College Fun, Friends, and Father's Heart for Missions

When it was time for the next move, I was excited. The high school years of much change were behind me and I graduated in the top 10% of my class of 450. I even earned a partial scholarship to college. I decided at this point that I needed a lot more Bible training and so chose to go to Biola College (now Biola University). This meant many nomadic changes in the years ahead: from new dorm rooms and roommates to back and forth summer work placements and home surgeries and stays.

Everyone at Biola had to take one year of Bible classes (two full semesters) in addition to their four-year major. I majored in humanities, which included 18 units of literature, 6 of philosophy, and 6 of foreign language (I chose Spanish). I also took courses in elementary education, knowing early on that God had called me to work with children. At that time, education majors in California also had to complete another year post BA to obtain their teaching license. That's 4 years for a BA plus 1 year Bible classes plus 1 year for a teaching credential = 6 years altogether.

My classes were good, I just wish I'd had more time to study. Since I worked up to 30 hours a week, this was a challenge. But I especially enjoyed the year I took Greek, just for fun, and even today can make my way around a Koine New Testament. I graduated in 1967, but took the final credits for my teaching credential the next year. I received one of the last "LIFE" teaching credentials issued in California. They changed it to periodic renewals the very next month.

My first two years I lived in the dorms downtown in the top floors of the Church of the Open Door. I lived on the 12th floor. I traveled by bus at 5:30 a.m. each morning out to my classes on the campus in LaMirada. What great memories of times with friends on those buses!  My last two years I moved out to the LaMirada campus and new dorms. Isaac and Ethan have drawn the difference between the two for you!

Highlights of My Years at Biola

During my years at Biola, I met many new friends, some of whom are reading this blog today! Sometimes I went home on weekends, which was less than an hour away, and friends who lived out of state would come to stay and eat my mom’s good cooking. The photo of brothers David and Jim Christensen (Jim’s at my piano) was taken in my living room. The photo next to it is of some of my best friends in front of the downtown dorms. I'm to the back right of JK Adams, the guy in front. Lee Ann Wimer is to his left with her future husband Spence Wimer behind her. Spence and Lee Ann have been friends over the years. Others I recognize are Neal Anderson, Eddie Snyder, David Christensen, Roger, Sheryl, and Linda (whose last names I've forgotten).

Service Projects: Every year at we got to do a service activity. My first year I helped teach a Child Evangelism after-school-program.  My first year at Biola, I also worked as a counselor for the Billy Graham Crusade in downtown Los Angeles. I remember being up front and Billy Graham passing in front of me one time. I was blown away by the Presence of God he carried even then. Another year I was part of a downtown ministry to the homeless.

The third year I was the piano player for a male quartet and Sunday evenings we would go to different churches to sing. Here’s a picture of me and the guys! Ed Snyder, on the left, was the “Captain” of the quartet crew.

During my first year at Biola I also became a counselor for the Billy Graham Crusade in downtown Los Angeles. I remember being up front and Billy Graham passing in front of me one time. I was blown away by the Presence of God he carried even then.

By this time, I’d become a messenger about the love of the Father in Jesus to everyone I met. When I had more leg surgeries, I told roommates, nurses, and doctors. I told my Aunt and Uncle, who only chuckled at the time. But they listened more carefully than I knew. And of course I told my friends.

Throughout my years at Biola I kept being drawn to overseas missions. Often our chapel speakers were missionaries who told of how they loved and served people in other countries. I'd heard Father's heart for missions and I thought I’d love to go -- to any country but India. So basically I told the Lord to not send me anywhere but there!

Those of you who know the rest of the story now can chuckle since we ended up in Nepal, right above India on the map, and with very similar cultures and problems. Go check out the world map and see these two countries--and find Mt. Everest in Nepal too. But I had heard His call to missions. That was all I knew at this point.

Friends, Memories and Facebook

How many friends do you still know from childhood? With one you are rich, with two you are richer than a king, and with three you hold the treasures of the ages.

Years ago, a friend helped Mary (Laing) Vaughn and I reconnect on Facebook. Then lengthy emails followed, and our old high school friendship is still growing. During my junior year, her dad had tutored me in geometry when I wasn't doing well. It meant I got to hang out with Mary more too. We spent many good times at each other's houses, sharing lives.

There's one important story about Mary that I want to tell you. During my senior year, a YFC leader was praying for us as a group and told us God would be speaking to us and giving us the name of a friend whose heart He wanted to touch for Jesus. In the silence that followed, I was surprised to hear the name "Mary." I knew it was my dear friend Mary and began to pray for opportunities to share Jesus with her. As the school year ended, nothing had happened. But we had a slumber party one night at the home of another good friend, Linda Gardner. All my best friends were there, which of course included Mary. We got to talking and after a while went out to sit in the car for some privacy......

Here's what Mary later wrote of that encounter, "Do you remember the night of the slumber party at Linda Gardner's house?? You wouldn't let me out of the car until I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior.(You must have known something about me that I didn't know!") Since that time Mary has continued to follow Jesus and has a wonderful husband who also does. Mary and Buck and Bill and I have spent some precious times of sharing our faith in Jesus together.

Then last year it was my high school's 50th class year reunion. While I didn't make it to California, we were on a trip and stopped to see Mary and her husband Buck in Pennsylvania.  We took this picture together at their house and sent it to the class (the falcons were our mascot). "Ever forward, never backwards, that's our Crescenta Valley Team!"

Thanks to Facebook, I have been in touch with other good friends from high school too. Marilyn (Petersen) Kirshberger and I have continued to keep in touch over the years. We've missed the birthday hot fudge sundaes but we have spent good time together during our travels. Most recently my good friend Terry (Morris) Cleary and I have found each other (she was in an earlier photo with me and my mom)! We haven't yet been able to get together face-to-face, but we're talking about it! It's also been a joy to reunite with Shery (Rife) and Paul Lowen, in email and in person! I'm sure there's been others too....and the story's not all written yet!

I love "friending" and renewing these relationships, learning about the between-years of those I have loved--and their families and stories. God's been very good.

One thing I am leaving out are all the boys I had crushes on! I didn't do a lot of serious dating, but had fun and special times with lots of the guys from YFC. Here's Milt Jones and I at one of our YFC retreats. I think he was from the Pasadena YFC. Milt, where are you??

PS: If any of you have pictures of our high school years, please send on!! Below is another picture I found in the yearbook of the future Teachers Club! Terry and I are in the front row on the left. We both made it into teaching too.

Jump If You Know the Question...AND the Answer!

The most transforming experience I had during high school was being part of our YFC Quiz Team. To compete with teams across the area, the state and nation, we formed a Crescenta Valley team. In eleventh grade we studied and memorized the book of Mark and in twelfth grade took on the book of Hebrews. Can you imagine memorizing those wonderful books during the teenage years? It helped me know Jesus better and many of the verses remain familiar and well loved today.

As a local team, we met weekly to practice answering questions and then monthly had contests against other schools' teams. We studied one chapter a week. The judge would ask a question and as soon as we knew how to complete the question AND give the answer, we jumped out of our chair. The first one up got to try to answer correctly. Here's an example:

Judge: “Who is the So…..JUMP!  Chair #3, what is the question and answer?”

Chair #3: “Question: Who is the Son? Answer: ‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word’ (Hebrews 1:3).”

Judge: "That's correct. SCORE 1 point!"

I remember spending many hours studying and memorizing God’s Word late at night. My sister Nancy remembers helping me study for this. And Marilyn (Petersen) Kirshberger remembers all the 3 x 5 cards we created with rubber bands around them to keep chapters together. Then we quizzed each other daily. And while we never made it to Winona Lake for the national championships, it worked its way deeply into my heart.

Here's a photo I found online to make you chuckle. We didn't really jump that high but sometimes it felt like it as we tried to be the first one out of our chairs. Kinda felt like Jeopardy!

Apparently the Quiz Teams are still going strong. Scroll down to the one minute mark on this linked video and see how to really jump out of your chair: Quizzing video.  And YouTube is full of videos of all ages doing Bible quiz teams. Today Quiz Teams can download the questions all ready for them too!

I’m so very grateful that God allowed me to come to know Him through His Word. It helped form the direction for the rest of my life, including later joining Wycliffe Bible Translators to help people who didn't yet have a Bible in their own language to hear about Jesus, and learn to read, in God's Word.

Our Youth For Christ Club was an encouragement in several other ways too. We had monthly meetings in one location for all the Los Angeles area YFC clubs. These meetings were life-changing times of hearing God's word from many respected leaders in the church. Roy McKeown was the Los Angeles leader and Gene Sweeney was our area director. It was during this time I really came to know and love Jesus.

OK, next blog I MOVE again, this time to college. Mom had drilled into Nancy and I that we needed a profession in which we would have a guaranteed job with income and to choose to study either nursing or teaching. Even though all my family were nurses and doctors, I already knew I would be a teacher, so that was easy. My days of studying geometry, chemistry, and college prep courses, and even my wonderful years of piano lessons with Mr. Frost, were soon to be part of the past. But my four years of Spanish were to continue into college along with my heart for international peoples.

One of my favorite songs about God's Word is Ancient Words Ever True Changing Me and Changing You.

Hebrews 4:12: For the Word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.

Glub, Glub, Glub….Getting Baptized in a Full Leg Plaster Cast

The first time I was baptized I was in fifth grade. My mom picked me up from a party and took me to be baptized and then returned me to the party, all in the space of about an hour. All I remember is being sprinkled and feeling rushed because I thought I had more important things to do.

This time was different in two important ways. It was June 10, 1962 at a combined baptism for two churches. I had recently turned 17. This time I knew it signified a commitment to be a lifelong follower of Jesus. It was also different because I was wearing a full length leg cast (after yet another surgery), and was being fully immersed in front of the whole church. The cast was a heavy plaster one, like in this picture. Nowadays they have casts that are easily removed from your leg, but then the plaster was almost cemented around your leg and very heavy....and itchy. (The picture below is not me, just a picture I found online. My leg had to be straight with no bends!)

So how did this baptism happen? I got a large garbage bag and put it around my leg and tied it tightly at the top of my leg. I left my crutches on the side of the baptistery and, with help, hopped into the cool water.

All was going well. I was giving my testimony of what God had done in my life. Then the pastor joyfully immersed me. At this VERY moment the plastic bag around my leg started leaking and going “glub, glub, glub.” I could both hear it and feel it. I felt the water trickling in, down my leg, but could do nothing about it.

So I entered into the joy and mystery of the occasion and then got out as quickly as possible. But I knew I’d been washed clean and was so grateful for the new life I’d found in Christ. And the cast was only damp. We were able to get it dry using a towel and hair dryer.

Jesus made such a radical change in my life that both my mom and sister noticed. My mom wondered why I didn't get angry anymore. When I told her, she decided that maybe she and my sister would come to church with me..

Nancy recently emailed me her memory of this time: “After you came to Jesus I saw the change in your life and that's when I came to Jesus also. Seems we all have to come to the end of ourselves before we recognize our need for the Lord.”

I'm so grateful that the life journey that my mom, my sister, and I took all merged together in the bigger journey with Him. One day we will look back on all this with even greater joy.

Romans 6:4: “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

Song: Baptized in His Name.

The Bible "Expert" Repents and Gives Her Heart to Jesus

Being now a self-declared "expert" on the Bible, I decided that I should start a religious club on our high school campus. I put a note in the school newspaper to arrange a meeting with others who may have a similar interest. A couple dozen kids showed up, all of whom happened to be Christians.

As it turned out, these students knew of an organization that we could hook up with, so the group developed into a Youth for Christ (YFC) club. The other students elected me as President, assuming I suppose that I belonged to Jesus since the club was my idea. But I had not yet admitted I needed Jesus to forgive me and be my Savior. Up until then I was reveling in a combination of self-inflated righteousness and an awe of the God who was always there.

It was at YFC that I met many significant friends, ones who wanted to talk about the purpose of life. One who became a best friend was Marilyn Petersen, now Kirshberger. Marilyn and I hung out a lot together, even shared hot fudge sundaes on our birthdays. There were a couple of twins who were leaders in the Eagle Rock YFC, Ed and Ernie, who were the heart throbs for many gals.

YFC had retreats and camps where we talked about what it meant to follow Jesus. We hung out with other YFC leaders from other schools. The photo below is taken at a retreat with my good Snowman Friend who borrowed my crutches (but not my cast).

 

And one time we mourned together as a young YFC leader named Hal was killed in an car crash—yet his funeral was one of giving thanks for his life. I’d never been to a funeral before and it seemed a whole new way to look at life and death for me.

I had also discovered a Swedish Covenant church near our home and started going there every week. The teaching from God's Word by Pastor Lorin Soderwall was good and I met many amazing, heart friends there, like Sherry Rife, now Loewen. They all spoke very directly about Jesus and how to share our problems and concerns with Him. I went through a confirmation class here where I learned many things about what it meant to follow Jesus. Here’s a picture of my confirmation class. Sherry is in the middle. You can see my cast from one of the surgeries.

Our youth directors at church, Larry and Marilyn Pendleton, took me into their family and home and even let me come on vacations with them. They had a poodle named Fifi who used to water ski on a board attached to their boat. So funny to watch. I babysat their three boys, Steve, Ricky, and Gary, often, but it didn't stop there. We’d sit around the living room and openly talk about the deeper issues of life and what it meant to follow Jesus. They answered question after question—even ones about why God would allow me to have all my leg problems. I’d never encountered people like this.

SO, surrounded by God's people, and being continually exposed to God's Word, I recognized my need of more than social religion. During tenth grade I asked Jesus to be the center of my life, to forgive my anger and sins and be my Savior. And thus at 16 years old I began my new life with him.

From now on I hope to share a song that represents a part of my new life and nomadic journey and mention Scripture that talks about it too. Here’s the song for this one, sung by my 3 grandsons: Three Boys Sing "At the Cross" The words are a bit different that the traditional song since I rewrote them for young children to sing and understand: At the cross, at the cross, where Jesus died for me. And the bad things that I've done got erased. It was there at the cross, I gave Him my heart and now He’s the one I want to please. 

So for this one, Ephesians 2:8-9 expresses what He did for me at this time of my life: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.

How My Doctor’s Biggest Mistake Led Me to Jesus

Everyone’s special, right? But how many people do you know who can move their knees caps out of their sockets and several inches around their legs? Just me, right?

I had inherited this physical problem from my mom. My knee caps would fall out of place and cause me to fall and break my legs at least once a year. Consequently, I could move my knee caps all over my knees and gross out my friends. So nurses Mom and Aunt Hazel decided I couldn't be a socialite, or a dance floor queen, if I were always wearing casts.

They knew of a famous orthopedic surgeon and arranged for me to have surgery on both knees. Dr. J. Vernon Luck Sr., accompanied by Dr. Munsen and Dr. Nichols, performed the surgery at the Los Angeles Children’s Orthopedic Hospital in June of 1960—as soon as school was out.

However, things did not go as my mom and aunt planned. During the surgery the doctor accidentally cut a nerve in my left knee, leaving my leg and foot paralyzed. Because of this, what the doctor called his "once in a blue moon" case, I was confined to bed with casts for three months, and a leg brace for many years more along with six more major surgeries over the next four years.

The doctors graciously covered the cost for all the following surgeries and my mom did not sue. Back in those days, most people trusted the doctors and didn't sue for accidents. Dr. Luck went on to pioneer limb reattachment in the year after his biggest mistake ever. He became so famous that an important research hospital is now named after him: J. Vernon Luck Research Center. I now wonder if his “mistake” may have pushed him to research and develop how to help reattach nerves.

This was the beginning of many painful tests and treatments. As a young girl, I remember lying in my hospital bed feeling pretty sorry for myself and not knowing how to relieve the pain. My mom and aunt were great. I don't remember how they got my home with two full length leg casts, but they did. So I was confined to bed (and you can read in there using bedpans and having sponge baths) for the summer. A few friends came to visit, and my sister was there through it all. She still is. Like my mom and aunt, she too later became a nurse, and went on to become a nurse practitioner.

During this time in bed, I read everything my mom brought me and was still bored. Here's my amazing mom from an old church photo I just discovered!

Finally, out of desperation, my mom checked out a Bible from the library (we didn't have one and only went to church on Christmas and Easter). She figured that would take me a little longer to read. She was right. But I did read the whole thing, cover to cover.

It was through this reading of that Bible that God began to reveal Himself to me. I found I liked the man Jesus that  I read about in the New Testament (when I finally got there after reading the whole Old Testament first!), and how He loved and cared for people in need, like me. And I soon came to love the real Jesus I had not previously recognized, but had encountered in those experiences I wrote about in earlier blog entries.

So now I began the all-important high school years, with a disability I never imagined…..and a relationship with the Living God I also never imagined. And God said that it was good. And this “evening and the morning” were the next day of my life.