The Kidnapper, the Hitchhiker, and Living on the Land

These years in Norman were some of the best of times. Building memories is simply building up relationships, friendships and family, which for us included being part of a larger family, both physical and spiritual. It was a joy to be in the community of believers that were “our family” in Norman. Plus our relatives came to visit.....and some like Orv and Nan came to stay and live very near us. We were bound together in love to walk with each other through thick and thin, and there were both.

There are many highlights of our time in Norman, Oklahoma and many of them were times spent together as a family. Grandma and Grandpa Leal spent as much time as they could with us, especially in the summers.

As a family we made as many fun and memorable experiences as we could. One time I kidnapped Bill from work and took him away overnight. I arranged this with his boss, Mary Fleming, ahead of time. The kids were in on this one. He thought we were just going out for lunch. I told him the restaurant was quite a distance and I kept on driving. He was very worried about getting back to work: "I have a meeting!" He began to get suspicious after half an hour. So I told him that Mary already knew and had given her OK. She was in on it!

Another time we had planned a vacation and Bill pretended he had to work and couldn’t go. The three of us went on anyway and hoped he would join us soon. Meanwhile a friend had dropped him off at the side of the highway where we would be driving, with his luggage. He had his thumb out and acted like a hitchhiker who wanted to be picked up! You should have seen the kids faces when they recognized who was standing by the road. Bill still remembers both children with their faces and hands plastered to the car windows, gaping. Of course we stopped and picked him up and went on to a fun vacation. Jenny says she most remembers how shocked she was that I would pick up a hitchhiker!

Here are a few pics from one of our vacations and an anniversary celebration in the early 80's. Note the amazing homemade anniversary cake made by our kids!

Having creative kids helps make a family memorable. Jonathan was by this time finding his stride in writing. He and Jenny developed their own magazine they self-published called "Pure Gold." They and their friends wrote the stories, poems and art work and then sold them for 25 cents each.

Jenny was a whiz with vocabulary. The kids had to memorize a lot of words for their different subjects. She did more than just memorize them and to this day can carry on spirited discussion with Bill, who also has a large vocabulary. Jenny was also a huge help to me in the home and in the classroom. She still is!

Both our kids were a delight to our hearts (still are!). They did well in school and their hearts were turned toward pleasing us and pleasing Father. We spent a lot of time in God's Word, memorizing some long passages. They both had good friends and played a lot with them, especially when we got our ten acres that they could roam, explore and claim.

So what else makes family memories unforgettable? Sacrificial love is what holds a family together. And that love is unforgettable. For us, showing love still means making fun, zany unpredictable memories. Jonathan likes the one about my birthday surprise and his "bad fall." Bill arranged for a (pretend) housewarming. After folks arrived, Jonathan faked an accident upstairs to get me upstairs and distract me while the people downstairs got out the presents.

We've been known to drive 7 to 14 hours to surprise loved ones on birthdays. Maybe Jenny can tell you how we drove from Alabama to Georgia to have a surprise lunch with her after church at her favorite restaurant, the Olive Garden (her friends and roommates helped get her there!). Surprises are kind of a tradition for our family. For my 50th, Jonathan dressed up as an uninvited old lady that was dying of throat cancer and couldn't speak. We allowed her to stay and I never recognized that it was Jonathan till he made it obvious. Then last weekend we surprised Jonathan by being at the restaurant he and Barry were going to have his birthday lunch at. Some pics are posted on Facebook: Jonathan's birthday surprise 2016.

Speaking of zany memories, that brings us to housing and land. Backing up a bit, after living in our first house in Norman for a year or so, a larger house with a swimming pool came up for sale.We all thought that would be a great idea and good investment. Little could we predict the future. Our smaller house quickly sold and we purchased a house that was really too big—but we did have room to share with single people in our community. We especially remember Gary Nishmuta who was single at that time and whose wonderful sense of humor kept us laughing. Then along came a young lady who stole his heart!

Later, three families in our community got together and decided to buy land and build houses near each other. We each purchased ten acres adjoining each other's ten acres: the Nivens, the Wimers and the Leals. What an adventure each one had, but I’ll only tell ours. Maybe they will add theirs to this rendering!

Again, we sold our house--the "too big" one with the pool--and moved out to a small three bedroom mobile home. We purchased a "build it yourself" kit from by Miles Homes so we could build our own dream house from ground up. We knew that would take time, which was why we lived in the mobile home while building. But before moving in, we had to get rid of thousands of cockroaches. We set insecticide bombs inside and left the place closed up. When we returned it had literally rained thousands of cockroaches all over the counters and floors. But apparently it did the job and we were thankful to not see any more of those menacing creatures

We called our land, “Redbud Acres” because there were so many beautiful redbud trees. We loved living on the land that also had a stream—especially strong in storms. It was truly beautiful in all seasons. I described the house to Joshua, our six year old grandson and he drew his picture--without seeing the real one!

We then began the process of house building. It was professionally framed and put under roof. Bill did all the interior work, little by little, after he got home from work. We had energy then!

The kids loved the land and built a clubhouse out of scrap lumber, seen in the photo. That's one of our nephews, David Hazelton, next to the clubhouse. It was great to have my sister and family near enough to share life together. We were surrounded and blessed by many gifted and loving people.

Yikes, It's a Snake! One More Time God Spared My Life

Let me go back in time. I forgot all about this event, which was pretty significant. When I was about 10 or 11, I attended Camp Fire Girls weekly and loved it. My mom saved enough for me to go to camp that summer for a week. We got to sleep in cots outside and it was great fun. I remember the big pool that we got to swim in every day....except.....

One night a friend, named Colleen, and I were talking late into the night. When our camp counselor told us to keep it down, Colleen crept over to my sleeping bag and together we continued our conversation until we felt something heavy work its way onto our legs on the cot. It was dark but we could see it was a large snake.

We decided the best plan was to keep absolutely still until it left. But it curled up and went to sleep. After what seemed like a couple hours, Colleen could take it no longer and decided to get out of the sleeping bag and run, which she did. At that point, she rudely disrupted the sleep of the snake, who got mad and struck out. I was left alone and so it bit me on my knee and foot as I too escaped.

We went immediately to the camp counselor and woke her up and told her what happened. She laughed and said it was unlikely. We took her to my cot, where the snake was back to sleep. When she saw it she nearly fell over the cot next to mine trying to back away. I have such a visual memory of this event.

She then went and woke up the camp nurse and people in charge. They made a tourniquet around my upper leg and raced me to an emergency room. They cut open the two places where the snake had bit me; the snake fang marks were still there. I don't remember what else they did. In my memory they drew out a lot of blood from the sites of the bites, but that could just be a child's image of what happened. They said it was either a side winder or a blue racer from the descriptions. But if it was a side winder, I think I would have been dead, don't you?

A blue racer; from animalspot.net

In any case, they took me back to camp, with bandages. The worst part was that they wouldn't let me swim the rest of the week. I was pretty bummed about that.

When my mom came to pick me, up no one told her what had happened. I described it all to her on the way home and showed her where the snake had bit. She had a hard time believing it, but eventually, seeing where the bites had been, she did. I had scars over those two places for several years. I still remember it was my right knee and left foot where it bit me.

Since then I haven't much liked snakes. Guess they don't like me either. One day when we lived on our ten acres I was getting ready to do some wash. I opened the lid and saw that the inside tub rim at the top was all curvy. It looked like the rim had melted or something. Then it moved! I screamed, closed the lid, and Bill came running, When he opened the lid, the snake was still there. He went to get our nearest neighbor, Spence Wimer, who brought his BB gun and killed the snake right there inside the washing machine.

We've since had more encounters with snakes when we lived on land in Athens, Ohio, but nothing so dramatic as the ones shared here. When I was in ninth grade, I wrote my narrative story about this event (the story that Ray Bradbury read--if you saw that blog).

A Father to the Fatherless: Healing for the Heart

Our next five years in Oklahoma were ones of deep healing. Healing from many diseases, but mainly healing from the loss of Nepal and all that meant in my body and soul. The next blogs will show lots more photos and tell of significant events, but this one will highlight the biggest thing God did for me.

Through God’s Word He showed me His view of fatherhood. Through the gift of my husband’s tears He showed me His view of fatherhood. Through the gift of being fathered and cared for by our pastor, Dow Robinson He showed me His view of fatherhood. I learned and rested in the fact that God IS my Father and He was all I needed. This brought healing to the fear of fatherhood I had experienced in childhood. Here is my recounting of how that healing happened and how I began to rest in my Father's love.

I then saw that through many men He has shown me a father’s love and care. But I never knew it was Him. Only now have I seen Him. Only now have I known the truth—that HE is my dad and will always provide for me and be there loving me: to let me sit on His lap and to be a child with all my faults and immaturities—forever loved by my eternal Father. He alone is “a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling” (Ps. 68:5). How grateful I am for His constant care of so many years.

So how did God change my heart and fill that empty spot? He saw that it was time and laid in place our first big move in 6 years—from Oklahoma to Kentucky. I was pleased and excited. And I got sick. One Sunday morning as I was struggling with the delay we were having in moving, and with being sick, I began to weep. As Bill began to pray for me, he too touched the pain. And THEN God touched my heart and I knew that the pain of moving was the pain of a 6 year old girl whose father had left her, whose father didn’t love her. It was the pain and sickness of a 6 year old who had blocked out her relationship to her father as unreal and superficial and that it didn’t matter anyhow. BUT IT DID.

And slowly God touched the pain and opened my blinded eyes and I saw that my father had loved me and that I loved him. Memories came back of the relationship we did have and the only love he was able to give. And I wept—this time for gratefulness, because this time I knew it was my Heavenly Father who had come to me and healed my heart, and the heart of a six year old.

And over the weeks that followed, as God showed me His provision of father throughout my life, I began to wonder how my mother fit into all of this: my mother who was always there and always caring. Then one day as I was being prayed for, and God was bringing to a completion my physical healing, I received a hug from a dear friend, Kay Camenisch, who was praying for me. She was a mother of four. I knew the hug was special and that God had imparted something new. I asked her if she knew what it was. She said it was the Father’s love. And suddenly I knew, and said to her with a deep assurance, “Yes, it was the Father’s love, but He sent it through a mother.” And the circle became complete, as I saw how God had so richly provided His love through both men and women in my life. And His provision was perfect and complete.

So now I know that my Heavenly Father loves me deeply and tenderly. And I recog­nized Him as my dad, both then and now, and that only in Him will my heart ever find rest. The rest comes in knowing that I am a child of my Heavenly Father. And like Jesus, my birth was really not a human decision or a husband’s will (John 1:12-13). But it is my Heavenly Father who has called me into life. Indeed, He is a Father to the fatherless, and the lover of my soul. 

Life in Community -- A Journey through Our Family’s First Year Back in the US

Our first year of living in the US was one of getting used to stateside living, yet another culture. It also meant living in the context of a loving, living covenant community of others who loved and followed Jesus. And this was very good. So what did and does that mean to me? Well, here's my answer. This will be a little different than my other posts as it's organized topically because I want to bring out what I think are the key points of a time in our life that laid a foundation for the decades to come. To this day, these are touchstones for our daily life.

Being in community means you’re not alone, that God’s people are there to support and encourage you in the bonds of the very real covenant that Jesus made with us. We worshiped together and we went places together. We did things together and just hung out together. We celebrated every chance we could. Meetings were full of God’s Presence and on September 5, 1979, I wrote, “Last Saturday was Dow's (Robinson) and Richard’s (McAfee) ordinations, with Bob Mumford and Paul Petrie present to pray over them and give the commission and blessing. Really beautiful.” Plus this year we began to listen to recorded messages by Rebecca Petrie on what it means as women to follow Jesus. Her insights still impact me and many others today. Now there are her two books, both very powerful, which I had the privilege of editing.

Being in community means hearing, giving and receiving God’s Word and His words. It means worship together around the throne, praising God with others who love Him. It means sharing deeply in communion with Him and one another. During this year the Lord spoke many words to me, with similar content to this one, “Continue in My love. But be careful of the little traps that would rob your joy and pulse. Look to Me and receive from Me your life and I will bless you as I blessed Abraham and Sarah. My covenant is with you and My desire is toward you. You are one with Bill and with Me. We walk together…..Now believe Me for good things. Walk with Me into the land. The giants are slain—though they appear to be alive. Stay close and I will guide you. And take your husband’s hand. We walk together."

Being in community means you are surrounded by people who will pray with you in the middle of problems and do all they can to help. This first year in the states I continued sick with more bouts of typhoid, and colon pain and problems. They also discovered one large tumor on my uterus which resulted in a hysterectomy to remove the grapefruit size growth, fortunately benign. The community jumped in to help with our kids and meals. And my "baby" sister, Nancy, came from California to help care for me and the family during recuperation. We were so blessed! Later we were even more blessed when she and Orv decided to move to Norman to be closer to us and this community of people who loved and followed Jesus. We loved having family close too. Here you can see all of them and their three kids with all of us. 

Being in community means close communication with someone who pastors you. Our pastor (the same meaning as the word "shepherd") is the one that knows us and cares for us, not just the person that runs the church and preaches each Sunday. For us this meant many good times of sharing with Dow and Lois over meals and private conversations; a deep and lasting friendship. Dow really became a father to us, one whose profound relationship with his Heavenly Father carried over with us. And they prayed for us regularly. One thing they prayed for and helped me release was a fear of death in general, and cancer in particular (like my mother’s). With all the illnesses I had been experiencing, I was sure I was soon to die and was paying for my sins of years ago during college. Well, as you know, I’m still here at 70 years old. And I'm no longer afraid of death. I know who holds the keys to life and death and I’m content to leave those decisions in His Hands. 

 

Being in community means doing your work with all your heart. Bill had been assigned to Wycliffe’s Printing Arts Department in Dallas to continue the work with the Devanagari typesetting project. This meant the work assignment, not another move, at least for now. It meant Bill would see his hard work help Bible translations for Nepali people groups come to life, in the script they could read, Devanagari. For me, during this year, I began to help out in the kids’ school one day a week, something I enjoyed very much.

Being in community means that you aren’t perfect parents and you continue to learn and grow for the rest of your life. We had a large church school in Oklahoma City that the kids attended the first year. My journal says: "They did well academically, but Jonathan especially struggled with self-discipline and following directions and seemed to have no desire to change these attitudes. So Bill outlined some new restrictions and penalties for him." These are, to this day, painful memories for Bill. There was so much we didn’t know about parenting and had to learn the hard way. What our kids needed most was our love and acceptance, to know how valued they were in our eyes and heart, and still are! 

Here you can see Bill and Jonathan building their own seismograph. Probably today in Oklahoma it would really work with all the fracking, since it would have taken an earthquake next door to record anything!

Here are our two precious kids together.  They always spent a lot of time together and usually got along well! The next picture is Jenny's 7th birthday, shared with Allison Wimer and Julia Niven.

Being in community means spending time with people in distress. This includes marriage issues, depression, illness, and unbelief. Since I’d struggled with all those, Father brought many different people into my life. He still does. During this time Bill also began to help some of the people in the community. It seems hard to believe now that in our mid-thirties there would be people who would be looking to us for help and counsel in God’s Word and ways. We gave them what we had and Father did the rest; nothing much has changed that way. This year we also attended a Bill Gothard seminar and learned many Biblical truths that began to shape how we related to God, each other, the kids and the rest of our friends near and far. 

But I think the biggest thing I learned this year was that I truly was of value in God's eyes. I had always believed myself of little value or worth. It was for this reason early on I actively decided to try "to do things of eternal value if I couldn’t be something of eternal value." It was part of why I wanted to be a Bible translator. Can you guess what God healed and what I learned? His value, acceptance and righteousness are all I ever need. His are eternal and His goodness is ever toward me. Derek Prince said, “Jesus bore our rejection that we might have His acceptance with the Father.”

Being in community means we have family worldwide. We continued to hear good things from our village friends, telling us of more Tharu believers and a growing church. Kissan Rawat (our friend, language teacher and co-translator) wrote that he was sharing our translated books of Mark and half of Genesis in the Tharu language and that “interest is high.” In March we had a visit from a friend who had visited our village, taken slides and brought us a tape recorded message from our friends. “It was delightful to hear all of their voices again even if they all wanted to know when we are returning.” We were already beginning to think about how and when a return visit would happen. In His time it would. In the meantime we prayed, and we also loved every visit we had from all our expat friends from Nepal.

Being in community means times of rest and refreshment. December took us to California to spend Christmas with Bill’s family—a real treat and joy in spite of spiraling gas prices. It meant a trip to Disneyland for the kids and us, and a time with my sister and her family before they moved to Oklahoma near us. Plus it meant a visit with long-time Santa Barbara friends Martin and Deidre Bobgan and family. By this time they had begun to author books and other materials on the importance of Bible counseling in contrast to psychological counseling. Returning to Oklahoma in January brought lots of fun, snow and ice, which the kids especially loved. 

Refreshment this year for me also included a summer at home, the first summer we had ever had without work or children’s programs. No traveling—just home, friends and time  together. We also had on loan for the year the trampoline that SIL used during the summer for the children's program. It was a popular item. On the left you can see my sister with her two sons David and Daniel along with Jenny and Jonathan. On the right are Jonathan and Tad Wimer with Jenny and Allison Wimer sitting and waiting their turn. Back in "the old days" there were no protective surrounds. We are grateful there were no accidents that year. 

Being in community means you don’t always get your own way. We were organized into small groups and during during this year, at Dow's request, we changed from one group to another. We felt we didn’t fit in the new one and struggled, but we learned that yielding to Father and His placements is the only way to work through problems. We always thought people should initiate toward us if there was a problem, but now Father was showing us Jesus’ way of reconciling broken relationships. Jesus listened to Father, didn’t heal everyone and didn’t call everyone into his circle of 3, or even the 12. But each one was fitted into His purposes and life. And we were learning contentment. Below is a picture taken at a cabin at Lake Tenkiller where we sometimes went to take retreats with Dow and Lois and some of the gang. All of these in the first photo below--Dow, Miriam, Mel and Michael--now have the best retreat of all, in heaven with Jesus and each other. Some of the rest of you may recognize yourselves in the second picture including, Dick and Sue Niven and Kim Foster!

 

Being in community means there are always surprises around the next bend, and unexpected blessings. During this year “the Lord brought us the sweetest puppy ever—a pure toy poodle we’ve named Muffie cuz she looks like a walking muff ball. She was born Sept. 9 (we got her at ten weeks old). We all love her already.” We had Muffie for ten good years before she died. 

Then the biggest surprise: at the end of the year I was asked to teach kindergarten and first grade next year in the school our church was beginning near our home. With great joy I accepted the assignment and jumped in with a whole heart. I knew that would require super God-given energy and wisdom. It also meant restoring the place that was to become the base for the school—on heavily wooded acres. It took a community to get it done. Here’s a picture before renovations. Bill’s parents came for a long stay during the summer and ended up helping out too! The group photo is a shot of all the kids who were enrolled the first year of NCA, New Covenant Academy.

When the school opened I immediately loved my 12 kindergarten and first grade students. But it was during this year, using A-Beka curriculum, that the desire to author some primers based on Biblical truths and principles was born in my heart, ones that would truly let kids read and learn about God's Word, Who God is and how He runs the universe. More about that later.

Being in community means we keep growing. Since we've been in the US full time, we've moved a bunch (having purchased nine homes and sold eight, not counting the places we've rented). With each move our community of friends and loved ones keeps growing...,the circle of friendship larger and larger, friends for life. We are rich indeed!

Being in community is The Way of Love, summed up in I Corinthians 13 (The Message translation):

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.