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Limitless Ladies' Retreat
January 2012
I am honored today to be here
to tell you how I believe God has worked immeasurably more than I could
ever imagine in my life. You will hear a number of stories that are very
special to me.
Wow! I just celebrated my 80th birthday this week. I can't believe how
many cards and notices on Facebook I received. I've decided it's great to
be 80. And, I know you can do it to. So enjoy it when it comes to you.
I started reflecting on my life getting ready for this talk. I took a lot
of time to think back about different periods of my life and what I see
now that I didn't know then.
And, I asked myself the question what has the spirit led me to do? I also
asked the question who I know and who I remember that made a difference in
my life? I will address both of those questions.
I read Ephesians 1. Like this "For he chose me in him before the creation
of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight." "In love he
predestined me to be adopted as his son through Jesus Christ in accordance
with his pleasure and will."
What this passage means is everything about us that we should know. Bring
Glory to God!
Psalms 139 says "For you created my inmost being;
You knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Your works are wonderful.
I know that full well.
And, then look at Ephesians 2:10 "For we are God's workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to
do."
Paul is telling us that God chose us to be with him, he created us in his
image, he has plans for us. To do good works for him.
God has created us and given us everything we need to do the work that he
has planned for us.
I realized there were a lot of people involved in making a difference in
my life.
I thought about my parents and their background that have shaped their
lives as well as mine. My mother and father both came from Christian
families. My mother was baptized when she was 12. Both my mother and
father went to a Christian college and met and were married there. My father
preached most of his adult life, and I remember how he always read his
Bible every evening. My mother taught Bible class. In the front of her
Bible she had written the words read this book daily. I remember her
sitting in her chair when she was older and she would tell me about
reading through the Bible. It gave her a lot of consolation. They planned
ahead for me to attend a Christian college.
I want to share my baptism with you now. We had a beautiful artesian
spring that was our swimming pool in the town where I grew up. In Texas.
The children's pool was on one side of the Pavilion and had a spoon rocky
bottom and the stones around the walls. After my father baptized me I
remember the happiness I felt my heart and the joy I expressed in tears. I
knew my life would be changed. I wanted to read my Bible every day. So, I
would put my book beside my bed and read before I went to sleep. My first
memory work was Psalms 21, "The Lord is my shepherd." Not long after my
baptism my grandma gave me a tiny child's Bible that had the story of
Jesus inside. She wrote the date on the inside, December 26, 1944, beside
her name and that's very precious to me. I still have it today. My school
years went by, and I finished high school.
When I went to college, my parents had planned for me to go to a Christian
College and on my very first day of class I met a friend who became my
best friend in that first day of classes. We discovered that we had all
classes together except one. In second semester, my roommate returned home
and Valeta invited me to be her roommate. A common interest that Valeta
and I shared were science, sports, specifically volleyball and basketball,
and music.
When I returned to college the next fall, I was surprised to be invited to
teach zoology lab. I had been invited to be one of the instructors. We had
come highly recommended by our professor. A new professor of biology was
our mentor. He became one of the most important encourager's I have ever
known. [Roy Willingham] He had confidence and believed in my roommate and
Bob. Bob was in zoology that year and I was his lab instructor. We became
good friends. I will never forget Roy or his wife. They were encourager's
and supporters to us until their death's.
Bob and I started dating the third year and married the following year. We
moved to Dallas after college. My parents had moved to Oregon after my
second year in college. We started our family while in Abilene. Our son
Mike was born after I graduated. While we're in Dallas Sheri was born. We
moved to Albany Oregon while Bob attended Oregon State University to do
graduate work. Angi was born there.
None of my children waited to full-term to be delivered. God was with us
when Angi was born. She came nine weeks early and weighed 3 lbs. 9 oz.
she was so tiny when I first saw her I was frightened for her life. She
lost weight down to 2 lbs. 13 oz. and after several days she began to pick
up a little weight. By the time she was five weeks old, she was 5 pounds,
and we could take her home -- that little girl -- they didn't get very
many of these in the hospital. I was so glad to have her home.
After graduate school we moved back to Dallas again, and I began to get
involved in teaching. Bob taught the young adults class, and I taught
two-year-olds.
We moved to Beaverton in 1967 just in time for school to start for all
three of our children who were now in school. Angi was first grade and
Sheri was a fifth grader. Mike was starting junior high. We had a ladies
Bible class at church that was taught by Agnes Turner; many of you know
Sarah Buckingham and Agnes was her mother. She taught for several years
until her health no longer allowed her to be able.
I started teaching our ladies class, and we would have visitors from out
of town time to time. Mary Oler came into our lives. She had a
daughter appear and would come and visit often. Mary was well known in the
Dallas area because she and her husband worked at Boles Orphans Home. She
wrote freely and she spoke for women's classes etc. One time she wrote
me and told me to take this class to teach the Christian Woman course and
she gave me the dates of the class.
I just signed up for that class, an all day workshop. I got two other
people to go with me. Kitty young was one of the women. The man [Ron
Willingham] who had written the material was a classmate of mine at ACC.
The material he had written was to help women have a better self image
from a Christian perspective; so, we went to class from 9 to 4 for three
days. Our teacher was none other than Melinda Doolittle. We had eight
sessions, our homework assignment, class sharing, and a graduation. Now we
knew how to teach the class. We went back and set up a class.
Teaching that class gave me more confidence in myself. I could see so many
positive changes in the women that took the class. I could see changes in
myself. I was encouraged to teach more, and soon we had another series from
the writer, Ron Willingham, called Love, Joy, Peace. More women could
participate in the class session.
Then there was another class for pre-teens, fourth, fifth, and sixth
graders called "Celebration." I taught that class and loved being able to
see how the children changed during the course of the class. By the time
at the end of the class, and dinner came, they were ready to stand in
front of their parents and tell what they learned from the class when it
is time. Each one was very sincere and serious about what they told that
helped them. Each one was really trying to make their life, his life,
different by applying the principles learned.
In 1994, I made my first trip to Albania for a three-week stay. I was
participating in a WEI workshop. The stay was six weeks and I took three
weeks off work. The plan was to teach one or two students one hour a day,
five days a week, for six weeks, and give them a graduation certificate.
Each day we would have studied God's plan for mankind from the beginning in
Genesis to becoming a Christian. I had little background about Albania, but
there was a lot I didn't know. Some of the things I had learned were much
more different when I saw them in actuality for real.
I knew that Albania had been in isolation since World War II not receiving
and not open to tourism or travelers, but I had no idea that they would be
so fearful and that there ruler, Hoxha, had every family build a bunker so
that they could survive in any case they were attacked. Over the
countryside you could look up into the mountains and see these concrete
buildings that were now probably being used by nomads from the city. Many
of them were broken down all around this country.
When the Iron Curtain fell and everyone knew that they were not under
Socialism and Communism anymore, they hated their leader Hoxha so much that
they started tearing things up and basically destroying many important
monuments. They seem to have total disrespect for government; so, they
felt that since they were not under Communism now we don't have to do
anything that anybody tells us and they didn't.
They had been told all these years that they were the richest country in
Europe when in fact they were by far the poorest yet there was a sense of
pride among the people and the children were proud of their heritage of
being from the recumbent, and we do read about Illyricum in Paul's travels
near the end of the book of Romans.
They were friendly people but
only with their close neighbors. We would talk to students and think that
they should know each other since some of the students go to school
together. "I don't know her" or "I don't know him." Finally, we learned
that only close neighbors could be trusted and among the close neighbors
they had strong trusting relationships. They're very polite people and
they would give you anything. In the first year we went in April, and it
was cold and rainy like it is here often. Clara Bristol, many of you know
her, was 75 at the time of her first trip. When she got to Tirana, her
luggage didn't arrive with her. In fact, it didn't arrive for several
weeks. She had only the clothes that she was wearing and only a few other
little things. So, the woman in whose home she was staying, Sarah, gave
her a warm wool dress because it was freezing.
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