"If I keep on like this, I'll break."

I was way too busy. I enjoyed it all, though! Among other things: giving Spanish lessons, piano lessons, being the church pianist, speaking at ladies' meetings and retreats...while running our house, which included things like baking a lot of our bread, making my own yogurt, pasteurizing our milk, and cooking without all the convenience foods available in the biggest cities or in countries like the U.S. (About all you could get canned back then - in Shell- was tuna, tomato paste, and evaporated and sweetened condensed milk. No frozen vegetables, and only one kind of bread, little round rolls. No pizzerias or supermarkets.) But I love cooking, and experimenting in the kitchen, and had lived in this country long enough to be able to adapt recipes to what was available. I also (as did many in the missionary community) sewed quite a bit, making not only clothes but also gifts for the various children's birthday parties that were the "highlights" of the kids' "social" lives! (A favorite manipulating device was, "I won't invite you to my birthday party...")     And then there was the hospitality. When someone came down from Quito on mission business, a sign-up sheet would be put up, where one could offer to feed whoever was coming a meal. Besides that, we had friends and neighbors over for meals.

Looking back, I wonder how in the world I ever managed to do so much! Of course, I was a lot younger! But it caught up with me. Other factors were present (which I'll get to in another post), but the over-busy-ness apparently was the catalyst. I remember standing in the kitchen after lunch one day and thinking, "If I keep on like this, I'll break." I went out and walked for a long time, something which always helped.
I did try to cut back some on activities. But in a bee-hive like Shell, it was hard.

Then came a week where I had people over for meals 8 times in 7 days! (Crazy!) Then we were going to go away for a night or two for our anniversary, and my mother-in-law showed up at our front door! She had asked about coming, and we sent the message to come down later, as we were going to be away, but she didn't get it. She stayed a couple weeks, and although we got along well, it was one more strain. With all the other things I had to do...

I collapsed.

I had almost finished making supper one night, and suddenly I couldn't function. It wasn't dramatic. Everything inside me just slowed to a crawl. I could hardly talk. The next couple weeks I spent mainly laying down in the apartment next door, which was empty at the time. (There was a connecting doorway between it and ours.) Our front door remained shut...which meant to others that I was either not at home or  unavailable. Sometimes I would sit and listen to music and cry and cry.

Germán took over for me in a lot of ways for a while. I would make meals (if you could call them that) while the kids were in school, but then he'd supervise the supper hour. Various friends in the community sent over meals, too, which was wonderful. Most of them sent enough food to feed us for 2 or 3 days at a time!

I read a lot, and just rested.  And then, very soon after, JESUS came. Although I didn't actually see Him with my physical eyes, I could have told you where He was standing when He was with me. Sometimes at the left side of the bed, sometimes at the right, sometimes at the foot.

Not understanding what was going on inside me, someone said, "Pull yourself together!" But in order to do that, one has to have something of substance on which to stand while pulling...and a reserve of strength from which to draw. I had no strength left; my reserve was empty.

I couldn't "pull myself together". Someone Else would have to do that for me...and carry me in His arms until I could walk on my own again.
************************************************************************************************(In my next posts I'll share more about the days when HE carried me, and show you some more poetry.)

Double Feature! - Gigantic spider vs. bag of M&M's // "I Walk On", a poem of trust

It was beautiful, but its beauty was sinister. I was walking back to our house in Shell, and as I got to the swinging bridge a colossal spider walked elegantly onto the narrow dirt path and stopped. I was transfixed. It was the most enormous spider I had ever seen in my life. (And I grew up around the jungle!) As I stared at it, and it at me, I calculated that if I were to lift it up and set it down on a dinner plate, without straightening its legs out, just in normal pose, its legs would be resting on the outer rim of the plate. Extending its extremities, it would have had about a 12-13-inch leg-span. It's body was bigger than any I had seen and was about 5 inches off the ground. It seemed to be a tarantula, but its legs weren't very hairy (not like the goliath spider).

I've looked it up on the Internet, and never have I found a description that matches what I saw. The closest is the huntsman spider, the largest known, only discovered by science in 2001. The huntsman has about the same leg-span, but it walks with front legs in a sort of crab-like fashion...which my spider didn't. The huntsman has a body a little less than 2 inches long, and mine's was from 3 to 4 inches long. (If anyone can tell me what it was, I'd love to know!  If the largest spider known to science was only discovered 12 years ago, who knows what other species are still out there, unknown?!)

I wanted to capture the creature, but all I had in my hand was a small bag of M&M's. The spider's body was half the size of the bag, so it obviously was useless. I wished I'd had a sweater, so I could wrap it around him. Finally someone came along the path, and through him I sent word to a couple of the missionaries who collect spiders. But it took too long for them to get there, and the spider had headed into the underbrush. I was really disappointed that no one else saw such a magnificent work of art. The closest was when one of my friends finally arrived and we peered into the underbrush, where we saw the spider glaring back at us. All we could see were his glowing eyes. They were so far apart and so far off the ground that his enormous size was easily imaginable, and my friend said there was no way he was going in after it! (I didn't blame him!) It's a haunting memory, with still a tinge of disappointment, but in the end I'm sure the spider far preferred his own environment.  Some things are better off just left alone.

(Isn't it awesome that God never says that  about us?)

****************************************************************************************


                            I WALK ON

            You know where my path's uneven,
            where it's strewn with debris and stone.
            You know where it turns most ruthless,
            for You walked it Yourself...alone.

           You know where the seas are deepest;
           even there they obey your Voice.
           You know where the road is steepest,
           for You climbed Calvary's Hill...by choice.

          You know where I'll cross a desert
           like the one where You faced your Foe.
          You know where my griefs weigh heavy;
          when You bore them, they bent You low.

                                           You know where I run for safety
                                           when my courage in tatters lies.
                                           You know where I find my refuge
                                           when the harmony 'round me dies.

                                           You remind me that where I'm weakest,
                                            your Power can make me strong.
                                            I can live each day touched by Music,
                                            for You are the Eternal Song.

          You know where my heart is headed.
          You set all that I need in place.
          I walk on, for my soul is embedded
          in the depth of your Love and Grace!
                                                                                       -Becky Rhon

                        
I place this poem here because in the next blogs I want to show you how, in the days, months and years following a collapse that challenged our faith, priorities and balance, God proved what this poem says! He knew everything we'd go through; He knew where we'd struggle and where we'd triumph. He set what we needed in place. He was ready to let us know in special ways that we were truly "embedded in his Love and Grace".  Please join me!
************************************************************************************************
(Again, if you would like to use my poetry, please let me know!  Thanks.)
*****************************************************************************************

Oh...it's just a cockroach (Apartment Wildlife!)

Are you like me, in that when I try to remember when something happened, I first think of how old my kids were then, and THAT helps me place the event? (Well...sort of!)  The events and situations I'm sharing with you might not be in chronological order, I'm afraid. I can't always remember how old my kids were at a given point!

The first several years in Shell held a wealth of new experiences, challenges and showings of God's Hand on us...before things started on a downward spiral with my health. (But I must add that in the years following the spiral, and even today, we are STILL struck by new experiences, facing new challenges and seeing God's Hand move. There may have been an abrupt upheaval in our life, but NEVER in the faithfulness of our Heavenly Father!)

Our apartment in Shell had an attic that was inhabited...by rats and bats.  We could hear them scratching  around up there. They were just a part of life, and never bothered us. In fact, once when Debbie was about 4, we were talking about where Jesus was. In Heaven...and I pointed in a general upwards direction; she looked at me doubtfully and said, "You mean...He lives up there with the rats and bats?"

Cockroaches were the bane of all the dwellings in Shell. When I was very pregnant (and overdue) with Debbie, one night I felt a little whish of tiny feet race over me; I squeaked and sat up to brush it away. Germán bolted upright and immediately wanted to know if  my labor pains were starting! No...it was just a cockroach.

Every few months we would empty kitchen cabinets and the like, and paint on a liquid cockroach-killer; when it dried, we'd wash everything and put it all away again. The "roach-i-cide" was absorbed by the little pests as they walked over it. Of course, this meant we ended up with dead cockroaches here and there, not a good thing when one has a crawling-but-not-yet-walking baby.  When I saw Debbie one day munching tentatively on something, I checked to see what she'd stuck in her mouth. Yeah...it was just a cockroach. (Yuck!)

Spiders were omnipresent, but they were mostly harmless. Right after we moved into the apartment, a small tarantula came to greet us, but we never saw him again. There would be an occasional lizard and different kinds of bugs, but we never had trouble with them, no bites or stings. None of the rats found its way down from the attic, and only one bat ever did. I heard some slapping sounds in the living room one night, louder than the usual noise the nocturnal cockroaches made. I went out and found a bat that apparently had been injured, as he couldn't fly and was just flapping around. I put a basket over him so he couldn't migrate to other rooms...and went back to bed.

God protected all of us in the community from any of His creatures that might have harmed us, even the wildlife outside the apartment. (Yes, like venomous snakes.) Obviously, though, we ourselves also had to be alert and stay out of risky situations (if possible).  It's like an illustration of how He protects His children from things that could endanger them spiritually or emotionally.  We are surrounded by the "wildlife" of the world, of sin, of ourselves...God, our shield, is there beside us...but here, too, we  need to be alert and watchful. We need to always pay attention!

More next time!  Be grateful for God's protection...and pay attention!  May He bless you.

"But I don't want anyone to kill Cain!"

I'm much more of a country girl, so moving to Shell with its several thousand inhabitants (and a couple thousand of those were on the military base) was an appealing idea. Germán still had to get out every now and then to the pollution and noise of the city. I was reared in the coastal jungle; he was reared in Quito. Big difference! (I still vaguely remember when they got their first traffic light. Not that people paid much attention to it!)

When we arrived in Shell the HCJB missionaries were in the first stages of a game of "musical houses". So for the first month we lived in the guest apartment I mentioned in the last post.  Germán began learning his duties as he supervised the maintenance crew, kitchen and laundry staff, etc. He also helped with things like picking up blood at the blood bank in the next larger town, or transporting patients flown in from the jungle by the MAF pilots. We started getting to know the other families. Fast friendships developed over time, and we still keep in touch with other "Shell-mates".

One night when we had just recently moved into the apartment that would be our home for the next eight years, I was reading Dan a Bible story before he went to bed. That night it was about Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel and is then banished by God, who says, "Now you are under a curse". Cain is dismayed and responds, "My punishment is more than I can bear...whoever finds me will kill me."

As soon as I read that part, Dan's eyes filled with tears and he protested, "But I don't WANT anyone to kill Cain!"  I was speechless for a couple of seconds. The normal human reaction would be "he got what he deserved". I doubt Dan even realized that he was mirroring God's feelings. In spite of his horrible crime, God loved Cain and didn't want anyone to kill him either!

 I continued with the story. Hearing that God had put a protective mark on Cain so that anyone who killed him would be severely punished, Dan was very relieved! This happened 32 years ago, but it still makes me think. In pleading with God, Cain also said, "I will be hidden from your presence", and I think that may have been far and away the worst part of his banishment. Leaving his homeland and wandering the earth was hard, but having to leave God's presence must have been soul-wrenching.

I'm sure you've all wondered what Hell is like. We read of  fire and "weeping and gnashing of teeth", but I believe the most excruciating aspect of it will be separation from God, with no hope of reconciliation. Those who reject Him in this life reject the chance of reconciliation He provides for them. So many people in this world face the same punishment as Cain did: banishment from God's presence...only theirs will be forever. As we settled down in Shell, we wanted to continue the kind of  work we had done in Australia: helping others find the only way a person can avoid this awful ending...and helping others understand that the God who provided The Way to do this is loving, compassionate, powerful and fully worth getting to know! Each of us can begin to build a relationship with Him that should continue to grow...and never stop growing, even when we get to Heaven.

I pray that each one of you who reads this has accepted the chance God gives you to be sure that you will never be separated from His presence.

If I may I interupt myself..?

I may?  Great!  Thanks.

Briefly, I am wondering if you will say a prayer for my mother. It has been 2 months now since Dad died, and decisions about her living arrangements are taking their toll on her. We are all working on getting her the best care, but she's under a lot of stress. Please pray that she (Joyce) will feel God's arms enfolding her and giving her peace.  I sent her this little poem:

                     CHOOSE WHERE YOU'LL LOOK

             You cannot dodge all of life's ill-timed blows,
             so choose where you'll look as the raincloud grows:
             look in at yourself...where perception slows,
             where your fears and your doubts would keep doors closed...

             OR...

             turn your eyes to the One from Whom grace flows;
             for, as (s)he who has struggled with pain well knows,
             there's a Holy Hope that sustains all those
             who look UP through their tears and find...rainbows!
                                                                                                     -Becky Rhon

I wish everyone who reads this many rainbows!
**********************************************************

Now I'll un-interupt myself!   I mentioned that I started attending a woman's Bible study. It was during this time that we were asked to fill in for two months for a couple who administered a Christian camp. While there, God answered one of our hearts' desires, against human odds. Please go back to the post I wrote  on Wednesday, June 12th, and remind yourself (or find out, if you haven't read it) what happened. After 32 years, we are still amazed at His gift!

 The ladies in the Bible study were aware that we were trying to find a place for Germán to work. I was told that there was an opening in HCJB's  hospital in Shell (on the edge of the eastern jungle) for the position of maintenance director. That sounded like it would fit my husband perfectly, as he supervises people well, and can fix just about anything!  (My humble opinion!)  Besides his salary, we would get our apartment rent-free, and not have to pay utilities. AND, Dan could go to the little missionary school (Nate Saint Memorial School) if we wished.

Again, I had a dream, in which I was walking up to some big mesh gates that enclosed the HCJB compound, hand-in-hand with a former classmate of mine; later I realized that he was a grandson of one of the mission's founders, and it seemed like he was escorting me into HCJB. Then I dreamt that we were gathered in a second-story room in the hospital building, in a prayer meeting, while in other parts of the floor, one could sense witchcraft trying to find an opening. I had never been inside the hospital, so I was surprised when we arrived there and were put in the guest apartment...on the second floor of the hospital building...in the same format as in my dream!  (And we found out over the years that evil WAS trying to find its way in.) By the way, the big gates in my dream weren't there when we went...BUT while we were there, mesh gates were installed that looked remarkably like the ones in my dream.

We waited to move until Dan had finished the school year, arriving in Shell with me six months pregnant, and Dan almost 6 years old. Shell was a very small town, and the missionary compound was at one end of it. It was from this town that the martyred missionary Nate Saint and his colleagues were operating before they were killed. In fact, the house Nate Saint built was still standing, with an MAF family living there. (Now it is a museum, I believe.) 

The Nate Saint house holds a poignant memory for me. One night after a meeting at the house next to it, I left to walk back to our apartment, and declined the offer of a flashlight. I was so sure I could easily find my way. I kept to the cement walkway and suddenly...I stepped into the air! A second or two later I landed flat on my back on the ground. Thank God that someone passed by about then and helped me up. I hadn't taken into consideration the fact that the walkway split, and one part of it led up onto the veranda of the Nate Saint house...from where I fell.  (Hmmm...that sounds like something you could build an object lesson around, doesn't it?!)

My main worry was for my baby! (She was fine.)  But the next day I went down to see the "scene of the accident" and was shocked.  The veranda wasn't very high, but right under it was a row of pointed stakes! There was one place that had instead a boulder. Then there was one small space, the only one, where there were no stakes or stones, only grass and earth.  And that was precisely where I had fallen! And on my back, not my stomach. I can't imagine what would have happened if I'd hit the stone or, much worse yet, fallen onto the stakes. Isn't God awesome?

I'll see you next time, to share more of God's hand in our lives!

Uh...is that what the Recipe calls for?

I AM going to continue our journey...but first let's think about this:

Who you are in relationship to God is MORE important than where you go or what you do. In fact, where you go and what you do should be the ongoing outcome or consequence of WHO you are in God.  You may be in the place He wants you to be, but if you don't keep growing closer to Him, and if you try doing things (even good things) on your own, He can't use you half as well, and YOU lose out!

Let's suppose I'm making a cake. I find I don't have baking powder. I ask my husband to go buy me some. He comes home with a lovely...pound of prime steak. Now, there's nothing wrong with him bringing me a good steak, IN ITSELF, right?  But that's NOT what I need for the cake. It would taste weird and wouldn't rise!

Things we do ourselves may be very noble, in and of themselves. Good works are great! But is each one necessarily what God is calling for in a particular "recipe"? The closer we are to Him, the better we will be able to follow each "recipe" He asks us to prepare, to make sure the right ingredients are included!

Remember: He puts you in places, jobs, ministries, work, etc. for more than one reason. Yes, He has work to do through you. But He also will use that work to shape you, teach you, help you grow, draw you closer to Himself. This relationship is the most essential ingredient of all His "recipes". (We tend to put the emphasis on the wrong part of the equation!)


                                  Seek Ye First

    Our searching selves look 'round to see the why, the when, the how;
    what else to plan in daily toil, where else to set our plow.
                  We ponder, listen, figure, fret, and hope to steer aright.
                  Uncertainty breeds shaky ground, distracts our hand, our sight...

                                    and we forget...

    that learning Who God is, His Kingdom opening heart-to-heart,
    where spirit, soul and mind embrace, that's where our steps should start.
                   Then He can take all other things and guide them into place.
                   (In fact, He loves to do it while we're looking at His Face!)

    SO...I lift my eyes unto the hills to seek You, Lord of Power.
    My hands reach out to cling to You, unmoving Rock, Strong Tower.
                     You may not always let me know how come, how soon, how far.
                     But You'll always have the grace to show me more of Who You are.
                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                             -Becky Rhon
*********************************************************************************************
Now, where were we? (Go back to the previous post if you need to remember what the "fleece" was.) The answer from the seminary. Well, our application was refused, and it WAS for a really illogical reason! It made no sense to us, anyway. It was a vague, wandering "explanation" that had to do with the fact that we wouldn't have a car! What that has to do with studying, I don't know, but God certainly answered our fleece very specifically!

Around this time, I started attending a women's Bible study in English, and got to know some of the missionaries here. It was there that we heard of another option for our future...which I'll tell you about next time.  See you then!

"Don't Talk to Me in English!"

Actually, he said it in Spanish ("No me hables en inglés!") with a stomp of his three-and-a-half-year-old foot. While in Australia, we had spoken only Spanish to our son, because if we stayed there, he would learn English quickly, in school and with friends. We didn't want him to grow up not knowing Spanish.

But now it was the other way around. Here in Ecuador he was surrounded by Spanish,  and (as we thought then, anyway) he'd go to school in Spanish. When I talked to him in English, he was really upset. (Other people could, but not me!)

Meanwhile, we were trying to adapt to being back in Quito. We had a piece of land here, so we sold half of it, and started building a house.  It was hard for Germán to find a job until the Wycliffe  mission here hired him to keep their vehicles in good shape (he was a trained mechanic) and also work in public relations. But it was only part-time.  So here we were, a little disoriented, with a little boy who wouldn't let me teach him English! (Though we did find a good church.)

At one point Germán said to me, "Let's go back to Australia". Back then, if one returned within three years, there was no need of getting a new visa. You may be thinking, "But didn't God call them back to Ecuador?" Yes, He did. So this idea wasn't very smart, was it? But I figured I'd put out a "fleece".  (Note that I have used "fleeces" on several occasions, but do so with utmost care and not flippantly; the idea is simply to ask for confirmation, like Gideon did in the Bible.)

So I decided I'd write to a number of friends in Australia, none of whom had wanted us to leave.  I figured they'd surely answer right away, saying "Please do come back!" So I asked God to take the situation in hand: if our friends answered, we'd go back. This seemed so much more likely (which was why I chose it - since a "no" from God would be rather dramatic and obvious, going as it would against our logic). If they didn't, we'd know we should stay in Ecuador.

We waited...and waited...and waited. NO ONE wrote back! Finally, after a really long time, one friend wrote and said, "I don't know why you want to come back here"  and told us about prices going way up and other problems in the country. We really shouldn't have even considered going back, but God knew we were struggling and searching, and with His abundant grace went against all probabilities and set us straight. (Sometimes I wonder if our friends even got the letters; maybe they got lost in the mail...on purpose!)

That's not to say everything was great from then on! (Our major problems were still ahead.)  We dealt with "little" problems...like when one Sunday we returned from church and saw our typewriter in the front yard! In the house things were scattered all over the place.  We don't know what the thief was looking for, because he didn't steal anything really valuable.  He grabbed some of my sister's cheap jewelry, but not her pearls. Do you know what else he took? My Australian driver's license! He didn't even take the money we had.  What good an Australian driver's license would do him here in Quito was beyond us!

Another "small" problem was  when Dan disappeared! He loved to stand on our front wall and say hello to everyone who went by. When he was out there, I always kept an eye on him, but somehow he seemed to vanish into thin air. I was SOOO scared. He was such a beautiful little boy, and there have been so many cases of children being kidnapped. I stayed at the house while Germán went out to canvass the neighborhood. I couldn't concentrate on finishing supper; the chicken just lay cold in the pan.  The prospect of anything happening to our precious little one was one of the worst things a parent can imagine.  Finally Germán came back...with Dan in tow!  Some of our teenage neighbors had decided to take him home with them, and hadn't bothered to inform us!
 
 We put Dan into a little school a few blocks away when he was four years old.. He was technically in pre-kinder, but was in with all the kindergarteners. He ended up being quite a ringleader! When the school year finished, the teacher said that since Dan had done so well, if we left him in their school, he could go straight to first grade. If we put him elsewhere, he'd have to wait until he was six. So, since he was ahead, we put him in the Alliance Academy (the American school here where my siblings and I studied) to do kindergarten again, but in English. By the end of the year he was fluent.

So we were back in Quito, finally living in our almost-finished house, with me pregnant (I told you about that in one of the earliest posts - go back and check it out) and we asked ourselves...What next?

One option was to go to a seminary in the States, where one can study in Spanish. So I put out another "fleece", and asked that if we were NOT to go there, our application would be turned down, but for a really stupid reason. It had to be a reason that didn't make sense. I couldn't imagine that happening, but I knew that God doesn't play around with us, and knew He'd use this to let us know what He had in mind.

We got the application back, and....join me next time to find out what the answer was!