TRAVELS AND TRANSITIONS

The link below brought back memories of the summer of '94 when I visited dear friends in Holland. I went up to Amsterdam for the day and took a Museum Boat to the house where Anne Frank and her family and the others were in hiding, to the Rijksmuseum and to the Van Gogh Museum. Then I spent almost two months in Russia and Ukraine, and was in England for some Healing Prayer Ministry meetings at with Francis and Judith MacNutt at Oxford and at Newman College in Birmingham.

I always said I would go to Europe when the kids grew up. As I have written before this, on the Mother's Day weekend of 1994 I was so very proud of both my kids. Tom finished US Marine Boot Camp in South Carolina on Thursday -- he was an honor grad, the best of the 60 guys in his unit. The parade passed before the honor grads. They got medals and Krista and I sat under the awning with the other family members, generals and admirals. We were blessed that our folks and their dad's mom were there as well as some friends.

Two days later Krista graduated from Bluefield College where she had played on the Women's Varsity Softball Team and excelled in many ways. Both of my kids have wonderful lasting friendships from those days, too. 

On Mother's Day they gave me cards and presents and said, "Bye, Mom! We're grown up!" 

So then I did go to Europe -- to Russia on a Volunteer in Mission (VIM) trip to Tsarskoye Celo, "The Tsar's Village," which was still called by its Soviet name, "Pushkin." A group of over thirty UMC pastors and their wives and other church members (not only United Methodists) from Washington, D.C., Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York helped remodel a nursing home. This was my second time to Russia. Was also on a VIM trip to Obninsk, 230 southeast of Moscow from December 27, 1993 until around January 20th, 1994. Was blessed to be able to escort interpret on both trips.

The group that was in Pushkin near St Petersburg and I took an overnight train to Moscow. The day they all left to go back to the U.S., I was blessed to be able to take another overnight train to see friends in Kharkov, Ukraine. We had met during my last academic year studying Russian at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana ('77-'78). The husband of the family had been an exchange professor at U of I from September through May and his wife had visited him in the US during the month of January.

So we were very happy to see one another again sixteen years later. Was so amazing because I was able to stay with them in their apartment for two weeks. If I had come to Kharkov during the Soviet era, I would only have been able to stay at a hotel and visit them briefly. They drove me to Kiev to fly back to Holland. A few days later I took the train/boat/train to England for the Healing Prayer Ministry conferences in Oxford and at Newman College in Birmingham.

Being in England for the first time was so amazing. Aside from the fact that after speaking Russian for two months, I had a rough time with various English accents, I felt so at home. So many of the ladies looked like my aunts and grandmother. While in Oxford before and after spending the weekend at Newman College, I was blessed to stay in the home of the sister of one of the first women who was ordained in the Church of England.

Our Dad's parents grew up in Walsall, a small town not far from Birmingham (now part of the larger metropolitan area). All our relatives happened to be on holiday when I was there, so that was too bad. Our paternal grandparents, their parents, and all their siblings left England for Canada, for the U.S. and for New Zealand between about 1905 and 1915 or so, because of economic conditions. One of Grandma's brothers went back to Walsall instead of staying in the U.S. or Canada. 

In the summer of '72 we met the widow of our grandmother's brother. She, her daughter and her family came to visit our grandmother. The sisters-in-law had not seen one another for over 50 years! Our aunts had visited them when they were in England on holiday and in our family album there are photos of them holding 5 month old Krista in our parents' back yard in Lake County, Illinois.
I enjoyed the train trips from the port to London; from London to Oxford; from Oxford to Birmingham and back again. While walking through the train station in Birmingham, I was awed to think that my ancestors had walked there, too. Sailing on the ferry back and forth from Holland to England was lovely, too.


I'm looking forward to going back to England and to traveling where the Lord leads me again in His time and in His will. We are so blessed to have such wonderful family members and friends all over the world. I am very grateful to the Lord for all of them and for all the opportunities I have had to travel and to share God's love.

 
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Holland

COME AUTUMN

I miss Alaska ALL the time, but especially at the end of summer when I know that for a little while the Chugach Mountains are dressed in the glorious reds, oranges and yellows of the ground cover . . . bush willows, grasses and moss punctuated by the bright mellow golds of the aspen and birch leaves. The white bark of the birch tree trunks are interspersed and shimmer through the vibrant shades.
As happy as we had been to have lived in the bright long days of summer, we were kind of relieved when the nights began to be darker and longer. Autumn is short-lived. While preparing ourselves for the long dark cold, icy winter, we hope for our first glimpse of the aurora borealis.

We drank in the intensity of the colors on mountainsides and in fields, the sunlight sparkling on flowing water soon to be frozen and covered with snow. Soon only shades of white, grey, brown and black will be expressed in nature. 

Oh. 

And when the sun shines after the snow covers everything, the sky becomes the incredible deep solid blue like the bright dense color of some houses in New England. Muted, but brighter somehow. 

And then also, you might see bears. 

(Moose. Caribou. Ptarmigan. Dall Sheep.)

And lots of other lovely wild animals and birds.

Please enjoy your life and the beauty around you in nature wherever you are.

It hurts so much to know there are hundreds of thousands of people in the world living through conditions of violence, poverty and strife who can only think of surviving.  There are so many ways we can help.

FIRST HOUR OF THE THIRTEENTH TIME

REFLECTIONS BEGINNING AT 58 MINUTES INTO THE THIRTEENTH TIME WE HAVE COME BACK TO SEPTEMBER 11Th.

 I've been missing you, Beloved.  Have spent the past few days bouncing back and forth between Symantec Norton Antivirus techs and VAIO techs.  Had malware on my laptop hard drive that I apparently acquired about a month ago.

Looks like now I will have to reformat the drive and put the VAIO system and everything else back on the hard drive.  Bought the E series VAIO in December of 2012.  Have had to start from scratch over eight times and there have been two sessions with hardware and memory replacement when the laptop had to go back to Texas to the Sony repair facility.

Over all, I think it has been a case of the technology being too far ahead of whatever else was out there . . . compounded with many problems between the VAIO  and way Windows 8 and 8.1 operating systems work on it.

Life in cyberspace can sometimes add to the difficulties of life on Earth . . .  :-(

Very sad case in point that in two minutes it will be 1 am on September 11, 2014. 

Has it really been thirteen years?

May the Lord continue to bless, protect, guard, guide, heal and comfort you on this day of sad memories and all the 13 years of compounding sadness and evil since and continuing on and on in a way that seems to have no end.

Nevertheless we are promised that there WILL be an end to evil and strife, sadness and horrors.  We can trust in the Lord that He is more powerful than anything that can come against us when we know we are loved by Him, trust Him and live in His Love and Grace.

Really.

Truly.

Keep remembering whatever is happening or has happened or will happen that if love, grace, mercy, kindness, joy and peace have not become triumphant yet, it is not the end.

The more we trust the Fullness of Love, Light, Life and Truth -- God in Christ by the power of His Holy Spirit -- the more we are able to endure, survive, conquer our fears and serve the Lord. 

We do this by acting out God's love, compassion, faithfulness, grace, mercy, joy and loving kindness with the Lord's help. 

We do this by sharing all that we have, beginning with prayers, joy and peace with everyone who is in or who comes into our lives.

And two important universal principles set out by the Creator:

1.  You cannot out-give the Lord.  True love in action has no ulterior motive of gain, but when we reflect the love we have been given, the Fullness of Love that IS pours blessings down on us with the same measure we have used, but multiplied.  (See Luke 6:38.)

2.  Not only does God forgive us, that forgiveness is available all the time to everyone because of the life, suffering, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ Jesus. Sadly, some people refuse to believe the forgiveness and mercy that is already theirs.  We must try harder to help them know they are loved by actively loving them, not with words, but by sharing. 

More than that, say you have tripped into temptation or deliberately hurt someone, or done anything else that separates you from Love and Peace.  You feel miserable and the Holy Spirit helps you to be able to ask forgiveness of the Lord.  That forgiveness is already yours, just waiting for you to open the spiritual channel from Heaven into your heart to be able to receive mercy, grace, peace, love, forgiveness and righteousness. 

Our Father in Heaven, our Abba/Daddy who we are able to know and love, continually and always answers His one and only begotten Son's plea that was made while He hung on the Cross.  Jesus asked His Father in Heaven to forgive those who tortured and executed Him because "they know not what they do," by wiping out the transgressions and completely forgetting them.

So the punishment of all past present and future sins are removed as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:2) and forever forgotten (Hebrews 8:12).

Therefore when you go to the Lord to ask forgiveness the second time for doing again what has already been forgiven (or the third, fourth, fifth . . . seven hundreth and seventy seventh time), and you say, "Abba, please forgive me in Jesus Name, I did it again."

Because He has forgotten it completely by forgiving you the first time, the Lord will answer you, "Forgive what again?"

Really.

Truly. 

Absolutely.

Believe it or not. 

BUT ACTUALLY, WITH MY WHOLE HEART, I WANT YOU TO BELIEVE IT.

If you need help believing, just ask the Lord.  He will help you come to know and believe in exactly the way you need to know.

Really

Truly. 

Absolutely.

I'm praying you will open the door of your heart even ever so slightly.  Love will then come in and fill you in just the right way in just the right timing for you personally.

The step from the spiritual darkness and deep fearful scarcity into glorious Light and Lively Abundance is symbolized by the image of being in a sealed cave facing the blocked entrance.  Nothing even seems to exist.  Then all of a sudden you may watch the stone being rolled away so that the sunlight streams in changing terror in the unseen emptiness into overflowing joy.

May the Lord continue to bless and keep you in ways you are not even aware so that you may one moment be changed from one who doubts to one who believes. 

And if you already have come to believe in the Good News of God's love in Christ Jesus, may you be drawn ever deeper into the Heart of the Fullness of Love while you continue to grow into the person you were created to be.

In Jesus' Name I pray.  Alleluia!  Amen.

P.S.  A dear friend who is a wonderful evangelist says that for someone not raised to know the Lord, he or she needs about 900 loving invitations to come to believe.  I've lost count, but I'm working toward that for you, Beloved, praying all the way.

P.P.S. Of course it doesn't have to be 900 times by the same person.  This is for those who are trusting the Lord that their loved ones and everyone they know will come to believe.  Don't give up even if you do not see the fruit of your efforts. What counts is not that you keep talking, but that you keep loving.