THE NOSEY NEIGHBOR
I am going to deviate from the normal post tonight.
The neighborhood has been somewhat quiet. Even our new neighbors have been slooooowly moving in.
I thought you might enjoy getting to know my family some.
My heritage is always with me no matter where I go even though my country of origin may not be my ancestors origin. I grew up painfully aware that I just did not look like those around me. As a tow head, blue eyed toddler I was not one of them.
I am often drawn towards my roots, an indescribable force that has influenced my identity and influenced my spiritual heritage.
Indelible markings, my connection, to the past becomes more meaningful as my existence marches along at a fast pace and disappears.
I pass along my genetics, my values and then am gone.
My heritage cannot be taken from me although it can be forgotten by not passing it on.
I have become more aware of the richness of what has been passed down to me from my descendants as well as living it through my parents.
What is so fascinating about genealogy is what is buried under the present.
Take for instance, the five notorious women in Biblical history who entered the bloodline of Jesus: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, Mary.
They all shared something in common, disgrace and tainted reputations. Even in genealogies, God weaves his grace and loves to redeem foreigners and sinners.
What I find so captivating about my genealogy is its colorfulness, source of inspiration, validation of family stories, and glimpses of experiences, and feelings.
Out of my past, I have also seen how God's grace has been woven in some disgraceful and tainted reputations.
It is a journey of many life past times woven into the present time to gain an understanding of how I got to be in now time.
Finding out you are related to someone famous can add to spell binding stories.
My mother whose surname was Wedgwood claimed to be in direct line to Josiah Wedgwood, the renowned English pottery-maker of his day (1762). In completing my research, I found this to be true.
Charles Darwin, the naturalist who formulated the theory of evolution married a Wedgwood of this family as the two families were good friends.
It was 1800 when Thomas Wedgwood was the first to capture an image with a light sensitive camera."
YES, HE IS A DISTANT RELATIVE.
My mother was not raised in a Christian home. Her parents were alcoholics until God miraculously saved them.
My great grandmother was a saloon keeper in Oso, Washington with a tainted past, who had three daughters, each by a different man, yet God in his mercy saved my grandmother later in life.
On the other side of the spectrum:
Sometimes God uses an individuals heritage in the unfolding of His plans. His Word says that He knew us before the foundation of the world.
On my fathers side, my great grandfather and family were all staunch Mennonites who migrated from South Russia as children with their parents on THE S.S. TEUTONIA,
arriving in Castle Garden New York on Sept. 2, 1874. (What is now Ellis Island)
The church among the Mennonite communities were a tight knit family of believers ruled by elders who were the spiritual leaders.
My great grandfather Solomon S. Ediger was an elder as well as a farmer and founder of the Evangelical Mennonite Brethren church of Dallas, Oregon.
Solomon Sr. worked very hard farming his homestead.
Solomon owned a threshing machine outfit on the side which earned them a little extra money. As soon as the harvest was finished and the machinery properly stowed away for the winter, he and the boys begun working on the railroad.
Great Grandfather Solomon Ediger was a man of excellence in all he undertook. In the early 1920’s he felt led to leave the Mennonite church. He then helped found the Dallas,Oregon C & M A (Christian, Missionary Alliance church.)
In God's providence,
the unlikely union of two,
a farmer family, of devoted Mennonite heritage and a more refined British lady, non religious family,
began a life together to establish a rich heritage to bring me to my present.
It has been a long rich journey, a harvest, clay pots (china) woven threads of my family past,
“Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand..." (Jeremiah 18:1–6,
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