COON HUNT

The neighbor that lived one mile north of us had a coon hound.  His name was Wheeler. I believe he was what you call a black and tan, anyway that was his colors.   I didn't really know this man very well even though he was only a mile from us because he was in another township and the mail and telephone and schools were different than ours.  But sometimes he would be driving by our school at recess and he would stop and talk with us.  He always had a gun or two with him and had a hunting story to tell us. And he liked to tell dirty stories to us boys so we got to know him better because we were always interested in his stories, especially the off colored ones.  

One time he asked me if I wanted to go coon hunting with him that night?   I said yes.  I think I was 8 or 9 and I had never been coon hunting before so I didn't know what to expect.  It was quite an experience.   It was scary for me and he made it worse by telling scary stories that he was making up. It was cold and dark and after a half hour I wanted to go home but I didn't tell him.   That night I learned to tell the different cry of a coon dog when they are tracking a coon or rabbit or the opossum.  The cry is a distinct sound, when they tree a coon they really come alive.

Pipe creek runs through our land so we would hunt it often.   The neighbor to the east of us had some land that joined ours that made one mile of creek to hunt.   In his field he had a drain that drained the water from his land.   It was a 10 or 12 inch clay tile that dumped in the creek.   The smart coons would run into the tile.  It had two openings in the field and they would get in the tile and the dog couldn't get them.    One night we put buckets in the openings before we started so they couldn't get in the tile.    Old Wheeler started chasing a coon and soon we heard the old coon  hit the buckets so we got some of the smart coons that night.   One time when hunters from a northern town was hunting by the tile they had a small dog and it got caught in the tile and they finally had to dig the tile up to get him out.   

In later years my brother LaRoy hunted with Lester more than I did.   I remember one night all three of us were hunting on Briggs' place.  We just turned old Wheeler loose and most of the time we would wait for Wheeler to get his running around done before we started walking but tonight we were still getting our lights and coats on when Wheeler opened up a hot trail and a short time later  he treed.   So we took off to see what he had treed.  When we got there we were surprised there were 5 coons in one tree.    So Lester shot them out of the tree.   He said it was a family. We forgot to bring a sack so we put four on the dog chain and I put it over my shoulder, two in front and two in the back, and LaRoy carried the other one.    Lester said we will hunt a little more and as we were walking things were crawling all over me and driving me nuts so I headed back to the pickup.   When I got there I was covered with fleas I had to take my clothes off to get rid of them.  That was the last time I went coon hunting.

In those days the fur of the animals were worth a lot of money so coon hunters would skin them and sell the pelts of coons, possums, and sometimes, skunks.  If the dog cornered a skunk and got sprayed that was the end of the coon hunting for that night because the dog couldn't pick up the scent of a coon after he got sprayed. 

One thing that I really liked about coon hunting was looking at the heavens, all the stars and different lights in the sky, the night life you hear and see, owls, skunks, birds, farm animals and other sounds that made you wonder what kind of animal that was!  It was a whole new world. Fleas to you!!

SHEEP

I can't remember not having sheep when I was a kid. We didn't have a large number, something around thirty.   There was a man that lived north of Bennington that had a large flock, in the hundreds.  Each year he would have a lamb roast for any one that wanted to come.  There was always a large crowd there.  He served lamb sandwiches, beans, chips and drinks.   We kids always liked to go there.  It was like a big picnic and they would have men shearing sheep and other thing to watch like docking (cutting) there tails off.   

We had 20 acres of pasture that was fenced sheep tight.  You couldn't find a weed in the pasture. They like weeds and tree leaves so the pasture looked like a golf course and the trees were trimmed just as high as they could reach.   

Each year we would shear the wool from the older sheep.  Us kids' job was to hold them for dad.   He would shear them by hand using the old hand clippers and sometime he would cut a hole in their skin that we called button holes.  The number of button holes determined how good of a job you did, good or bad.  When we kids would try our hand at shearing we always ended up with more button holes (bad).  When dad would hire a shearer they had gas powered clippers.  We didn't have electricity until '49 or '50.  The gas engine would turn a small universal joint shaft that would run the clippers.  This made shearing much faster.  Then we would take the wool, roll it up in a ball and tie it with twine then put it in a large gunny sack. The sacks were 10' long 3' wide.  They would hold a lot of wool.  To get more wool in they would have us kids get in the sack and pack the wool tight.  They were heavy.   Dad would take the sacks to the Santa Fe depot in Minneapolis and ship them to Mid West wool in Kansas City, Kansas.    Mid West was a Co-op so it would take some time to get all your money back.  They pool the wool all together by grade and then sell it over a period of time.   Other times dad would take the wool to Oak Hill about 25 miles from us.  The Santa Fe rail road had a special train that would come out from Kansas City on Sunday.   The train would pick up all kinds of livestock and farm products on the way back to K.C. stock yards.  They would be there for opening market Monday morning. Several farmers would be at Oak Hill with one head or more.  They would mark them so they could be sorted out according to owner at the yards.  It was a train that met the needs of the small and large farmer. 

 

When lambing time came around we would shut the sheep up at night.  This would let us go check the ewes during the night.  If they would be having trouble lambing we could help them. Another reason was it was warmer inside.

One day two men came to look at our lambs.  Dad was not at home so I showed them where they were.  I told them to watch out for that buck because he is mean and they just laughed and said we can take care of our self.  So I headed back to the house, then I heard them hollering.  I went back and he had them in one of our hay bunks so I opened a gate to let the sheep in another lot. The buck went with the other sheep so the men could get out of the hay bunk.  

 If I remember right, one day we kids were playing just north of the old rock house.   There was a yellow rose bush (the old fashioned stickery kind) about four feet tall.  My brother LaRoy was bent over playing in the dirt and this buck came up behind him and butted him right over that bush.   My sister Donna got a broom or shovel and chased him off.  I don't remember if it hurt LaRoy or not.   Donna was 8 or 9 I was 6 and LaRoy was 4.

   When our kids  were growing up we had sheep so they got to experience some of the same things I did.  The kids also showed sheep in 4-H and we butchered about four lambs each year to feed them.  We sold our lambs and old sheep at St Joe., Missouri and sometime at Wichita, Kansas when we shipped with the Ottawa County Sheep assoc.   

I hope to start writing more now.   I am felling better each day.  My right arm is still partially paralyzed but gaining with therapy.  Thanks for your prayers I would not have been able to stand the pain this winter with out them.  The Lord is Good!!

GOIN' TO KANSAS CITY

                                              ARROWHEAD STADIUM

                                  THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

                                           WRITTEN BY A HIRED OBSERVER

                                          
Bob and Kathryn were close friends that helped us in our walk with the Lord.  We were having prayer meetings and praise parties in their home in Delphos.   We also were having weekend seminars, we rented a rural school that had 3 class rooms,  kitchen and an auditorium with a stage.  This made an ideal place for a 3 day spiritual weekend.   We were surprised at the turnout.  People came from a large area.  They were hungry for the Lord.

In 1977 there was an International Conference on the Holy Spirit being held in Kansas City.   We decided to go.   Another couple said we could stay with them with some of their relation.  Just 3 days before the conference they told us there wasn't room.  This left us with out any place to stay.  This conference was world wide.  We started calling for room reservations and we got the same answer from all of them:  " we have been booked for months".  The closest place we found was in Topeka 70 miles away.  We kept calling each day hoping that there would be a cancellation or something.  We finally gave up.   The night before the conference Darlene said call this one again, so I called and they said they had an open room.   Two other couples wanted to go but they wanted us to check out the meetings  for them first.

  On the way to the conference we stopped at a truck stop to get a drink.  While we were there a small Ford station wagon pulled in by us, it was from California.  When they opened the doors out came 12 adult people, 5 or 6 different nationalities.  We couldn't believe how they all got in there.  They were on their way to the conference.  We started visiting with them.  They told us they were all from California.  We asked where they were staying and  they said they couldn't  find any place but they were going any way, The Lord would take care of them.  And He did. We visited with them at the conference and they said a Catholic convent took them in.

  We arrived at the motel to get our room. They said we didn't have a room there,  they had been booked full for six months.  I gave them my confirmation number and they just laughed at me and said 'no room'.   I went back to the car and just sat there wondering what to do.  Finally my wife told me to go back in there and tell them we have a room here and here is our confirmation number.  So I went back in and there was a line of people waiting to check in.  The man behind the counter looked at me then took a set of keys and threw them to me and said:  "Here is your room keys and you are not supposed to have a room here".  That really let us know the Lord was with us.

   We headed out to Arrowhead stadium for the first night of the conference.  We knew it would be a once in a life time experience but we were not ready for what we saw and EXPERIENCED. When we arrived  there the parking lot was row after row of buses with banners with all kind of Christian symbols and scripture verses.  Prayer groups from all over the world were marching, carrying their banners and singing.  It was pageantry at its best--like a movie, only no human had directed it!  When we got inside the stadium there were 65,000 people singing and praising God all in one accord.  The presence of the Lord was so strong--it was like nothing we had ever seen or heard before.

At one point during the evening during singing of a hymn (Holy God We Praise Thy Name) and prayer we knelt on the concrete for 45 minutes.  No one could believe it had been that long.  A young man across the aisle from us stood holding a small child in one arm and the other arm upraised for hours.  Later we learned that they were from Minnesota and their car had broken down so he was working on the car in the daytime and attending the conference at night.

During the evening one of the speakers made the comment that "We've read the end of the book and WE WIN!!!"  The huge, joyous, enthusiastic crowd came to their feet cheering and praising God.  The scoreboard was flashing "TOUCHDOWN!!  JESUS IS LORD!!  TOUCHDOWN!! and it was after midnight when we left the stadium.  

When we got back to our motel our phone was flashing.  It was a message from the two couples that stayed home.  We called them and they said they had tried to rent a camper but couldn't but they were going to come anyway.  After we hung up I called the desk and asked if anyone had checked out today because we had friends coming and they needed a room.  He told me "No, and you're not even supposed to have the room you are in".  When I got up in the morning I went to the lobby to get some coffee.  I asked the clerk if they had any rooms and he said "some people just moved out of a room with two beds in it".  I said "we'll take it", and guess where the room was---it was a room adjoining ours!!  so we could open the door between us and be together.  

During the day they had seminars downtown led by every denomination you can think of and you could pick which ones you wanted to go to.  One of the seminars we attended was in a room with 10,000 Catholics.  They had made provision with a vending company to feed us a sack lunch at noon.  It was quite a sight to see 50,000 plus people eating from their sacks.   It took about 10 minutes to feed everyone!!  It was very well organized with plenty of serving lines.

Each evening we went out to Arrowhead stadium.  It was the largest convention they had ever had in Kansas City.  Headlines in the Kansas City Star read "THE MOST COURTEOUS DRIVING WE HAVE EVER SEEN!!" of all the traffic to the stadium.  Another headline read "PROSTITUTION DOWN---ICE CREAM SALES UP!!".  There were also comments about the lack of litter and the cleanness of the stadium.

There were many great speakers at the 4 evenings of the convention.  One evening President Jimmy Carter called and spoke to us by phone.  His sister, who was attending the convention, also spoke to us.  

On Sunday morning we attended Mass at the stadium.  Over 500 priests marched in in procession wearing white robes.  It was very hot!!  A cloud came over and it started to rain on us.  Everyone immediately started praying that we wouldn't get rained out.  The cloud moved, the sun came out, and it was cool, a beautiful day.

It would take a book to tell all the little things that happened, things we saw and heard.  It was an experience we will never forget!!    

Saved by His life---EASTER---2009

                                                       SUNRISE SERVICE
                                                           HE IS RISEN!!!
                                                              ALLELUIA!!!
Read Romans 5:8-10

God tells us that he loves us no matter what we do or what we have done or what we are going to do.  When they arrested Him His disciple's scattered, Peter even denied knowing him.  Peter not only denied Jesus to the authorities because he feared for his own life, but he also denied Jesus to a peasant girl because he wanted to not be identified with him.  I believe that this scripture puts it real plain what we celebrate this week.  We have all denied him and we have all run from him. But He rose from the dead, not to give us what we deserve, but to meet our needs.  Forgiveness, Grace, Peace, Love,  and most of all--Life.  This is what saves us-- His life.  He is RISEN.   What can you do to stop Him from loving you?

PS:  After suffering extreme pain all winter I had surgery April 1st.  The pain is gone but my right  arm is partially paralyzed.  Last Monday the physical therapist came in to see me and to help me regain the use of my arm.  I asked him how long it will take to do this.  He answered with three profound words:  "It's OK".   He was telling me no matter what stage I am in, it's OK.  It really ministered to me that no matter what happens, God is in control and 'it's OK'.

                                 HE IS RISEN!!!  ALLELUIA!!!  

Living in the Kingdom

This is where the rubber hits the road.  Now that we'd made a decision it was up to us to live it out with the Holy Spirit's help.  We had been partiers--Saturday night meant we were usually gone dancing and partying.  The first Saturday night after we gave our life to the Lord the telephone rang and the people said "Let's go to one of the nightclubs in Salina".  So we went. When we got home we looked at each other and both said it was the most miserable night we had spent.  After that the phone would ring every week and I would lie saying that we had company or were sick or had something else we had to do.  I didn't have enough guts to tell them that we were Christians now and the Lord had taken away any desire to party that way.  I didn't want to offend them.  This went on for abut 6 months and then the Holy Spirit convicted me that I should tell the truth.  So I did and it freed me to live my new life openly.  

              "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;                      the old has gone, the new life has come!   II Cor. 5:17 NIV

We were Catholic and the words 'saved' and 'born again' were not in our vocabulary.  We attended a Bible study with our Protestnt friends and they showed us in scripture what the words meant and helped us understand what had happened in our lives.  We wanted to see what our church had to offer so we questioned our priest.  He told us "I don't know what you are talking about but there are some meetings going on out in Hays next weekend that you might be interested in".  This was Pentecost weekend and the meetings, conducted by a Father Rohr, were excellent.  In the evening they had a prayer meeting and we had never been to anything like it. It was awesome!  The power of the Holy Spirit was there and healed and delivered people. When we got home we started going to a prayer meeting in the Catholic rectory in Concordia. Everyone would be praying aloud as the spirit led them, then a silence would fall on the group and someone would give a prophecy or a word of knowledge or word of wisdom.  There was a little boy, 6 years old, who would often prophesy at length.  It was always beautiful and right on. Later, we and another couple started a prayer meeting and Bible study in our own church.

We started sharing with our family and friends but were not able to communicate what had happened  to us in a way that they could understand.  We were at my sister's house for dinner and she asked our daughter to say the blessing.  She didn't say the traditional blessing so then my sister told her children "now you say the real one".  She didn't understand where we were coming from but later she became a very strong Christian and prayed for people's healing and salvation and openly shared her new faith in Jesus whenever she could.

We were Godparents to one of my nieces.  I felt the Lord was telling me to write her and her husband and tell them what we had experienced in our life.  We were taught that it was the responsibility of the Godparents to help form their spiritual life.  It took 4 pages and their response was that they really didn't understand why we were sharing this with them. They are a very strong family today,  dedicated and living their lives for the Lord.  So our responsibility is to share what the Lord has done for us and then let the Holy Spirit do His work.

After a couple of years we realized there was a different emphasis between the Protestant Bible study and the Catholic prayer meetings we were attending.  The emphasis at the prayer meetings was on the power of the Holy Spirit Who lives within us and is our present day enabler. 

"But when He, the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth, He will not speak on his own; He will speak only what He hears, and He will tell you what is yet to come."    John 16:13   NIV 

So we spent more time at the prayer meetings and at charismatic Masses.  We also went to Full Gospel Businessmen International meetings and Catholic charismatic conferences where we observed and experienced many miracles, healings and deliverances.  More about that later.

As we live in the Kingdom it is our reponsibility to share the 'good news" (Gospel) with the people around us and whoever we meet wherever the Lord takes us.  In John chapter 3 Jesus tells us that we must be born again to see, enter and hear the Kingdom of God.  In verse 13 He says "I have spoken to  you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?"    NIV  This tells me that we can all live in  the Kingdom of God right now.  You must be born again!! 

                                                                                                                                                                               

Getting Saved

In the early '60's I was serving on the school board of the rural school our boys attended.  A neighbor who was also on the board rode to one meeting with me and when we got back to his house afterward he didn't get out of the car.  We just sat there and chatted for a while then he started sharing with me about Jesus.  I thought he was crazy and my wife thought we must be out partying because I didn't get home until 3 am.  The next day when I went to work I told some people: "This guy told me he knows he is going to heaven."  I thought this was a big joke because no one could know that they were going to heaven.  Could they?

We continued our lifestyle for the next 7 years but God was working.  He brought a whole new set of friends into our life and they were all talking about Jesus.  We would sit up all night (almost) discussing scripture and what it meant to us.

One couple in particular kind of took us under their wing.  They would take us to hear speakers.  One night they took us and another couple to Concordia to hear a preacher.  There was a nun there who had come because one of her piano students was providing special music that night.  When the preacher gave the invitation to come to the front to accept Jesus we were amazed to see her go down the aisle.  On the way home I said:  "That preacher was looking straight at me all night".  The other couple husband who was with us said:  "Oh, no!  He was looking at me".  We were both under conviction about our lifestyle but we were tough, we resisted.

Shortly after that a professional football player by the name of Bill Glass was scheduled to speak in our town.  (He was an all-American at Baylor University and later played for the Cleveland Browns)  I was asked to be a counsellor as a representative of the Catholic church.  On May 30, 1971 we went to the meeting in the grade school gym.This time the conviction got the best of us and when he gave the invitation we and our three sons and a niece went forward.  It was a great moment---and what a relief!!  All of our burdens were lifted and immediately we experienced a new freedom.

Meanwhile---back at the ranch---.  During the meeting there was a bad storm.  We had trouble getting home because there was water over the road.  My sister, who was at our house, with our little  daughter and her 2 small children, was running bathwater for the kids when the storm hit. She gathered up the 3 kids and took them to the old root cellar in the back yard.  That took real courage because it hadn't been used for so long that there were snakes and spiders etc. down there.  When we finally got home we found that the barn had blown down, the back screen door was ripped off, and the bathtub had overflowed.  

I think the devil was really mad because he had lost 6 of his own that night!!!

"For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life."   John 3:16  NIV

"He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.  I write these things to you who believe in the Name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life."   I John 5:12-13  NIV     

LENT

                                                           Donny               Me

                                     June 16,1940--First Communion

I was raised in a Catholic family.  As long as I can remember we always went to church.  We lived 10 miles from three Catholic churches.  Minnespolis, Delp0hos, and Meredith which was a small country church.  We kids liked to go to Meredith because it was small and there were a lot of other farm kids there.  The church would hold about 50 or 60 people.  I think the pews were homemade.  They were made out of 1X12 boards about 10 feet long.  4 or 5 people could sit in them easy.  I remember you had to watch it when you sat down because the pews were not fastened to the floor.  The floor was slick and the pews were light.  When you sat down  they would scoot out from under you if you weren't careful.  The kneelers were the same way so if you didn't watch it when you knelt down they would scoot away or turn over.  So you can see, we kids would have fun watching things happen and we would laugh when they happened to us.  

We went to Minneapolis for catechism.  They only had it two times for country kids that I can remember--once before 1st communion and once before confirmation.  They were two weeks each.  

I remember we would go to confession on Saturday night and that meant you could not eat anything after midnight.  We thought we were going to die!!  Saturday night was a big thing during the summer because you didn't go to town during the week and if the folks went to Salina we didn't get to town for two weeks.  On Saturday nights farm families would gather in town to shop and visit with each other.  They would visit until after midnight so on the way home we would want something to eat but that was a no-no because if you broke your fast you couldn't take communion Sunday morning.

When Lent came around it was time to get out the rosary.  Ash Wednesday was the start.  This was the only time I can remember going to church during the week except for mid-night mass on Christmas eve.  We would go to the Ash Wednesday service and get the ashes put on our forehead and NO washing them off the rest of the day.  The ashes were from Palm Sunday palms that had been burned and they symbolized repentance and sorrow for sin.

Every night at bedtime we would kneel by our beds and say the rosary.  Mom would lead us until we got older.  When my sister Donna got older she would lead us.  We all got our turn leading the rosary.  I remember we would be saying the rosary and fall asleep and someone would poke us to wake us up.  I thought we did it for hours but it was only 15 minutes or so.  We got pretty good, we could mumble the responses in our sleep.  It was a serious thing to our mom. We didn't understand that until later years.  

Lent is the time for reconciliation with the Father and His Son Jesus so fasting was a big part of Lent.  I remember we would give something up for Lent.  Mom would ask us "What are you going to give up for Lent this year?"  We would answer with some smart aleck answer like watermelon, washing dishes or going to school.  Mom would say "That won't work!"  We would give up something like candy, ice cream or one of the meals each day.  We would do this to show Jesus that we loved Him.  In later years we realized He was more interested in our heart (our inside rather that our outside).  I knew ABOUT God but I didn't KNOW HIM.

Joel 2:12-13----"Even now, " declares the Lord, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning."  Rend your hearts and not your garments.  Return to the Lord your God , for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and He relents from sending calamity.  NIV