"It's bear!" she announced proudly. A friend had just stopped in and given her some bear sausage to snack on. Now she was sharing a piece with me. 

"Her husband got a bear," Mathel told me. "Up in Minnesota. Up there, the tribe [Dakota or Chippewa] considers bear sacred, so they are not allowed to kill any. 

But to keep the bear population from getting out of control, they allow the Rosebud Sioux to come up and hunt bear (since the bear is not sacred to the Sioux) in return for allowing some of the Minnesota tribe to hunt elk down here."

Hm. 

And Mmm.

I munched on that wonderful meat, made from bear not unlike the bears our sons and daughters have gotten in western Colorado. 

It's good we don't consider bears sacred. According to scripture in Genesis, God gave them to mankind, along with all the other animals, after the flood to use as food when necessary.

So we do!

And it's some of the best tasting meat I've tasted!

Freezer Frustrations--and When We Don't Understand Why Things Happen

I could not understand why our upright freezer, that has worked for years for us, had to die on us only about three days after I had it the most organized I had ever had it. 

I had hoped to empty the chest freezer in the garage so that I could unplug it for a while and save electricity, so I stored as much as possible in the upright freezer, all neatly placed and organized helpfully. 

Now we were emptying everything from the upright freezer back into the chest freezer and into the fridge freezers. Thankfully, it all fit, with room to spare, but I was keenly frustrated with the crazy turn of events as Danny and Jonathan tried to figure out where the bad noise was coming from under the freezer and why the electric wire was arcing. 

Not only was the freezer beyond what Jonathan thought he could fix, but all the neatly organized food was scrambled up and piled here and there in several different places with little organization because it happened in the evening when I was already too tired to do much besides tell Crystal where to take one pile after another while I took others to the chest freezer in the garage. 

Jonathan lay on the floor peering at cobwebby and dirty wires while brown water dripped right into his face from an unknown hole in the bottom of the door of the freezer. 

And I could not understand why this had to happen. 

I had just nicely defrosted that freezer, besides!

I could not understand why a lot of things have to happen--like why did Jonathan end up having to get an MRI today in Rapid City because of some concerningly high numbers?

I don't know. 

I don't know what the MRI results are going to say, or if the numbers are due to the inflammatory response his body has had to the terrible spider bite a couple months ago, leaving him in increasing pain. 

I don't know a lot of things. 

I just know, that as we look around the corner of our lives, God will be there for us. 

He was there for us today. Jonathan figured the copay for today's MRI would probably be several hundred dollars. 

And in the mail today was a check that would cover nearly all of it!

When our freezers quit, clinic numbers come back concerningly high, and we don't understand why things happen that mess up all our neatly made plans and organization, 

God is still there. 

He is there giving hope in our darkest hours,

giving peace in our storms,

and giving "the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."

Isa. 61:3

Once Upon a Town--Nebraska Miracle

Last week our pastor's wife Mathel lent me a book she had purchased at a museum in North Platte, Nebraska, and, after reading the entire book, she was sure I would love it.

After her stories from it, I knew I was interested, not only because of her recommendation, but because we travel through North Platte every time we go to or from here to Colorado.

Once Upon a Town is the name of the book--the story of "the miracle of the North Platte Canteen." 

["canteen"--place where servicemen were served food, etc.]

The author, Bob Greene, a journalist, became fascinated with what he was hearing about what happened in the town of North Platte during World War II. 

During the six years of the war, every single troop train stopping through this little known mid-western town would be met with a group of ladies taking their turn providing sandwiches, fruit, candy, magazines, cigarettes (sorry!) and other things for the troops that ran into the station.

Ladies from towns, churches, and civic groups for miles around took turns providing food and other gifts and traveling in for their day, beginning about 5:30 in the mornings until midnight.

They gave from their own farms and larders, giving up their own sugar rations, for example, to make the best food to share with the soldiers. 

No other town did any such thing--at least not to the extent that North Platte did.

And it all began with, first of all, a mistake, 

and then a 26-year-old young lady who had a bright idea of a way to do something to support the soldiers in the war effort. 

Because women were left at home feeling as if they weren't doing much while the men were off at war. Could they do something meaningful, too?
Rae Wilson thought so. 

The mistake happened when the town got wind that on a certain day in December, their own Nebraska boys in National Guard Company D were going to be coming through North Platte. 

Ladies got together and prepared some treats and gifts for them--

and waited through train after train. 

Finally, Company D arrived, but the company coming through ended up being from Kansas!

No one recognized anyone--but it was decided, after an awkward pause, to go ahead and share the love with the wrong Company D--from Kansas instead of Nebraska. 

The soldiers were so grateful that one of the young ladies wondered if the town couldn't do this again. Could they keep meeting the troops on the trains with treats and gifts to encourage the boys heading off to who knows where and not knowing if they'd ever come back?

That mistake was the first of anything-but-a-mistake efforts to meet every troop train coming through North Platte during the war--beginning on Christmas Day some days later. 

All due to a young woman named Rae Wilson who thought that something women could do would be to boost morale and share coffee, (or cold milk), food, music, smiles, magazines, Bibles, and even postage stamps with the young servicemen heading off to who-knows-where and not knowing if they would ever come back. 

Basically every American soldier, no matter where he was from, passed through North Platte at one time or another on his way to or from training or assignments--and hardly one of them ever forgot the love, appreciation and support he felt in that place. Women's groups from as far away as Colorado (photo above from Tim in  Colorado) traveled in to North Platte to participate in their day to provide the food, the drinks, the smiles, and the love.

Some mothers had lost their own sons in the war, but they stepped up anyway, not mentioning it to the soldiers rushing into the canteen for the short ten to twenty minutes at that stop. 

Reading that book gives a person an unmistakable sense of nostalgia which you just have to overcome--or turn into something very, very positive. 

I had to do just that. Everything in me wanted to do something  like those women did--something that would make a difference like they made in their World War II world. But I am in a whole different era and culture. So what can I do that those women did?

Well, one thing the women did was to prepare meat for hundreds of sandwiches a day. They had a commercial grinder that one day, at her turn, a 13-year-old girl operated.

Those women ground chicken or pheasants (since pheasants were plentiful in Nebraska) and added pickles and homemade mayonnaise (made from egg yolks leftover after making dozens of angel food cakes for birthday cakes for any troop whose birthday it was that day) and made bushels of sandwiches with it. 

Well, I only make two to four sandwiches a day for my guys plus others, but yesterday Hannah and I got our meat grinder out to grind scrap meat that had been in our freezer for quite a while--until the upright freezer gave up the ghost the evening before. 

Someone discovered the frozen food half thawed and strange noises under the freezer. Jonathan said electricity was arcing. And we had to unplug it, unload it, and find space in the other freezer and fridge freezers for all the food I had only just-

only JUST, mind you, organized in that upright freezer a few days earlier after defrosting it. 

I had organized it better than it had ever been organized in either its life or mine, and I even had a paper with the frozen foods typed on it so I would be able to make better and easier decisions about what food to have for meals. I hoped to buy less in the future and use up what we have of frozen meats, garden produce, and such. 

And then, after being so happy with the morning's project ending so well, the freezer suddenly goes kaput only days later. So that is why, nostalgia or not, Hannah and Crystal and I got the grinder set up in the basement and the thawed meat cut up and ground through and packaged and refrozen in another freezer. 

No, we weren't at North Platte Canteen at the train station during World War II, but we were making a difference in our own little world. 

Here are a couple links to more information about the North Platte Canteen. 

https://lincolncountymuseum.org/canteen-expansion/

https://www.hhhistory.com/2025/09/a-wwii-canteen-in-north-platte-nebraska.html

I hope to visit the museum in North Platte sometime. But for now, I'm making one meal after another not only for my own family, but two evenings ago for Peter and Payton Casalino who worked with Jonathan and Danny all day at Wounded Knee, and other times for the Beckers, or for Ambroses, or for Sally or for Sunday potluck or my share of the missionary staff meal. 

This evening I passed along pieces of pumpkin pie and cornmeal muffins to a couple who stopped in to share their rhubarb and pick up whatever milk and eggs we have available. They help us with chores when we're gone, and we supply them with milk and eggs and whatever I may have at hand when they drop by since the lady is not doing well right now--and it's my joy.

And when my boy runs off as a volunteer fireman to a grass fire only a few miles away, he comes home to homemade bread, homemade granola, homemade ice cream (from homemade goat milk yogurt), homemade gingerbread or other homemade food from a mom who may not be serving at a canteen, but serves at home.

We moms may not be remembered famously by thousands or millions of servicemen, but we can be remembered by our one husband, or our sons and daughters, and whoever else God places in our lives. 

And more later,

I'm entranced with North Platte Canteen. 

Mother's Day--Its Joys and Challenges on the Rez

 This was our daughter Rose's first Mother's Day to be a mother back in  Colorado. 

I just love this picture of her and baby at her mother-in-law's place. My heart was a bit all over the place this Mother's Day.

Meanwhile, my own mother was surrounded by two sons and a daughter and families in Missouri, (photo above) while our own family was super busy preparing a Mother's Day service with plates of goodies for moms besides the usual food for Sunday dinner. 

Accidentally, most of us color coordinated--sort of! 

Jonathan led the service and all of us shared poems or readings from a book my mom gave me long ago called A Mother's Sourcebook of Inspiration.

There are many gems in that book. Here is one.

Grandma

My grandma likes to play with God,
They have a kind of game.
She plants the garden full of seeds,
He sends the sun and rain.

She likes to sit and talk with God
And knows He is right there.
She prays about the whole wide world,
Then leaves us in His care. 

Crystal and Hannah played a piano duet that is one of my favorite hymns, "Children of the Heavenly Father."

Jonathan asked each mother to choose a favorite hymn, ending up with  "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy," "My Faith Has Found a Resting Place," "The Unclouded Day," (requested by Pastor's wife who said her grandma used to sing this in her squeaky voice while shelling butter beans and blackeyed peas in Mississippi), "Amazing Grace" and "Trust and Obey." 

The Beckers visited our church this morning. There's a possibility the church will be coming under SIM in the future, so it was great for the Beckers to experience the place and the people. 

After the meal and moms getting their Mother's Day plates and some photos, Jonathan, Crystal and I took a few plates to White River Care Center down the street. We visited my friend there a bit, a mom whose daughters all live in Sioux Falls. When I asked when was the last time they had come to visit her, she said, "They don't. They're too busy."

Rather than focus on that bitter disappointment on Mother's Day, I simply put my arm around her and said, "Then I'll be your daughter today." 

I told her that I myself am far away from my own mom, so I go visit other moms like her.

 I told her what Jonathan shared in church that morning, that when our father or mother forsake us, (or in her case, as an older mom, when her daughters forsake her) the Lord will take care of us. 

I talked to her about God's love and care, got to pray with her, and enjoyed watching sparrows landing on the bird house just outside her window. I told her about the song, "His Eye is on the Sparrow." It was a lovely visit. 

We also got to see two other residents, including a man that Keith Lavery asked us to stop and see, so Jonathan checked into his room and gave him one of our extra plates of goodies. 

One of the things we face here on the reservations is the fact that Mother's Day is not a happy day for many people. Some don't like to attend church on Mother's Day because they had a bad mother or never had the privilege of being a mom themselves. With those thoughts in mind, I wrote a poem that Jonathan shared Sunday.

"I will comfort you as a mother comforts her child. You will be comforted in Jerusalem.”

Isa. 66:13

When God Becomes Our Mother

Many are the poems that have been written through the years'

About the well loved mothers who have been kind and dear.

But many are the children who missed that mother love.

Their mom was not there for them, or gone to heaven above.

Or maybe she was drinking and out with men and sin,

And never did her children know where she had been.

Some sluffed off their duties and let the children grow

While seldom ever providing the things they needed so--

Like love, attention, patience and smiles to the child 

Instead of negligence that sat and let him just run wild.

Grandma had to take him in, or the foster system cold,

And memories were rough and dim as such a mom grew old. 

Some people do not know a gentle mother's face

And they have few memories to fill that happy place. 

They envy those who get to have a happy family

While they sit quietly alone with tears that no one sees.

It's then that God stoops low, and whispers in their ear,

"I'll take the place of mother, for you are very dear.

When children have no good mother, God cares about the lack,

And when that child turns to Him, God will have his back. 

God will be the Father, the Mother, and the Friend,

He will be just all we need, until the very end.

So whether you're remembering a good mom or a bad,

God's arms are here to wrap you, and make you loved and glad!

--Anna Lucas