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.