LESS LIKELY TO FALL APART

"When I look around me, I have got so much to thank God for.  I have so much to praise Him for.  When I think of what he has done and where he has brought me from..."  Lyrics to a song come to mind.

 My very first Bible, given to me some sixty years ago was a Spanish King James Version Bible, although I did not take its truths seriously til later in life, it became my constant companion through out life.

Ready for Sunday church service with my first Bible

  Not that particular one as I do not have any recollection as to what became of it. It was later replaced by an English one.  It was a required book as part of my Christian education through out the years.  I struggled through out the years to memorize certain portions, joined in the excitement of sword drills, and was admonished and shown the error of my ways in my childish mind.  I loved the Day of The Bible celebrations each year in Mexico.DAY OF THE BIBLE CLICK HERE  The very first verse, I memorized was John 3:16, in Spanish. 
John 3:16 (Spanish)
"Porque de tal manera amo Dios al mundo, que ha dado a su Hijo unigenito, para que todo aquel que en el cree, no se pierda, mas tenga vida eterna." In time, I learned the preciousness and unperishableness of that book. 
God's Word had become a large part of my life very early.
I had an insatiable hunger to learn more about that book that had become such a comfort to me as I moved around from place to place.

I now have seven,  the top three are my to go Bibles, the others for studying

  As life was so transient during those earlier years, I found comfort in knowing that, that book would always say the same thing no matter where I found myself, in joyful times or times of disparity and discouragement. 

1973

The desire to learn more about this book led me to attend Multnomah School of The Bible in Portland Oregon (Multnomah University)
Their advertisement caught my eye, "If its Bible you want.  Then you want Multnomah."  I will never forget how those years molded me and life's lessons were valuable in laying the foundation for the present time I find myself in.   I will never forget my studies in Romans with Dr. John Mitchell.DR. MITCHELL BIOGRAPHY
  Many times he would ask us students a question and we with blank looks or cat got our tongues stared at him in silence to which he in a distinct Scottish brogue would say, “Don’t you folks ever read your Bibles?”  We loved his classes because he never gave tests, yet we learned so much.

  He had an amazing ability to quote Scripture from memory.   
Although, God had been working in my life long before attending Multnomah, I look back on that season as the beginning of heart transformation, learning about God and about myself. It was the beginning of a more intense journey,  the emergence of a slow and painful journey of embracing God's plan for me, a journey I'm still walking.
 

STILL WALKING IN THE LIGHT OF HIS WORD

My top four go to Bibles,  the most used MacArthur Study Bible and Inductive Bible, two in Super Giant Print

In 2005, a good friend encouraged me to inductive studies and gave me this Bible.

Chapter Themes from Psalms

Prof. David Needham was another powerful influence on my life during my time at Multnomah.
I remember him as a very gentle and kind man.  He would tenderly ask "Do you know who you are?" and explain our birthright as Christians. 

His very small office was off to the side of the hall, I had to take to get to my dorm room.  His classes were more like a devotional time and he had such passion for imparting God's love.  He invited us to drop by anytime just to talk, although I never took him up on the offer, I was in such awe of his wisdom.

Each year since 1998, I make periodic reviews of my primary goals in my spiritual life and write the date I read those goals, making a commitment to my self to pursue and cultivate right desires.  Watching these play out in my life have made a considerable difference.

Since 11-7-1998 I have attempted to make these my primary goals

LIFE VERSE~MARRIED LIFE VERSE~A project still in process

Pamela Reeves, another Multnomah professor, had a great influence in encouraging me to write about life, herself, being an author of many books.  In the pyschology type class, she taught, I remember her asking us to choose an animal, we would like to be and why we would like to be it and write about it.
 One of those years, for a semester, I was taking journalism, even writing an article for the school newspaper.  I did not pursue journalism at that time as it took too much "thinking time".  I was pursuing a major in Christian Education with a minor in Missions at the time.
My interest in writing only came about in more recent times as there are many down times while care giving.

  Miss Reeves was a phenomenal, classy lady, and her classes were always full and hard to get into.  She encouraged us ladies to be ladies.  She was dean of women at the time I was there.  Once a month, she would gather us ladies for a talk while the men had a talk with the Dean of Men.

The dress code for most of those years for us ladies, were dresses and skirts. 

 

 

ERODING DREAMS with video

Periodically, I take inventory of our marriage.  It is far from the perfection that we had so anticipated those first few years.

  Change and time have a way of eroding dreams.
In reality, life can be one big disappointment.
Yes, we are the perfect couple!  For each other.

High On Fresher Air, Pilot Butte

Change and time have a way of eroding health.
Change changes ones perspective through its events, events that God has orchestrated.  So many events!
Change either breaks or humbles our stubborn hearts.
Change can crumble and erode the foundations that our parents laid or not laid.  But don't blame them for the way your life is going.  It is going because of the decisions you may have made.

 Change follows us through out life and chases us toward God's loving arms or toward pursuing life's pleasures, pleasures of our choices that are temporary and very short in comparison to setting our sights on lasting pursuits.
So, yes, life has eroded my hopes and dreams.  Life has been a disappointment but God has worked out those changes and disappointments to His Glory and Honor.

EVER SO HUMBLE

In the court yard of my first home with my brother ~1952

“Be it ever so humble, there is no place like home.” a refrain from an old ,1823 American folk song, HOME SWEET HOME penned by John H. Payne comes to mind as I recall many of my past homes.

Our current home on Alcove

Although, I have lived in my current home some forty years, I have memories of the many places I called home prior to that.

The courtyard, Our play ground

I do not remember to much of my very first three years of “home” but have photos and stories in time I have been told or have been written about.

1950 ~Boxes became my friends

That first home was in a remote village in the Sierra Norte mountain range of Puebla, Zapotitlan, at 4,839 ft. in elevation. ZAPOTITLAN CLICK HERE 

HOME AT THE FOOT OF THE BELL TOWER ~THEN & NOW

It was about one square block with rooms around the perimeter.  We shared a couple of rooms on the compound with the medical clinic, the medical staff, and the stable.

OUR COMPOUND HOUSE

(Yes, we had a horse and it was our transportation.)  In the center was a beautiful luscious, gigantic courtyard, a toddlers paradise, a dream play ground.  We took our baths outside in good weather.  HOME AT THE FOOT OF THE BELL TOWER CLICK HERE

Out side bath time.  Me with my nanny, Piedad in the courtyard

When I was three, my parents were invited to come start a ministry in another small town, Cuautempan, although not so remote it still remained primitive and the nearest highway was a ways away.

The house we shared with Dona Emilia in Cuautempan.  This was the side yard

  We moved into a huge adobe house and shared it with a seamstress named Dona Emilia and her family. 

Emily Ruth

The large rooms were made into smaller rooms to accommodate all of us with an out house out side. The floor was brick.

1954

The house was located right next to the main road that led to the next village and there was a cement,rock bridge right in front.

On the stone bridge in front of the house

The front of the house~the first congregation~Dona Emilia far right

I was in second grade when we lived in that house and that year, the mission school teacher arrived to teach my brother and I and two other kids.  Another room was again divided to accommodate the school teacher/class room that yr. and concrete was poured for that floor.
Meanwhile, our own home was being built up the mountain with a beautiful view of the valley.

Our own home, Cuautempan

OUR OWN HOME CLICK HERE 

CONSTRUCTION

The concept of HOME changes as we change.  HOME is where you make it yours.

Becky and Donny in Cuau, 1962

  It is a place you want to come back to whether it is a ramshackle house, an apartment,a mansion, a dorm room, missionary school, a room at Grandmother's or it may be squeezing everything into a suitcase.

Dad with Tommy

Brush College Acreage in West Salem, 1963-66

Pop & Mom's Place on Brush College Rd.

The Annex, Ed's Bedroom

My paternal grandparents invited me to board with them, allowing me the chance to finish Junior High (Walker Jr. High) and two years of High School, (Salem Academy) (BRUSH COLLEGE ACRES CLICK HERE followed by my last year and first year of college at an Uncle and Aunts, sharing a room with my cousins at 2205 Viewmont in Springfield, Oregon. SPRINGFIELD YEARS,CLICK HERE

Pop, Uncle Ted, Mom,Becky,Nancy(back row) Julie and Kathy (front) Uncle Ted and Aunt Sarah moved to Springfield and I moved for my senior and first yr. of college to live with them.

9th Grade, Walker Jr.High, 1963

The following year (1968) found me sharing a dorm room with a room mate in Sutcliffe Hall at Multnomah U.  It was the beginning of a multitude of living arrangements to get through school with no debt.

Multnomah U. in late 60's, The Administration Building first floor and dorm rooms on second

Back side of Sutcliffe Hall

Sutcliffe Hall was very unique place to live.  It did not afford the nicer amenities of the more luxurious dorms.  The campus was a former school for the blind and instead of stairs or elevators, a wide, carpeted ramp led up to the second floor.  The fire escapes were chutes like airplanes have.

Sutcliffe Hall, I lived on the second floor dorm rooms.  Each room has one window and I bunked in about four different of those rooms  over time with different room mates where you see the windows open.

   Every morning on cold days, the ancient steam radiators would come on making loud clanging noise.
I lived off and on campus for the four years I was in Portland hopping from one place to another that I could afford and trading my services for rent at times.

MSU, Chapel, Library, and Sutcliffe hall

I shared rent with several other girls in large vintage type houses.  I even lived in a very large an elegant Victorian home that I shared with a Lady and her mother who had Alzheimer's, exchanging care for the privilege of living there.
  While on campus, I cleaned toilets, I washed and waxed the library floors, and on occasion washed pots and pans.  When I got employment at a near by Nursing Home, The Manor, I lived mostly off campus.

A Dutch door into my room at The Bungalow

A co-worker and former MU student and I found this cute little cottage, bungalow house, sharing rent. That is when I got Smoochie my dog.

The front yard of our Bungalow

During the summers or if my parents were home on furlough, I would join them for a time before heading off to school again. 

Furlough, 1958, Washington & Main St.,Dallas Oregon

Those were precious times.  We could always find jobs picking beans, strawberries, and cherries.
The house we lived in on our 1958 Furlough was a somewhat run down clap board siding of sorts.  It had a very old apple tree in the front yard.

Sept. 1958

  It was my job to keep the old rotten apples picked up and put in trash.  My brother and I attended Sarah Morrison Grade School that year.  I was ten and that was my first year of a US public school.  My teacher had a very unusual name, Mrs. Kitzmiller.  We left for Mexico before the year ended.

June of 1963, My last trip down into Mexico with Uncle Ted, Aunt Sarah, and the girls, Nancy, Julie, Kathy (Kathy celebrated birthday.  We rode in Uncle Teds Volkswagon, double cab pick-up with canvas cover in back where we rode and slept.  Then Ed and I stayed the summer

This was also the year that as I recall, my brother lost his way back from school one of those first days.  I was in fourth grade and he was in third. 
1964,1965 according to my sleuthing, it appears we lived in two different places that furlough year for my parents.
We lived in my grandparents recently vacated large,two story farm house on Brush College Road in West Salem, Oregon. They had moved up the drive way to their new house that they built.

The Photo every missionary family gets while on furlough, Emily Ruth, Dad, Donny,Becky,Mother, Tommy, and Eddy in back row

 It was painted light yellow and had large fir trees around it and was part of my grandparents what was called Brush College Acreage.  It must have been built in the early 40's and had the typical farm back door entrance way where there was a back room with a sink to wash up and place to put your muddy shoes before going into the rest of the house.  My grandfather, Pop, bought this house from Uncle John and Aunt Lily, Mom's brother as they could no longer afford the mortgage.
Well my time there was a memorable one as I got the worst case of poison oak.  I think I was in my mid-teens, that awkward stage that you are not a child anymore and yet to old to do some things.  Being the oldest at that time and having younger brothers, gave me the opportunity to indulge in some childish pursuits.
  We loved to create "hide outs" among  any under growth.  Well on this occasion, we were totally oblivious to the fact that there was poison oak amid the black berry brambles.   We had created our "hide out" with a price.  It was a hot summer day and my almost twin brother, was not wearing a shirt.  He only got poison oak on his back.
This was also the year that Tommy started Kindergarten at the Baptist Christian School that was a field away from our house.

1964, Tommy, Kindergarten

Bucket Heads, Tommy and Donny at Brush College Acres

One day, my mother ask me to run down the road to the little grocery store to get something.  The store owner was a large rotund, sort of stocky man with a glass eye.  He always wore a white apron and always sort of scared me.

He and my grandfather did not get along. There was a big fiasco about that which caused Pop a lot of stress and may have contributed to his heart problem.  Somehow his property owned the right to the water well at that time. I am sure Dwight and Candy know more about this than I do. Later when I lived with my grandparents, a water diviner came in search of where a new well could be tapped into.  At the time there was no city water as it was very rural.

So that errand to the grocery store, well I had been busy in the bathroom when my mother handed me a twenty dollar bill, just as I flushed the toilet.  The bill fluttered into the swirling water, mother made a quick hand dash into it in an attempt at retrieving it but it was too late.  It was one of those last bit of money times and finances were lean.  I do not remember any of the rest of that incident.  My mother did not get mad or reprimand me.
That next year when furlough ended, Dad and Mother took the two younger boys back to Mexico and I moved in with my grandparents in their new house up on the hill with a large woodsy park like back yard where I spend many hours.  It was full of poison oak but I had learned to stay away from anything resembling poison oak or ivy.
I loved living with my grandmother.SHE WORE PEARLS CLICK HERE 

  We got our milk from the Butterworths, neighbors over the fence who had some cows.   They would set a gallon of raw milk on our side of the fence and Mom would set an empty one with some money in it on their side.  There would be about 3 or 4 inches of cream on top and Mom would skim it off for whipped topping or baking recipes.

MOM

I did more kitchen observing than I did work in the kitchen.  Mom ruled the kitchen and she did not want me messing around in it.
Mom made the best cobblers, berry, cherry, peach.  She canned peaches and pears when in season.
Every Sunday night after church, we would have toast with peaches or Royal Ann cherries that she had canned.

Summer of 1963, My very last visit to Cuau

(1964) One interesting house we lived in was a huge house, we thought it was a mansion. 

Emily Ruth, 1964

Becky, 1964

It had an abandoned look because it was and we thought it was wonderful.  It was just off the road of Wallace Road in Salem, Oregon and just down the road from where my grandparents had rented a house.

The windmill

The property was huge and sort of on a knoll.  Besides the house it included a large barn out back with all sorts of interesting things left by previous occupants like those old horse collars you see in museums.  There was a lot of undergrowth and places to explore and carve secret hide outs. 

The old abandoned windmill in the back yard

But the strangest thing was that just beyond the brambles and berry bushes  was an old delapidated windmill.

Dad, 1964, on Wallace Road house

That was the summer, I decided, I wanted to sleep outside under the stars.  Well in the very early morning hours, I suddenly felt very damp from all the dew and went into the house to sleep.  The Gromans visited us here and it was also here that someone forgot to set the brakes to the Rambler station wagon and it went down hill into the brambles.  It was a summer of working in the berry and bean fields.

The wonderful provisions of the Lord just kept coming as He always was faithful in proving places for our family to stay.  I was always aware that each was only a temporary provision.

Nathan at house on church property

One summer we stayed in a large house on the church property in Dallas, Oregon.  Each morning we would wake up to the pastor playing hymns on the piano. (1972?)

Mrs. Alice Cogswell, a dear family friend in Dallas was gone for another summer and while she was away, we house sat.  My youngest brother was a baby at this stay and I remember a large weeping willow in the front yard.  He would schoochie up to it in his walker and nibble on the lush, elongated leaves.(summer of 1969) 

Nathan nibbling at the weeping willow

This was the year that Grandma Wedgwood passed away unexpectedly. 
And, again God provided in a big way when Dad and Mother moved into a large house at the Alliance Missionary colony in Glendale with my five siblings. for a furlough (1969)  I joined them during the summer and Christmas break.
Dad got a job at Village Christian School in maintenance for three months until he got a job at the mission center.  Our front view was Forest Lawn, a gorgeous green. 

1969 On steps of house at the Glendale Alliance Center, Becky in Portland

Several of us got jobs at the convalescent hospital and the assisted living facilities.  (That is where I got my initial training in nurses aide.)NURSES AID TRAINING DAYS CLICK HERE

The house in Glendale 1969,1970

When furlough was over, my parents took the three younger boys back to Mexico with them while Pop and Mom (my grandparents) came to Glendale to take over the house to make a home for Ed and Emily Ruth and Uncle Emory.(He was working at the post office at the time.)  Pop took over the maintenance job that Dad had at the center and Mom did the housekeeping for a year.

Packing up for yet another move (late 1964/65) with Tommy on ground and Donny on truck on the Wallace Road, Windmill mansion

 Wednesday, July 27,1972, my sister and I journeyed down to Southern California and settled into a small apartment in Glendale for awhile.
I sold Avon door to door until I got a job as a nurses aide at the BroadView Convalescent in Glendale while also taking classes in child development classes at Glendale College.
I set my hopes on teaching pre-school.
After an unusually busy night at work, one of my favorite patients died of a cardiac arrest.  Another patient fell, received a gash in the head and had to go to the ER.  I felt the urge to move on.

My apartment on Witmer St. in LA, alley view

I took on a summer internship with Gospel Recordings,1973) (Global Recordings Network USA.) never returning to the nursing home job and signing up as staff with Gospel Recordings for the next 20 years.

Our First Home, a Sears Kit like compact bungalow shack,    home in the alley, after we got married, 108 1/2 Witmer St.

 Lived here for a year until we purchased our home on Alcove St. in North Hollywood 41 yrs. ago.

Our Home in North Hollywood on Alcove

A Home For All Seasons

A blooming purple plum tree and a bed of blooming ice plant.

Dec.13,1975

👫There were other places I laid my head down and called home for short periods of time.  In light of what Scriptures say about us being sojourners, I still have not gotten too comfortable here that I don't look forward to my Heaven home.☝                 

Philippians 3:20

"For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ;"

1 Chronicles 29:1 "For we are sojourners before You, and tenants, as all our fathers were; our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no hope."

Engagement