Bibleville

Fun concert last evening with the Mark Trammell Quartet. Southern Gospel again, as is usual here, I think. Good variety of style with differenct songs featuring different members of the group. The bass was especially good and made us think of Steve's dad with his incredible basement voice. Dad would have loved singing in a group like this. If Steve's folks had spent more time in the south in heir later years...if Dad had not gotten sick...who knows what he might have done?



We went to the worship service this morning. Had lunch with friends of Orlin's who invited him. He had already invited us to his place to watch the football game, so they invited us all and had the game on until its pitiful end. :-)

I organized my suitcase before church. Steve has his ready to go. Mom was thinking of organizing hers and wanted to pack what she wore to church this morning, so she put on her nightgown--at 5:30 PM--completely forgetting the evening service. She debated, but decided to leave it on and skip church tonight. Steve isn't preaching. If she gets to bed earlier tonight, it will be easier to get up in the morning and hit the road.

Tomorrow we head west to Laredo, then north to the Texas Hill Country. Erika thinks we are nuts not to visit Big Bend National Park, but it is several hours out of our way and we just don't have the time. (This is one BIG state.) Bibleville is talking of inviting us back. Next time we'll have to plan on Big Bend. The sad thing here is that with so many older people, inevitably you lose some every year. So how many that we met and enjoyed this time will still be here?

Bibleville/Santa Ana

The sun came out again and it has been a beautiful day. I returned to Santa Ana this afternoon for a vigorous walk while Steve watched football. But before that we had some other adventures.

The vege wagon comes here on Saturday mornings. It's a Brazilian feira on wheels. I went looking for munchies for our trip north, but came away with this bag of grapefruit. It will be a bit difficult to eat in the car, but for $2 we will find a place for it.



Linda and Doug Mosier are both very musical. Doug plays trumpet and writes and arranges for Bibleville's Glory Band, a play-whatever-instrument-you-want group here in Bibleville. We have enjoyed Linda on both piano and organ in the auditorium, but when we found out she had a pipe organ at home, we had to see it. Not every mobile home in this park could have held it, but they found one with a cathedral ceiling, removed a closet and voila!

Mom found it hard to focus her eyes on music at this height and her hearing aids distorted the sound, but she enjoyed playing around. Ignore Steve's voice in the background of this video. I know horizontal would view better, but vertical shows more of the organ.

We chatted over tea (South African rooibos) for an hour. They are Minnesota people during the summers. Who know? Perhaps we will see them again some time.

Since Steve finished preaching last night, we are no longer schedued in homes for dinner. We were all a little relieved to call our tea time "lunch. While Mom napped and Steve watched football, I took off again for Santa Ana Nature Reserve. This time I walked west toward the Cattail Lakes. Loved the wildflowers growing in the sun on the dike between lakes.

I sat on a bench near the HQ building, enjoyed the view, and read a book I am editing for a colleague. Very funny.

Bibleville/Santa Ana Wildlife Reserve

I spoke to women's groups a couple times this week--their Tuesday morning Bible study (they asked for a testimony) and Thursday afternoon tea on the theme of joy from Psalm 126:2-3 and Habakkuk 3:17-19. I read from The Wooden Ox on Tuesday, the scene where Mom says she didn't have enough faith to bring out their trail mix and dried fruit when the prisoners stopped for tea. On Thursday I read the scene from Keeping Secrets where they visit the church on the corner and the African pastor preaches on Habkkuk 3:17-19. It puts the verses into a context of HIV and urban poverty. My point was that our joy is in the Lord, not what is happening in our lives. I ended by singing John Rees's setting of Psalm 73:21-28. I think I got more comments on my singing than on the talk. Most people here have older vocal chords than I do so high notes that don't wobble are important to them.

One morning were buzzed repeatedly by a biplane spraying a nearby field. It took me a while to figure out that if I went outside, he would be back and I could get a picture. Of course, that was his last pass and I had no chance to line up a second.



Orlin loaned us his golf cart, a common form of transport around here. Since three of us didn't fit, we found that we weren't using it so we returned it. But first Mom and I took a spin to check out all the RVs and mobile homes.



Today (after lunch with a Minnesota couple who spent a summer "hosting" a trailhead in Alaska) I took Mom and Steve back to Santa Ana. We should have brought Mom's walker to give her more mobility. She ended up napping in the car while Steve and I walked. I took him through the Spanish moss which stops abruptly and then starts again for no reason that we can discern. The trail went right by the Rio Grande with no security that we could discern either although getting out of the park would be a challenge if you we wet and carrying suitcases. Someone told us thater that they bring dry clothes across wrapped in plastic. Also bales of marijuana, but we didn't see any of that.

Rio Grand River at Santa Ana National Wildlife Reserve

The blind where I took pictures the other day, this time with a telephoto from across the lake.

We were mainly there to walk, but we did see plenty of water birds. I have no idea what kind.

Bibleville

This is a very hospitable place. It was hard to take a vigorous walk this morning becaue people kept greeting me! We have a schedule of meals with different people, including a light supper before the evening meeting and “fellowship” after. Sunday lunch was a turkey dinner. Supper was homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches with homemade bread. After the service was cheese and crackers, fruit, pie, popcorn, etc. It is going to take discipline not to gain ten pounds!

A couple of the local residents sitting out in front of their place.

Everyone treats Mom with honor and consideration. 

Claudia from Moorhead was pleased to meet Claudia from Cambridge.
(Have I mentioned there are a lot of Minnesota people here?)

And each host invites others to join us, so we have met lots of interesting people. Hard to keep them all straight. The parking lot is full of Minnesota and Wisconsin license plates. Supper was Wisconsin people including a couple from Spooner, but after the meeting was Minnesota people, which was a good thing since the Vikings/Packers game was on. It was an exciting game, too close for comfort at the end, but the Vikings pulled it off. Glad we were watching with Minnesota (Rochester) people, not Wisconsin. (Don’t worry, Orlin; I promise I won’t tell your family which side you cheered for. Of course, they might read it on the Internet.)

Steve wasn’t happy with his morning sermon. Tried to cover too much material about who Jesus is to support “All authority is given to me”. But the people were enthusiastic. Sunday night he moved on to “I am with you always” by telling David and Goliath. He’s a good storyteller. This picture shows his hands sedately in front of him, but that is only because I caught him the moment before he flung them wide in one of his gestures and that frequently hits the mike. (Good thing he had one of those head mikes last night and didn’t need to stay close to the pulpit.)

I sang “Take My Life”. Unfortunately, I had enjoyed the hymns too much and started out with a frog in my throat. But I got rid of it and the sound came through all right. 

No one is lonely here. People are very supportive of one another. We heard several times that people came here to retire because they could be involved in so much meaningful activity. There are places for sale if anyone is looking for a southern place to settle.

Temple to Alamo, TX

This is pretty much what Texas looks like from San Antonio south. North of that it looks like strip malls and gas stations.

Not the most scenic part of the country. And not the warmest this January of 2016. Mid 40s and rain. Bibleville is a conference center/RV park with some permanent mobile homes as well. Orlin Anderson from our church up north, winters here. It was his wife Karen who worked so hard to get Steve on the preaching schedule. Unfortunately, she died of cancer last winter. She leaves a big hole here.

We arrived about 2:30. In the rain. It is a gated community and we had no pass code. Everyone was in the Saturday afternoon gospel concert. Eventually, someone came along and spotted us at the gate, but it still took more than an hour to track down the key to the speaker’s efficiency. We were glad it wasn’t ten o’clock at night. As it was, I took Mom to the little library next door and we chatted with a retired missionary to Yemin for a while.

The efficiency is a good-sized room with a king bed, a couch a couple chairs, TV, dining table and kitchenette. They had put in a comfortable roll-away for Mom. (I gathered it was new.) It was in the middle of the room between the couch and the TV, but we managed to shift things and find a place along one wall. Most of the cupboards and drawers had stuff in them (extra sheets, towels, tissue boxes etc), but again we shifted and made drawer space. The kitchen is stocked with snacks and breakfast things, but we are invited out for most lunches and suppers with various people.

Saturday there are two concerts, one at 2 and one at 7. Between them, they take the singers out for pizza and the whole community goes along. It was a Peter Piper Pizza, which is a lot like a Chuck-e-cheese for northerners. But it was big enough and the games on one side, so we could mostly hear for conversations. Except when someone’s pizza was ready and the loud speaker announced it. We never understood a word, but the person who had ordered our pizza did, so that was fine. There were a whole bunch of tables reserved for Bibleville. The Peter Piper Pizza people must love them since they come every week. In winter at least. If you bring your own Peter Piper mug, you get free drinks. And free ice cream. Having recently been diagnosed with diabetes, Steve abstained from ice cream.

The concert was a quartet called Forgiven. It was Southern Gospel Music, not a genre we are familiar with. We didn’t recognize a single song, even when they said it was a classic. I always knew the south would be a cross-cultural experience. I understand the afternoon was packed with about 500 people. Because of the cold and rain the evening only had a couple hundred. I guess they come from all the RV parks around. Should be an interesting week.