The Big, Big Move

Prior to moving to Ketchikan, AK, we were traveling to different churches every Sunday A.M., Sunday P.M., Wednesday P.M., Conferences, etc. I was pregnant with my third child. It was a stressful pregnancy because for some reason her little heart would quit beating and then start up again. Many doctors told me to abort her because she would be born dead, with hole in her heart or mentally challenged. That wasn't an option for us. We sent out a letter so people could pray for her and for me. I had two doctor's appointments per week for about 10 weeks. I had an appointment with one of the doctors and her heart beat quit and started again. The next day at another doctor's appointment it was normal and stayed normal til' she was born!!! My labor and delivery was only 4 hours. She was born in the morning and greeted us all with a look of, "Good Morning world" ~ very alert and she is still a lot like that to this day.

So after our little daughter's birth, we packed up our earthly belongings, said many sad good byes and started our move.We have the saddest picture of Micah with his cousins A and J. When we look at even today it makes our hearts tug. Our dear, dear friends, J and R helped us move across the country. My dear mother-in-law paid for the kids and I to fly to California. So R flew with the three kids and I across country. We drove to Minneapolis and then flew to San Francisco. We stayed with my sister in the San Francisco area for about a week. Chuck and J drove across country and had quite the story to tell. They had car trouble crossing Nebraska that cost both time and money. The rear end went out of our Scout. They were in Sydney, NE at the time. It was late on Saturday night so the guys got a motel room and went to church the next day. On Monday they went to a car garage and found out that there wasn't a rear end to be found even as far away as Omaha, NE; Denver, CO; or Cheyenne, WY. The guys waited a couple of days and then a guy said he found one 3 miles away right there in Sydney. Does Jesus care - oh, yes He cares. It cost $700 which was hard on the travel budget. J said he would help out financially if needed. But . . . Chuck wanted to see how far God would take them. They crossed Dead Man's Pass in a blinding blizzard, had a toll bridge to cross going into San Francisco and arrived in Seattle with change in Chuck's pocket!!!! R, the kids and I rode up to Seattle with my sister and her family and had beautiful weather for crossing over mountains in November. Our family arrived at the ferry terminal with tickets in hand that had been purchased prior to our trips. We didn't have to cancel because of bad weather, car trouble or anything. We were thankful to God for His care. He provided just the perfect timing, with just enough energy and the perfect amount of money.

It was sad getting on the ferry and leaving our loved ones behind but we were excited about the uncharted adventure in our lives that lay ahead. The ferry was decked out for Christmas and it was wonderful and relaxing. Micah (7) and Jewels (2) had a ball getting their "sailor legs" through exploring and looking out the windows or walking on the deck. Micah and Jewels were thrilled there were no seat belts on the ferry. We saw Killer Whales, lots of Dolphins and lots of Seagulls. We had a berth to sleep in which was a wonderful relief to be able to put Jewels and A.J. down for naps. We had French Dip on the ferry for the first time and we all agreed that it was very good. Trying to eat and drink with the swaying of the ship was interesting! Our ferry trip lasted for 40 hours. We met lots of interesting people. One couple even supported our ministry for several years after only meeting us that one time. Learning to walk on solid ground was quite a hoot. We walked like wobbly sailors for a while. We went to church that night and the pastor had us come to the front. Little Jewels still had her sailing legs and struggled to walk to the front!! The church people had a wonderful food shower for us.

Living on the Pacific Ocean had many benefits. Salmon and Halibut became our staple food. We learned how to fix it and use it in many different ways and it became a favorite for us. Chuck had an office at the church so the kids and I would walk the five miles to see him quite frequently. Many times we walked in pouring rain. I would put A.J. in a backpack and Jewels in the stroller and Micah would walk along beside me. We walked along Tongass Narrows on a boardwalk. What an education for a seven year old boy. We saw jelly fish, multiple colors of starfish, sea horses and different kinds of fish. We didn't mind our long walks in the rain unless the wind was blowing too hard.

I grew up in Kansas a long ways from the ocean so moving to Ketchikan had lots of new things in store for me. The Welcome Wagon came to our home and gave us lots of goodies. One of the things they gave us was a Tide Book. I thought to myself, "Wow! That will be a lot of coupons for boxes of Tide detergent." I had never seen coupons with "moons" on them before! Am I ever happy that I didn't tell anyone in Ketchikan about that! I was so surprised to find out that the Tide Book was for telling the times for the high tide and low tide on a certain date. Did I ever feel dumb!!! I had never eaten crab before going to Alaska. One of the men in church gave us a whole cooler full of Dungeoness Crab. He told me to put a pot of water on to boil. Then he said to put the crabs in one at a time and put the lid on for a certain amount of time. Then I needed to take the crab out. What he didn't tell me is that it sounded like they screeched when I put them in the pot. They even tried to push the lid off. I felt sooo bad for them but it was free food. Chuck and I had to crack them open so the kids could eat them. It reminded us of what mother birds do for every feeding. We would drop crab in the kids' mouth and then they would immediately open their mouths again. So . . . it was a while before Chuck and I got a bite of our own.

Prices twenty plus years ago were very high, in Ketchikan, compared to any place we had ever lived before. A gallon of milk was $5.00, a pound of cheese was $5.00 and our rent was $700 for a 3 bedroom apartment. Our apartment was on stilts because of the "muskeg" soil. It was soil similar to a slow quicksand. I learned quickly that even if you could go faster from point "a" to point "b" by crossing "muskeg" it wasn't an option. So we walked on boardwalks to go from one apartment building to another. Skunk cabbage grew in the wild open areas. Blueberries, the size of my thumb, grew close to our apartment buildings. We could help ourselves to as many as we wanted. Yummy!!

Micah was in the first and second grade while we were there. He was going through a name crisis at the time. He couldn't find his name on pencils, shirts, hats, etc. To our surprise there were three little boys, in his class of 8 kids, named Micah. Two were Micah John and all three of them had last names that started with a B. So . . . that ended the name crisis. None of them wanted the teacher to shorten their name to Mickey or Mike. So she spent the year calling them by both their first and last names.

Twenty plus years have gone since living in Ketchikan; but it will always have a tender place in my heart. The people were wonderful to this "cheechako" couple and their little family.

Oh Boy! Oh Boy! It's A Boy!! (Part 1)

March 27, 1975 was a much anticipated day for my hubby and me. I had stayed up all night March 26, typing a 20 page paper for one of my hubby's classes at Bible College. This was in the days of typewriters, not computers. If I made a mistake I had to start all over on a clean sheet of paper. I finally went to bed at 4:00 A.M. and then my hubby came home from work at 5:00 A.M. We were both in a sound sleep. At 7:00 A.M. Micah decided to wake Mom up with contractions. Of course, Iowa was having its worst ice storm in history. I woke my hubby up because the contractions were getting closer. So we trekked out to the car very carefully. All the way to the hospital we saw cars, trucks and semi's in the ditch. I prayed and asked the Lord to keep us safe and to keep the car on the very icy road because I selfishly did not want to have my first baby, during an ice storm, in a ditch. We got to the hospital safely with plenty of time to spare. The hospitals at that time were just starting to allow the fathers to be in the delivery room. Micah was born at 6:33 P.M. My hubby was in the room for the delivery and was elated that our first born was a boy. (Micah means "who is like unto Jehovah".) We were in the hospital until Easter Sunday morning. My hubby was with a pastor friend when he heard the song, "Because He Lives" and it became a favorite one that he sang quite often to Micah.

Bringing baby Micah home was an entirely different thing. I was a nervous, new mother and Micah was a very colicky baby. So he cried and cried and cried. Chuck and I kept a vigil during the night so we would stay sane. That allowed one of us to sleep. The crying continued for about a year. Once that ended, he became a very good sleeper. Since my hubby was still in school Micah became my little buddy. We did everything together because daddy was in school or working. Micah was born before car seats, so he stood behind my shoulder when I was driving. He had a pathetic car seat that basically just allowed him to see over the dash. He loved boxes and would arrange them so they looked like a pulpit. He would stand behind them and put his pointer in the air and say, "Peech da Word." Who do you think he was imitating? It was so cute.

The summer Micah turned 3, my hubby graduated from college. I received a "PHT" degree - ("Put Hubby Through" degree) Both my hubby and I had to take 2 summer school classes. Then we joined a mission and started traveling to different churches. Micah was such a good traveler and learned to read maps at a very young age. He would sleep so soundly in the car that we could carry him in or out of the car or a house and he stayed asleep. He had our slide presentation memorized!!

The summer Micah turned 5, he became a big brother to a baby girl, "Jewels". He had prayed for a girl and then changed his mind. I told him that God may have already answered his prayer and he decided that was okay. I was at my sister's house when I went into labor. My hubby and Micah were at a camp 8 hours away. (I almost went to camp - we would have caused quite a commotion!) They didn't make it back to Iowa in time for the delivery. But they both came a few days later and Micah was so excited to meet his sister. But he was so disappointed that she couldn't play football!!! "Jewels" and Micah had so much fun together when she learned to walk. We were in New York helping with an Indian Camp and ended up staying there while we traveled to different churches. This camp was a little boys' paradise with all kinds of trees to climb and land to roam around on. The camp director had two little boys Micah's age. They played from sunup to sundown.

The summer after Micah turned 7, "A.J." was born. He now had two little sisters to tease! By this time he was learning how to tease without hurting someone and also to know when he should stop. He was a protective big brother which was so nice. When A.J. was 2 months old we moved to Ketchikan, Alaska.

A Farm Girl's View From the Past

My sister, Esther, was only 20 months younger than I was. We were inseperable when we were growning up. Since we lived on a farm, we went to a one-room schoolhouse. We lived about three miles from the school. Every morning we had a routine that makes me wonder how we ever got to school on time. First stop was just across the railroad tracks. We usually got cookies to eat while we visited with the farmer and his wife. The next stop was enthralling to us. The farmer was blind and had a rope tied between his house and the barn. We watched him walk to the barn and then watched him milk his cows. Our last stop we talked with the farmer and his wife and got some more cookies. Our trip got a little faster because I got a bike. It was way to big for me, so I had to ride it standing up. Poor Esther! One night after school I got a brainy idea to take her on the back of my bike. I felt sorry for her because she always had to run along beside me. Well, we were going down a hill a little too fast and had a bad wreck. I ran home, crying all the way. Esther came home dragging the bike behind her. We were in the third and first grade. That ended my trying to take her and she happily ran beside me until she got her own bike.

One of the things you learn growing up on a farm in big family, is responsibilities. Everyone has chores to do and no questions or criticisms were ever given. One of the chores we were supposed to do every spring was to clean out the cellar to have it ready for tornado season. It was the dreaded chore because you never knew what you might find. For instance we might find a rattlesnake, spiders, a raccoon, a rat or a mouse - yuck!
One spring we waited too late to clean our cellar. You guessed it, we had a tornado on our farm. My dad had been watching the sky all morning (we should have gotten a clue from what he was doing - duh) when all of a sudden he yelled for all of us to go to the cellar. We didn't want to go in because we hadn't done our job. We had no flashlights because we hadn't replaced the batteries. We didn't have a Coleman lamp because we hadn't replaced the oil. Being in the dark during that tornado, wondering what we were sitting with, was the longest ten minutes of my life. "Be sure your sins will find you out." The tornado uprooted trees, blew out windows and made a big mess of our yard. We had lots of bonfires that summer. My dad had wanted to move a windmill from our south pasture to closer to our house. The tornado moved it for him - right side up!!!

Another adventure with Esther was that of taking the railroad tracks to town instead of walking to town by roads. We weren't ready to go to church one day so my dad left us at the farm and we had to walk. It was much safer to do that back then. So . . . Esther and I decided to try to go to town by way of the railroad, thinking it was a faster way to town. There was a long trellis bridge over a deep gorge. We were half-way across it when we heard a train. We didn't think there was enough time to go back where we came from or to finish crossing to the other side of it. We climbed under the track and held on to one of the poles for dear life. Trains are very loud when you are under them! When it crossed over we climbed back up on the track and we were so deaf and scared we couldn't hear. We had to literally pull our fingers off the poles and we were such a mess with all the creosote. But to my knowledge my mom and dad never knew what we did. Do you suppose they could tell just by looking at us? I doubt that we were very clean for church that day.

Mom's Simple Hospitality

Whenever a visiting pastor, missionary, evangelist or singing group from college came to my hometown, Mom and Dad would have them come to our house for lunch. My mom was not a great cook but she would share what she had. Some of those lunches had to be very interesting for the visitor. My mom had such a green thumb she could make a stick grow. She loved the outdoors and did not really care for the domestic side of life. She had such a giving spirit that that counteracted her cooking! She would fry potatoes and burn them and then put water on them! I did not know what chili was until I went to Bible college and had to serve it. Our chili was a big pot of water and one bag of beans. The beans kind of floated on top of the water. Then she would put a lot of chili pepper in it. We always had bread served with it so we could dip it in the chili broth!! (remember she had to cook for at least 8 of us) She would sometimes serve hamburgers - again it wasn't until I was older that I realized hamburgers were to be about the size of a bun!! Her hamburgers were about the size of a silver dollar. Her deserts were different. If she made cookies, they were more like biscuits. When surprise guests showed up she could serve saltine crackers along with the coffee or water and be completely comfortable and make guests feel welcome.

I am grateful that Mom taught me that a home doesn't have to sparkle and that a seven course meal doesn't have to be on the table just to have someone come for a visit. As a family we have had hundreds of people in our home over the years. We enjoy hospitality and my mother helped immensely with that. I am so thankful we had people come to our farm as rustic as it was.

Rural Beginnings

My story actually begins on a thousand acre farm in Kansas that my family sharedcropped for free rent. Both of my parents were married three times. I am first, second, third, fourth or fifth in the lineup of ten children depending upon which marriage I count from. There were seven girls and three boys. My father was an alchoholic which caused a lot of grief to Mom and to us kids. When I was seven, my sister who was ten choked to death on a hot dog. After the funeral my dad tried to get drunk. He drank and drank and drank. He tried to get drunk but it was like God was saying, "Ralph, you cannot drown your sorrows in booze. You need to drown them in Me." That began a major change in our family! About that same time a pastor came to our farm to see my parents. I can only imagine what my dad said to him! But he kept coming. He worked at a shoe store - so he wasn't rich. But he bought all of us kids who were home at that time, shoes to wear to school. He helped to put up hay, helped with the wheat harvest, and basically helped whereever he was needed. He became one of my dad's best friends. Gradually my dad's veneer broke. My dad allowed us to go to church with the pastor and his wife and then eventually my parents started going. My dad released his burden of sin and gave his life to the Lord. Talk about a change - we went from never going to church to going to church every time the doors were open. My mom and dad had pastors, evangelists, missionaries, etc to our house for lunch but that is a new story all of its own!

The Journey of Blogging

Blogging is something I never thought I would do. My daughters both blog and said I should give it a try. I have always wanted to write a book because my husband and I have lived quite an adventure through our marriage. We have been in the ministry for 32 years and have lived in many states including the great state of Alaska, the tropical state of Hawaii and even to the province of British Columbia, Canada. I will try to tell a little bit about our lives as I journey into the world of blogging.