Thanksgiving

This coming week is American Thanksgiving, a harvest festival that remembers those who came to this country for religious freedom and honors the indigenous people who reached beyond their cultural comfort zone to help them adapt to their new home. (Hmm. That sounds like it should lead into a challenge to reach out to immigrants in our neighborhoods, but it doesn't.)

You don’t need me to tell you that Thanksgiving should be 365 days a year. God says, “He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God.” (Psalm 50:23) That means that when I practice giving thanks in all situations, I not only honor God; I establish a habit of looking for what he is doing, and that makes it more likely that I’ll see his salvation at work.

A while ago I began writing down something every day for which I am thankful. It has to be something specific from the past 24 hours. I look for an answer to prayer, a person God has brought into my life, an event where I see his hand, or a gift he has given me. Some days I could fill the whole page, but other days I stare at my notebook, trying to come up with something unique for which I really do feel thankful. I don’t want to fall into a habit of just going through the motions of honoring God. I love being able to look back at the list and see concrete things that God has done for me—especially on those days when I’m struggling to see him at work.

Last week I spoke several times at the Global Impact Conference of Faith Missionary Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. The last time we participated in this conference we felt under-used. Believe me, they have made up for that! It was an exhausting week. Steve was teaching workshops for academic deans in Latin America, so the speaking and relating to donors (and potential donors) all fell on me. By the time I got home to my snug house in the Northwoods, I was nearly catatonic. This morning I looked back over some of the things I wrote on my thanksgiving list last week:

All those hours in the car by myself getting there before non-stop people
A good group of missionaries, representing a variety of countries and ministries
Old friends like Gail, and family like Aunt Millie
Enthusiastic Sunday School children, praying for the boys and girls in Africa
Retired missionaries like Betty who have spent their lives in service
Families who opened their homes for meetings even though they didn’t know me
Strangers who asked to be on our mailing list
Younger women (not just little old ladies!) who are meeting weekly to pray for missionaries

This morning I lolled against the pillows and ate my breakfast in bed. On my thankful list I wrote “A week without pressure.” So what are you thankful for today?

International Bazaar

“That one, Mom. Beads and Braids. Buy that one!”

Friday night we held a bazaar in the fellowship hall of Faith Missionary Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Various booths were set up with goods we missionaries had brought from around the world. Participants had to get a ‘passport’ and insert ‘stamps’ from the various countries represented. They exchanged U.S. dollars for GICC (Global Impact Conference Cents) at the ‘bank’ with good-looking teens in suits and ties. The ‘customs official’ even pulled a few people out of line for searches, and I heard an alarm go at one point and the intercom announce a ‘code red’. A dog wandered in and out among the shoppers and sniffed the live chickens in one corner. My Mozambican colleague and I in the Africa booth pinned up a sign that read, “We are speeking English” and chased away a couple pesky beggars.

Peg jiggled the baby doll tied to her back and bargained freely with her customers, arguing that their initial offers wouldn’t feed her family. I spread my books on a cloth on the ground and sold only in foreign currency (U.S. dollars.) It wasn’t really black market. It was more like our days in Mozambique when the government ran a store with imported goods sold only in dollars or South African rand. I told all the children how smart they would be and how well they would do in school if they practiced English by reading my books.

The fun part for me was the children who had been to Vacation Bible School and contributed for the books I left at Arebaokeng and Thembisa Baptist Church. The children recognized the cover of Beads and Braids from the VBS promotion and wanted their own copy. Last Sunday I spoke in their Sunday School class and told them about the children whose mothers and fathers had died. Some of those children live with grandparents like the ones in Our Gran. Some of them live on their own like Toto and his brothers in Toto in Trouble. That story was told in detail to at least one mother in the car on the way home from church. “Mrs. Hardy wants to write stories that will make the children say, ‘That’s just like me,’” her son told her, echoing my exact words.

Whenever a child at the bazaar bought a copy of Beads and Braids, I signed it and wrote on the title page, “Pray for the children of Africa.” I hope they will.

Proud to Be an American

Tuesday, November 4, I was the first person in Jackson Township to cast my ballot. I have voted before, although not in every presidential election. We were disenfranchised a couple times because of postal systems that didn’t get absentee ballots to us in western Brazil, and later, Mozambique until too late to return them on time.

What moved me most in this election was the first-time voters—a Sudanese ‘lost boy’ who just became a citizen, young people eager to make a difference, and older African Americans who finally felt like their voices mattered. Those who took their children to the polls or to the victory celebrations because they wanted them to be part of history made me think of the day Nelson Mandela was elected in South Africa. Our church in Kempton Park held a prayer meeting in the early morning before members went to stand in line together to participate in South Africa’s first democratic elections.

Today the whole world is celebrating with the United States. There is dancing in Kenya as well as in Chicago. Many hope that a new face in the White House will mean a real change in American attitudes, someone who will work for peace and justice for all.

It’s not a job I would want. I couldn’t organize a women’s retreat much less run the country. The issues of the economy, the war in Iraq, and America’s role in world leadership are so huge that there is no way Barak Obama will solve it all any more than Nelson Mandela could provide instant jobs and housing in a post-apartheid era.

Election morning brought an e-mail from an African American friend. She didn’t endorse either candidate. She challenged us to pray for whoever won. What progress might he make if those who voted for him or against him committed to pray twice as much as criticize?

I look at president-elect Obama and all the excited young people enthusiastic for his cause and pray there will be no Monica Lewinski among them. I look at his beautiful and gifted wife and pray that her abilities will be used, her presence will inspire and that their marriage will stay strong. I see those two precious little girls and wonder what life will be like for them under the magnifying glass of public scrutiny.

I join Kersten in asking you to pray whether you voted for Obama or not. Pray for his relationship with God, for his family, for his advisors, for his policies, for his relationships in Washington and with world leaders. Pray for the physical and mental stamina that will be needed to carry him through the next four years.

Tuesday we exercised our right to vote. Now we must exercise our responsibility to lift up our leaders before the King of kings.

Being grateful

When is it easy to be grateful for a major leak in your basement water pump?

1) when you are home (as opposed to being away for weeks or even months...)

2) when you have just ripped out the old carpeting and the new hasn't yet been installed.

When is it easy to be grateful for a flat tire?

When you find it Saturday morning instead of Sunday morning on your way to church and your granddaughter's second birthday party.

Not hard at all.

Who's at risk?

We were out to enjoy the autumn leaves on the last nice day before the weatherman told us rain and high winds would strip the trees. The sky was blue and the air was crisp as we drove along the edge of town toward the park by the river.

“Down this way—” My mother-in-law pointed to a short street that ended abruptly on a bluff overlooking the park. “—there’s a cul-de-sac where kids come to take drugs. Our friends often find stoned teens asleep in their front yard.”

I was shocked. Here? In the small Minnesota town where my husband grew up? The town where we lived when our girls were in junior high that one of our Indiana friends described as “living in a Norman Rockwell painting”? It didn’t seem real. I’m not naïve enough to think there is no crime in small towns even though when Mom sold the house Steve grew up in, she hadn’t locked the door in so long that she couldn’t find the keys. Unfortunately, crime is everywhere. But I grieved for the despair of teens that would get sucked into such as destructive life.

We parked our car near the low bridge (as opposed to the high bridge that the highway uses to cross the river.) Two small children played on the climbing frame under the watchful eye of a man who might have been their grandfather. I thought of the delight of my own nearly-two grand daughter who is getting more articulate by the day. “Playground” is now part of her vocabulary, and she shouts it enthusiastically whenever she sees one.

Mom and I walked down an asphalt path across the lawn and followed on into the woods where it turned to dirt and scattered leaves. But I couldn’t get those stoned kids out of my mind. Was this a pleasant walk along the river bank far from the noises and smells of traffic and the garish lights of strip malls? Or was it an isolated spot to take drugs or have sex with no one around to say ‘no’?

The young people our friends find asleep in their yard were once as small and vulnerable as Bella. They came to the park to climb on the playground, throw a ball or shuffle through the leaves to Grandpa. Then somewhere along the line, despair took hold.

African children aren’t the only ones at risk.

God is still on the Throne

The reason we were in UK in September was Steve’s meetings with Langham Partnership, the trust that uses the income from John R. W. Stott’s books and other donations to provide books for majority-world pastors and seminary students, hold preaching workshops and scholarship future church leaders from around the world. The meetings were held at Farnham Castle, the seat of the bishops of Winchester from the 12th century to 1962.


The earliest buildings at Farnham were begun in 1138 by Henry of Blois, grandson of William the Conqueror and abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, the setting of my novel Glastonbury Tor. Henry helped to put his brother Stephen on the throne in the time of Ellis Peter’s Brother Cadfael stories, then briefly switched sides to support their cousin, Matilda, in the civil war that followed. Ultimately he negotiated the treaty that ended the conflict. Henry of Blois wasn’t the last powerful bishop of Winchester. Nine were Lord Chancellors. According to the castle website, “Most of the monarchs of England from King John to Queen Victoria visited or stayed at the castle.”

Bishop William of Wykeham (1366-1404) would no doubt have approved of the educational endeavors of Langham Partnerships. He founded New College at Oxford and a college at Winchester for “poor” middle class scholars. Both schools had a revolutionary impact on the education of the time. Later Bishop William Waynflete (1447-1486) continued that interest in education. He founded Magdalene College, Oxford, that later gave us C. S. Lewis of Narnia fame.

Since 1962 the castle keep has been open to the public and the bishop’s palace run by the Church of England as a training and conference center. We stayed in the “new,” half-timbered part of the palace built for the courtiers of Tudor Queen Elizabeth I in the sixteenth century when she fled London because of a plot against her life. They have been remodeled with en suite bathrooms that the prior of Llantony and Henry of Blois would have envied.

One evening a string quartet played in the large hall. It was a private event, but when the Langham group went out for dinner, I decided I had eaten quite enough for one day and drank my cup of soup sitting on the floor of the gallery out of sight, but where I could enjoy the music.

The stock market began its plunge as we arrived in Farnham, making us all wonder what the impact would be on charitable giving and with it scholarships for majority-world doctoral candidates. The colleges founded by the bishops of Winchester have endured nearly six hundred years, impacting each new generation. Despite world financial markets, God will continue to work out his plans for the leadership of his church around the world. His character has not changed, nor has his plan to reconcile the world to himself. May Langham Partnership continue to play a significant role in that plan.

(I can’t resist sharing pictures. See my Picassa album.)

Return to Wales

According to the date my digital camera attaches to my photos, it was the tenth of November, 2007 when I drove my rental car down the one-lane road between the hedges into the Llantony Valley in southeast Wales. That day I said to myself, “This is it. This is where Colin Hay is from.”

I was spending three weeks in Wales researching a sequel to my novel Glastonbury Tor. At the end of that book Colin goes home to Wales to reconcile with his drunken and abusive father. If I was going to write about what happened when he got there, I needed to know more about Wales. (See my blog entries for November 4, 9, and 18, 2007 for more about those weeks in Wales.)

A few weeks ago in September 2008 my husband, Steve, had meetings in England in the middle of a long trip to various places on that side of the Atlantic. To break up his trip, he suggested that I fly over and join him for a few days. “You can show me some of the things you researched last year.” How could I refuse?

There aren’t a lot of choices for accommodation in the Llantony Valley (or the Vale of Ewyas, as it is called on some maps). It was either the Abbey Hotel or the pub down the road. We chose the Abbey Hotel in the ruined 12th century priory. The prior’s quarters are still standing although roof lines indicate that they are partially rebuilt. The hotel has four rooms, one on top of another in the tower. We stayed in the bottom room, up a steep winding stair from the prior’s small, vaulted hall. Residents of the other rooms had to come down a similar stair to use the only bathroom—located on our floor. Dinner was traditional recipes served in front of the fire in the hall. (Sorry, no swan’s tongues.)

During the day we hiked the hills around Offa’s Dyke, explored tiny, ancient churches and drove up over the bluff to Hay, the town of books, with its streets lined with used book shops and other goodies—and an internet connection in the public library.

With a geological survey map and the guidance of locals, we found an ancient Celtic hill fort near the entrance to the valley and a mystical circle of stone slabs in a field below it. In the center of the hill fort were two raised places looking remarkably like burial mounds. I had an idea for something similar in the story, but dismissed it because forts were civic centers, not burial places, to the ancient Celts. Seeing these, it occurred to me that although the original residents would not have buried there, later inhabitants of the valley might have seen the ring of earth as a sacred place suitable for burying chieftains. So it may work in the story after all.

I have a wonderful husband, who traipsed through spring-soggy fields with me, sheep dung and all. He drove the car home from the next valley, freeing me to climb through the heather and gorse over the top, imagining what Colin would see, hear, feel and smell as he approached his home after a year away. I didn’t get much time to write on this trip, but I certainly enjoyed the ambiance.

(The priory was very photogenic. You can see more photos in my Picassa album.)