Guess who's coming to dinner

My mother didn't get to finish her tablecloth. When we moved my parents from their farm in Kansas to Palo Alto and later to Bakersfield, she began to crochet it.   ... star by star.  Her hands were work-worn from years of raising chickens, planting and hoeing gardens, picking the fruits and vegetables then canning and freezing them, beginning her washday Mondays at 4 A.M.  by heating water to the boiling point on the old wood stove in the wash house, and finally bringing from the clotheslines sheets, pillow cases, towels,  heavy overalls and all the washables that were required for running a one hundred-sixty acre farm and farmhouse. Her house was always immaculate, despite her daily battle with wind-blown dust.  My daughter Dee still talks about her grandmother's neatly folded, ironed, snow-white stacked linens.  Mine aren't.

My brothers were gone from our home by the time I was  eight years old.  My grandmother became bedridden with diabetes. Her leg was amputated and gangrene set in.  There were no hospice nurses then; my mother and dad cared for her while keeping the farm producing food for our table, grain for the feeding of the livestock and poultry and hopefully enough of a surplus to sell in order to  pay off the mortgage that was forced upon them during the depression.  I was resentful toward my grandmother. ... repulsed by the odors and the ugliness of dying.  After the light that emulated from her quiet life was extinguished when I was fourteen,  I became so ashamed of my attitude.  I truly believe it was that sin that brought me to repentance when first I heard the Gospel at nineteen. .

Years later I knew that Ted and I somehow had to release my parents from that Kansas farm that was sapping the life out of them. At our insistence they sold the farm and moved to Palo Alto/San Jose where we were in our first post-seminary pastorate with Ray and Elaine Stedman.  Elaine Stedman is now 92,  living in Medford, Oregon;  Ray has long been with Jesus.  I also stay connected with 91-year-old Harriet and 92-year-old Betty; . ...all three from that first ministry with Ray where we received our practical training for ministry.  We learned that a biblical church is based upon discipleship, rather than a pulpit star's sermons. Ray's excellent messages on the website "RayStedman.org" reach many more people than they ever did when he was still here on earth.

It was Ray and my Ted who led my 75-year-old dad to Jesus when he lay in a hospital bed in Palo Alto. The beautiful saints in Peninsula Bible Church gathered my parents into their Christ-arms and loved them both to Himself.  We moved them to Bakersfield later where the saints in Fruitvale Community Church displayed to them the love of Christ.  When we moved to Houston, my brother in Kansas provided a home for them.  One of the greatest agonies of my life was that I could not care for my parents until they died.  I cried often, sometimes screaming with pain into my bathroom towel so the neighbors wouldn't hear.

News: Yesterday a mother who was brought to join the "Thursday girls"  by her new Christian daughter came to know Jesus. The Gospel Singalong last Friday night was such joy to offer to the community. I can't offer a recording of it to you just yet. I am hatching up some ideas for more singing celebrations. ...probably in my home with small groups of Christians and their friends who may not know Jesus. My dining table is always set for receiving "angels unawares".  All of my beds are ready to be slept in by those He brings.  This next weekend son Jeff and dear daughter-in-law Carla will be here.  I had lunch with Sue and five of her friends from Bakersfield last Saturday at a restaurant in Tehachapi. They will be coming for an overnight soon. Michele and I will be in Round Top, Texas from October 9th until the 18th.  Carole and her daughter Lisa will be coming from Houston in November

Recently in my sewing room I found eighteen of those little crocheted stars my mother made that have waited all these years for me to stitch them together and center them in a pretty frame where they grace my lovely downstairs guest room. The tablecloth that was never completed blesses more people now than it might have had she finished it before she went to Heaven.

What will remain unfinished when I leave this earth? Will all I should have forgiven remain unforgiven?  Will all strained relationships be healed?  Will I leave behind a legacy of love and grace that will draw people to Jesus and not to me?

Many years ago in our first pastorate in Bakersfield,  California  the "Choralaires" sang for church, many kinds of clubs and gatherings in and out of town and once a week taped five five- minute segments called "Jo's Kitchen" that were broadcast on Family Radio from San Francisco to Phoenix.  Early this morning when I called my best friend Char to help me recall the words to this song that we sang so many years ago these were all we could remember.  If some of you former Choralaires are reading this blog and can remember more of the words, please Email them to me.

How rich I am since Jesus came my way
Redeemed my soul and turned my night to day
How rich, how very rich I am.

...and I am!

Love,  Jo

God's ways...

We had been in Houston for awhile and were not pastoring a church for the first time in many years.   Our Sundays had been crammed full of meetings and people for decades. Ted was loving being free to watch sports on TV like every other jock in America.   I, on the other hand moped around on Sundays when we weren't at Round Top, in Monroe, Louisiana ministering to students at Louisiana Tech (Yep! the home of the "Duck Dynasty" family),  or at Shakey's Pizza Parlor on Sunday morning where we met with singles who hang out on Westheimer Boulevard.  Ted was known as the "Pizza Pastor". Through the week we were all over Houston, having "Search" meetings in homes.  I was on KSBJ, a kid's heavy metal music station. How?  Why? We had moved to Kingwood hoping I wouldn't be bedridden some days from allergies to mold and pine, but it didn't work. I was still sick; however the beautiful woods, lakes and biking trails gave me relief from the fire engines and helicopters and never-ending sounds of traffic. Copper head snakes were on the trails.  I just squished 'em with my bike tires and went on pedaling. ...sort of like what we do with the devil: squish him with scripture! One afternoon I listened to KSBJ, the new heavy metal station that was located right down the road and thought that something should be done to break the monotony of hours of ear-blasting music.  ...so I called Buddy, the manager whom I had met all the way across Houston in Missouri City on a Sunday night where a renegade Church of Christ crowd met to lift the roof right off  "The Barn" as they sang without instruments.  ...not unlike the Kenyans in Africa who sing with only a thrum of the drums in the background.  That's where I had met Buddy...and Mike Richardson and his beautiful wife, Cynthia.  Mike, a Christian conservative had been on radio for years and was then running for Senator; ...or something.  We were meeting all kinds of people.  With that card to play I walked into Buddy's office at KSBJ radio and said: "Buddy, you need some variety on your station.  How about giving me some time every morning to interview interesting people I'm meeting?"   "Uh...Well, .O.K., Jo, let's try it!" Now, that's the kind of Christian I love to hang around.  For three years I lugged my little tape recorder all over Houston, interviewing people I had met that I knew would bring the radio audience, kids and all some perspective and encouragement.  I found those old KSBJ tapes the other day and put them aside for a snowy day next winter when I am feeling useless.

The music on the station sounded just like what the world plays so I was getting calls from kids in the drug-selling business, one of whom asked: "Who is this Jesus you keep talking about?  I've never heard of Him."  I told her to go buy a Bible. She did and called me back. I told her where to turn to scriptures that led her to Christ.  For a year she called me once a week from a pay phone,  I fed her scriptures that began to heal her wounded soul. ...but she wouldn't leave her live-in boy friend who headed up a drug gang.  One time he caught her reading the Bible, beat her up and left her for dead in a ditch alongside Highway 59.  When she regained consciousness she crawled up onto the highway,  a Christian woman truck driver saw her,  picked her up and took her to Baton Rouge, carried her into ER,   paid for her treatment and went on her way. Several weeks later Jill  (Let's call her "Jill".)  called me. She was back in town. "Why did you come back?"  "You don't understand. They will find me and you will read in the paper that an unidentified woman has been found dead in a dumpster. Besides, you are here."  We continued our once-a-week discipleship-by-pay-phone. ...then came a day when Jill didn't call. I had met another young woman who was connected with this same drug gang. She called me and said, "Jo, Jill called me screaming as her door was splintered open by her boy friend. He shot her. She's dead!"   No. She isn't. I will meet Jill for the first time. ... in Heaven

Ted and I were together on a more traditional radio station: KHCB. Once a week we fielded live questions that ran along the line of needing help for basic couple disagreements.  Ted and I had had a few of those and shared openly; ... which isn't exactly what Texans do.  The audience loved us because we didn't preach to them. Ted was meeting in the early mornings with business men, with pastors and all through the day with all kinds of people that heard us on radio. So was I.  ...but silly me, I missed the pastorate!  Here's a little FYI about some pastors. ... lovable, flexible, faithful Ted Stone, for one. These guys will travel thousands of miles to preach to a handful of people but won't walk across the street to listen to another pastor preach.  I tried to start a home church. It fizzled. I tried to start a church in a community center. It went belly-up.  About this time, we had to move back into our city house because our renters were trashing it out and had not paid one cent of rent in the year and a half we had lived in Kingwood. As Ted was ready to put the last finishing coat on the hardwood floors, an arsonist came in the night, threw a match in a bucket of varnish and all of our work was turned into one black gooey mess.  A wonderful family who specialized in restoring burned houses and I headed into turning that home into a light  home with lots of glass that sold to the first people who came to look at it. ...in a totally flat market where no one was selling any houses.  Because an arsonist did the damage our insurance paid for all but $50 of the restoration cost.  Then Dee came back to California, my health went further into the pits and I went into a depression.  Ted Stone realized he had to get me to a dry climate. The Lord had already taken us to Houston by way of a  pastorate in order to turn us loose to disciple people. I should have suspected He would do it again.  He brought us to Bear Valley where a church building was needed. Ted and the people went to work and after three years a beautiful church was ready to receive the lost and the found. The price of the rental home in which we lived was lowered $130,000  by the doctor and his wife who owned it and wanted us to have it. Doctor Knudsen developed a brain tumor (just as did my Ted) and couldn't commute any more to Bakersfield.  His wife Joyce and Antje, our former neighbor up the mountain came yesterday for lunch and to meet the  "Thursday Girls".  They were blessed and they blessed us.  Joyce feels a part of everything that goes on in this hallowed house. ...and she should!  People were coming from many places for counseling and safety. We were on our way out of the church with walls, and once more in the ministry of the "church without walls".  Over the exit doors of the first church in Bakersfield that we pastored is this sign: "You are now entering your mission field!"  We brought them up that way. God has seen to it that we practice what we preach.  We joined the Associate Staff for training foreign missionaries with Campus Crusade for Christ.  Hundreds of those outstanding young candidates began to pour into our home.  Part of my on-going ministry by blog is to those precious people who are scattered around the world.

We belong to a Royal Family: the Family of God. ...and what a Family we are!  I am not quite gentle enough to get to go Home.  It took a lifetime for Sarah to be called "gentle and quiet".  The Big Battle we face started with her taking God's business into her own hands,  hating the result and blaming everybody else. ...same with Eve. ...so does God use every terrible and wonderful thing we have ever experienced?  Oh, yes, He does. ...everything!.   It's part of that Romans 8:28 verse we all know in our heads that moves deep into our souls as we discover the depth of the meaning of the word  "Sovereign".

A CD will be available of the Old Time Gospel Singalong will be available.  Let me know if you want it and I will send it to you.

                                  OLD GOSPEL SONG:  I SAW THE LIGHT

I wandered so aimless, my heart filled with sin
I wouldn't let my dear Savior in
Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night
Praise the Lord; I saw the Light.

I SAW THE LIGHT; I SAW THE LIGHT
NO MORE DARKINESS; NO MORE NIGHT
NOW I'M SO HAPPY, NO SORROW IN SIGHT
PRAISE THE LORD; I SAW THE LIGHT.

Love,  Jo

I don't remember how we met. 
Anyway, with my woebegone feeling because Ted wasn't pastoring a church and I didn't have a built-in job description, I was blind as one of the bats that comes zooming over my head in the early morning hours as I snooze on my deck.  Gratia calls.  Who is Gratia? ...an astronaut's wife who maybe heard me on radio, calls and asks if I will come and speak to a few high school kids in Clear Lake where the Johnson Space Center is located.  The "few kids" turn out to be a few hundred in a high school auditorium....and thus began four decades of a relationship with Gratia and Jack Lousma, now (sort of) retired from the space program.  On my wall hang three pictures of the lift off of Jack's ship, the Columbia, at Canaveral. Ted, son Jeff and I attended, then raced back to Houston in time for Jack's and his crew's re-entry.  Another picture on my wall is taken from one-hundred-seventy-five miles above the Mediterranean, the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea and the Suez Canal , and one more photo of the Columbia landing in White Plains, New Mexico because Houston was locked in by a storm, preventing their landing.   We hot-footed it back to Houston from Canaveral in time to be in Mission Control for Jack's landing. There we sit, midst a hundred or so scientists and NASA personnel, listening to Christian Jack up in space talking with Christian Steve in front of the monitors. "What are you doing, Jack?" "I'm opening my Bible to have devotions with my crew. We're reading Proverbs 3:5 & 6." ...which he proceeds to read out loud as scientists and NASA personnel listen in.  Long after Jack has been out of the Program, he continues to speak and host crowds of people who continue to visit Canaveral. Gratia has gone along with Jack for years for his speaking engagements,  sits by a premiere's or president's wife and quietly tells her about Jesus while Jack is showcased. For years, Gratia called me and said, "Jo,  I've got this idea!" ...and the shivers would race up my spine because I knew we were in for an adventure that would bring the Gospel to her collection of people. You wouldn't believe some of the wacko things we did. The wife of one of the guys that landed on the moon came to Jesus on one of those "wacko" adventures.  Years later, we were in Michigan speaking to Gratia's collection of people in Ann Arbor: street kids, Chinese students, U of Michigan students and a few faculty when it became evident that Ted was not "tracking". We flew home and started the downward, then upward trip that ultimately took Ted into space....with Jesus.  Gratia and Jack are back in Texas after years in Michigan. She's cookin' up something, and maybe I'll get a call before long:  "Jo, I've got an idea..." Whatawoman! ...and what a Man is Jack Lousma.

Nearly every day someone comes or calls that has been alongside us in partaking in the Greatest Story Ever Told, somewhere in these United States or in another country.  Just now I was feeling  like all the fun stuff is over and the phone rang, and it's Gideon: on his way home to the Navajo Indian Reservation where he lives with his dear wife, Alta.  Is that relationship over?  Probably not. My life is quiet now, because it has to be. My body is tired, but darn it, my heart just won't stop yearning for more people to come to Christ before He "raises me UP"!  

IN THE SWEET BY AND BY

Gideon and his truck have just left my driveway. He will cross the Mojave Desert and twelve hours from now will be reunited with his beloved wife, Alta on the Navajo Reservation where they live.  Gideon and I had breakfast on our deck before the sun came up, prayed together and he left by 6:30. An eternal friendship with Gideon and Alta started by his asking me to play "Amazing Grace" at the Apple Shed. In a week Gideon will host his brother from Israel. They will travel and sight-see together for many days.  Gideon's passionate desire: that his brother see Jesus in him. Do you remember his story? ...born and raised on a God-rejecting kibbutz in Israel. ...the son of Holocaust survivors who like many other Jews fled to Israel after the war.  Gideon has been transformed by the indwelling Christ.

How well I remember the awful rejection I felt from my family when I came to know Christ and He began to change me. I was called a "fanatic", "religious nut" and I have blocked out the other names.  My family separated from me. ....until my brother's wife left him and he called Ted and me in Minneapolis. ...in shock. We weren't shocked. My brothers were both self-serving, demeaning-to-women, controlling men. ..and to think I struggled with wanting to please both.  I, the little sister had been longing for validation even for my existence from both of them.  They were my "idols".  All of my life, the Lord has sent me people who have suffered in like manner.  When finally we are able to believe that Jesus deems us worth every drop of His blood ("Father, if Thou art willing, remove the cup from Me, yet not My will, but Thine be done." Luke 22:42)  our Lord begins the healing process.  For many, it takes a lifetime of reassurance.

Next Friday night, the 19th,  at 6:30  Gayel, Frank, Maria, Michele and I will play and sing about Heaven along with whoever shows up to sing with us at Country Oaks Baptist Church on Schout Road.  I will send you a link when this Singalong has been uploaded for viewing.

THIS WORLD IS NOT MY HOME; I'LL FLY AWAY; UNCLOUDED DAY; I SAW THE LIGHT
JUST A LITTLE TALK WITH JESUS; POWER IN THE BLOOD; GIVE ME THAT OLD TIME RELIGION; LEANING ON THE EVERLASTING ARMS; VICTORY IN JESUS; DRINKING AT THE SPRINGS OF LIVING WATER; OLD RUGGED CROSS; STANDING ON THE PROMISES; IN THE SWEET BY AND BY; IT IS NO SECRET; BLESSED ASSURANCE; LIFE IS LIKE A MOUNTAIN RAILROAD; HE'S THE LILY OF THE VALLEY; A NEW NAME IN GLORY; PRECIOUS LORD, TAKE MY HAND; WHAT A FRIEND WE HAVE IN JESUS; I'VE GOT A MANSION JUST OVER THE HILLTOP; HOW GREAT THOU ART; SHALL WE GATHER AT THE RIVER? PEACE IN THE VALLEY; JUST A CLOSER WALK WITH THEE; I'D RATHER HAVE JESUS; FARTHER ALONG WE'LL KNOW ALL ABOUT IT; CHURCH IN THE WILDWOOD; ARE YOU WASHED IN THE BLOOD; AT CALVARY; TO GOD BE THE GLORY; TELL ME THE OLD OLD STORY; ALL HAIL THE POWER OF JESUS' NAME; PASS ME NOT O GENTLE SAVIOUR; SOFTLY AND TENDERLY JESUS IS CALLING; TRUST AND OBEY AND AMAZING GRACE.

As we lead these Heaven-songs, may we DEcrease so that Jesus can INcrease.  Praise You, dear Jesus, for however you want to use these songs written by the saints who are with you in Heaven now.  In Jesus' Precious Name.  Amen.

                                        IN THE SWEET BY AND BY

There's a land that is fairer than day and by faith we can see it afar
For the Father waits over the way to prepare us a dwelling place there

To our bountiful Father above we will offer our tribute of praise
For the glorious gift of His love and the blessings that hallow our days.

IN THE SWEET BY AND BY, WE SHALL MEET ON THAT BEAUTIFUL SHORE
IN THE SWEET BY AND BY WE SHALL MEET ON THAT BEAUTIFUL SHORE

Love, Jo

Some from every tribe and nation....

Last Friday night my new friend Gideon and his dear Navajo wife Alta from Arizona,  Kate, a friend of mine and I sat around my deck fireplace and sang old hymns together: "Blessed Assurance",  "Trust and Obey",  'What a Friend We Have in Jesus",  and many others that would bless the hearts of many who miss those old hymns written by the saints who await us in Heaven.  Gideon and Alta sang one of their favored hymns for us in their native language. What joy unspeakable!  Each told our story to one another. ...the story of how Jesus found us and has never left us.  Gideon and Alta, now married eight years love each other dearly. Their faith in their mutual Savior is the glue that bonds them, transcending cultural differences.  Gideon still speaks with a thick Israeli accent,  Alta speaks perfect English.  She suffered the loss of both kidneys many years ago and by a miracle of the Lord lives with a young New Yorker's kidney sustaining her life. She is a nurse to kidney-challenged patients in an Arizona hospital. I felt so lonely after they all left.  Kate, my precious new friend who shops for groceries for me now and comes once a week to cook nutritious food has a cute little rescued pooch she sometimes brings with her. Name: Lucy Lou.  Lucy wears a yellow vest around her round little belly. It seemed to Kate and me that that vest needed to be gussied up so I found in my stash of accumulated sewing scraps a hand-crocheted bit of lace that my dear friend Euphanel and I had purchased in a craft shop somewhere on a Texas backroad over thirty years ago.  The night of the Fireside Singalong Lucy Lou snuggled up under my lap blanket in her ruffled vest, went to sleep and snored as we worshipped under the stars.  Gideon's work as an electrical contractor takes him far away from home for months at a time. Would you pray, if God leads you to, that the Lord will give him work closer to the reservation in Arizona so that he and his lovely wife can be together?

Friday night's singing together reminded me of a night in Dalat, Viet Nam. In the living room of  missionaries Dr. and Mrs. Bernie Ericcson  Ted and I stood in a circle with those two,  Dr. Ray Benson and his wife from Billings, Montana,  Sai, Chief of the Su Tong Tribe,  Sao's two sons who had renamed themselves "Jimmy and Johnny",  and the two of us.  We were singing in English and attempting to follow Sao's lead in singing in their tribal language. I felt a similar chill on Friday night, as Kate and I sang with a Messianic Hebrew and a Navajo Indian, thinking about how we will be singing with Jesus' family from every tribe and nation at the Throne. ...in the same language. When I quote this oft-repeated statement of Ted's I always weep, and right now the tears are trickling down my cheeks: "When the last one accepts Christ,  He will say: 'That's it. I'm wrappin' it up! Come on HOME !' "  Come, Lord Jesus.  Some days I indeed "groan" to be with You.

Several years ago an organizer of summer musicals-in-the-park asked if I would entertain with a Gospel Singlong but "Please don't mention the Name of'  'Jesus' for that would be offensive to some people." As much as I love to entertain, I knew I needed to pass on this one.  There are piano players watching the obituaries hoping to find my name there so they can take my place at the Apple Shed.  I won't quit until the back pain cannot be stanched by medication.  How else would I have met Gideon and his lovely wife?  Some caring friend called my daughter Dee and asked her if she knew her mother had brought a single man home from the Apple Shed.  Her answer: "Of course she did".  Does God protect me?  He always has and I assume that He always will. ...and what's that scripture about "entertaining angels unawares"?  ...and then came another unexpected overnight guest: Maria. ...a musician friend from years ago.  She has moved north to Lone Pine where she teaches high school students. I needed a bass player to round out a band to lead a Gospel Singalong Gayel Pitchford has asked me to lead for the upcoming Old Time Fiddler's gathering on Friday night, September 19.  I traced down Maria, not really thinking she would make the trip down here to play with us, but praying that she would.  She came,  joined Frank, Gayel and me and the Lord lovingly let me recapture the joy I feel when I play with His hand-picked musicians to sing His praises.  Michele will join us to sing, and probably some of the Old Time Fiddlers will come up on the stage and join us too. .After rehearsal Maria came on out to the house to stay the night and we had such a lovely time together.  I can't entertain the 5,000 any more, but His selections of the ones and twos?  Oh, yes!

I have experienced a nagging "heaviness"  for several weeks. This morning I read in Isaiah 61:  "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me..........to appoint unto those who mourn in Zion......the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness...".  He has lifted that heaviness, replacing it with praise.


                                            OLD HYMN: BLESSED BE THE NAME

All praise to Him who reigns above in majesty supreme
Who gave His Son for man to die that He might man redeem

BLESSED BE THE NAME; BLESSED BE THE NAME;
BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD!
BLESSED BE THE NAME, BLESSED BE THE NAME
BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD!

His Name shall be the Counsellor, the mighty Prince of Peace
Of all earth's kingdoms Conqueror whose reign shall never cease
CHORUS

Love, Jo

I have just looked up on Google under "Homer Dowdy//Su Tong Tribe/ Viet Nam" and to my amazement found under "Family Life Resources" something I have written about this tribe. You will be blessed...especially about the "white army". The book: "The Bamboo Cross".    J.