Witness the Life in Me

Witness the Life in Me

“Oh, Sweetie, I just take it day by day now, ” she said with a smile. I smiled in return but the truth in such a statement caused me to reflect later - was that the appropriate response? I hugged her. My blossoming baby-belly quickly bringing us close together, one of her arms tightly wrapped around my shoulders and the other still gripped onto her cane. Camp hosted a special women's retreat this midweek. Many of the ladies that came during this time have built their legacies and are in the last chapters of His narrative in their lives. I had the privilege of speaking to them the first night about my experience in China. When I surveyed the group, it was clear that their concept of the nation was much different than mine. They lived during the time of the Cultural Revolution. They knew Red China. They heard the front line news of the closed doors and the persecution, the oppression, and the famine.

I entitled the talk “Three Lives, Three Women, One Story” and as I spoke to them in that dimly lit room, I could clearly see their faces, imprinted with stories of their own to speak of and share. After forty-five minutes, we thanked God together for the Greatest Story Ever told and the honor and privilege it is to a be a witness to His kingdom coming. But there was one more story that they insisted on hearing about: how did I meet my husband? I briefly shared about my sister working at the camp where Ben was the Outdoor Education Coordinator and how on my return visit back from China, I shadowed her at work. That is when it happened. Ben was standing up in front of a group of sixth graders singing about three short-necked buzzards when I fell in love. The last of the three women's lives I shared was my own but I stopped the story simply with my return back to the states. But these women knew better than I, know better than I. They insisted that I continue sharing. It all brings Him glory – in China, in Prescott, as a single woman, as a married lady, as a mom! After all, his story in us and through us never ends. Let us not keep from speaking of the things we have seen and heard. And even when they might not be able to return again to camp next year, His story will continue on. It is all a part of the One story. “See you again next year, I hope,” I say to her, life in me forming and life in her nearing the end. She smiles at me. And I smile in return. This is the right response. She knows. Stories have beginnings and ends but His story is eternal, everlasting, amen!

Time Travel by Ben Maki

Yesterday, as I was deep in concentration over some new problem that had cropped up in our soon-to-be-released redesigned website, Laura came in to ask a favor.  “There’s a family here to visit the grounds and I need someone to take them around,” she asked. “You’re the only one available.”  Generally, it takes me a few minutes to switch to people mode when I’ve been coding web pages all day, but when the woman who hands you your check every other week asks a favor…well…

The family turned out to be from Utah and they had come all the way to Prescott for a whirlwind one day tour of all that was special to grandpa when he lived here as a boy.  Grandpa himself was leading the tour and from the smile on his face as we climbed into the golf cart I could tell this was going to be a fun trip.

Our first stop was the Chapel.  After a family picture outside the door, he stepped inside and began describing in detail how it had looked so long ago.  “There were pews and the front was on the end, over here.  There was a banner on the wall that said ‘I can do all things through Christ’ above the stage.  And I was sitting right here when I gave my life to the Lord.” He was standing right under the left projector, surrounded by chairs facing the wrong way and staring at a blank, banner-less wall, but you could tell that the decision he’d made so long ago on that very spot hadn’t changed at all.

Now I was born in the ‘70’s, so when people talk about coming to camp in 1948, it falls into that realm of history sometime after the Romans, but before the VCR.  And the difference between that time and this one seems like an impossibly long time.  But as we continued the tour (his level of excitement rising to an almost giddy level when he discovered his cabin is still—barely—standing), I was reminded of something a pastor once said to me.  “I’ve made a lot of decisions in my life, starting from a very young age.  What I was going to be, where I was going to live, what I was going to do.  But there is only one decision that has stuck with me for all these years: the decision to follow Christ.  I don’t know how, but I am who I am because of that decision.”

Like I said, I’m working on a new web site.  We just built a new dining hall.  We’ve got grandiose plans to make this place as unrecognizable in another 60 years as it is now compared to back then.  But nothing excites me more than this:  that when my own childhood joins the Roman Empire in ancient history, my work here will have helped people know the One Who Never Changes and who will still be loving me.