Sunday Wrapup 4/3/2011
"How much of this is going to make it into your blog?" someone asked me on the way home from Oklahoma yesterday.
"I have no idea," I answered. "I won't know till I'm in front of the keyboard." I still don't know.
I traveled to a "Women's Day" event in Boley, OK, along with several van loads of other women from our church. The four hour trip there and back was part of the pleasure of the day, as was the time among Christian women whose recent ethnic and cultural history is very different from ours. They are known among us as Kleine Gemeinde people, recently affiliated with the Biblical Mennonite Alliance (BMA) group. My father helped me understand where these people fit into the Mennonite family by describing the Kleine Gemeinde as a revivalist group among Old Colony Mennonites. They are of Russian German background.
For some of the people in the host congregation, English is clearly a second language, and speaking in the second language produces some surprising and rather delightful expressions. In a mealtime prayer we asked the Lord to bless the food ON our bodies. And all of us who know about a later-in-life biological milestone common to all women identified with the woman who referred to her mid-life crisis--a term I have usually heard associated with an identity crisis rather than a biological event.
We ate "restaurant soup" and wonderful chicken sandwiches for lunch. If I can find a recipe somewhere, I want to make restaurant soup some time. It's a kind of vegetable soup, with a distinctive mixture of spices, possibly including cilantro, if one of my dining companions was as discerning as I think she was. Hilda, who taught school in Copeland, KS, a community with similar roots as the Boley church community, is familiar with restaurant soup from that experience.
Dorcas Smucker regaled us with many stories, and hung deep truths on those story hooks. It's a pity my note-taking ardor faded as the day progressed, so my ability to pass on pithy quotes is compromised by a poor memory. But the stories keep coming back, and I am learning from them every time that happens.
I marvel at how each of us "hears" the same truths differently, depending on the needs of our hearts and the faithful promptings of the Spirit of God. Without being able to articulate it very well, I am conscious of new courage, and a sense that God is working His purposes in what sometimes seems to me to be a very circuitous route to becoming a woman of joy and influence. How can the less-than-ideal circumstances of my life and my faltering journey be imbued with holy purpose? Only when transformed by the wisdom, mercy, and providence of God. The certainty of the presence of God throughout the process is my reason for hope.
********************
I just returned from the high school program. I'm always full of warm fuzzy feelings after these programs. Seeing the students sing with such joy and skill as they displayed again tonight puts a smile on my face every time. When all the former students who knew the song joined the current students to sing "Singabahambayo" the singing also put a tear in my eye. The sound filled every corner of the room and ohhhhh it was lovely.
These former students' faces are, at once, deeply familiar, and a little strange. The young people have matured, and they're taking on more responsibility and more adult roles. I remember the hard work many of them accomplished during their school years, and I respect them profoundly. Most of them are still making good choices and their life is a blessing to others. What more could anyone ask of them?
******************
After the program tonight I met Mildred, a sister to our principal, Wesley. She is my brother Lowell's age, and was probably about 13 when their family moved from here to Minnesota. She lives in Seattle, WA now, with her family, and is visiting her parents and brother here. I'm not sure that I had ever seen her since she's an adult, so it was nice to get reacquainted.
******************
The temperature climbed today to at least 93 degrees. Right now, however, the wind is howling out of the north, and by tomorrow night we're expecting a low of 32 degrees. There's some lively weather in the eastern third of Kansas right now, but it looks like we might not get any rain out of this system.
*******************
We've started marking our calender with PS and NPS. The letters stand for "Pig Smell" and "No Pig Smell." When the wind is from the southwest, the calender contains a PS notation. Any other wind direction merits an NPS marking. Yesterday and today were PS days.
Shane's wife, Dorcas, thinks a pig smell is a seriously undesirable home site characteristic. Who would argue?
The calender notations are an effort to quantify the magnitude of the problem.
I keep remembering something Dale Love used to use in his confinement hog operation. As I recall, he regularly applied a bacteria-laden spray that neutralized the odor from pig wastes--probably through the mechanism of digestion. Myron was in Dale's hog barn at least once and claimed it didn't have much of an odor.
Maybe if Caleb started selling the bacteria product, he could more easily sell the idea of producing naturally raised pork. Because the processing plant for this premium-priced pork is in Missouri, transportation costs could be minimized if a semi-load could be shipped at a time, instead of a stock trailer load. Caleb is recruiting other hog producers to make the economy of scale work to everyone's advantage.
I think the idea of some production on many different farms with cooperation in marketing is a stellar idea--the kind we should commit some energy and resources to developing. Goat dairying is another venture that I think would lend itself to a similar model.
***********************
Yesterday during the meeting I heard Jewel laughing at one of the stories. She was sitting on the opposite side of the auditorium from me, and I smiled when I heard her laugh. She's a bubbly sort, and a lively time is had by all when she's around. So I told her afterward that I had heard her laugh, and, GET THIS: She replied by saying she had heard me laugh too. I was shocked.
"When I hear that throaty chuckle, I know it's you," she said.
I'm feeling quite un-self-aware at the moment. I could have declared I laugh very unobtrusively--certainly in a way that blends seamlessly into the general laughter around me when laughter spreads over an audience.
I'm not sure that easily-attributable throaty chuckles are a signature characteristic I wish to cultivate.
***********************
Twila was in our load on yesterday's trip, and several stories she told are still giving me some good belly laughs.
She has four-year old twins, and Bryce is full of running commentary on many and varied subjects at this stage of life. He visited the doctor for a well-child check last week and his verbal skills were on display during the visit.
"Mom has bad breath," he told the doctor. (Twila explained that she's been eating a garlic-rich soup and apparently her self-consciousness about her breath vapors sharpened Bryce's awareness also.)
Bryce also informed the doctor that "Jesus doesn't like when women wear pants." (He had asked Twila why she doesn't wear pants, and she tried to keep things appropriately simple by saying, "Jesus wants me to wear a dress." He apparently extrapolated and generalized and finally verbalized his slightly startling version of Twila's comment for the doctor's benefit.) The doctor grew up in our church and was probably not offended by this child's certainty about what God likes and doesn't like.
*********************
The other funny story Twila told was about her attempts to learn how to drive a stick shift car. Her family lived in Belgium at the time, and owned a car that was a little temperamental about how the accelerator should be depressed at the time the clutch was let out, and it died easily.
One day she was returning home from the farm the mission owned, and passed through a small village with a single main intersection. She stopped when she reached the intersection, and noticed that some kind of festival must be underway, and a band was marching down Main Street. She was happy to wait till the band had passed, and did what was necessary for keeping the car under control while she waited.
Then the man who was leading the parading band motioned for her to cross ahead of them. She was a bit surprised at this turn of events, but she tried to cooperate quickly. This was a mistake. The car died two or three times--probably because she was in second or third gear instead of first--while the band came ever closer. The leader raised his hand, signaling the band to march in place rather than advancing any further. Finally Twila got just enough acceleration going to overcome the wrong-gear disadvantage, and the car lurched forward. It traveled in fitful jerks and starts all the way across the intersection in front of the still marching-in-place band. (How's that for a stressful learning environment?)
After that, whenever Twila saw the parade leader in the village, she imagined that she saw a smile playing around the corners of his mouth.
*********************
I'm feeling frisky and free tonight because there's no school tomorrow. We're cashing in on having banked one school day when we had night school. Hence, a skipped school day tomorrow.
*********************
Grant's fiance, Clarissa (Clare) comes at the end of this week. She plans to stay for most of the summer.
**********************
Hiromi keeps making adjustments to his kiln and then retesting the firing process. Right now he has trouble getting the temperature to 1300 degrees where it needs to be to fuse the glaze onto the clay.
He also plans to try burning hedge wood in the kiln, along with gas, to create the special smoky effect he wants. This experimentation all pleases his science-loving heart a great deal.
***********************
Some of our ministers are heading to Lancaster County, PA this weekend to attend the Beachy minister's meeting. My dad has already begun his trip, and was at Plain City today. He traveled with his brother Paul (and Martha) and Eli Yoder. Dad and Paul are attending a publication board meeting ahead of the sessions for all the ministers.
***********************
Norma planned and supervised a sleep-over for all the high school girls on Friday evening. I knew I couldn't stay for the night because I needed to get up at 3:30 the next morning to go to Oklahoma. I hoped perhaps I could join them for supper, but gave up even that when I realized that there would be no time because of having to clean the church on Friday evening.
They spent the night in Marvin and Lois's Partridge house--unoccupied by renters at the moment.
"I have no idea," I answered. "I won't know till I'm in front of the keyboard." I still don't know.
I traveled to a "Women's Day" event in Boley, OK, along with several van loads of other women from our church. The four hour trip there and back was part of the pleasure of the day, as was the time among Christian women whose recent ethnic and cultural history is very different from ours. They are known among us as Kleine Gemeinde people, recently affiliated with the Biblical Mennonite Alliance (BMA) group. My father helped me understand where these people fit into the Mennonite family by describing the Kleine Gemeinde as a revivalist group among Old Colony Mennonites. They are of Russian German background.
For some of the people in the host congregation, English is clearly a second language, and speaking in the second language produces some surprising and rather delightful expressions. In a mealtime prayer we asked the Lord to bless the food ON our bodies. And all of us who know about a later-in-life biological milestone common to all women identified with the woman who referred to her mid-life crisis--a term I have usually heard associated with an identity crisis rather than a biological event.
We ate "restaurant soup" and wonderful chicken sandwiches for lunch. If I can find a recipe somewhere, I want to make restaurant soup some time. It's a kind of vegetable soup, with a distinctive mixture of spices, possibly including cilantro, if one of my dining companions was as discerning as I think she was. Hilda, who taught school in Copeland, KS, a community with similar roots as the Boley church community, is familiar with restaurant soup from that experience.
Dorcas Smucker regaled us with many stories, and hung deep truths on those story hooks. It's a pity my note-taking ardor faded as the day progressed, so my ability to pass on pithy quotes is compromised by a poor memory. But the stories keep coming back, and I am learning from them every time that happens.
I marvel at how each of us "hears" the same truths differently, depending on the needs of our hearts and the faithful promptings of the Spirit of God. Without being able to articulate it very well, I am conscious of new courage, and a sense that God is working His purposes in what sometimes seems to me to be a very circuitous route to becoming a woman of joy and influence. How can the less-than-ideal circumstances of my life and my faltering journey be imbued with holy purpose? Only when transformed by the wisdom, mercy, and providence of God. The certainty of the presence of God throughout the process is my reason for hope.
********************
I just returned from the high school program. I'm always full of warm fuzzy feelings after these programs. Seeing the students sing with such joy and skill as they displayed again tonight puts a smile on my face every time. When all the former students who knew the song joined the current students to sing "Singabahambayo" the singing also put a tear in my eye. The sound filled every corner of the room and ohhhhh it was lovely.
These former students' faces are, at once, deeply familiar, and a little strange. The young people have matured, and they're taking on more responsibility and more adult roles. I remember the hard work many of them accomplished during their school years, and I respect them profoundly. Most of them are still making good choices and their life is a blessing to others. What more could anyone ask of them?
******************
After the program tonight I met Mildred, a sister to our principal, Wesley. She is my brother Lowell's age, and was probably about 13 when their family moved from here to Minnesota. She lives in Seattle, WA now, with her family, and is visiting her parents and brother here. I'm not sure that I had ever seen her since she's an adult, so it was nice to get reacquainted.
******************
The temperature climbed today to at least 93 degrees. Right now, however, the wind is howling out of the north, and by tomorrow night we're expecting a low of 32 degrees. There's some lively weather in the eastern third of Kansas right now, but it looks like we might not get any rain out of this system.
*******************
We've started marking our calender with PS and NPS. The letters stand for "Pig Smell" and "No Pig Smell." When the wind is from the southwest, the calender contains a PS notation. Any other wind direction merits an NPS marking. Yesterday and today were PS days.
Shane's wife, Dorcas, thinks a pig smell is a seriously undesirable home site characteristic. Who would argue?
The calender notations are an effort to quantify the magnitude of the problem.
I keep remembering something Dale Love used to use in his confinement hog operation. As I recall, he regularly applied a bacteria-laden spray that neutralized the odor from pig wastes--probably through the mechanism of digestion. Myron was in Dale's hog barn at least once and claimed it didn't have much of an odor.
Maybe if Caleb started selling the bacteria product, he could more easily sell the idea of producing naturally raised pork. Because the processing plant for this premium-priced pork is in Missouri, transportation costs could be minimized if a semi-load could be shipped at a time, instead of a stock trailer load. Caleb is recruiting other hog producers to make the economy of scale work to everyone's advantage.
I think the idea of some production on many different farms with cooperation in marketing is a stellar idea--the kind we should commit some energy and resources to developing. Goat dairying is another venture that I think would lend itself to a similar model.
***********************
Yesterday during the meeting I heard Jewel laughing at one of the stories. She was sitting on the opposite side of the auditorium from me, and I smiled when I heard her laugh. She's a bubbly sort, and a lively time is had by all when she's around. So I told her afterward that I had heard her laugh, and, GET THIS: She replied by saying she had heard me laugh too. I was shocked.
"When I hear that throaty chuckle, I know it's you," she said.
I'm feeling quite un-self-aware at the moment. I could have declared I laugh very unobtrusively--certainly in a way that blends seamlessly into the general laughter around me when laughter spreads over an audience.
I'm not sure that easily-attributable throaty chuckles are a signature characteristic I wish to cultivate.
***********************
Twila was in our load on yesterday's trip, and several stories she told are still giving me some good belly laughs.
She has four-year old twins, and Bryce is full of running commentary on many and varied subjects at this stage of life. He visited the doctor for a well-child check last week and his verbal skills were on display during the visit.
"Mom has bad breath," he told the doctor. (Twila explained that she's been eating a garlic-rich soup and apparently her self-consciousness about her breath vapors sharpened Bryce's awareness also.)
Bryce also informed the doctor that "Jesus doesn't like when women wear pants." (He had asked Twila why she doesn't wear pants, and she tried to keep things appropriately simple by saying, "Jesus wants me to wear a dress." He apparently extrapolated and generalized and finally verbalized his slightly startling version of Twila's comment for the doctor's benefit.) The doctor grew up in our church and was probably not offended by this child's certainty about what God likes and doesn't like.
*********************
The other funny story Twila told was about her attempts to learn how to drive a stick shift car. Her family lived in Belgium at the time, and owned a car that was a little temperamental about how the accelerator should be depressed at the time the clutch was let out, and it died easily.
One day she was returning home from the farm the mission owned, and passed through a small village with a single main intersection. She stopped when she reached the intersection, and noticed that some kind of festival must be underway, and a band was marching down Main Street. She was happy to wait till the band had passed, and did what was necessary for keeping the car under control while she waited.
Then the man who was leading the parading band motioned for her to cross ahead of them. She was a bit surprised at this turn of events, but she tried to cooperate quickly. This was a mistake. The car died two or three times--probably because she was in second or third gear instead of first--while the band came ever closer. The leader raised his hand, signaling the band to march in place rather than advancing any further. Finally Twila got just enough acceleration going to overcome the wrong-gear disadvantage, and the car lurched forward. It traveled in fitful jerks and starts all the way across the intersection in front of the still marching-in-place band. (How's that for a stressful learning environment?)
After that, whenever Twila saw the parade leader in the village, she imagined that she saw a smile playing around the corners of his mouth.
*********************
I'm feeling frisky and free tonight because there's no school tomorrow. We're cashing in on having banked one school day when we had night school. Hence, a skipped school day tomorrow.
*********************
Grant's fiance, Clarissa (Clare) comes at the end of this week. She plans to stay for most of the summer.
**********************
Hiromi keeps making adjustments to his kiln and then retesting the firing process. Right now he has trouble getting the temperature to 1300 degrees where it needs to be to fuse the glaze onto the clay.
He also plans to try burning hedge wood in the kiln, along with gas, to create the special smoky effect he wants. This experimentation all pleases his science-loving heart a great deal.
***********************
Some of our ministers are heading to Lancaster County, PA this weekend to attend the Beachy minister's meeting. My dad has already begun his trip, and was at Plain City today. He traveled with his brother Paul (and Martha) and Eli Yoder. Dad and Paul are attending a publication board meeting ahead of the sessions for all the ministers.
***********************
Norma planned and supervised a sleep-over for all the high school girls on Friday evening. I knew I couldn't stay for the night because I needed to get up at 3:30 the next morning to go to Oklahoma. I hoped perhaps I could join them for supper, but gave up even that when I realized that there would be no time because of having to clean the church on Friday evening.
They spent the night in Marvin and Lois's Partridge house--unoccupied by renters at the moment.
posted by Mrs. I at
7:29 PM
3 Comments:
Mrs. I, please don't be disturbed that I picked out your chuckle. It's true, your laugh isn't readily heard, but I heard it often enough in class at the high school to recognize it easily. :) I have fond memories of your amazing ability to laugh at your own foibles, as well as those of your class.
I enjoy hearing you enjoy a joke... I didn't intend to embarrass you by my remark. I really didn't give it much thought, to tell the truth.
By
Jewel, at 4/04/2011
Thanks for the Bryce stories. :)
By
Cathy Miller, at 4/04/2011
I enjoyed this blogpost very much, but felt the need to comment about one thing. Laughs are individual, like people, and beautiful. Don't be ashamed if people recognize your laugh!
By
Unknown, at 4/04/2011
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