COMFORT IN SORROW.......

Having gone through the recent shock and mourning because of our Josiah's promotion to Heaven, I am learning a lot about comfort for the bereaved.   It was a comfort to have so many of the family on both sides be at the actual funeral procedures and burial.  We were all mourning together with Joel and Elin, the girls and Rebekah.  Many close friends and relatives were also present, and we were all in a state of shock and deep mourning.   From the time the news was out, our email box and our PO box were full of consolation greetings - often from people we had not hear from in years even, as well as close friends and extended family.  Death often brings people together through mutual sorrowing.

The night we got the sad news of Josiah's homegoing our pastor and his wife came over and prayed with us,  and the Albrights were also here to weep with us.  This was all a comfort to us, as we made plans to fly to Chicago for the funeral.  Our tickets for the planned wedding in August had to be changed to tickets for a different destination and a funeral.  What a sad change!  We were gone just three days and those days were so full of family grieving together and receiving condolences from so many hundreds (literally) of people who were there for the visitation and then the funeral the next day.  We marveled at how the Wheaton church took over all the physical aspects of such an occasion - food, lodging, everything was provided.   We all cried together there in Wheaton, trying not to question why God had allowed this to happen.

When a young person dies, a whole life has been struck down - a planned lifetime of ministry, marriage, a family, the joys and pains of old age.  It seems so contrary to nature, to the way things should be.  And we question and wonder why...We just have to reassure ourselves that God does do all things well, and even though we as human beings do not understand all the "why's", we sorrowfully accept God's will.

Coming back to Toccoa after the funeral, we went through a continuation of the grieving process.  Many people phoned us and talked to us at church and sent beautiful sympathy cards and emails. We are grateful to all who took time for this.  That first Sunday back everyone expressed sympathy in the congregation at church.  Tears were never far from falling as we returned home.  But there did seem to be something lacking....... and I was not sure what it was.....

Until towards the end of that first week we had a visit from Ed and Sue Potoroff, former assistant pastor and his wife.  They were in town only for a few hours and had business to take care of, but they stopped by to see us and to cry with us and pray for us and the whole family.  And it dawned on me what was lacking in our church - we no longer had a pastor like Ed who has a big heart for the sick and grieving and who is a great visitation pastor.  We have a terrific senior pastor (whose wife is a very caring person) and we have a great worship pastor and a great youth pastor.  But the board has divided up the congregation under a group of elders. Each member is assigned alphabetically to an elder - all good people - and the comforting and/or visitation aspects of ministry are assigned to these men.   Our elder is someone we know and we have seen him from a distance in church, but he has never come to see us, nor even expressed his sorrow to us at church.  We miss that wonderful ministry of empathy and visitation that Ed and Sue did so naturally.  Our pastoral staff is composed of wonderful people and we appreciate them, but real empathy is somehow lacking.

However, the church people more than make up for that.  Dozens of people have mourned with us personally and talked with us and assure us of their prayers.  And all of that has been comforting as we learn to live with the idea that Josiah is no longer here on earth but is in a better place.  But still we grieve.....  Interesting to see how God is sending some new positive things into our family and this is a comfort.  First of all, we got the announcement of Chris and Elizabeth's engagement.  Then the following week we heard from Rachel that she and Josh are expecting a new addition to the family in six months.   So we do go on living, but there is always that sad feeling that God has taken to be with him Josiah who was so precious to all of us.  And we continue to mourn for his parents and sisters - and for all of us who were blessed to know him.

AN EARTHLY FAREWELL TO JOSIAH

JOSIAH  -  so many memories overwhelm me tonight as we just received word that you are no longer with us here on earth.  You have gone on ahead to Heaven where we will all be together again one day!  God tells us to comfort each other with that thought! Heaven is FOREVER  -  earth is transitory!

So many memories flood my mind as I think of your unbelievably short life!  Papa and I saw you for the first time in Paris, a beautiful big baby boy with soft red hair.  We returned to Burkina after spending Christmas with you and your Mom and Dad.

The next time we saw you we were together in Daloa, Côte d'Ivoire.  You were such a sturdy boy - big for your age - and happily engaged in French chatter with the neighborhood kids, your friends. Bursting with energy - you were a delight to know!

My next memories of you are in Abidjan, when you lived across the street from Yves-Alain, your Ivoirien buddy.  The two of you were inseparable.  Again our conversations with you were in French, your language of choice, even though you did understand English.

Through the years I made many visits to Côte d'Ivoire because of my involvement in the FATEAC and other Christian education institutions of which I was a member in that city of Abidjan where you  now lived.  You loved to read in French and your language was so aretiuculate that I loved to listen to you. You also preferred reading French comic books, which you were allowed to do aftere you had done a certain amount of reading in English.  Your parents were getting you ready for English language school.

I well remember the week I stayed with you and Elizabeth while your parents and Papa went to a Mission conference in Bouaké.  You were in school in Abidjan, and I would sit and help you with your homework each night and at the same time listen to how you and your cousin argued with each other!  You were both very articulate!  That friendship between the two of you remained  and I remember occasions when the two of you were college students and  visiting in Georgia at Uncle Mark's and would talk together far into the night!

We did not see you often after you started attending Wheaton College.  We did have a couple of visits with you and we were always proud of your accomplishments in studies and sports at that prestigious Christian College!  You had by then grown into a wonderful adult - we were so proud of you!

I reember the last conversation we had  - that was late at night a couple years ago when we were all at Phenicie's  for Thanksgiving.  Papa and everyone else had gone to bed, but we night owls - you and I - sat there in the living room and talked for a long time!

Then came your work with Samaritain's Purse in Japan - and your meeting Rebecca, the love of your life.  We have been looking forward to being at your wedding in August and getting to know your beautiful bride - a new addition to our family.  But God had other plans for you.  The place in Heaven He had prepared for you was ready - and you are there with Him now!

What a tragedy for Rebecca - and for all of us who have loved you.  But I know it is a delight for you to be with the Lord you love and served on earth.  And Heaven is forever!  Some day we will be together again.  That is the hope we have as children of God.  One day we too - as God's children - will be caught up to meet Jesus.  There will be no separation - "we will all forever be with the Lord!"  And so today we do as our Lord has told us to do - we "comfort one another with these words".  Tonight, Josiah, as we mourn for our wonderful grandson, we have the hope of one day being together again.

Farewell from Earth, Josiah!  We look forward to some day being with you in Heaven!

THE JAIL MINISTRY CONTINUED...........

TO CONTINUE ABOUT THE JAIL VISITS EACH WEEK...... We meet for prayer together in the entrance room when we arrive - after getting our official badges to wear for our visit.  Men and women form a circle together and we give requests and someone prays.  We also get frisked at that point.  At first they went over us with a very careful search, but now that we are known, they just do a cursory search.  You cannot have a pen which clicks in and out because the prisoners get hold of those and make weapons, so you have to have a straight pen.  We can take in our Bibles and a note pad and can get permission to take in songsheets, helpful literature, etc. 

A man officer leads the men down the long halls and a women officer leads the women and those guards stay with us in the pods while we are visiting.  We are not supposed to make any noise in the halls, no talking, etc.  We have a few guards who know us well and they seem to enjoy being with us for our services and visiting with the girls.  First Alliance has more workers than any other church. We have a couple very nice Assemblies women also. The Jehovah Witnesses used to come each week and were very disturbing.  They kept themselves apart and taught their doctine loudly to a couple of girls. But lately - especially after one girl left their class and joined us - those women do not come. A couple men also go in and they confuse the prisoners with their teaching. So we are always glad when none of their people come.

The guard opens the door of the pod where we visit and calls out "church!" and the girls put up what they are doing and appear out of their cells. There are two rows of cells in one pod, upstairs and down. The girls are very affectionate and all hug and kiss us and then start talking indiviually.  They give us any in-prison news they have. And we give them a bit of news of the outside - the cells are totally sealed from the outisde, so they have no idea of what the weather is like or anything going on out in the community.  They spend their days sleeping or playing cards or other games or fixing each other's hair or just chatting.  Sometimes arguments break out and that causes problems for them with the guards.  They can be put in solitary if they cause a serious problem. 

After everyone spends a little time chatting, someone gathers us together in a circle around the pod, and we start to sing.  The girls also have prayer needs. We have prayed for salvation with a number of women.  Some give testimonies, some want to talk personally with one of us or present a serious personal need to the group and we gather around and pray.   Last week one girl who had been let out - and had even attended church with us at our church - was contacted after a couple of days and told they had made a mistake and she was brought back in after being free two days.  She was so angry, and asked us to pray for her to be delivered of her terrible anger.  Last week just as we were about to begin our little service, a guard came in and called out for three girls to return to prison - after they thought they were going to be released.  They had to run and pack up quickly - they own almost nothing, but have to strip their beds and bundle up their mattress and follow the guard.  Everyone was hugging and crying and it started off our time together on a bad note. All the girls were crying! One was a girl very close to me.

During our meeting, we do not have a speaker per se - although one week they had asked Valerie and me to dress in our national dress and speak about missions.  But we all give Scriptural advice and whatever we feel led to give to the girls.  We stop and pray with individuals for special needs.  It is a very informal situation.  We sing quite a bit also.  Then we go into groups usually one visitor per table and spend time  answering spiritual questions and listeing to them.  The backgrounds some of these people have is unbelievable.  Just yesterday Dad had a seventeen year old boy who came from a terrible home situaion - his thirteen year old sister is several months pg with HIS child. He has just so many problems and the only bright spot is when he sees Dad to talk with him.  The men also go on Thursday evening and have a more formal meeting when they have preaching. 

Just want to copy here something someone just wrote to Dad:

"Well, I just need to write to someone. I'm really depressed, the jail has charged me with some damage I did not do plus my girlfriend with whom I have two baby girls told me she was moving on.  She wasn't waiting on me. With all this I'm depressed. I've been praying and reading my Bible. I hope things get better. I am going to prison and all (as opposed to jail)  but I'm afraid I will never get out....I'm hurting deep inside.  You know how physical pain is, well spiritual pain is much worse. It never goes away. I'd trade a broken arm right now for a little peace in my heart. I'm not a bad person, I just had a drug problem and that made me bad.  My heart is so broke I pray it gets better soon.  You help a lot. You really have made my faith stronger. I thought no one cares, but Jesus cares whether anyone else does or not and I hope he makes me feel better about life.  Right now I don't like it!
Somewhere it says life is full of troubles but to put your trust in God. I believe that. I need some prayers though. I'm losing it, I'm about to snap but that will be more trouible for me. The thing is now that my girls are gone I'm starting to not care. I'm ready to give up, my spirit is so weak right now.  Pray for me please, I need it.  Well, with love I'm going to try and go to sleep."

As I have said before, this is a heavy ministry as well as being an opportunity to help some people who would never get help elsewhere. 

The men stay longer in their Wednesday morning time than we women do, and often we women will go downtown and have coffee together and share prayer needs and have fun and plan for a future when there might be a halfway house within reach here to help some of these poor souls when they get out.  One girl I have worked with a lot is totally homeless.  She has a drinking problem and so her two older children were taken from her and no relative wants to take her in.  When she gets out of jail, she walks around town and looks for an empty house where she can crawl in an unlocked window or just sleep on an open back porch, trying to keep warm all night. 

The Bobos were easier to work with I think!   They at least have an orgnized society and they take care of their own.  But in Toccoa we find many people - men and women - who have no one who cares for them.  It is very sad. 

JAIL VISITATION

Jail visitation occupies a great deal of our lives - not just the visits we make there every week - Wednesday mornings for both of us - and Thursday night as well for Dad.  I will share with you a little bit about the process of being in jail ministry.  First of all, these are very needy people.  Many of them will never hear the true gospel from anyone else.  Others have been in church most of their lives but have never had a real experience with the Lord.  Still others have been scorned or disappointed by the organized church and are totaly turned off to Christianity. 

There are about three times as many men as women in our county jail and so our visitation is different.  There are three "pods" of men and only one pod of women. So each Wednesday morning when we visit the women, we have  time to talk personally with prisoners, and in the women's pod we also have a little service - singing, testimonies, words of counsel - it is different each week.  Dad changes pods every twenty minutes and talks and listens to the men on Wednesdays. Then on Thursday nights he goes to preach or back up someone else who goes along to preach.  The TFC students love to go with him for this.

We have to remember the rules of the jail when we go in each week.  You have to have personal ID (I use my driver's license) and a simple pen, none of these which click in and out. The prisoners can use those to make weapons!  You have to have a patdown, usually in the large bathroom - female guards for the women and men guards for the men.  Then the first door to the cells is clicked open by the lead guard and we follow behind, being quiet in the halls.  We go through four locked doors before we get to the women's pod.  As we enter, the guard calls out "church" and everyone who wants to join us comes down out of their cells.  One thing we have been able to do is to require that all prisoners are free to come to talk with us. It used to be that the upper tier of cells was on lockdown one day and the lower tier on lockdown the next and so on...even on our visitation days.  But we asked that that be changed and they complied so now everyone is free to come to church, unless they are on lockdown for misbehviour. 

Just about everyone in there comes and hugs us as they greet us and then follows a time of chatting with the girls (women).  There are about twelve steel tables in a pod, with little steel stools around the tables, all stationery and VERY uncomfortable!  And that is where we sit and talk.  For many, it is a high point in their week.  These prisoners have no contact with the outside world - they have no light from outside in their cells,  there is no newspaper or TV. They do have visitation rights one day in the week when they are called out to visit through a glass with their family.  There is also a row of phones where they can talk with their family, if they have the money to do so.  They have no idea what the weather is like outside.  They live in complete isolation.  We have found that the majority of the guards are kind to the girls and many of them are even Christians.  When there are no visitors, the girls either stay in their rooms or else put together puzzles on the steel tables, play cards, etc. 

There is a certain camraderie that builds up among the girls, and if one girl is sick, the other girls will take care of her needs.  Each cell has a toilet, one girl to a cell.  They are not allowed to cover up, so wear sweaters or whatever they have which is warm when sleeping. Each one does have a pillow.  The uniforms are for the most part, faded (sometimes even ragged) and very unbecoming!  The girls do each other's hair to pass the time and they are required to be hygienically clean.  Often girls come into jail pregnant and usually the other girls take care of these prenant girls. Several times we have been there when a girl had just lost a baby and the others all try to comfort her and take care of her in her physical pain and mental anguish. Unfortunately, there is also a lot of lesbian activity tht goes on in the cells and homoseuxality in the men's side. 

Several women volunteer to be on kitchen duty and so they are dismissed early from our meeting with them.  If they have personl money from their families, they are allowed to order available snacks, plus special prison Bibles for a reduced price. Many of us who are involved in jail ministry put money on the prisoners' acounts so they can buy a Bible.  For a long time, we had some Jehovah's Witness women who also came in and had  couple of prisoners whom they were indoctrinating. They went in with us, but stayed apart from us.  One of the girls saw the  light and left the JW's and after tht the JW women did not come back again, so now we are all one big group. 

Our Alliance church has also been instrumental in starting a good library for these in the prison. We have given money for bookshelves and a cart to take books around to the pods.  The women spend hours now reading good books of all kinds.  And people in our church continue to donate good books to this cause.

Being in jail work is a whole new culture for us!  Our church has more people who come for visitation than any other church in town and so there is a ccertain camraderie among those of us who go each week. Our pastor's wife is one of them.  There are also some AG ladies with whom we have gotten close, and after jail time we often all go out for coffee or lunch together.  More later on jail... but suffice it to say this is a whole new culture that we have entered!  It is certainly a very needy world.  The housekeeping lady whom you kids have provided for us came yesterday as we were on our way to the court.  She hugged me and said how happy she is for people like us who care enough about those incarcerated to spend time with them. She herself was in jail because of drugs when she was younger, and she shared about how she looked forward each week to the church people coming to meet with them. She is now living a drug free life and very involved in an evangelical church.   It is good to know we are making a difference in the lives of these unfortunate people!   (to be continued)

LIVING BY PRAYER..............................................

Living by prayer has become a lifestyle for me since childhood.  My parents were great believers in prayer.  We saw God so many times provide and heal for us in our family.  We always had prayer together in the morning after breakfast.  Then at noontime, we prayed for the countries and peoples of the world after lunch:  Monday - India,  Tuesday - Africa,  Wednesday - Southeast Asia,  Thursday - South America,   and so on through the weekend.  We kids all took turns praying and so knew the names of countries and people we had never seen.  Then each evening we had bedtime prayers together.

Dad and I also have always prayed together in our marriage and family life - and we still do.  Through the years we have been comforted, helped, healed and amazed to see how our Heavenly Father has answered those prayers and the prayers of so many people who have prayed for us!  We are rich in praying family and friends.... I have been thinking of the many times in our life when we had major needs, and prayer was our salvation to get us through difficult times.

When we had to send our first daughter off to boarding school - three days trip away from where we lived - I thought sometimes I just could not stand that separation.  Maybe it prepared us for many more separations from you, Cheryl:  off to college in the States, then off to Beirut as a missionary.  I will never forget the terrible war in Beirut when we were waiting news of the birth of your first baby, Nathan.  We could hear the gunfire when we talked to you on the phone. And then the phone lines were cut....this happened so often.  The time you escaped in a boat with Rachel - we got the news at Council, the night I was giving the missions message.  All communication was going through us by phone to Dave Moore...and finally I had to go to another hotel and concentrate on prayer and also my message while Dad took over the Lebanon message  service.

I will never forget the morning you were so horribly burned, Debbi, falling into a pot of hot yogo.  Or the time we got word that you had been sick for some time at ICA and we had not heard about it.  Or the time we had to bring Elin home from ICA as she was so sick.  In all of those boarding school situations, we had to depend on prayer to get us through.  No one ever understands the anguish of a parent sending a child so far away unless you have gone through it!  And pray we did - always.

Remember the rabies shots??  The night before you kids took off for ICA, Cheryl was bitten by our new little puppy, nd the very night that you had left, the little dog went rabid and had to be killed.  That meant rabies shots for everyone who had been near the dog. We had to call the school and have you all have shots down there. John was pre-school and he hated going to the doctor each morning for those shots!  I wonder who was praying for us when we went through that experience??!

Many people prayed me through my bad bout with hepatitis.  When Dad took in my blood sample, the doctors wanted to know who this lady ws - the count was so high!  Again many people were praying for me, and through prayer and obeying the nurses, I was able to stay right there and finally got back to normal again after almost two months! 

When we got word, Cheryl, that you were being suspended from school in eighth grade, we were devastated, and all we could do was cry ad pray.  And it was a good time for you, being home with us.  Mark was born then and you were there - and he was always your baby. 

Towards the end of our time in Burkina, we made that famous trip to Abidjan when I was driving along the paved highway, still in Burkina, and a child ran right out in front of me and hit the car and fell by the side of the road.  I was terrified and just cried out to God.  The child lay there lifeless but then started to move and to cry.  It took us a long time to take care of the details of that accident and meant taking more time for the journey.  We were headed for Abidjan to make corrections in our Bible manuscript and this seemed like one more trial in keeping that Bible from getting published!  What an experience!  Many people prayed for us in the translation of that Bible for the Bobos, and how thankful we are for them.

I think also of the months and years we prayed for our dear Jennie when she started her cancer.  We prayed personally and with her and our friends and all of you prayed.  And finally we had to submit to God's will for our dear daughter-in-law, and she went to live in heaven with Jesus.  Prayer sustained us all during those times and especially you, John. 

All of these incidents and expeienced remind us that our family has been bathed in prayer all of our lives.  We continue to pray each day - praying together for each of you our children and grandchildren,  and now great grands in the morning -  and then many times during the day as you come to mind.

It is certainly true as the old saying goes - "More things are wrought through prayer than this world dreams of"!  We are fortunate to be a praying family.

DELIVERED THROUGH PRAYER.............

I was reminded recently of how our lives have been surrounded by PRAYER - our own prayers and also the prayers of God's people.  At the time of my unexpected brain surgery and the aftermath of all that, Dad wrote a daily report of what was happening in our lives right then, and I found a copy of what he had written in a file just the other day.  He wrote far and wide to ask people to pray for us at that time of our deep need, and people responded by praying and writing encouraging letters.  God DID answer their prayers.

People who walked with us through that time of trouble see me now and cannot believe how well I am and what I am able to do again.  I have always had a lot of energy, but during those uncertain days - weeks, even a couple of years -  I wondered if I would ever feel normal again.  But God answered prayer and it was nothing but a miracle.  At (almost) age 79, I am able to do a lot more than some of my peers who did not have to go through the trauma I experienced during those three years.  I just recently had a perfect doctor's report, and he commented on how far I had come.  The first time he saw me after my brain surgery, I visited him in a wheelchair.  A good doctor is a blessing, but without prayer I would never be where I am today physically.

The Bible tells us a lot about prayer, and as Alliance missionaries we have been abundantly blessed by the prayers of hundreds of Alliance (and other) people.  The Apostle Paul had this experience of living by the sustaining prayers of God's people.  He says, "(God) delivers us from deadly peril...and will continue to deliver us as you help us by your prayers."   Like Paul, we as missionaries have been delivered from peril, trouble and heartache even as he was, and you children have also been the recipents of this deliverance many times in your lives.  David tell us in the Psalms, "He will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help."

I have already mentioned how devastated Dad and I were when our entire month's allowance was stolen out of our apartment in Bobo while we took you little girls out for a Sunday afternoon walk. What a shock for brand new missionaries.  We soon learned that we belonged to a good mission which would advance us enough money to live on until we could pay back what we borrowed.. But God helped us to put all of that behind us, and not live in constant fear of robbery.  In fact, during our years in Africa, we were robbed so many times that we lost track. But it did not deter us from the joy of living and serving in West Africa for more than forty years. Credit for this goes to those who prayed so faithfully!

During our first term, Dad was often sick with malaria - the old fashioned kind that lasts!  But many people were praying for us in our missionary life and prayed for his health.  In answer to prayer, Dad had less and less bouts with malaria and was fairly free of the sickness during our later years in Africa. 

As a child, I had often had the old fashioned malaria and I can still remember the chills and the burning fever, and my mother wiping my face with a cool washcloth by the hour.  But during those early childhood years I must have built up an immunity in my system, as I was seldom bothered by a malarial attack in my adult life as a missionary.  We had a lot of praying friends who prayed faithfully for us during our long life of service in West Africa.  Prayer support is so important for international workers in our day even as it was for the Apostle Paul who spoke of those "who helped me through your prayers" as he traveled and preached the Gospel.  It has alwaqys been an encouragement for me to have someone tell me, "I prayed for you...." 

And now WE are on the praying end.  We pray for all of you children and grandchildren and now the "greats" every single day, and we also have a big photo album filled with prayer cards from workers all over the world for whom we pray faithfully.  Prayer is a privilege for the one praying and a blessing to those for whom we pray.

to be continued............................................... 

A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE ..........................

Dad and I went to college at the time that Billy Graham was getting started in his ministry and so we have many memories of the excitement in evangelicalism as  this new young evangelist began to preach and rocketed to evangelical stardom.  We had heard of the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, NC, about three hours from us, and Aunt Jessie had often invited us to come visit her and she would take us to visit the Library. She is a volunteer there one day each week. 

So last week we finally set up an overnight with Aunt Jessie in Charlotte so we could visit the Library.  We had no idea what to expect.  This is not just one library building full of books, but an enormous park which contains the original old Graham family stone home, acres of lovely park and beautiful flowers, the graves of those from the BG team who have gone to be with the Lord, including that of Ruth Graham, and then this huge building which contains all the mementos of Billy Graham history, including his enormous library, with his desk, etc. 

What an atmosphere of both peace and excitement pervades the whole facility.  We entered first into the original Graham home, perfectly restored with all of its (re-upholstered) furniture and original appliances in the kitchen.  From there we went on to the main building which houses both the library and all of the oral and pictorial history of this evangelistic team who has influenced the entire world. 

The entire building is electrically controlled and you go from room to room, being closed into each room to listen to the oral and electronic history of this evangelistic team.  You hear Billy preach and Bev Shea sing, you travel around the world to Asia and Russia and Europe and of course the United States, watching and listening to what God did in these many countries.  There is a whole room dedicated to the ministry of Ruth Graham who stayed at home to pray for the ministry and care for the children. She joined her husband when she could and often gave him advice about the ministry.

Giant videos show Billy Graham's time at Wheaton College and his courtship of Ruth, the many U.S. and world crusades. Billy being interviewed on US TV by well known personalities is all there to see. There are dozens of glass cases burgeoning with mementos of the Crusades and the people who made them possibe.  In every instance, all glory is given to God for the success of this great ministry. Many Alliance leaders in the world - like Sami Dagher and others -  are also pictured, and you hear their actual voices giving testimony to what God did in their countries.

For people like us who lived through that period of history, it was an exciting, uplifting experience, as we identified with so many of the people and events portrayed.  It was well worth the trip!  And we had the additional blessing of spending time with our dear friend, Jessie.  We go back a long ways together!

GROW OLD ALONG WITH ME..............................

Americans have many expressions about growing older - as we live in the "youth culture" of this century, like:
    - The old grey mare ain't what she used to be!
    - Old age ain't for sissies!
    - Grow old along with me - the best is yet to be!

Modern American society tends to  push aside the elderly, hoping that perhaps their children or the government will somehow take care of their needs.  Special communities are planned where only people "over 55" can live, an abnormal kind of place where the voices of little children are seldom heard unless someone's grandchildren come for a visit. 

In the United States, aging parents used to live with one of their children.  Dad remembers his Pierce grandparents living in his home when the children were growing up.  In other societies, the older generation is revered, looked to for advice, caretakers of the small children, storytellers and the repository for the family history.  They remain very valued members of the family until their death.  In our Bobo culture, an old person has a  funeral lasting many days,  and people come from other villages to greet the still living for the honored dead. 

But American society has changed and homes and apartments are smaller, everyone works outside the home and life seems more complicatd.  And so special provision is made for the elderly to live together.  Older parents are perhaps more independant than they used to be.  So those 55+ communities - and whole neighborhoods - flourish in our American society today, places where the elderly can live - and die - togther.  It is a different world. 

At this point, I need to add that you, our five children and spouses, have always had open homes for us, and even wanted us to live closer to you when we retired.  We chose the home we live in, made friends here, and have never been sorry we did.  You sons and families have long since moved away from the area,  and we feel at home where we are.  All of our children are good Africans and keep in touch with us and provide for many of our needs.  We salute you for your love and care.

I remember an old friend - a former missionary from Africa - who was starting to lose her memory when we visited her in Carlisle.  She tried to remember something and couldn't, and she said to me, laughing, "Don't ever grow old, Nancy!"  Well, guess what?  It comes to all of us.  We still live a full interesting life together, but we do have to help each other remember dates and events sometimes! 

We watched Grandma Kennedy's body and mind deteriorate each time we visited her in Carlisle. (The Lord mercifully spared Grandpa K. as he would not have aged gracefully.  He was able to preach right up to close to the time he died suddenly, and he is now rejoicing in Heaven.) Some things seemed to be buried deep in Grandma's once keen mind.  I loved to say to her, "Mom sing a song for me in Jula." And without hesitation, she would sing out lustily one of her favorite African songs, not missing a word!  The Carlisle nurses did not know that she had ever known another language and one day I had her sing her song for them - and they were astounded!   Grandma could remember those Jula words, but she had no idea what she had done yesterday, and it was a celestial deliverance for her when she transferred to Heaven!

Alliance pastors, Kenneth and Sarah Liu have started Caleb & Co., which is an annual gathering for retired Alliance missionaries.  Each year we enjoy times of good messages, fun and laughter, and the renewing of  lifelong friendships. We exchange stories of our pasts overseas, and enjoy updates from our Aliance leaders who also attend the conference. We pray together.  This has become a much appreciated ministry to all of us "oldies" by the Liu's.

Dad and I have been most fortunate to be together as we age and live on our own in our own home.  Our ministries have changed but we keep involved - in our local church, through prayer, and by ministering to needy people in the local jail each week.  We love our connections with you, our children, and feel blessed to have so many wonderful grandchildren and even great grandchildren. Many people of our age do not have loving caring family members as we do.  We are most grateful for your continued participation in our lives.  Thank you!!

MORE OF THE PIERCE CLAN...........................

Now for an account of Dad's siblings and their spouses and offspring.  These people you remember for the most part.  You will also remember some eventa I include here, but maybe there will also be some new things that you did not know.  So here goes.

Dad was the third child of four children born to Alvah and Edna Pierce.  I think all four children were born in the Danielson area, most in the home where they lived.  In those days, many women had their babies at home and did not have access to a hospital.  Uncle Luther was the first born, Aunt Esther the second born,  Dad was the third child and Uncle Richard the baby of the clan.  They were all within two to five years of each other, so grew up together, beginning with the frame house built for the family after they moved from that original old homestead, then at the big white home in Brooklyn, which you all remember. and which is now part of the Pierce Memorial Home for the elderly. 

I will attempt to write for  you what I remember as being told me by the various members of the family, but I may not remember the sequence of everything.  Uncle Luther was the first born. As was often the case, your grandmothr and grandfather made their home with his parents. This was often the case with young married people of that day.  But then Grandpa Pierce had a home built for Uncle Luther and his beginning family which is where they lived I think for some time before eventually moving to the big white house in Brooklyn town.   Uncle Luther was born in that frame house and was followed two years later by Aunt Esther.

When Uncle Luther was in his late teens or early twenties, the Second World War erupted, and he joined the army.  During the period of his training in the service, he was sent to Dothan, Alabama, where there was a large training base. There was a big Southern Baptist church in town where Aunt Fran attended, and she and her friends held regular events for the young men living on the nearby military base. Uncle Luther - being brought up a good Baptist - attended the Baptist church and also went to their gatherings for the soldiers, which is where he met Aunt Fran.  She was a Southern belle, and has never really lost her Southen accent and charm.  They made their home in Brooklyn, where they lived in a small house not far from his parents.  Later on, Luther and his family moved into a spacious home, on the next property to the Pierce home you grew up with as children. When they were younger, there were some marital problems for a while, but they wer resolved and they have had a long, happy married life. For some years Uncle Luther owned and flew his own small plane and Aunt Fran learned to fly that also.  They have always kept in touch with us - even came to Africa to see us, and always visited on furlough.  They moved to Miami from New England to take an assistant pastorate in a large Baptist church there. Uncle Luther had a radio program in Miami which was quite popular as a religious program of those days. From there he took a fulltime pastorate in Hallendale, Florida, north of Miami, and we visited them there one Easter time on our furlough.  They moved back north again and ended up in Pittsfield, Massachusettes, where Uncle Lu servd as an assistant pastor in a Congregational (?) church.  They built themselves their own home in the woods of the hill country there, and finally sold it a couple years ago and moved to Florida again. They live near Roger and his wife in central Florida and plan to remain there.  They, of all the family, have kept in best contact with us through the years.

Aunt Esther was a charming lady.  She had married fairly young,  and I never knew that husband. When I first met Aunt Esther, she lived in Yale and then New York City, where she worked in the publishing house of the Episcopal church.  Sh worked in their junior high educational department, developing written SS materials, for some years.  In New York she met Uncle Averill (distant relative of Averill Harriman, the well know at the time New Yorker)  and they seemed to have a good marriage. They were both New Yorkers, kind of artsy, and fun people really.  They had no children and so adopted children - Alice and Philip. Alice was also very artsy like her parents, and eventually ended up out in Hollywood where they live until this day.  Phillip married also, and he was an educator.  His wife is a dear person, but unfortunately bcame an alcoholic.  They finally moved up to Vermont, thinking a change would be good for her, but she remained an alcoholic.  Phillip and she were finally divorced, he has remarried, they both live in Vermont as well as Uncle Averill, and they share the children.  What is it they call them - wishbone children, pulled in two directions.  They were all at Aunt Esther's funeral on that cold, wintry day in Vermont. And they all still live in the same area up there.

Aunt Esther's funeral was a time of gathering for the family. During the ceremony, communion was served up front by the woman priest officiating. We went up by rows to take communion, and Philip was there with his newly engaged wife as well as his divorced wife. I went up with the divorced wife to take communion and their young son went up with us too.  If you did not want to sip the alcohol in the chalice, you crossed your arms in front of you over your chest, and as I stood by the young son, he crossed his arms as did his mother.  This because of her alcoholism. I had never seen that before.

The youngest of the Pierce offspring was Uncle Richard.  He studied for the ministry at Andover-Newton Seminary in New England, I think a congregational seminary.  They had been married several years and had no children, so they decided to take two boys as foster children. These boys were brothers. They had a beautiful mother (I remember meeting her) but she was too busy running around to care for her boys and so gave them up for foster care.  Dick and Jean were elated, but after several years they realized the mother would never give the boys up for adoption, and so they decided to send them back and at that time adopted their two girls, Sally and Susan.  You kids knew those girls growing up. Sally is divorced from her military husband of some years, and lives with her children in Maryland. Susan married a loser, and she had one daughter. He left her and she married another loser. She lives near her folks in Hartford, CT, and her parents often care for their granddaughter.  They still live in the same little house they bough back in the beginning of their marriage.  Jean retired recently from the town library where she was librarian for many years. Uncle Richard is still active in his local church near where they live.  Baptist I think.  

One furthere paragraph about the Luther Pierce children....The oldest, Roger, rose to the rank of major in the United States army.  He retired from the army, married an older lady, whom he had met on marathon bike rides, which they both love.  They seem happily married and live in Florida near his parents.  Larry was the second son, loved his trips to Africa, played the piano like a pro. He married young, actually a Christian girl, but after several years of marriage - and no children - she divorced him.  He was single for a while, but finally married Rose.  We met her once when we were on tour near them in Florida.  She was a total mismatch for Larry, and she had two or three grown girls of her own from a previous marriage.  Several years ago, Rose died suddenly.  The girls made life hard for Larry - took all his money, furniture, etc.  And he finally died unexpectedly from (I think) a heart attack.  Jimmy was next in line in the family, and again I think he was divorced, then married again.  We went to their wedding as were in Nyack on Home Assignment. That wedding was so hard on Grandma Pierce, as it was so very secular, with a wild  reception after the dry ceremony.  Both Jimmy and Alan married women who had already been married and wre divorced/ They "inherited" children through their divorced wives, and they all live in Massachusettes near each other I think.  It is interesting to note that Uncle Lu and Aunt Fran do not have a single biological grandchild.  And of the four Pierce children, only Dad and Luther had biological children.  The rest were adopted.

And I thiink that about sums up the Pierce progeny!

NOW FOR THE PIERCE CLAN

Now for Dad's side of the family.....
   You and I knew Grandma Pierce when she was quite afluent, but she was not always that way.  She was born into a preacher's family - her dad was a Nazarene preacher. He was a super strict, conservative man and the family was very ordinary.  I remember her telling me once that when she was a girl, there was a period when she could not go to school as she had no shoes to wear!  There were several children and Grandma's birth mother died quite young.  Her Dad married again.

The one sister I knew was her sister, Edith.  When we lived in Rutland, when you older girls were babies, she brought her sister with her and drove up to spend some time visiting us.  Aunt Edith had married an eastern European immigrant, and they lived on a hand-to-mouth kind of farm.  There were a number of children, and without doubt that family still lives in the Danielson area of Connecticut.

Grandma had a brother whom we knew, Uncle Nelson.  He and his wife, Elsie, had a daughter, Beverly, and the whole family traveled out to our wedding in Pennsylvania.  Uncle Nelson lived on a farm in the Danielson area, and I remember visiting there once.  They were good Christian people and Nazarene.

Grandpa Pierce I never met.  Just about the time Dad and I started dating, when we were both at Nyack College, Dad got word that his father had had a massive heart attack and was not expected to live.  I was working as roving hostess in the dining room that day when the phone call came for Dad saying his dad had passed on, and I had to deliver the message to him.  He went home for a week for the funeral.  So that is why I never met your Grandfather Pierce.  The family were farmers - remember when we all visited that old family farm, which is like a museum.  Grandpa and Grandma lived on that old farm, then moved on to another house, and eventually moved to the big white house in Brooklyn, which we visited last year.

Both Grandma and Grandpa worked in the Connecticut Baptist Convention. He was for a while president of the state Baptist convention, and used to often give messages and speeches to various groups. He was a well known Baptist layman in that area.  Grandma also worked in the Missions department of the Connecticut Baptist Convention, and every year she planned an elaborate women's missions conference in Hartford.  After Grandpa's death, Grandma joined a Baptist group and made a world tour by ship.  She also went to Alaska by boat with a group.  And of course she came more than once to visit us in Burkina Faso.

Grandpa Pierce had a brother, Charles, who died young.  He also had a brother, Fred, and we used to visit them in Massachusettes when you girls were young.  Fred was an educator all his life and worked in the Massachusettes school system.  We visited them a couple times, and when you children were young, they always sent us Christmas gifts.  They had one son who was mentally incapacitated, a big man. He was not violent, very passive, but a big care for the parents all of his life, his name was David. Uncle Fred and Aunt Gladys had another son, Stanley, who was also an educator. He and his family lived near Chicago.  We went to visit them one time when we were involvd in a TEE seminar in Wheaton.  They were Christian people, middle class, had a couple of children also. We used to exchange cards and news at Christmas time each year.

So Grandma came from a Nazarene background and Grandpa Pierce's family were all Baptists....
 how did they get togther??  The story goes that they met in a grocery store. He may have been working there and she came to buy something, and that was the beginning of a long family line of Pierce's!! 

So in capsule form,  this is the tale of the Amasa Dowe Pierce family, to which you all belong! 

THE KENNEDY CONNECTION...............

Now on to Grandpa Kennedy's side of the family.  Both Grandma and Grandpa Kennedy (your Grandpa's parents)  were born in Western PA.  I remember that Grandpa was born in Ford City, PA, which means that his parents lived there.  One time Debbi and I were driving to Mahaffey from Pittsburgh and passed right by the little burg of Ford City.  To my knowledge, they never traveled anywhere - except from house to house always in the Pittsburgh area.  They were both tall, large boned people and I remember them only with white hair. .  They were by nature nomads I guess as every time we visited them, it was in a different house, but all in the Pittsburgh area.

Grandpa was a railroad man, and he was a big man, with a deep raspy voice and a heart like a marshmallow.  His mother died when he was young, and the new wife of his father did not want children and so he was relegated to grow up in an orphanage.  I remember visiting Grandma and Grandpa Kennedy when I was young.  They were kind people and I enjoyed being with them.  They were obviously very prejudiced people, as I remember one time when I was staying alone with them, they were living on a hill and at the foot of the hill was a cluster of houses.  My grandmother warned me not to go near there, that those people were "hunkies".  I think they were actually Italians.  And actually my grandparents always lived in quarters that we would consider the poverty level today.

There were five children in the Kennedy clan:  Grandpa, the oldest, then Aunt Vivian, Uncle Fred, Uncle Kenneth and Aunt Thelma.  I do not know if you remember any of them, but again they all lived around the Pittsburgh area.  After Grandpa Kennedy died, Grandma always lived with her youngest daughter, Aunt Thelma. They both attended an Alliance church spasmodically.  Aunt Thelma was a long time single before she married Uncle George.  They produced twins - not identical in any way.  The girl was like Aunt Thelma, tall and normal and the boy was like Uncle George, a bit strange in both looks and personality!  Aunt Thelma was a member of the Aliquippa Alliance church, I suppose until her death. And I have lost track of her children.

Aunt Vivian was a great lady.  She and my Uncle Chuck were a kind of strange couple - he was a very short skinny man and she was a tall, well built lady.  To my knowledge he never accepted the Lord, but she was a faithful Christian all her life.  He was a chain smoker, their house was very tiny, but I always loved going there. They were a happy family and although their house was very small, they welcomed everyone and she was a good cook and very hospitable.  Their children were Mary, the oldest and the one from whom we got the saying in our family - "Pass the food, cousin Mary" as she would never pass anything at the table.  (How is that for trivia??)  The second was also a girl, Virginia, who was my age.  She was a diabetic and married and raised a family right near her folks.

Then there was Charles, called Sonny by everyone.  He married a lovely girl who attended the small Alliance church where Aunt Vivian took her children each week, and they have had a long very happy marriage.  They still keep in contact with us.  He worked in the local steel mills.  Tommy was the youngest and I really do not know what his life was like after childhood.  We probably visited this family more often than the other relatives.

Then there was Uncle Fred.  He had been married as a young man, but I never knew that wife.  He remarried  another lady after a divorce, something that made him a kind of "black sheep" of the family, as divorce was frowned on in those days.  They had one daughter  and we visited them occasionally on furlough.  Uncle Kenneth and his wife kept in contact with my parents until their death.  To my knowledge, they never professed salvation, but they did keep up family contact.  They had two sons, and I always had a good time with them when they visited - Billy and Jimmy.

My Dad attended Whiteside Memorial Bible Institute at the Allegheny Center Alliance church.  I was in that church on tour several years ago, and was looking at the old pictures on the church office walls.  I found a picture of Grandpa Kennedy standing on the back row of his class at Whiteside.  From there he went to Nyack for a year of missions training.

Grandma Kennedy was a student for three years at Nyack Missionary Training Institute. She did not have the money to live in the dorm, so she worked for a wealthy family down on the Hudson river shore, where she helped keep house and slept and thus earned her living.  As soon as Nyack graduation was over, Grandma and Grandpa went home to Marion Hill and were married in the Alliance church there. From there they went directly into ministry, in Buffalo, New York, and from there to French West Africa.  

YOUR FAMILY TREE

With the advent of Facebook and other internet services, someone is always asking me to please sign on as his/her relative.  Sometimes these are real relatives, occasionally it is someone I have never heard of. Usually I look at the invitation, but at some point it seems to be too complicated for me to get into.  However, it did give me the idea for cpntinuing our family blog, as  I was wondering how much each of you really knows about our family backgrounds.  There are all kinds of interesting characters there, and so I thought I would search my memory in order to share with you all your relatives in both Dad's and my families.

As far as the immediate family, you are all very familiar with my side of the family - the Kennedys and Albrights -  but you may be less familiar with your relatives on Dad's side of the chart.  You lived with the Kennedy clan in Africa al of your lives, but not so much with Dad's family, except for occasional visits during a furlough.  This is not meant to be a linear report of your extended family, but rather the memories I have of different family members on both sides.  So here goes.

Your Grandma Kennedy's maiden name was Best and that family (except for Grandma) lived all their lives in the Beaver Valley of Pennsylvania.  Most of the Best family lived on farms in a fairly concentrated area of Western PA.  Stories are told of how my great grandmother was quite a horsewoman. She also loved to drive her horses hard in front of her wagon as she travelled around the country.  That is really all I know of her. 

But I do remember well her son, my grandfather, and his wife, my grandmother.  He was a tall man - over six feet tall. And she was a very short lady of about five feet.  They also lived on a semi-farm, in Marion Hill, PA, but Grandpa Best worked full time at a large factory about twenty five miles from home, called St. Joe's Lead Company.  He actually died in that same factory, electrocuted.  My grandmother was so overcome with grief for him that she never recovered, and several months later died herself of natural causes.  I was just a little girl, but I can still remember when that word came at Baramba, Mali,  by our mail carrier who brought our mail by foot from Koutiala. 

There was an older Best boy, my mother's brother, but he also died young and I never knew him. Uncle Merle was the youngest brother and my favorite as he was only a few years older than I and often played with me when we visited. Merle became an alcoholic, married my Aunt Theresa and had several children.  He died of a freak accident when he was fixing his own car in his yard one day - had hoisted it up with a pulley and was underneath. The pulley broke, the car fell with force and killed him!  I never did keep track of those children.

My mother had a brother, Rodney, who went to Europe in the Second World War, was killed in battle and is buried somewhere in one of those beautiful military cemeteries in northern France.  I thought of him recently whn we visitd an American cemetery in Tunisia, where many of our soldiers lie buried in Tunisian soil, the cemtery carefully kept by Amrican miliary personnel.  He was never married. 

Some of you may remember Uncle Henry and Aunt Virginia. We visited them often when you were growing up. He was Grandma's brother and he also served in the military but was one of those lucky ones who came home again!  They lived for many years in New Brighton in the same home that they owned.  She found the Lord before Uncle Henry did, but when he was very ill - before he died - Aunt Virginia led him to the Lord. You no doubt remember Aunt Virginia and what a wonderful person she was. In later life she taught women's Bible studies in the area.  They had two children, both of whom married. The last I know of the married son and family was that they lived down on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. and he ran a rather prosperous pizza business. They also had children. The daughter, Nancy, and her husband, John, lived out in the midwest - we stoppd overnight with them once when you kids were little. They never had children, and the last I heard from Aunt Virginia was that they had lost their faith and become atheists.  They were very nice, middle class people, but have never kept in touch.

Grandma Kennedy also had one sister, Alice.  Aunt Alice was a fairly tall woman with deep auburn hair - I remember her well from my childhood.  Unfortunately she was both a chain smoker and an alcoholic.  She had a daughter, Mary Ruth, (whom we all called Dumple).  Aunt Alice's significant other and father of Dumple, was a partner alcoholic with her and they spent a lot of times in bars.  She also died fairly young, but her daughter was grown, contacted by the church, was saved, and was present at my mother's funeral with some of her family.  So that is one bright spot in that family! 

Thast pretty well sums up what I know about the Best side of the family, and next installment will be about the Kennedy clan.  As I go back and remember some of my ancestors - and yours - I realize what a lot of losers in life some of them were - and are.  It is only as we allow Christ to transform our lives that we can enjoy a godly heritage! 

SPRINGTIME IN THE SOUTH.........................

When we decided the last months of our  career in Africa to live in the South, we wondered how we would like it.  Dad was a Northerner, the time I spent in the States was in the North. We both went to colleges located in the North and took all of our home assignments - except that one year in Shell Point - in the North.  Florida is not really living in the South, and we chose Georgia because both of you sons lived in the Atlanta area and the girls were all spending their lives overseas.  So this influenced our decision.

We had just so much to spend on a house - money from an inheritance from Grandma Pierce - and in researching the situation, we realized that houses in Toccoa were within our price range.  We had many friends who lived in Toccoa, there was a good church here, and we liked the idea of living near a college. In hindsight, we realize we made the right decision.  Both of you boys have flown north but when you lived here in Georgia, it was only an hour's drive to go and visit with you.  Those were good years, we enjoyed being near you, with the girls all so far away!  Now that we no longer have any children and grandchildren living near us, we are still glad we decided to live here.  We did have Elizabeth here in college for four years and both Bubnas and Clousers spent a short home assignment here, which was wonderful.  Now we look forward to every family gathering anywhere, as well as occasional visits from all of you when you can make it. We are indeed blessed.  When we deal every day with such fractured families - even in the church - we realize what a gift of God it is to us to have a loving, cohesive family!  Thank you all!

The time I like best of the year here in Georgia is Springtime.....a beautiful early Spring in Toccoa is a treat. We are in the midst of that now.  The world is a wonderland right now - trees all leafing out and the streets are lined with flowering dogwoods, yards are full of flowers in bloom. And it is still only the month of March! The front of our house is lined with several colors of azaleas, the dogwood tree in the yard is in bloom, there are tulips and other ground flowers showing their bright colors.  Our Japanese maple - a gift from John and Jennie one year - is growing and is a beautiful dull red in color.  Dad visited the plant nurseries recently and our porches are lined with bright  geraniums, petunias, and other plants coming into flower.  Our plum tree has already set fruit and soon other bushes will be in full bloom. Dad has had to mow the lawn twice already as it grows so fast! The weather has been in the 80's this week.  Most afternoons we sit out back on the patio and enjoy the warm weather and the bright flowers and delight in the home to which God led us those twelve years ago. 

We have always believed that God has directed our lives, and even in retirement He continues to do that. Here in Toccoa we have a supportive church, monistries to be involved in, both in the church and the community.  We have many friends, lots of contact with missions (which has always been our life) and a comfortable home.      We are indeed blessed of God! 

OUR SMALL GROUP...............................

Somewhere along the line, while we were working overseas, "Small Groups" started in relationship with churches.  This seems to be the current method of pastoral care in a church, so we are learning about that.  Ideally, every person in a church should belong to a small group - usually these do not exceed twelve or so people.  The small group can be a group of friends who sign up together or it can be totally disparate people who just sign up at random.  The latter is the kind of group we belong to.  The members of the group are interesting.  We were sixteen, but lost a couple because of scheduling, so we are down to fourteen.

Our leader is a gentleman who is a retired college professor and lost his wife a couple years ago now. He is well organized and makes a good leader. We have been in groups before where the leader was in the clouds and had no idea how to lead and that was sort of frustrating at the time.  But this group is one of people from different walks of life, and we seem to interact together rather well.

Besides the leader. there is a couple who do not come to the church but know the Lord. They have been disappointed in the church and so do not join, but they are friends of our leader and they fit in well with the rest of us.  He is a former pilot and she was a flight attendant. They met while flying the same airlines and married - have no children but something like eight cats!  (which they do not bring to small group thankfully!)  Another couple both work at TFC, came originally from the northand, are college grads.  There is a former police chief of our town with his wife, people in their early fifties. And they love the study and fellowship.  There is another couple, originally from the north and have always been Alliance church members.  Besides us, there is an Alliance missionary widow and a retired missionary couple.  So we come from different backgrounds, sometimes have different perspective on things, have good discussions and really enjoy our Monday evenings.

The group meets in our home, so that means Monday we have to set up the living room for the Bible study time and have enough chairs in place, as well as our back room set up with more chairs for refreshment time. Each of us takes turns bringing the refreshments, and we never eat supper Monday night as everyone brings adequate for a meal.   The talk is fun and has a range of subjects as we are eating together and then by about nine o'clock everyone goes home..

We pray for each other and stay in touch. One member is in Emory Hospital right now with heart disease, and we get reports of his progress or lack of it each day.  So it has drawn us together as a group and put us in contact with some people we have not known well before this.  So I guess it is fulfilling its purpose.  Next week we have the final dinner together of this semester, and so we will not meet together again until the Fall. We read that in today's society, small groups are the answer to getting to know people in your church, and it seems to be working for those of us who participate in it. 

Pastoral visits are out - unless you are near death's door.....elder care is sketchy......but the church is trying small groups now.  I guess they are here to stay in the evangelical church of today.

THE STORY ISN"T FINISHED.......................

After such a beautiful, long day, we had another surprise.....a picnic at the Rocks.........You all remember the Rocks from your childhood......that high rocky cliff overlooking the Bobo fields and villages....right outside the city.....The path in there is rocky as ever......but it was worth the rough ride to experience another experience from our years in Burkina........the place has not changed......we sat up on the high hill overlooking the peaceful Bobo villages...........smoke rising into the air from the fires where women cooked the evening meal........the church president, Pastor Job and his wife joined us.........Esther had prepared her usual banquet......Peggy and Jetty brought special chairs for us........and Peggy even served me my coffee in a china cup!.........As it got dark someone built a bonfire, and we sat around in the glow of the flames from the fire in the dark night aorund us........Various ones took the words and told of how they had come to know us....... and we did the same with them........Job gave a testimony of how Dad had encouraged him as a young, single Maranatha grad, who had no church.......everything was done in French and English so all could understand.....We went to bed that night - tired - but happy with all that day had held.......and we were all up before dawn the next morning to return to Ouaga........this time we were in two cars to accomodate the mission as a car needed to be returned to Ouaga.......and it was back to the big city again....with more visits from friends........and then the goodbyes as one by one some of you departed.......and John and we finally took that late night flight for Paris.......and beyond that Tunisia for us.

Tunisia - what an experience!.....It started when we arrived from the Paris flight........we had been served lunch on the plane, most of which we could not recognize or eat!........but the sights were beautiful as we flew over snow capped mountains of Europe and finally down into the Mediterranean area and over to Tunis airport.........the walk from the plane to baggage claim was long, and as we neared our destination, someone stopped us........were we Mr. and Mrs. Pierce??? ....and then we saw the sign on a board to our left: "Welcome to Tunisia, Mr. and Mrs. Pierce!".......We wondered what was going on, but allowed ourselves to be led into an office and greeted by two men in uniform!......... they took our passports to have us stamped in while we were plied with water and local television.........Finally we were led out toward the baggage claim - and there was Cheryl!!.......One of the men comes to English class at the Family Place, and Darrell had asked him to meet us and make sure we were taken care of!.....So thus the VIP treatment.
.......Soon we were on our way into the city, with Darrell and Cheryl in the van.......our major suitcase was missing....but we were assured it would be there the next day........and borrowed clothes from C and D in the meantime.........What an amazing drive through the city - it is such a beautiful city!.....Stark white buildings everywhere......tall dark green cyprus trees are interspersed among the buildings.....horrendous traffic with everyone claiming space at every traffic circle.....and there are many.......We enjoyed Phenicies' comfortable (but cold!) home, with its space heaters in each room.......it had been a long trip from Ouaga via Paris, spending hours in the Paris airport....so the good meal and the hot bath felt great!.....Paticipating a bit in the Family Place was great........meeting many international workers as well as Tunisians was a delight.....I got to share a bit with the international women at their weekly Bible study.....we were treated to beautiful restaurants of various kinds - Indian out by the sea, fancy pizza restaurant in the uppeer crust part of town, indigenous Tunisian upstairs overlooking their local Champs Eliysées.......we were treated royally.....and met interesting people, not the least the few who come to a Bible study in the Phenicies' home.....many Tunisians talked to us - they are a friendly people .....and we were treated to dental care and barber shop and hair salon........Sunday the Family Place was closed so we travelled south to Sousse.....what a beautiful Mediterranean town.....like something in Europe....we sat on the boardwalk and had coffee.....then went to the big Catholic church where Protestants share the building with Catholics and we worshipped with the handful of Christians, most of them not locals.......then to an upstairs restaurant.....and home again driving through the Tunisian countryside.......a trip to Carthage was a highlight, visiting places where the early church fathers ministered in the early years of Christianity.....visiting the site of the now crumbled collesseum where Christians  were martyred, thrown to hungry lions......what a sobering trip....There were also the temples of Baal where thousands of babies were killed to honor Baal......both a bloody and beautiful past!

We were sobered by the dark Islamic side of Tunisian society and the open friendliness of its people....we can now pray for Tunisia and its people with better understanding.  

Continuing the Journey............................

Bobo, my hometown since childhood........but oh how it has changed!........All paved streets......many of the old buildings......but changed streets.....even the route out to our old home of Santidougou is half the miles and a completely different road!........Arriving in Bobo, we were warmly welcomed by the Schaeffers.....Esther had arranged a great schedule for us there.........First thing was put our luggage in the guest house and go to their home across the yard for a dinner party!......Several couples there, old friends whom we had known since their childhood........even Fernand from France happened to be there on vacation so was included........it was a beautifully set table, with lots of food and lively conversation!   How we appreciated the Schadffers for their organization of our program while in Bobo........That evening the kids went out on the town to visit old haunts and we had a lovely evening meal with Peg and Jet in their home......it seemed like old times, so many memories!  To ward off the hot nights, Esther insisted we use the AC for sleeping so we were ready to start a big day after a good sleep.

The road to Santidougou, how it had changed.....the beautiful old kapok trees and the bridge had all been taken out and the road deviated through that area.......the villages had not changed.....nor the dry, barren fields.....it looked like home again!!  Who would be content living in such a dry, barren area, dried mud villages and no electricity......but God's call to a people and a place had made this home sweet home to us!......The road was shorter now with the pavement making a new path to our home.....as we approached the village, there was loud singing and drumming and crowds of people......we stopped the car and we all got out.....Dad was ahead of us and when he reached Santidougou he bent down and kissed the ground to the cheers of the people........We were being met outside the village so as to walk the last half kilometer, accompanied by crowds of people, singing and drums!.....And of course many kisses (two on each cheek) and greetings in Bobo!......They led us directly to the huge new church at the edge of the town and beside the main road, stopping along the way to hug and give four kisses to all and sundry!......Wow - what a church, huge and it was FULL!.......

To our surprise, everything was done in Bobo - songs, Scripture, greetings, everything.......We had thought they would want us to speak in French and have it translated.......no it was a Bobo fete, and so we threw away our French notes.....and winged it in Bobo.....amazing how it came back to us after all these years of disuse!  ........the church is truly beautiful.....a high cement platform......Scripture text and the Alliance symbol painted on the walls.........everyone was singing and dancing when we entered........and soon we joined in the dancing as well - our whole family.......delegations had come from so many many churches......some we had never see.......others we had helped to plant!  How the Bobos have grown - it was like a miracle!......the name of a village would be called out and the leader would get up and say a few words of greeting.....this went on for a very long time......then everyone would dissolve into singing and dancing again......it was truly a grade fête!!

Afterwards we toured the old mission compound....visited the graves of two pastor friends now in heaven.... were given lunch in our old dining room.....the kids had fun touring the old homestead and reminiscing about times long past......this was our home for many years......After lunch we visited in the homes of others and the greetings and conversations continued!   Wow, what a day!!  Our hearts were so full of praise to God for the great things He had done and continues to do among our people, the Bobos.........

Continuing the journey....................

Bobo

Our incredible journey...................................

Did it actually happen - that wonderful journey???  When we first heard about it, it was such a BIG and happy surprise. And now that it is over, so many memories invade our minds and conversations!  Again we say thank you to all of you who planned such a beautiful surprise for us!   All of our friends have rejoiced with us since we returned. The trip had so many highlights that it would be impossible to list them all, but I'll try a few........

.....traveling business class - wow!  Comfort personified, wonderful service, care taken for our every need, comfortable armchairs that made into actual lay-me-down beds.....a real linen mini-tablecloth spread on our trays at mealtime....champagne served.  One thing they forgot - to make the toilets bigger!  They are the same size as those in the cattle car in the back!  We wondered how some of those enormous people travelling on our flights could ever fit in there!!!

...... the business lounges in the various airports, complete with comfortable chairs, desks, all kinds of drinks and snacks, hot and cold, TV, even showers ) which we did not use)  but everything for the comfort of the business passenger - and we had several long waits in airports so appreciated those lounges.

.....arriving in Ouagadougou - back home again.... it was HOT and dry, a cacaphony of languages being spoken (not English)...FAMILY....old sights, familiar from the year we lived in Ouaga.....greetings, visits, HEAT, a comfortable home.....that wonderful house helper of Clousers who took care of everything....Sunday morning church in Ouaga2000, that beautiful Sunday afternoon reception planned by Debbi and Steve, with about sixty of our friends from yesteryear.....the fun family times, sitting under the fans with the air cooler going at the highest speed possible....everyone (but me) sitting with a laptop in his/her lap, commenting on all the news coming through the wire.

....there was a trip to the International School and the library there, also the pool and having lunch at the commissary.....the drives around town.... dinner at an old familiar restaurant one evening.......and breakfast at one of the most beautiful cafés in the world....dinner one evening in the cooling Ouaga air, sitting at tables on the open sidewalk.

.....then the trip down to Bobo with brave Debbi driving since Steve had to stay in Ouaga and work..... the welcome of the Schaeffers.....they had arranged such a great schedule for us working with the Santidougou church......lunch at Schaeffers when we arrived with a number of couples who were very close to us there in Bobo.....dinner also with Jetty and Peggy, just like old times, eating a delicious meal, sitting and talking, just enjoying each other.  

(to be continued!)

House help ............................................................

My experience with someone helping us in the house came from my childhood, as my parents were busy in ministry and language learning from the start and they always trained someone to clean and eventually prepare food for the family.  Where we lived in Baramba, we were really "in the bush" - no big town nearby and you were allowed only one trip a month to your center to buy supplies.  So living was very basic and the village was very dusty. So it was there my mom trained her first house help, which was only the beginning of a long list of house helpers she trained during their many years in Africa.

I remember one funny incident from those earlier years.  Her helper was sweeping the floor, using one of those stiff-straw-put-together-and-tied native brooms You bent low when you used one.  This fellow whom my mom had trained was sweeping the dust and dirt from the cement floor in our house and he came upon a small button that someone had dropped.  He picked it up, looked it over, then swept underneath where he had found it - and carefully put the button back just as he had found it!  Being from a bush village, he had probably seen stranger things than that in his white patron's house!!

Mother was a good trainer of house help. She herself made wonderful bread from scratch and that was one of the first things she taught her worker. There was no bakery in our village so no French bread available.  Her helper taught other helpers through the years, and new missionaries often went to her help for their new house help to learn to make good bread.  That is where Yusufu learned to make the good bread we had when you were children - from someone Mom had trained! 

It is really amazing what these men (or girls) learned when they worked for one of us, coming as they did from a basic village lifestyle and had to learn our complicated tubabu ways!  We were fortunate to have the same person (Yusufu) work for us for many many years. You kids all grew up with him.  I could give him instructions in the early morning before I took off for class or the office and come home to a clean house, beautifully cooked meal and the wash on the line. What a treasure he was!

We had another house person who was not such a treasure.  He was very much a tigi type - or "in charge person".  He had worked for other people in the city of Ouagadougou and was actually listed as a cook. But he did agree to do housework as well.  It was Christmas time that year and friends from Pennsylvania were visiting in Ouaga, so we invited them and the Luthers over for a big Christmas dinner.  I had the table set, but no cook in sight.  He was going to prepare the whole meal. One thing he starred in was preparing beautiful vegetable salad platters for a first course and I had planned to start with that.  But no cook appeared!  I finally hustled around in the kitchen and got the meal started while Dad went to the cook's house to see if he was sick or what had happened.  He found him dead drunk!  He was in no condition to even leave his room. let alone cook the Christmas day feast I had planned!  That week Dad took him to the office in charge of house help in the city, but he turned around and insisted we had to pay back pay (which was all a lie - but we complied just to get rid of the guy)! A few weeks later we were robbed at night - a thief came in and stole all my lovely silver pieces on our buffet in the dining room, plus a hand painted lamp!  What a loss when we got up that morning...we always suspected that he had something to do with that theft, but there was no way to prove it!

The man who replaced him was a Bobo, a Christian, and I never saw a more silent house worker. You never knew he was around.  I spent hours in my office at the back of the house working on translation and lessons that year.   I could never even hear him as he worked - he didn't bang, he didn't sing, he didn't have visiting friends to chat with.  All was silence!  But if he needed to ask me something, he would come quietly back to my office, and turn on the light switch - the light suddenly going on would distract me from my work, and there he was with his question!  He was a faithful worker for us.

Some new missionaries did not want to have someone helping them in the house - they felt their privacy was being violated!  I guess super private people ought to go somewhere else than West Africa.  It is not a private life there!  When we returned to Africa, the year after we retired, we went to San Pedro to work for a year in the Alliance guest house there.  And we inherited someone else's house help.  The inside helper was great and we worked very well together. he was a Christian, from the Alliance church, and he served us well our whole year there.  The yard person was also a great guy - not a Christian and from a fisherman tribe down the coast, but he too was a great worker. We were blessed with good help that year. 

The outside man was a real hero when a band of robbers came into the yard one night and proceeded to steal everything they could find. They jumped over the wall. When they tried to get into Dad's outside office, the guard prohibited them and so they beat him and tied him up while they broke into the office, took a large sum of money and also equipment and made off with it all.  They also broke into the room of missionaries from another mission who were staying in our guest house. They wakened to these thugs entering their room, bright flashlights in their eyes!  It was a terrible experience. They were new people from Togo and we later heard they just could not make it in Africa after that terrible start.  Our car had been parked out back and the guard told the thieves we were not home so they did not even try to get into our room - we slept right through it all. Only to be wakened by the wounded guard after they had left.  After that Dad had to build the surrounding wall higher on that Alliance guest compounr overlooking the ocean far below!

We always found that our house helpers allowed us to be fulltime in ministry and we tried to treat them all with courtesy and friendliness.  We looked on them as "helpers" rather than "servants".  And now we look forward to seeing some of those faithful people who worked for us on our Africa visit next week! 

MAKING LEMONADE OUT OF LEMONS..............................

Maybe you have heard the expression, "When life hands you lemons, make them into lemonade".  In other words when bad things happen to you, things that might sour you on life, try to transform that sour exprerience into something sweet and refreshing.  When I think of our family, I think of all of us as having had a good life, a profitable life. But when I stopped to think recently of each of your experiences in life until now, I realized there were many difficult things that happened - the lemons of life.  And yet in each case you have been resilient and resourceful - you have turned the lemons of life into sweet, refreshing lemonade.

Cheryl and Darrell, in the beginning of your marriage you were so happy to be expecting a child - a little  baby girl.  But that child did not mature fully, she was born before her time. I think she might have lived a few hours even, but then with much sorrow you saw her life end and buried her there in New Jersey.  This was one of those lemon experiences.  But you did not allow it to sour you - you went on to finish your home service and went to Lebanon and started a new life there.  Again you were expecting, a boy this time, and he was born amid the worst bombing session of the war in Beirut.  You never gave up through that war season but moved to J'Bail in the north and even there the war found you. I well remember visiting the small, dark tunnel room that was your bunker when the bombs came there too.  You had to leave the port there in an open boat, Cheryl with Rachel and later Darrell with the boys, amidst the shelling.  You were all sent back to the States, and who would have blamed you for giving up at that point, but instead you persevered, and have become the pioneers and apostles for the Lord in the Middle East and now in North Africa.  Your stories of hard and even dangerous situations could fill a couple of books, but you didn't give up - you made lemonade and have been a refreshing presence in the Arab world. We look forward to being with you soon in Tunis - another world for you to conquer!

Steve and Debbi,  you too have had your share of lemon experiences. You were stationed in the most primitive situation of any worker in recent years in Burkina. But you made an oasis for your family and for others in that red stone house, complete with its insects and snakes, etc.  And you pioneered the work among the large Dafing tribe, learning their unwritten language.  Today there is a church and pastors in their area, thanks to your making a life and ministry out of a very difficult situation. 

When Daniel was a teenager and needed his parents near him in the States, again you had to leave your work and make a new life for yourself.  You had to drop your calling to Africa, take secular jobs of teaching and office work and make a life for your family in this country.  That was a hard situation, but you endured and God rewarded you with a new and different ministry in Africa.  You started out among an indigenous people in the bush country and now work among the very high classes in the capital city.  God has given you both so many gifts, and through hard times and good times you have used those gifts and accepted the difficult situations - those lemons of life. You too have brought refreshing to many people in West Africa, in Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso.

Joel and Elin, after your up and down friendship and courtship in college and seminary, God led you to marry and begin ministry together in Côte d'Ivoire.  In both Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal, God has led you to break into the upper class of people in those countries with the Gospel.  It always amazed us to visit you and to meet so many interesting people - your friends, many of whom eventually came to Christ.   Then along came the "lemons"of your life, schogren's disease.  This has been a disability often in your daily life, Elin, and you had to have special treatment in the US.  But again you have persevered and learned to live with your disability and minister to the people God brings into your lives. We admire you for that.  The contacts he has given you and continues to give to you as a couple are amazing.  You continue to make lemonade out of the lemons of sickness that are a part of your life.

John, you started out as an amazing child with such a positive attitude.  We knew God had something special for you in your journey.  He brought Jennie into your life, and as you started life together you had some hard times.  Not much money, the failure of the hotel in Puerto Rico.  I remember you and Jennie returning to Georgia from PR and you were staying with us for a few days. You were in the bedroom and Jennie said, "Mom and Dad, please go and talk to John - he feels like he is a failure."  And we reassured you and loved you both through that situation and rejoiced to see you come out of that whole diffcult period of your life - your lemons - and make a good life here.  During those long weeks of cancer with Jennie,  that was certainly a season of being handed lemons. And again God brought you - and all of us - through that time of sorrowing. We still miss Jennie, but rejoice that she is with Jesus.  You have had other rough times as well, and yet through all of them you have brought joy and refreshing to many people.  And continue to do so.

Mark, our shy little son has become a successful business man, a good husband and an outstanding father and we are proud of you too.  You could not have done it all alone - God gave you Katy, our lovely resourceful daughter-in-law, whom we admire tremendously.  Your worked your way through college, going to school nights and working days. And for a long time you worked in a Brazilian company. We remember your taking us to visit the company where you showed us where you began in the big warehouse....and then proudly took us to your own office, with your own desk.  But it was not long before you realized that you would never advance further in that company as you were not Brazilian!  And so you took the "lemons" of that experience and planned your way out.  And you joined your current company, being promoted all the way to head office.  What a journey!   You had to move, even though you both loved Georgia.  And again, you have adjusted and made a good life far from what you had always known as home in your married life.  Again making lemons into lemonade!

Dad and I have had a happy, fulfilling life and still do.  You children and your children and those children's children are all a delight to us.  And yet we too have had some "lemon" experiences in our lives occasionally.  Dad had several years of being field director in both Mali and Burkina and also in Burkina alone.  The last year he was director in Bobo, when the vote came for the director, Dad could not get the majority he needed.  Actually, Dad held that title lightly, but was willing to serve if he was voted in.  Finally after a couple more rounds and no majority (I think it was two thirds) he withdrew his name.  Some complained, but we both felt it the right way to go. (We later found out that the reason some would not vote for him is they did not like the young men who worked for him)  Dad has always discipled young boys and men and continued to do this in the office and this was evidently not appreciated by some.  But again this became a liberating experience for us. We no longer had the burdens of the office and the demands of everyone.  We had more time for ministry among the people and that is what we really liked.  We lived in Bobo one more year and then moved to Ouaga where we participated in the planting of that first Ouaga church.  And so the "lemon experience" of the conference vote became a blessing in disguise and our lives were a refreshing drink for many. 

It has been such a delight to us through the years to see you all developing in the right way and being a blessing to so many.  Our prayer is that your lives - and ours - may be a refreshing drink to many around us who need it. 

Staying in touch ...............................................................

Perhaps you sometimes get tired of my writing to you all so often, but I have lived my earlier life through a time when it was not possible to keep in touch with people.   If we were living in the same place, we would be communicating, and so often I feel like just writing you a few lines in order to stay in touch. 

Communications have changed so drastically during my lifetime.  I know I have told you that my mother never heard of the death of her parents until weeks after they occured, and the news was brought by a note sent to Koutiala and carried by Malien runner who went to get our mail every couple of weeks. She mourned alone there in that Malien village of Baramba, no possiblility of trips to the States in those days!  What a contrast to today when we have SKYPE and phone calls and quick mail delivery and email and Facebook!  It is not hard to stay in touch, and yet I often talk to older folks in our community here, who really have very little contact with their kids who live overseas or even in this country.  They are just not communicators.  I am so thankful for every communication we receive from each of you, so keep them coming.  It seems to me a tragedy when families grow so far apart from each other, simply through lack of communication of any kind.

Prayer has always been a kind of communication in our family also, and how thankful we are for that.  Every morning Dad and I pray for every single member of our family by name, as we pray together.  Often at night, if I am wakeful, I resort to praying for you - and sometimes fall asleep in the middle of the list!   You learned to pray when you were very small, and this is a great link of communication for all of us. 

My only communication with my parents during the years they were in Africa and I in College in the U.S., was a once a week air letter from them.  I always knew that that letter would be in my mailbox one day each week.  There was not a lot of news for them to write about and it was always a family joke with my brother and sister and me, that Mom would usually have a couple of menus of meals she had cooked for Dad that week.  After all, she had to fill up that space with something!  The letter was always just one thin air sheet, typed on one side - that was all that could be sent for the airmail rate.  And it was the sum total of the news I had from them during four years - that weekly letter.  I too wrote to them and I doubt if my news was much more interesting.  My life was lived very much apart from my parents my four years at Houghton College, but we did have that once a week link between us which helped us to know each other a bit.  Sometimes I wish I had kept some of those old letters - but what with moving so much in my lifetime, things like that never got saved.

Phone calls were few and far between when you kids were in the States and we overseas.  Again, the cost was prohibitive.  But when one of you did call, we basked in the good feeling of that phone call for days afterwards!  Now that we are living here in the States - and you all are living all over the US and the world - we cherish every phone call, SKYPE call, email and FB entry.  We appreciate all of you so much and love the way all of you are committed to "keeping in touch".

Amazing really, considering the many years we have lived apart from each other, how close we all are as a family.  We know families here who seldom hear from their kids - even here in the US.  And yet a week seldom goes by that we do not have some kind of communication from each of you.  We try to keep up our end of that communication also.  Communication is the cement that hold families together, it seems to me.

During these years as a family, some communications stand out over others:  Cheryl' s unexpected appendectomy, the birth of a new grandchild,  Nathan's birth in the midst of bursting bombs in Lebanon, Elin getting engaged to Joel, John's call in the night that Jennie had gone on ahead to Heaven, Mark calling to invite us for Christmas in CT, your conference call recently telling us about the trip you had together planned for us this month in Africa!     You are all such thoughtful people and we love and appreciate you so much.  Thanks to each of you for keeping in touch!