Category Archives: family

family

Ephraim’s first big adventure

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You all might be wondering why I haven’t posted more this month. Of course the bout with pneumonia was the first thing. Then Tuesday night I came down with a stomach/intestinal virus of some sort. All “action” was done by Wednesday morning, but I too weak and tire to go to work. So I slept in, then spent time between the couch and my reading chair–not reading but just laying my head back. By the end of the day my stomach felt much better and I had a little energy. Still went to bed about 10 PM.

But, the other reason for my lack of writing is: grandson Ephraim is with us! We have kept him a time or two before, but only for a night and a day while the kids got away. With son-in-law Richard in Boston on a two-week residency for his doctor of ministry degree, daughter Sara and wife Lynda decided we would keep Ephraim for at least one of those weeks, allowing Sara to get caught up with many things around the house. So last weekend we made the drive to Oklahoma City and drove him back to Bella Vista.

So far, all is well. Mother-in-law Esther came out from Bentonville to stay with us and help out. Ephraim knows grandma real well from all the times she’s stayed with them, but not grandpa so much. So I’ve had to work hard to get him to warm up to me. It’s working. He’s letting to read to him, and enjoys when I build block towers that he can knock down.

On Tuesday night (before I knew I was coming down with that thing) he let me do the honors of reading and rocking before bedtime. After reading, I took him into his room and sang to him–not baby songs, but some of the old hymns of the church. Then I prayed with him–not baby prayers, but a grown-up prayer for his sleeping through the night and getting over the little bit of cold that is lingering in him. When I put him in his crib he was not asleep, yet he laid down fine with no complaints. This is a change, for when Lynda does that he cries and wants her to hold him and rock him some more. Ah, it must be grandpa’s touch.

I think the current plan is that daughter Sara will drive up to see us this weekend, but will leave Ephraim here for another week. That’s fine with me, though it may continue to put a crimp in my writing. That’s okay, as he will never be 20 1/2 months again. Writing can wait.

family, miscellaneous

The Best Laid Plans…

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Yesterday afternoon, 5:30 PM to be precise, I was basking in the solitude of a quiet house, and the prospect of several days with evenings to myself and the time to begin work on my new writing gig while at the same time work on this blog and articles for Suite101.com.

Then a call came from my wife. She drove our daughter and grandson back to OKC yesterday (son-in-law having left the day before that to be in his pulpit Sunday morning). It seems our daughter did not have her main suitcase; would I check in the basement bedroom? Sure enough, there it was. She had said something to me about her suitcase still downstairs and might have asked if I would bring it up, but that was 30 or more minutes before they left. I asked her right as she left if she had everything from downstairs. She said yes, I suppose assuming I had gone downstairs to get the suitcase. I almost asked her to go down and make one more sweep. Should have.

We made tentative plans to meet tonight, maybe in Tulsa, and do the transfer. Meanwhile Lynda did some checking on-line, and determined a bus company had a bus leaving from Rogers at 1:50 AM and would have the suitcase in Oklahoma City by 2:30 PM. I spent some time debating whether to do that, or just to wait and see what I could do today, since my office is just a couple of miles from that bus stop. I decided to not be lazy and instead to tie up the suitcase, put it in the pickup, and drive the 15 miles. I got there at 12:30 AM. The bus would arrive at 1:30 AM. I had a pleasant time reading in my current selection from the reading pile for that hour.

The bus arrived on time–Great! But then I learned that the driver can’t accept freight that wasn’t already ticketed. I would have to come back during normal business hours and have the agent ticketed. Oh, well, about two hours wasted, and a late night to bed. At 1:45 AM I headed home.

But, I must first backtrack. About a mile from the bus stop (which is at a convenience store at the highway exit), the truck began acting rough–loud engine noises. What was going on? Was it low oil level? I was several thousand miles behind on having it serviced. No, the oil pressure gauge showed good pressure. I left the convenience store and headed home, deciding to drive through town and avoid the high speeds of the convenient Interstate. This took me right past our new office, the Ford garage near the office, and the Wal-Mart Supercenter. However, despite the rough sounds of the engine and the oil pressure gauge now pegged at zero, I kept going.

It got to sounding so bad that I decided to stop at the Phillips 66 station/convenience store in Bella Vista. In the near darkness I couldn’t really see what the oil level was, but it looked low. I put in two quarts, started the car, and the oil pressure gauge showed a good level. Headed down the road and the gauge pegged zero within a block. I stopped, checked to make sure I had the cap on tight, and decided to drive the remaining seven miles home. When I got there I was too wound up to go to bed, so finished the chapter in the book and got to bed at 3 AM.

Up at 7:30 AM, called the Ford garage four miles from the house, and after I described the problem they said to drive it in. Got there at 8:10 AM. Sat till 8:45 AM, when they told me the engine was blown. It was just a matter of time before it locked up, maybe a mile, maybe a month. Why did it do that, I asked them? Low oil? Oil pump quit? Long term damage that just reached a critical point between 12:30 and 2:00 AM on a Monday morning? No way to know. I waited some time at the dealership before telling them to go ahead. And while they are at it, to check the clutch too. The other Ford garage told me a year ago it was bad, and I’ve been nursing it, trying to get by for as long as possible.

They gave me a loaner for the duration. Went home, ate an early lunch, headed to the bus depot, got the bag on the 12:30 PM departure, and arrived at the office.

With my equilibrium and my tranquility quite upset. Haven’t gotten much done today, but will try to knuckle down as soon as I get this posted. Did I cause the engine damage by letting the servicing go? Was it just time for it to happen, and it happened in the wee hours when my back-up transportation and cell phone was in Oklahoma City? All I know is the outcome, which is in a week I will be considerably poorer, with my emergency fund, auto repair fund, and savings significantly drained.

family

Paul Jackson, R.I.P.

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Paul Jackson, a song evangelist in the Church of the Nazarene for almost forty years, died today after a two year battle with cancer. Paul and his wife, Trish (Pohl) Jackson–my wife’s cousin–were the evangelistic team known at Jetstream Ministries, or simply Jetstream. They spent those years traveling from church to church, setting up and tearing down their equipment sometimes twice a day for services. They did puppets, drama, songs, preaching, recitations, instrumentals, the works. Parts of their ministry included the Country Gospel Music Association, at which they both and together won multiple awards, and the Christian Motorcycle Association.

Paul is survived by his wife, his parents, a niece, and numerous friends. Services have not yet been announced, but will be in Meade, Kansas, surely at the Church of the Nazarene there (unless moved for a larger venue). I do not have an electronic picture of Paul, but will find something to scan and add to this. And I’ll try to offer a few rememberances of Paul in a subsequent post. I realize few readers of this blog knew Paul (and I realize few people will read this), but I want to celebrate the life of this man of God in the way I can.

family, travel

U-505

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As I mentioned a few days ago, on Friday during our trip to Chicago we went to the Museum of Science and Industry in the Hyde Park neighborhood. The museum was having a day of no admission (except for special exhibits), so the place was jammed. While I was glad to get in without any cost in money, the cost was in having to deal with the crowd. Lynda and Charles wanted to see the Harry Potter special exhibit; I didn’t. I’ve seen the five movies with Lynda, but haven’t read any of the books whereas she’s read all seven. I also had a problem with things so new being in a museum. Museums are for old stuff, not for things from a mere five to seven years ago, or less. So I avoided the Harry Potter exhibit.

So I used the time to see the U-505 exhibit. This is the World War 2 German U-boat that was captured intact by the US navy, towed to Bermuda and then on to the US east coast, where it was inspected, injected, dissected, folded, spindled, and mutilated.

The story of the capture is amazing, and well told in the exhibit. You begin with a television screen with Bill Curtis (of A&E channel fame) narrating a couple of minutes of the story, beginning with the havoc the U-boat wolf packs were having on our merchant marine fleet and crews. On the walls are various explanations of and expansions on what Curtis said. Then, just a few steps down the corridor was another TV monitor with the next few minutes of the story. At times the corridor opened into a room, giving more exhibits to go with the sequential narration. Once the narrations was done by “actors”. I think these were really projected on a screen, but it had a 3-D appearance behind a sheer curtain.

Eventually you arrive at the main hall, where the sub resides. All around the walls and on the floor around the sub were exhibits, mainly of the workings of the sub and its weaponry, but also of its capture. This is the first submarine I’ve seen out of the water, and getting a look at the diving planes and the trim tank was great. This gave “flesh” to what I’ve read in several books.

I was also amazed at the torpedoes. Two rested on platforms next to the sub, one in cut-away view and one mostly intact. The innards of the torpedo were quite complicated: motor; batteries; gyros for navigation system; warhead (or gas canister for floating a test torpedo); structural frame; skin. An exhibit also showed how these critters were loaded and launched, also putting before my eyes what I’ve read in books.

On the way out, the exhibits covered the relocation of the sub to Chicago after the navy was through with it, and then the construction of the building wing to house it and actually moving the sub to the open building then closing the building over the sub. As I wrote before, this was quite an engineering feat and worthy of showing. Except, that happened in 2003, so I’ll have to go back on my previous statement about museums showing only old stuff.

One part of the exhibit saddened me. The incredible complexity of the torpedoes demonstrated the huge effort that goes into making war. These fish are manufactured to tight tolerances. Each has a thousand parts. It’s a huge effort to make each one. This sub carried about twenty of them, and with a couple of hundred U-boats in the fleet, that means about 4,000 torpedoes were being moved at any given time. Add in equal amounts of American, British, Russian, Japanese, and you have a massive industrial work all for the purpose of killing others. Then add to that the sub itself, and the cost to humanity is geometric. How sad.

Still, if you are ever in Chicago and have the time, go see this exhibit. It’s well worth your time.

Christianity, family

Ordination

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I’m sitting in my office this noon hour with a storm raging about me. Not a figurative storm, but a literal storm. The tornado sirens sounded about 10 minutes ago, ran for five minutes then quit. The Weather Service has issued a tornado warning. A funnel cloud–no, perhaps two funnel clouds were spotted within striking distance of us. One NE of Gentry and one SE of Gravette. That’s probably the same storm. A rumor has it that one is also near Cave Springs, about 6 miles south of us. The wind is fierce, sky dark, rain heavy, lightning and thunder in close communication, and all who are in the office worried. Traffic has supposedly stopped on the state highway a mile and a half south of us.

I just went on walkabout throughout the building, and although radar says we are now in the worst of it, the sky has lightened. We’ll see.

Last week we attended the ordination service of the Southwest Oklahoma District of our denomination. This is, I think, the fourth ordination service I attended but the first one where I went for a purpose other than as a delegate. Our son-in-law, Richard L. Schneberger, was ordained. The way we do it is a minister is licensed once he or she has passed a course of study and been examined by a District Credentials board. This makes him/her legal with the State, and able to perform marriages. For ordination, we require a minimum of 2 years of active pastoral ministry or 4 years as a minister on staff–plus another examination by the credentials board.

Richard made it. He has been pastor of the church for the last year [there goes the tornado siren again], was a fill-in pastor for several months a couple of years ago, and was in staff ministries a couple of years. It all added up to enough; the Credentials dudes thought he was qualified; and he was ordained.

The ceremony was not solemn by any means, but it was reverent and exciting at the same time. We, like most Protestant churches, do not consider ordination a sacrament, but perhaps we should. What is more sacred, or a more outward sign of an inner grace, than for the bishop (a.k.a. General Superintendent) to lay his hands on the new minister and read the minister’s charge from the writings of Paul, then for a mentor to pray the prayer of ordination/dedication. To tell the ordinands to preach the word, minister to the sick and needy, administer the sacraments, and change the world. Truly this was an inspirational moment.

So go out there Rev. Richard and change the world. I am here in an inner room amid a fearsome storm, but you will be outside in an unstoppable storm that is leading to our Lord’s coming again. Things are not going to get better, only worse. The difficulties under which you will work are enough to crush someone who is not truly called of God for that purpose. Find your own inner place to pray and be strengthened. Heed the advice of the scripture and those who are senior to you in the ministry. As an ordained Elder in the Church of the Nazarene, help us laymen to dedicate our lives to spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The tornado warning in our area expires in one minute. The worst has passed us by. For you the storm continues. May God bring you, Sara, and Ephraim safely through the storm of ministry.

family, History

We Remember

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Everyone is gone now. Richard, Sara and Ephraim packed up and headed west a couple of hours ago. My mother-in-law is about to head back to her place in Bentonville. Lynda is in bed with a stomach flue. The kids brought it from Oklahoma City and we have all had it in succession (except me; my time may yet be coming). That put the damper on weekend activities, as did the rain. But we weren’t planning on cooking outside, so all it did was keep us from taking walks.

Yesterday I was called on to teach life group since my co-teacher was called in to work. I also had to start of the class with announcements, prayer requests and praises, etc. One of the things we normally try to do is have something humorous prepared to read. When Marion did this I called it “Marion’s words of wisdom.” Now that I generally do it I call it “Totally useless information.”

Yesterday, however, I gave them some statistics that were not useless, and in fact were quite important. Here they are.

American Revolution…25,324

War of 1812………………..2,260

Mexican War…………….13,283

Civil War…………………498,332

Spanish American War..3,289

World War 1…………….116,708

World War 2……………407,316

Korean War………………54,246

Vietnam War…………….58,159

Persian Gulf War……………200

Afghanistan War…………..610 and counting

Iraq War…………………..3,915 and counting

All statistics are approximate, based on the best sources I could find.

We remember the sacrifice.

And to those families who are represented by these statistics, we thank you for your gift to the nation.

family

My home has been invaded…

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…by family!

Wednesday night our daughter and son-in-law came in from Oklahoma City, bringing their son Ephraim with them, of course. My mother-in-law came out from Bentonville to stay with us, so we have much more than our normal quiet household of two aging baby boomers.

We baby-sat Ephraim last night while the kids went off to Eureka Springs for a belated anniversary celebration and time away. They’ll just be gone a night, coming back late today. Sara has high school class reunion over the weekend. So they will stay till Sunday or Monday.

Ephraim was a delight last night. Now a year and two weeks old, he’s not quite walking yet but does an amazingly fast crawl. We had baby-proofed the house somewhat, and got a bunch of toys out to keep him busy. It worked, and he didn’t spend too much time trying to get where he shouldn’t. He is a little too interested in the lap-top computer, but understands “no” and stops when you tell him to. He was kind of fussy when we put him to bed, and Lynda got him up for a late night snack. After that he was fine and we didn’t hear a peep out of him. Well, at 4:00 AM he let out a single cry, but we left him alone and he went back to sleep.

I got some great pictures of him last night. I’ll try to get them downloaded tonight and added to this post, and make another out of them.

I’m afraid I didn’t get much writing done over the last two days.

family, Harmony of the gospels, Screwtape's Good Advice, Writing

Getting Things Done, Part ?

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I have been in the whirlwind since last Thursday, and am just now taking time to post, in the few minutes before beginning my work week.

This past Friday and Saturday we held a moving sale for my mother-in-law. She moved to her apartment in August, but we have just now gotten our act together for the sale. Thursday night until 10 PM was intense activity of setting up tables, arranging items for sale, and pricing them. Then home to make signs. Up at 6:00 AM to get ready and in to town to place signs and hold the sale. Traffic was steady both days. We sold much, though it still looks like we have a lot left; some of it ours, for we brought some items to sell as well. By Saturday night we were exhausted, physically.

Then, on Thursday as we were setting up for the sale, we received a call from an out-of-state family member who is in the midst of a financial crisis. Dealing with that took much mental energy.

Then, on Saturday during the sale, at least two people showed interest in the house, and one person brought by an offer. While this is good–no great, it also turned out to be part of the mental overload in progress, and we couldn’t deal with it right then. So we arrived home Saturday night mentally exhausted as well. I then got another hit as I received a critique on a book proposal that indicated the work was too denominationally slanted to be published. A further mental blow. I tried all Saturday evening to prepare my Life Group lesson for Sunday, with no concentration available and hence little success.

Sunday was a true day of rest. We were to church a little late, then had a good Life Group time afterwards. The lesson turned out okay, as I came back time and again to the basic principle behind the lesson. Sunday afternoon, after nap, I went to work typing the harmony of the gospels, and I finished it about 5:00 PM! I’d say this is the end of several years of off and on work, but the end is not in sight. I now need to print it and proof it and annotate it and decide on a number of up in the air places. And I have to write a dozen or more appendixes with notes about why I made my various decisions.

But still, that main effort, the document itself, is done in first draft. That is always a good feeling.

This morning on the way to work, somewhat recovered both physically and mentally, I made two stops. One at my mother-in-law’s house to pick up something left there on Saturday that I need today; one to put some gas in the truck. It’s strange, but just getting these two things done has given me much satisfaction to start the day. Well, being down in my weight helped a bunch too. I’ll get back to my series on the harmony of the gospels soon.

family

R.I.P. Howard Cheney, age 97

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Last Wednesday one of Lynda’s elderly cousins, Howard Cheney, died at age 97 in El Dorado Kansas. Before 2006, Howard was a name on my many genealogy pages. An older cousin of Lynda’s dad, I assumed he was dead (being age 85 when I began genealogy pursuits), and didn’t make any attempt to learn more about him.

In May 2006 he celebrated his 95th birthday, his granddaughter, Ronda, sat with him over old family photos and asked him to identify them. One he said was “Grandma Cheney”, but he couldn’t give any more info than that. Ronda’s interest was piqued; she began doing some genealogy research; found my posts on-line about the family; and contacted me in August 2006.

Events happened quickly. We were going to New Mexico in October for a writing conference. Another elderly cousin, Cecil Cheney, 91, lived outside Albuquerque. When Howard learned Cecil was alive, he wanted to go see him, and a mini-reunion was planned and happened. Howard and Cecil had last seen each other in 1918, when Howard was 8 and Cecil 4. Cecil’s dad Will Cheney had been murdered in 1916, and his widow and their three children moved in with Howard’s family, the Clarence Cheney family. The widow re-married in 1917 or 1918, they moved to Colorado, and lost track of the Cheney family.

That was quite a moment, when Howard and Cecil saw each other for the first time in 88 years. Howard remembered some of those times, but Cecil not at all. Still, it was a good day, and I was glad for the part I had in making it happen. Genealogy does have some positives.

We drove to El Dorado on Sunday, after Life Group, for the afternoon visitation hours. The weather deteriorated during the four hour drive, the temp. dropping from 69 to 21. We saw Ronda and her brother and sister, their mom and uncle, Howard’s widow (a late in life remarriage for him), some spouses, and other relatives. Most of these we had not met before. It was a great time, including looking at some photos we hadn’t seen before. The trip back was through some sleet (not too bad and not enough to slow down a whole lot) and temps. around 17. We were back about 9 PM, glad we made the effort, happy to have met relatives, sorry at Howard’s passing, and worn out.