18. Friendship with Maureen

© 2020 Daniel Yordy

September 1988 - May 1990

The Best Thing Ever
Maureen Mack arrived back at Blueberry at the end of August, 1988, flying up with Jill Shapiro from Hollywood, Florida, who was also coming to college at Blueberry. Jill would become an important part of our lives, eventually marrying Ken Geis. To my consternation I continued to find myself next to Maureen unexpectedly and often. At the September convention at Shepherd’s Inn, in the large meeting tent they had pitched for the convention, I sat down in a row near some seats that had been saved – by, of all people, Maureen, Cindy Dix (our daughter, Johanna’s, mother-in-law), and Jill, who came in just before the service started and sat next to me. I had no idea what on earth God was doing.

Then, on the evening before school began, I went into the school to pick up my schedule from Sister Charity. As I left her office, scanning over the courses I was enrolled in, I noticed Maureen standing there also looking at her schedule. On the spur of the moment, in this environment that was fully safe for me, I did something very, very brave. I asked her what courses she was taking.

What happened next was the most wonderful thing I have ever experienced in my life.
MAUREEN MACK TALKED TO ME.

We talked, back and forth, about the courses we were taking – and then, to my utter astonishment, we kept on visiting for maybe twenty minutes. As we went into the bootroom, preparing to go to our respective cabins, Maureen paused and said something to me that was like a mighty spear piercing all through my soul.

“Daniel,” she said, “I’ve been really bothered by how I treated you at Bowens Mill. I want to ask you to forgive me.” 

Forgiving her was the easiest forgiveness I have ever granted. I walked home in a daze of joy and wonder – “Maureen Mack talked with me.” She tells me now that she also walked home in the same daze of wonder – “I talked with Daniel Yordy.”

It had been seven years since God had spoken to me that Maureen would be my wife, seven years of being unable to speak to her; it would be two more years before she would walk down the aisle to stand by my side. But our friendship had begun, and I was filled with the joy of God’s goodness and great generosity to me.

My Fifth Semester of College 
The fall semester of 1988 was a lighter load of college courses for me. It began with a one-week block by Ernest Watkins on the life of David. Then I took “Twentieth Century British Writers” with Sister Delores and a classroom management course, which has been, at times, my least successful part of teaching (including getting a B for that course.) 

Because of this lighter load, I was able to fill my time up with adding a second high school class, which was an eighth grade geography class that included Paul Austen, Jesse Rehmeier, Chris Kidd, and Ruth Raja, whom I would also teach each year for five years. I really enjoyed teaching them geography, and I developed, in my estimation, a very good course. (My students remember it as a highlight for them.) I gave them a similar task to what I had done when I was their age, that of writing to the embassies of various nations to ask for information on their country. Jesse Rehmeier received a wonderful package of propaganda from the then Soviet Union. I also devoted a large amount of time to teaching the construction degree program to Terry Miller.  

My Friendship with Maureen 
Visiting with Maureen on the day before school began was an open door for me. Over the next couple of months more opportunities to visit together arose. Maureen lived in the upstairs of Roger and Bertie Henshaw’s cabin, so I found good reasons to go visit with Brother Roger more frequently. The twinkle in his eye told me that he knew I had an ulterior motive, especially since I used those visits to greet Maureen in passing.

After a couple of months, Maureen went to Sister Charity to pour out her consternation with the whole business of our “non-relationship” over the years. She was astonished when Sister Charity replied that she knew all about it already.

The truth is, as Maureen tells me now, she had resisted coming to Blueberry for school all through that summer for the same reasons I had struggled, that a return to the difficulty of a “non-relationship” with me was more than she wanted to accept. That sounds strange, but it does describe our situation. The truth is, it wasn’t that God had not spoken to her through those years, it’s that she had avoided “hearing from God,” and with good reason. I was a closed shell outwardly prior to the fall of 1988. In fact, as I look back now, I realize that God brought Maureen back into my life just as soon as I was free enough inside to relate normally with her.

Sister Charity took our situation to the Blueberry eldership, and they devised a special “dispensation” for Maureen and me, which they termed a “covered friendship.” You see, the typical pattern of only a brother-sister relationship until a couple began “walking out a year,” would not have worked for us because of our involvement in college. More than that, our developing relationship, I think, required time, and Sister Charity was wise enough to see that.

A “covered friendship” meant that I could visit at the Henshaw’s without “seeing Roger” as my excuse. Maureen and I would sit on the couch in their living room and visit together. This was slow-going, because neither one of us was an “exuberant” talker. I must admit that I was secretly pleased at the shocked expressions of some of those who lived at the Henshaw’s as they passed by seeing Maureen and me together like that for the first time. 

By March, the elders agreed to a small increase in our relationship, that is, to something they had invented, separate from the broader and more strict move-fellowship order for brother-sister relationships, that is, a “covered relationship.” This was not quite walking out a year, but it allowed us a bit more time together.

Then, in May, after having written to Maureen’s parents and having received a favorable reply, I went to the elders’ meeting to ask about our walking out a year. They must have already discussed it, because Don Howat said, with a grin on his face, “Well, why don’t you get out there and ask her?”

I went immediately and found Maureen just leaving the school. “Maureen,” I asked her, “would you walk out a year with me?” “Yes, I will,” she replied. That sounds like a simple thing, but for me it was a miracle of God.

Let me describe, now, what “walking out a year” meant. First, it was not an engagement to be married, that would come only after the year was completed and the Lord had confirmed, through visions and the witness of the eldership and family, that this joining was truly of Him. But it meant that we would sit together in the mealtime and services, and that we would be together in any community activity, including going to town, etc. The restrictions were that there would be no touching of any kind, and that we would never be alone together, but always within sight of a responsible adult. 

This seems “restrictive” in a day when every-thing goes, but it is a practice that I agree with fully. By not allowing for physical “sensations,” we were free to know one another as real people. The woman who walked down the aisle to stand by my side had become my best friend. But for some, it meant that the discovery that a relationship was not going to continue could happen without undue hurt or shame. In fact, through these years at Blueberry, we watched three such separations happen. It was emotionally difficult, of course, but there was no shame or undue hurt as is normal all through a careless world.
And so my friendship with Maureen grew slowly, even as completing college was an important task for us. And from May on, we were together much of the time.

Spring Semester of 1989
The spring semester started with Sister Ethelwyn Davison teaching a one-week block on praise and the tabernacle of David. Then, besides several practical courses about teaching, I also took “Early American Literature” with Sister Delores. 

During this semester, the entire high school staff agreed together to lead the high school students in a speech workshop and presentation, drawing from what we had learned the year before from the Grier’s. Paul Mandry, a fellow college student and teacher, was given overall charge of this program. I was assigned several young men as my charge in practicing them on a speech presentation. 

David Deardorff was one of those whom I coached. He wrote his speech about some of his experiences growing up at the Shiloh community. David was different from the others. There was a depth of untapped quality inside of him. With the others, I practiced them in expressing themselves outwardly, but I believed that was not right for David. I wanted him just to know his lines. This distressed David such that he complained to Sister Charity, but I defended my decision.

Then, we had an entire Saturday night meeting devoted to the high schoolers sharing their speech with the whole family. David’s speech was to be the last one. I might have had something to do with that, but the Lord had far more. Just as I knew would happen, the moment David started speaking, that depth of being and anointing inside of him came out. No “posing” could have matched what happened. There was not a dry eye in the place, and no one would have been able to present after, if David had not been last. 

Not that I had much to do with it, but David Deardorff’s presentation was a highlight of my teaching experience.

The Bible and I
I am finally beginning to understand the meaning and purpose of God through the years of my life, and especially through these critical years at Blueberry. The most important thing for me in my outward life, of course, was my friendship with Maureen. But inwardly, the most important thing was my relationship with the Bible.

God created me with a desperate, desperate need to know what the Bible actually says, through all the years of my adult life. Part of that need came from my Asperger’s vulnerability, which, in spite of it’s more difficult parts, was a critical gift of God to me. I needed to know God for real, and I could not pretend to be what I was not. I am a word man, and God had put His Bible in my hands. I have not and will never rest until I know His Word all through my being.

As I have shared, hearing the words, “the Bible says,” was always overwhelming for me. I trust no one. I have a Bible; I will know, for myself, what God says.

Now, I have added a chapter titled, “In the Womb of the Church.”  That next chapter is necessary because my experiences at Blueberry became very confusing to me once I was no longer in college, and especially after we were married and our son, Kyle, was born.

In this chapter and the next, I am including three topics, “The Bible and I,” “Services at Blueberry,” and “My Identity.” In each of these topics, I will cover the entire time of my college years at Blueberry. And I can lay these things out only because I finally understand what it all meant, and what God’s incredible purpose for me was.

As I shared, I did not do any mental school work after supper, just the reading of a text when it was assigned. That meant that most of my evenings were free to do what I loved doing most – writing out Bible verses in endless word studies. 

First, I did a massive study of the book of Revelation. I took every key word or symbol in John’s vision, and, using Strong’s Concordance, I wrote out every verse in the Bible containing that word or symbol. Remember that I had long since abandoned the practice of “figuring out” what these things mean. What I wanted was to KNOW what God says; I did not have to know what it meant. Writing out a verse, word for word, is a wonderful way to see those words and to ponder what was actually being said. This study filled many notebooks with verses.

Strong’s Concordance is a list of the English words in the King James translation, but I had run off with a different kind of concordance that had been my dad’s, a Greek New Testament Concordance, which was matched to Strong’s numbering, but which included all the occurrences of the Greek word, regardless of the several English words into which it had been translated. I chose many key Greek words of the New Testament and wrote out every verse, in order, containing that Greek word. Among those words that I chose were apocalypse, life, God/Jesus, Paul’s references to himself in any way, lie, death, grace, logos/rhema, salvation/saved, and so on. As I wrote, then, I looked carefully at the context clues, to determine, from the text, what God might have meant when He used that word in that place.

As I did that, I began to notice something terrible, something overwhelming, something I had no idea how to place or handle. You see, no dictionary ever defines any word except by the study of context clues. And the context clues I found in the text, as I wrote these verses over and over, were NOT the same as the “received” definitions that had come to me out from Christian theology and preaching.

What do you do with that? The little boy who said, “But the emperor has no clothes,” was most likely Asperger’s. Now I was that little boy – but how on earth does this fit?

Let me give a for-instance. In writing out every verse in the Bible in which the word “grace” is found, I found NO context clues indicating the meaning of “unmerited favor.” That definition is imposed on the Bible; it does not come out from the Bible. The biggest, however, was the word “salvation,” or soteria in the Greek. What does it mean? I was satisfied that I did not know. Except that Brother Sam had given me the license to throw out “go to” heaven as having anything to do with salvation. My word study found NO VERSE allowing anyone to place "go to" heaven as the goal of the beleiver.

Think of a kaleidoscope. Every time you turn it, the colored crystals line up in different formations. Very often, the same Bible verses were appearing before my eyes throughout my different word studies, yet in a slightly different arrangement, depending on which word I was writing. Then, think of Nicene theology in a similar way, that is, as ways of explaining how different verses fit together. 

I could not find any match between what I was seeing in the Bible and received Nicene definitions. Certainly there were innumerable similarities, but NEVER a match.

I did not know what to do. All I knew was that God did not say what “they” claim He said.
Here is another example. Since “hear and obey” was the core teaching now in the move fellowship, with Sam Fife no longer around, contrasting the words “logos” and “rhema” had become a favorite topic of some preachers. “Logos” was supposed to be the “written word,” and “rhema,” the “spoken word,” that is, God speaking personally to you. So, I wrote out every verse in the New Testament with rhema and logos in it. It wasn’t true. Logos refers to spoken word more often than written, and rhema refers to written word as often as spoken.

I did not know what to do with this massive disconnect; finding fault with the ministry of the word was not inside my sphere.

Through these years, God was bringing me out from my autistic shell through both deliverance times and my college experiences. At the same time that He was doing this, He was planting the beginnings in me of the present word I now share. What would be my anchor? I desperately needed an anchor, and for me, that anchor could be one thing only – the key gospel verses. But what were they, for nothing in all the Christianity I had known was giving those defining verses to me.

I could not have told you at the time, but my heart was found in John 14, beginning with verse 23 – “My Father and I will come to you and make Our home with you.” This was simply the best and only possibility for me, though I did not know how such a thing could be. I noticed the words, “You shall be with Me where I am” – matched by “You will know that I am in the Father.”

I did a study of the word “image,” and in that study found this definition, that an image (or idol) was a visible representation and dwelling place of an invisible spirit being. I secretly read 1 John, knowing that, in actuality, 1 John was heresy by all Nicene Christian theology – God Himself dwelling inside of me. (The remainder of John 14:20 and Ephesians 3:19 were simply not visible to anyone, including myself; that is, no one I had known or read could see those words except as something far in the future and utterly meaningless to us now.)

I did not understand what any of this meant, but, somehow, around the middle of my college years, soon after my full deliverance, one verse came into me to become the ruling verse of my life and of all my desire – conformed to the image of His Son – Romans 8:29. This I wanted with all my heart, though I had no idea what it meant or how on earth it could happen to me.

And I also could not have said it at the time, but the one line that defined “image” for me and that would undergird how I would receive everything God says in the Bible was this one line. “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” (The doctrine of “the Trinity” is one of those many things that simply have no relationship with the actual words of the New Testament.)

Interestingly, I also did a different kind of study of the book of Hebrews through these years. Hebrews is a sentence nightmare. And so, as a grammar teacher, I wrote every small phrase in Hebrews as its own complete sentence. This required some doing, but in the process, another verse came into my knowing that I KNEW must rule how we are to know what God says – Hebrews 10:19-22. I had no idea what it meant; I just knew that if it were true, it had to rule.

Services at Blueberry
My study of the Bible, however, was never isolated from the mighty movings of God by His Spirit in the midst of the Church. By my involvement with those services, I knew the demonstration of the Spirit and power, right along with the word. For that reason, even though I am a word man, I never separate Word from Spirit or Spirit from Word, for they must never be separated.

I do not remember which service happened when, and so I will simply share some of the highlights together. In one service, prior to Brother Victor’s death, for I distinctly remember his involvement, we had a communion and foot-washing service. In fact, this was one of only two communion services I participated in within that fellowship, something I regret, even though our breaking bread together daily is the true “communion service.”

The entire service of probably three-hour’s time was devoted to this communion and foot washing. The anointing of God upon us was palpable; there was such meaning and sobriety. I remember washing Brian Dwyer’s feet, something that will gain more meaning in just a bit. I remember John Austin and Victor Raja both washing my feet. Knowing God in the midst of His Church as we humbled ourselves to one another meant a whole lot to us.

In another service, at a later time, as we sat quietly waiting for someone to stand up to lead praise, Sister Edie Dwyer, Brian’s mother, got up from her seat, went over to another person, got down on her knees in front of them and asked them, before all the congregation, to forgive her of some wrong she had done them. In that moment, something extraordinary opened to us, and without any planning or direction, over the next two to three hours, one by one, many got up, knelt before another person, and, in tears, asked forgiveness. Again, I remember doing that to Brian. This was one of the holiest times of my life experience.

And in another service, again as we were waiting quietly for the praise to start, Edie Dwyer stood at her seat and spoke aloud a thanksgiving. Again, something extraordinary came upon all of us and for the next two to three hours, without any planning or direction, this one and then that one stood and spoke mighty thanksgivings. This was a most incredible time. When the Spirit is free in the Church, amazing and real things happen on a regular basis.

Another time, Brother Gary Rehmeier was there for a service; he often was not, since he had to work the logging company. But he got up to lead the praise. For some reason, he was all excited in the Spirit, and that same Spirit was upon everyone. As we sang praises, we soon began to dance, as was our wont. Except this time we felt like celebrating. Brother Gary soon stopped us and said, “Let’s get rid of the chairs.” They were soon gone and we began to dance together in circles, small and large, singing the praises of God in all joy – for two or three hours.

These services stood out, yet they were only representative of many spontaneous movings of the Spirit of God in the midst of the Church. This is normal Church. There were always anointed prophecies in the praises, and the proclaimed giving of thanks through the preaching of the word, and responses of joy and faith. There was always praying and singing in tongues, always spontaneous, always filled with the Holy Ghost and power, all through the years I was at Blueberry.

Indeed, I lived inside the womb of the Church and there, God marked me deeply with His finger concerning His Desire for His people. The covenant I had entered into with God at age 22, that I would know Him, and that I would walk with a people who know Him, remained my embraced reality. In fact, I shared that very thing, as I had experienced it (as found in “Cutting the Covenant”), in one of the Wednesday-night sharing services. I remember Sister Nathel Clarke getting up after and expressing how much that meant to her and to us all.

In another sharing service, I shared about the rivers of my childhood, the rivers of Oregon, and how the Columbia River was not one, but many, as in RIVERS of living water flowing out of us. And so John 7:37-38 was also coming into my knowing as a verse that must rule all things. Sister Charity shared with me later how much my sharing of that metaphor had meant to her.

And let me say this also, a whole lot of this flow of the Spirit in liberty came out from Sister Charity Titus, in her utter devotion and commitment to the revelation of that Spirit in power in the midst of our gathering together.

Visiting Other Communities
Through my college years, I often visited the nearby communities, specifically, Evergreen, Hilltop, and Shepherd’s Inn. Evergreen community was about five miles to the east of Blueberry. In fact Blueberry owned property on both sides of Evergreen, which we farmed. Evergreen was very involved with Blueberry because students and teachers in the Blueberry school lived at Evergreen and came over to Blueberry daily. Among them were my good friends, Peter Bell and his family, and Rick Annett and his wife, Shirley, who had moved to Evergreen after Shirley had graduated from college in the spring of 1987.

Then, Hilltop was another community, maybe four miles further to the east and north of Evergreen. In fact, the road going by Hilltop and Evergreen continued on over to connect with the road coming up from Mile 73, at the small town of Buick. This would be a road I would traverse a number of times since the Blueberry trapline (coming up) could be accessed by the road going on north from Buick. The Hilltop community consisted mostly of people who had come up from the move fellowship in Houston, Texas, including Patrick Downs, who had also graduated from college in the spring of 1987 with Shirley. I had become good friends with Patrick. 

I visited with Patrick at Hilltop a number of times through the years. Since it was a bit further, I typically went Saturday evening and stayed the night through Sunday. This way I got to be a bit more part of the family there in service and in meals. Patrick and I got along great and had many wonderful conversations together. He taught in the school at Hilltop and was part of the cow-milking program. Hilltop was one place that had copied my design of benches from Graham River. In fact, there were families from Graham that had moved to Hilltop. 

Something amusing to me was the different expressions of “not being worldly.” Blueberry did not have any curtains in the dining room, but we had sheetrock on the ceiling. Hilltop, however, refrained from being “worldly” by not having sheetrock on their dining room ceiling, but they had curtains on the windows. God’s people can be silly sometimes, but the motives were sincere.

Then, I visited with Rick and Shirley at Evergreen two or three times, until they moved on up to Whitehorse in the Yukon for a season. I also went over a number of times to spend time with Peter and Barbara Bell. In my visits to Evergreen as well, I often joined the whole family for a meal in their dining room. I connected with Peter most of all, for we shared so many odd intellectual interests. Peter was always great fun, and we laughed a lot. Usually, I drove my Toyota Station wagon and, when the roads were dry, went the five-mile dirt-road over. When the roads were wet, however, I had to drive out to the Alaska highway, down to the Aiken Creek road, and then up to Evergreen on gravel.

One time, for some reason, I borrowed Brother Alvin’s car to drive over for a visit to Evergreen, I think I was going to see Rick and Shirley – this was after Brother Victor had been killed, probably later that summer. A mile up the Aiken Creek Road, Brother Alvin’s car died. I learned later that the timing belt went out. There was nothing to do except to leave the car and walk back home to Blueberry in the dark. It was nine miles, a mile back to the Alaska highway, four miles up, and then, four miles back down to Blueberry.

Needless to say, both bears and bulls on the road were very possible. In order to place my concern, though, I sang praise songs all the way back. It took me about two hours, but I remember the last mile as if I were floating in the heavens in the joy and praises of God.

Since Shepherd’s Inn was on the highway, at Mile 72 on the way into town, stopping there was a very common occurrence through these years. Brother D and Sister Ethelwyn lived at Shepherd’s Inn through this time, so I visited with them in their home a number of times. Ian and Isabell Still and Harold Witmer from Graham River also lived at Shepherd’s Inn. Sister Ethelwyn had started the Shepherd’s School of Music and many came to Shepherd’s Inn to go through her program. Maureen’s sister, Jessica, was one who did that, and she came to Blueberry as well, during the day, to take a few of the courses on offer there. Sister Ethelwyn was mightily anointed of God in praise and in the word, and her students were “out of breath” to keep up with her. 

One night a week, the School of Music put on a special presentation in the restaurant dining room. Many came out from Fort St. John just to enjoy that music presentation. In fact, after Maureen and I were walking out our year, we had dinner there with her parents. I remember how hard I forced myself to eat as slowly as I could. It was agony, but I persevered. When I had finally finished my plate, I looked up to discover that Sister Roberta had hardly started!  So much for my relationship with my future parent’s-in-law.

Sometime in 1989, Mike Pelletier moved elsewhere and Michael Wallace came to share the bunk-bed with me. At that time, Michael was still younger than the students I taught. I'm not very good at relating with younger kids, and so I did not develop a significant relationship with Michael. I only hope that in some way I was a blessing to him.

In fact, his mother, Kay, whom I had known from the Portland group, came to me during these times, as she was in the process of making her will. She asked me if she could put me down as the one who would become the guardian for Michael should something happen to her. I agreed that I would. 

Thankfully, nothing did happen to Kay, but I would like to extend that care in the Spirit towards Michael even now, these thirty-some years later.

The Summer of 1989
My relationship with Don Howat in the construction work had grown slowly. At this point in time, we worked together most of the time. Don was the elder, and technically the oversight, but I was the designer and builder and, for the most part, Don worked under my direction. It was a good back-and-forth relationship, however. Don was a bit older, stronger in Spirit and wiser than I, and because he treated me as an equal, I flourished during my years with him. I yielded to his wisdom, and he yielded to my abilities.

We mostly completed Dave Smillie’s house before moving them back in. We didn’t complete everything inside, which some thought was “wrong.” But in the north, outside work can happen only in the short summers. Inside work can be left to the long winter months. The building needs of the community required us to take full advantage of the summer months for outdoor construction. 

Sister Delores Topliff’s cabin was the next on the list. It was literally rotting and falling down, past the place of being habitable. You see, her cabin was carved into the bank of the hill, and thus more subject to damp. While I was designing her a new home, and while her old cabin was being torn down, then, we turned to a remodel of the drying house, where much of our food was preserved for winter use. I enjoyed designing Delores’s new home. She was always big-hearted towards others, and so I made it fairly large, with a steep roof-line and dormers, allowing a number of rooms to be in the upstairs. She had earned a fair bit of money herself doing handwork on the side and we had access at that time to government grants for the rebuilding of derelict homes. Thus we had the money to do a half-decent job.

We widened the site, and thus had to put in a heavy retaining wall, about three feet high, to keep the slope from sliding down against the house. Slumping earth is a powerful force. At the same time, the move community habit of no foundations simply would not work here. More than that, foundations in the far north region of permafrost are a continual problem. An attached porch can go up three to four inches in relation to a house each winter, and then back down in the summer. Permafrost can spit posts right out of the ground.

Don and I chose to drill holes down below frost level, maybe seven feet deep and pour concrete pillars around rebar set in each hole as the foundation of this house. We rented a two-man digger, which was a lot of hard work. I helped with most of the holes, and through the process, put my back out worse than it has ever been out. I did not want to spend a few days in bed. In the service that evening, as I stood up for the praise, I realized that my back was about to throw me to the floor in writhing agony. John Austin had gotten up to speak, but I put my hand up and asked if the elders could please come and pray for me. They did, and as they prayed, as I stood there, my back went into place, sound and whole.

Then it rained, hard, the next day. And muddy water filled all our newly-drilled holes up with slime. We had the “brilliant” idea of using the outhouse slurry pump tank to pump out the mud. The result was that we caved in the large tank. We eventually got the holes cleaned out and the cement poured. Through July and August, then, we built the frame, as frames go, fairly rapidly, again, with double walls. But I was planning a trip down to Oregon again, in August, and so I asked Brian Dwyer to head up the team to get the new blue tin on the roof while I was gone.

That August, then, Maureen and I drove down to Oregon for her to meet my parents, with Nancy Raja and Freda and Ruth as our chaperones. What a wonderful gift that was, for Sister Nancy, who was a good mother to me the four years I lived in her home, to meet my own mother and for all of them to see where I grew up. 

One thing I remember in that trip is that I took all of them up to the top of Snow Peak with me. We drove most of the way, but then had to get out of the vehicle and hike the last mile or so. Sister Nancy did not brave the rock peak itself, maybe a hundred feet up, but the girls all went up with me. The lookout building was no longer there, but we could see the whole Willamette Valley in one direction and the snow-covered peaks of the high Cascades in the other direction. 

This was August, the best time for me in Oregon, when the blackberries are ripe. I like blackberries, especially when you funnel them off the hard-spined vines straight into your mouth. I also remember us all going down to Crabtree Creek and swimming in the swimming holes of my youth. I was so thrilled to share these things with Maureen and the Raja’s. 

To the right is a picture of Sister Nancy with Frieda, Ruth, and Maureen in front of her on the lawn of my childhood home.

Sister Delores had been in Portland, visiting, when we drove through, and we invited her down to mom's house for the day. We have a picture of all of us sitting out on the patio deck, with Delores telling us stories.

When we returned to Blueberry, I went right on up the hill to see how it was going on Sister Delores’s new roof. They were just finishing it up. Brian, as always, was doing an impeccable job. It was a tough roof line, and he was the best to have done it right.
As I looked up at these fellows, including Terry Miller, finishing the roof, my eyes opened and I saw something I had never seen before. I saw how badly I had treated those who worked with me in construction. 

Regarding our relationship with God, shame is an enemy, but when it comes to how we treat one another, seeing one’s self from a distance and being heartily ashamed of one’s actions, is a gift from God. For the first time in my life, the idea that how we work together was of equal importance to getting the job done entered into my knowledge. It would be several years, then, before it worked its way into the practice of my heart. But that is a later story.

Bryan Dwyer 
I want to introduce here my relationship with Brian Dwyer over the 8 ½ years I lived at Blueberry. Brian was just a couple of years younger than I. His work was primarily in welding, machine operation and metal work, along with Randy Jordan, but Brian helped us out in construction from time to time. Often, when there was large equipment work that we needed done, it was Brian who did it.

Brian did everything methodically and impeccably. A job that covered me with mud from head to toe would see no mud on him above his boots, in spite of being in it all day. But on almost every job where we interacted, his way of doing things and my way of doing things were opposed. Brian was never bashful about telling me that I was doing it wrong. Whereas I was never bashful about doing it my way anyhow. And, of course, I had the crew and the responsibility for the job, so we almost always did it my way, to his consternation.

We never found agreement through all those years on how anything was to be done. And sometimes our clash became something that either Dave Smillie or Don Howat had to intervene to bring us to peace. Yet we were never hostile against one another, just over how something should be done. Brian thought everything should be done by the book; whereas I did it however it worked best for me in the moment.

As I think of it now, I realize just how much Brian’s seeming “obstinacy” was a gift from God to me. Because my bright and enthusiastic ideas were challenged so often and with such ferocity, I had to think more deeply and more carefully. We had clashed the summer before on the kind of chimney I had bought and brought home for Brother Dave’s cabin, which was Brian’s home as well. And so, when I looked up and saw that Brian was completing the difficult roof task so well, something I had worried about the whole time I was down in Oregon, something clicked in me, the idea that different could actually be a treasure. You have seen that thought coming through many things I have shared; we can both thank Brian for that gift. 

I can’t say that we ever became “friends,” but we learned to respect one another deeply, and I count Brian as one of the most important people in my life. He will return to this narrative more than once as we go forward.

The Trapline Cabin 
Before bringing in the outline of both my and Maureen’s final year of college, I want to go forward to November and to the design and construction of the trapline cabin, my favorite in all my construction career and knowledge.

Brother John Austen had purchased a trapline for the Blueberry Community, the south end of which was situated around fifty miles north of Buick, British Columbia. It was accessible by a windy dirt road from one side and by the railroad running through on the other side. In fact, the train tracks were less than a mile from where we built the cabin. The road was nearby because of the existence of a fire watchtower, which was manned through the summer months.

Steve Ebright would run the trapline, at least for the first couple of seasons, but he wanted his family to be out there with him. For that reason, we built the trapline cabin slightly bigger then normal, so they would have a nice home and a place for the children to homeschool.

I designed a cabin 20 feet by 30 feet with a steep-pitched roof and a larger flat dormer in the center facing south. I put large windows in the living room and in the dormer above, which would be the school room so that the winter sun would shine brightly in. At one end was a covered porch, then the door opened into the kitchen to the left and the dining table to the right with a stairway going right up in the center. Upstairs, the center room had a high ceiling with the window wall seven foot tall. The two outer sides, then, were large bedrooms fully inside the slope of the roof. Steve and Michelle’s bedroom was in the back left corner downstairs. 

Although I would not study Patterns of Home until years later, this little house, when completed, incorporated each of those ten patterns of home perfectly. That was entirely happenstance, but it also explains why I loved that little cabin.

I designed a double-wall as well, with a framed inner wall and then the old logs from the Topliff cabin as the outer wall. The rafters were made with an OSB beam, 16 inches wide, and thus could hold twelve inches of fiberglass insulation as well. This cabin would be snug and warm.

Eric Foster, Steve Ebright, and Tim Kiezebrink, from the Upsala community, braved the first drive up with a large truck loaded with the logs and other building materials. Meanwhile, Gary Rehmeier, John Austen, Don Howat, Terry Miller, Dani Maldonado, and myself went into Fort St. John and climbed into the engine of a freight train heading up to Fort Nelson. That was quite an experience, two hours standing up in the very front of a locomotive through the Canadian wilderness. This was something the railroad often did, dropping people off wherever they needed. We returned the same way, but on the return trip we all rode back in the caboose; again, a pretty cool experience. 

We had the structure nearly finished in just a few days, enough to be lived in, although the interior was not nicely finished. Coming up to finish the interior is a story that comes in a later chapter. There is something about the wildness and remoteness of the Canadian wilderness that is planted deep inside of me.

My Final School Year 
I will include a brief overview of my final year of college here, but the final two sections, “My Identity” and “Graduation,” are in the next chapter.

The school year began with a one-week block titled “Salvation” taught by Tom Rowe from Atlanta, Georgia, one of the apostolic ministries of the move. I had done my study of the word “salvation” prior to this. Again, we had one assignment, a paper summing up what we had learned, and again, I got a B because I could not just repeat back; I cannot write things except they make some sense to me. Nonetheless, this course made me think deeply about what God might mean by what He says.

Through both semesters of this year, Maureen and I took a course on learning Spanish, taught by one of our fellow students, Leslie Cedeno, from Mexico City. It was just the three of us in the course, and we had a lot of fun together. I cannot hear or speak another language, but I am good with the written word, and thus I have some idea about the Spanish language.

In December, then, a new chapter of my life opened; Sister Delores allowed me to team-teach her college Geography course with her. She even gave me much space in the shaping of that course, which I realize now was very great-hearted of her. My enthusiasm in something like that, to shape and mold it, can be very focused, and I am often oblivious to other people. Nonetheless, we taught a wonderful course together. Maureen was in the class, so now I would be marrying one of my students. I remember that Barbara Bell’s brother, Tim Beebe, was also visiting from Upsala and was able to take that course with us. We had a full class in Sister Delores’s room.

Sister Marlyss Johnson from the Covenant Life College branch in Haines, Alaska, came to Blueberry for the entire spring semester to teach two courses, both of which I signed up for, “The Gospel & Epistles of John,” and “General Geology.” I enjoyed both of her courses; nonetheless, for a reason I don’t understand, I did not always connect fully with her as a teacher. 

Let me explain. After conflicting in my own heart with what Buddy Cobb taught at the beginning of my second college year, and after continuing through the times of deliverance, I slowly began to adopt what Buddy Cobb taught as my own. You see, Brother Buddy continued coming through the northern communities twice a year and so we continued under his strong influence. I knew that I was twisting some gospel verses to do so, but I had begun to define most everything by his Calvinist theology. 

And so, as I was “coming out from” my autistic shell, I was “coming into” a way of thinking that I had two lives in me and that God expected me to live in one life and not the other by the performance of "hear and obey," something I had no ability to do whatsoever. Now, I will position Brother Buddy in my life in the closing chapter of my season of the move of God fellowship. God wanted me entirely inside of an anointed, Bible-based understanding of that entire way of thinking – that He might bring me to despair before bringing me to Himself.

And so, Sister Marlyss included in her teaching on John some of the “life” stuff we had received from Brother Sam. I got in trouble with both her and Sister Charity because I had the effrontery to contend with her on that “problem,” that is, why was she teaching contrary to Buddy Cobb! 

Then, in our geology course, my one science course, we took two significant field trips. The first was to a huge open-pit coal field in the northern Rockies of Alberta, near the BC border. This was quite an experience for all of us. The second was a field trip up the Peace River valley to the gorge below Williston Dam to see the coal seams in the rock. On this trip, as we were driving along the Peace River, Sister Marlyss made a comment about geological things we were observing. In my logical mind, I could see the probability of a completely different explanation, and so, as was my wont, I expressed that opposing viewpoint. 

This was in a confined vehicle with several people together. After “correcting” her, I could, for the first time, see what I had just done, as an observer. I knew, then, just how cruel my “logical corrections” could be. This moment was a significant part of my coming out of that shell of oblivion inside of which I had remained safe over many years. The truth is, it also changed how I responded in such situations. 

And so, Sister Marlyss, I ask you to forgive me for my unthinking cruelty, and I want to thank you that, in your forbearance towards me, you helped me to drop some of my blinders and to begin to see that other people were, indeed, real, and that my words did affect them, sometimes painfully. Thank you for the good heart of Christ inside of you.

I also took a course in this final semester titled “The Christian Teacher,” taught by Sister Janet Randall from Evergreen. I realize now that some things expressed in this course helped shape the awful false identity in which I would live until God brought me into the Lord Jesus, my only life. And so I will bring those things into the next chapter.