22. Glory Against Shame

© 2019 Daniel Yordy

May 1992 - December 1992

This chapter is just a continuation of the last. I will not bring things into resolution until the end. The problem with God is that there is no escaping His determination once He has set it upon you. I have spent years kicking and screaming and can testify that there is no escaping the bony finger pointing right at one’s forehead. What I mean to say is that I don’t really want to write this chapter, for it should be titled “Glory inside of Shame.” Yet it will not leave my mind and so I will escape it in the only way possible, by placing it out into the light into whatever the Lord intends to do with it.

The Summer of 1992 
From May through July, we put up the outer structure of the washhouse and started the new shop. By the end of July we had weathered in the washhouse with the roof on and doors and windows in place. Maureen and I were planning a trip down to Bowens Mill and Texas in August. We must have finished the large structure of the shop with its high walls and large heavy beams after our return. We would not finish the interior of either one until the winter months.

I was at the center of those two jobs, with several men helping, especially when we got to the shop. Nonetheless, they were not my main focus through those months. Rather, I devoted much of my time to designing and planning the Graham River Tabernacle. I spent more time at Graham, visiting with the brethren there about their needs for a new Tabernacle. Bill Alter was the elder with whom I spent the most time. He had moved up to Graham from Arkansas with his family to be part of the Shepherd’s School of Music. Bill did have some construction knowledge. 

I was given much liberty in designing the new Tabernacle. I designed it as an L-shaped building, except we would build only the larger rectangle first, forty by sixty feet, with an L of forty by forty being added later. It was two stories with a large steep-pitched roof, at a 45-degree slope. The bottom story would be mostly underground, with the west wall at ground level. The ground there was sandy loam on top of river rock, and so draining a basement would be a simple thing. A forty-foot-wide building meant that the third floor would be twenty feet high in the center. 

The design was, bottom floor, a 20' by 40' foot root cellar, with the other 40' by 40' area containing a utility kitchen, laundry, and storage. We planned for underfloor heating like the shop at Blueberry, but we also put one wood stove in this area. The main floor would be a well-laid-out kitchen above the root cellar and a 40' by 40' dining room. The upper floor inside the roof would include a living apartment above the kitchen and the remaining area for the Shepherd’s School of Music. That part would be open but with dividers as needed. My goal was to meet many different needs of a community all in one building project.

Overall, it was a simple layout. I designed it to be double insulated. But I did it better this time than before. The main wall was 6” thick and then a 6” space with an outer frame that just hung there without carrying any weight, upon which the siding could be fastened. Inside that 6” space, we could wrap the entire building in 6” of fiberglass, with only the glass of the windows not being inside that blanket. And I did put in lots of large windows, especially in the dining room. 

I designed beams of plywood and floor joists and rafters made with OSB sheeting cut at 16” strips with a 2x4 on each side, like an “I” beam. The rafters could then hold 12” of fiberglass with a 4” airflow space above it. I made special care to design the plumbing and electrical connections to fit into an accessible vertical and horizontal chase so that the main pipes and wires could be easily added to or worked on.

But drawing the plans was only one-third of my job. I also created an exhaustive materials list. That means, every single board, plumbing piece, etc., in its exact dimensions. I drew complete layouts of every wall, etc. We were also planning for a cement floor in the basement and a large septic tank outside. Every single item in every part of this large building I drew out and dimensioned, metal, wood, pipe, wire, concrete, caulk, etc. You see, when 65 men gather to put up the building in four days, there can’t be any hindrance to the constant smooth flow of work. Everything must be on paper in front of them so they can just DO.

And so, as I planned and drew, I also built every single part of that building in my mind’s eye, fastening everything together in my imagination, step by step, so that I would not miss anything. That was the third part of my task, then, to layout an exact order of construction tasks hour by hour through four days. In order for everyone to keep working at full blast, every task had to be coordinated.

I divided the work into eleven different crews, each with a crew leader. That way I only directed eleven men, and they directed the several in their crew. I will share more of that when we get to those four days in September. By the first of August my plans were mostly completed and I gave Don Howat the materials list for the brethren at Graham River to purchase and bring to the building site. Don would take the materials list out to Graham, while Maureen and I were gone, and help them in obtaining everything needed.

Our Trip to the South
Because my mother no longer had dad to care for, she was free to come visit us at Blueberry. She came up in June, when everything was green, and spent six weeks in our home and in the community. Kimberley had returned home after she graduated, so Mom stayed in what had been her room. After that, it became Kyle’s room. Kyle would turn a year old in August, it turned out, while we were in Texas.

Maureen’s grandmother, Susan Jacobsen, who was one of the elders at the Ridge, was having her 90th birthday celebration to be held at Maureen’s uncle’s place, Stan and JoEllen Miller, just outside of Stephenville, Texas. This would be a large gathering of her entire family, all of Sister Roberta’s siblings and all their children. This was a chance to celebrate the godly heritage Grandma Susan had given to all. 

We drove down to Oregon, taking Mom back home, and then up to Seattle, Washington, to board a flight to Atlanta, Georgia. One wonderful aspect of living in community was that there were no bills back home needing to be paid. All of our needs were met inside the community and thus it was much easier to travel with little money than it is now when we seem to be earning far more money but are tied down to all the bills. Claude and Roberta, who had returned to Bowens Mill from Graham River for the summer, picked us up at the Atlanta airport and we drove on down to Bowens Mill. We spent a few days visiting there at the Ridge before heading for Texas. 

While at Bowens Mill, I received a phone call from Don Howat. He had gone with Dural and Ethelwyn into Fort St. John with my list and they had priced everything, It came in at well over $100,000. Don told me that the normally placid and calm Brother D was “hyperventilating.” But Don is a diplomat, and he was able calm them down and get them focused back on faith and on God’s provision. 

At that point I suggested that we do the construction in two parts. Just complete the basement now, with a temporary roof on it and all the ground work finished, and then, in a couple of years, we could do the second floor and the permanent roof. This phased-down plan would still cost maybe $60-70,000, so it would take great provision from the Lord to be able to keep our plan for four days in September.

Grandma Susan would be traveling to Texas with Claude and Roberta. That meant that Maureen and I, with Kyle, would drive ourselves in Grandma Susan’s little Toyota. I needed some dental work done, so Brother Jim Fant suggested a dentist he knew back in Greenville, Mississippi, who would do the work for a reasonable cost. 

It was a beautiful drive across the South. I always try to stay off the freeways in the South in order to enjoy the country roads and the lovely landscapes. On our way out of Georgia, however, I had a strange experience. I was just driving when I felt a profound “snap” in the back bottom part of my brain, right at the junction of the cerebellum and the brain stem. I did not know fully what it meant, but as time went on, I noticed that a familiar connection inside my brain was no longer happening. This is hard to explain, yet when I raised the issue with the Doctor of Psychiatry at the University of Houston, who is an expert in Asperger’s Syndrome, I learned that this disconnect at middle age is indeed common among Asperger’s.

It was as if the thinking/dreaming part of my brain slowly began to drift apart from the acting/doing part. This had some pluses, for I soon began to sense that my overwhelming internal drive was no longer so powerful. I could relax a bit more. But, as you will see, it was not too many years before this disconnect would become problematic for me and for my family. Now, I have no idea what actually happened inside my brain tissues on this drive to Mississippi, or if it had anything to do with anything. Nonetheless, the passage of my life from strength to no-strength turned that August of 1992. I was thirty-five years old.

As we approached Greenville, we passed through a dark and fierce thunderstorm, with rain dropping as sheets and no visibility. That was a bit scary. The dentist in Greenville was highly contemptuous of anything in natural health. To him, mercury fillings were God’s gift to mankind. He did a poor job on my teeth, the two he worked on would have to be pulled within a few years. I’m sure the new mercury did not help my brain disconnection. 

We drove on to the Miller home outside of Stephenville, Texas. I finally got to meet all of Maureen’s aunts and uncles and cousins. Peter and Patti Honsalek were there; they had lived and married at Bowens Mill during my years there. It was a good time of celebration. Grandma Susan could still get around well at that point, four years before she passed. Her godly life had passed on to generations of off-spring. 

When we returned to Bowens Mill, a friend of Maureen named Susan, whom she had known in Brussels, agreed to drive us back up to the Atlanta airport. On the way, however, we wanted to make two stops in the Macon area. First, we visited with Andrea and Dina LaFera. They were not walking with the Lord at the time and were a bit wild, but they were dear to us. When we left, Susan had to go back in to retrieve something she had left. She told Maureen and I later that she overheard a friend of theirs, who was also there during our visit, asking Dina about Maureen and I. “Wow, they are real people, aren’t they?” And Dina answered, “Yes, they are.”

We then visited Charlie Jones who was in a hospital in Macon having just had knee replacement surgery. It was good to connect with him again.

We flew on back to Seattle, and then returned to Blueberry before the end of August.

The Next School Year Begins
Many things were happening back at Blueberry, besides the start of the new school year. First, we finished the construction of the shop, with a completed roof and all the doors and windows in place. That way we could work inside to finish it during the winter months.

At the same time, money had come in from all over for the new Graham River Tabernacle and the brethren there were busy purchasing everything needed and ferrying it across the Graham River. The water was low, so they were able to tractor a wagon across the ford. I had planned for the brethren at Graham to dig out the building site and to pour the footer prior to the great gathering. Because this building was sitting on solid river rock, the foundation was relatively simple. 

At the same time, people from all over were communicating their desire to come and be a part of this great endeavor of providing a new Tabernacle for the family at Graham River.

Something else that had happened this summer, however, was that this next school year of 92-93 would be the seventh year for many of us on student/work visas. That summer, Mr. Wenham, the immigration officer in Dawson Creek, had let us know that our time on temporary visas must come to an end. A number of us at Blueberry would have to leave Canada by June of 1993. We received this as from the Lord, being grateful for the graciousness that had always been extended to us by the Canadian authorities.

Nonetheless, the only thought anyone had at Blueberry was that it MUST BE God’s will that we all find a way to immigrate and to return to Blueberry. Those whose visas would expire in 1993 were Maureen and I, Don and Martha Howat, Mike Pelletier, Laura Weitz, Terry Miller, and Sister Mozelle Clark. And so every one of us except Laura seemed to be caught in this great enthusiasm and need that we must immigrate because we were “part of Blueberry.”

To immigrate, then, one must have a way of earning an income that did not take jobs away from Canadians. So we were attempting to come up with any number of “business” ideas that might work. I have since learned the Canadian immigration system well and now know that most of our ideas were just a waste of time. In fact, of all of us, only Maureen and I did immigrate to Canada, and that was by an entirely different reason – which is a later story.

Another family, the Franklins, had moved to Blueberry that summer. The husband, whose name was Alan, was an elder, and they also were interested in immigrating to Blueberry, and so were part of this ongoing discussion. 

The school year began before the time planned for the raising of the Graham River Tabernacle. My teaching load was much less this year, maybe about half of a load. That way I could give more of my time to the completion of all the building projects. Paul Austen, Chris Kidd, Jesse Rehmeier, and John Mancha were all seniors this year. Paul, who had been short all his life, grew a foot this year and became as tall as Jesse. 

These were mature young men. Nonetheless, the exaltation of “the flesh” had grown inside the move, and the common view of teenagers was that they were almost entirely of the “flesh,” and thus could never be trusted. At the same time, almost the entire school faculty were single intellectual women, the type that gravitate towards teaching college. 

We planned a wonderful project for the start of the school year. We would put on a series of survival training sessions, some of which would be given at the Oxbow. Different ones in the community would teach different types of skills. I suggested to the school faculty that the seniors be given some responsibility for this occasion and that they be allowed to teach a session as well. My suggestion was counteracted immediately and completely. “NO!”

The problem is simply this. Yes, intellectual single women have much to give, but they have no knowledge of young men. The thought is only to control their every move out from an unsettled and misguided fear. It was a good project, yes, but as I watched those four young men, denied responsibility of any kind and almost neutered in their need to be respected, my heart groaned for them. That, and other similar things through these years after my graduation caused my heart slowly to disconnect from the Blueberry School. By the end of this school year, I would be done with this particular all-controlling version of schooling. 

The education council of British Columbia had devised a new approach to education. There is an entire story of their attempts to bring the move community schools under their control, and how our principled stand for freedom caused them to rewrite the law down in Victoria, the capitol, in order to allow schools like ours to remain free. I will not share that story in detail. Nonetheless, in this new approach to BC education, there was an interest in making the schooling experience more practical and hands-on for the students. I saw this as a way to more truly integrate our practice of education with our community life style. Everyone else saw it as the intrusion of the devil. 

I bring this in here because I will have much more involvement with BC education in coming years as well as my own attempts to devise a better way to teach middle school children, including my own, later on.

The Graham River Tabernacle
And so we come to the four days of September, 1992, and the gathering of 65 men to build the first part of the Graham River Tabernacle. I will describe the plan first, and then the experience.

I had chosen eleven men to be the leaders of the eleven crews. I gave to each of these men a complete layout, hour by hour, of their crew’s tasks through each of the four days. Reality would change the timing of that layout, but the ordering of tasks would remain similar. It would be my role to keep everything flowing together. 

I had two main framing crews and a third, small-project framing crew. A young man from the Ridge who was an experienced framer had come up with Claude and Roberta; he led framing crew 1. My brother, Glenn, came up with his wife, Kim, and their children. Glenn led framing crew 2. Then, Dani Maldonado was the crew leader for the small-projects framing crew. He would do things like stairs and bays, leaving the two main crews to alternate with each other in the raising of the walls, the building of the second floor, and the construction of the roof.

Don Howat was the leader of the electrical crew. Tony Cobb came up again from Dallas; he led the concrete crew, a big crew because they were also forming and pouring the large septic tank. Bill Alter led the saw crew. He had lists of every board to be cut in order and he and his men did nothing but saw everything to length. The framing crews assembled only. Another brother from Graham led the materials handling crew. Their job was to get all supplies to where they were needed at the moment they were needed. 

I forget who was the plumbing crew leader, that crew would also install the underfloor heating tubes. David Miller, Sister Jane Miller’s son, along with Terry Miller (no relation), led the cabinet construction crew. They were set up with good shop tools in a nearby shed. They would have the cabinets ready for installation the moment the space was ready for them. Del Buerge had come down from the Yukon to be part of this time. I think he worked with Dani Maldonado. That crew would also do the construction of the outer false wall and the outer sheeting. There was a crew for insulation and sheetrock. That makes ten crews. I had eleven, but I don’t remember the other one.

On a prior work occasion, we had done two meals a day. I suggested the same for this project. We would start at 7 AM and work for two hours. Then we would have an hour for a huge and hearty breakfast from 9-10 AM. At that point everyone was hungry, and we chowed down. That large breakfast, then, carried everyone until late afternoon for a wonderful dinner after which we worked a couple more hours for a ten-hour work day. This system works great, with less time spent on meals and better eating as well. Sister Ethelwyn led a large crew of sisters who were all really good cooks.

All of my crew leaders were experienced and professional men, and so all the willing helpers had good guidance in their work. I was thrilled to have my brother Glenn there as one of my crew leaders, participating in a wonderful community experience. 

Our four days were Wednesday through Saturday. Most would remain Saturday night for a worship meeting in our finished building on Sunday morning. All the crew leaders had gathered on Tuesday afternoon to go over the plan together. I had a blackboard and began to explain the layout of the work to the crew leaders. Brother D stopped me however, and apologized for not having started the meeting with prayer. I was a bit embarrassed as he prayed, placing all of this great gathering into the Lord. You see, I was a “get the job done” sort of guy. Nonetheless, Brother D’s gentle correction lodged itself deep inside of me, and I gained from it the great importance of placing everything into such faith-prayer.

By supper time on Tuesday, all the men had gathered to be ready to get started at dawn. After supper, in the twilight, Don Howat and I walked together down the airstrip for a ways and then back. During the day, he would work under me, but otherwise, Don was my strength. We talked about the coming days, and Don encouraged me greatly in strength and in the Lord. The truth is, that time with Don was as important to me as the whole project experience. 

Let me describe the flow of the work on the first day. Remember that there were sixty-five men on this work site. The concrete crew began the forms for the septic tank right away. The saw crew had already started sawing. The cabinet crew began their work in the improvised shop. The electric crew were working out the main line to come underground from the generator. Meanwhile the two main framing crews were positioned on opposite walls from each other. As the materials crew brought them their boards, the crew leaders unrolled their drawings for each wall, the long side walls first. All they needed to do was place the boards where the diagram showed, nail them together, and raise the wall. Then, the two crews took one an end wall and the other the first inner bearing wall. After that, while one of them built the second bearing inner wall and the other end wall, the other crew began setting the joists on the one side of the floor above. As the crew beneath finished the remaining lower walls, they came behind the crew on the joists, and sheeted the newly laid joists with plywood. 

Just as soon as the first twenty-foot bay was covered and it was safe beneath, the plumbing and insulation crew came in to install their work. And as soon as heating pipes were installed in the first twenty foot bay, the cement crew switched over to installing the rebar and pouring the slab. You see, the concrete floors would have to be poured and then have time to dry before further work could take place in those rooms. We did include an ingredient that made the cement dry more quickly. I was very glad to have a professional like Tony Cobb overseeing that difficult work.

By noon my carefully laid-out time plans were no longer in sync with the reality of the job flow. I was at the height of my construction skill and experience, and this was what I was made for. My task was to replace that time schedule, to circulate constantly from one crew to the next. I knew more about what each crew and even each individual was doing than they did. My task was to be sure that each thing needing to be done was completed so that the next crew could start their part. 

The anointing of God came upon me, and I walked in a knowing of all things in this construction task. It was seldom that anyone had to pause for the lack of knowing what to do next. It was seldom that any crew was blocked because something was not yet ready for them to do their part. I remember only a bubble of grace and of joy, of knowing and wisdom and direction. It was glory to me, the best experience of my building career. There were, of course, many problems and even some contentions, but those were all worked through in good order.

By the end of the fourth day, a Saturday, everything was coming towards completion. The septic tank was finished and covered over and the roof was on. The sheetrock was mudded and the cabinets were being installed. A number of the men kept working late into the evening, but before Saturday was over, we were finished with all we had intended to do.

That Sunday morning, we all gathered inside the new dining room, which, for the present time, was the space that would become the root cellar. We ate a breakfast made in the newly completed utility kitchen. The electric lights and the piped water were all working. And we worshipped God together. Such an anointing came upon us; we knew that God had done a mighty thing in our midst, in this wondrous flow of community work. We knew that we had tasted together of a glory yet to come.

Darkness and Shame
Let me include another factor in my life experience through this season of Blueberry that had begun several months before. Lloyd Green was a few years older than I, a strongly self-assertive man who had definite ideas about how work in the community should be conducted. Lloyd was very good at presenting himself as “the expert,” and Don Howat and all the elders seemed to be excited about what he could bring to the work flow of the community. 

Lloyd wanted everything discussed and fully “planned” by experts. What people don’t realize sometimes is that work does not happen just by planning, it happens by gut, by getting in under the responsibility of the job. Things don’t go by “plan,” decisions have to be made on the spot by those who have the heart to bear the load. I was very good as the primary community work leader, which at that time was mostly construction, especially with Don as my oversight. I would often show up at the job site early before anyone else and, as I walked the site, I would draw out from my gut the flow of the day. My heart was given utterly to the needs of the community, and I would bear any weight on my part that was needed.

In order to establish his own place, Lloyd would have to sabotage my hands-on role and wrest my place in the community work from me. I don’t think the elders understood that. I’m not sure what was in Don’s mind. Everything of the construction work came out from me, but it went to the elders through Don. To some, I think my role might have appeared small. Lloyd was not a doer, but a planner and even a conniver. Getting under the weight of an individual job did not seem to be in his sights. But I had no ability to express that. I had no ability to convey to anyone the reality of the work and my role in it. And my stuttering attempts to explain seemed to some to be nothing more than a petty attempt to control on my part.

In the weeks leading up to the Graham River Tabernacle experience, Don had been sharing with me a new direction for the community work at Blueberry that the elders were considering. Only two of the men elders participated in that arena of work, Don Howat full-time and John Austin part of the time. Lloyd’s ideas of the leading men to sit down together and to plan out every detail of every project before the men went out to do that work, was to be the new order. 

Other non-elders who would be part of this planning team would be Brian Dwyer, Randy Jordan, Philip Bridge, Sir James Barlow, Roger Henshaw, Lloyd Green, and Steve Ebright. Don assured me with great faith that I, also, would be part of that team. 

I do not know fully the sense of the elders towards the Graham River Tabernacle project and towards the new role Don and I were finding as other communities looked to us for leadership and advice. I know that some had expressed disagreement and that Blueberry’s participation in the Graham River project was not wholehearted. Again, I perceived that some, by knowing only my outward shell and inability to socialize and communicate, thought that my stance was one of conceit and self-serving. 

But of my peers, those listed above, with all their many good qualities and skills, there was none with the aptitude and the heart to get under the load all the way through and to make the big construction needs of the community actually happen. Yet to explain this reality in a way that could be understood and received was far away from my abilities.

A few days after I had returned to Blueberry from the Graham River project, Brother Roger Henshaw, who was considered as a deacon, took me aside in the dining room to share with me the decision of the elders. He said that the elders had determined that I was not ready to be a part of this new “planning” team. 

Roger was gentle and kind, of course, but he was not an elder. Where was Don Howat? I did not know. I did not know what this could mean. The idea that this new approach could actually produce good results was not real. My complete exclusion from the planning process after years of all the construction planning coming out from my own heart and gut was outside of my ability to comprehend. I knew what it was like to work under others and I hated it, because all you did was stand around most of the time watching them do all the work, and giving no directions to anyone. When I led the job, I always had my eye on everyone’s progress and was ready with the next task for each the moment the prior task was completed.

I was not to sit with my peers to discuss the work I had carried all these years. Yet I would have to fit under the “plans” created by men who, except for Randy and Brian, did not do any of the work. To say that I was thrown into a great agony of confusion and humiliation would be an understatement. It was Don who had encouraged me to believe that I would be part of this; where was he?

That evening, Sister Barbara James was there for another deliverance service at Blueberry. Deliverance services were seeming to become the “solution” for every apparent lack in the community because we did not know Christ our life. I was sitting with Maureen in the back of the room. At a certain point Lloyd Green came by and beckoned me to come upstairs with him. We sat down in the sitting area at the top of the spiral stairs. Lloyd wanted to “talk” with me.

Maureen was disturbed by this and she went over to Don Howat to inform him what Lloyd had done. He assured her that I would be fine. 

Lloyd presented himself to me as the spokesman for the elders. I was already confused, humiliated, and deeply wounded. Lloyd’s “appointed task” was to explain to me why the elders had decided I was not mature enough to participate in the new order for work, most of which would now be coming out from him. 

I was now in the hands of the most powerful psychopathic bully I have ever experienced in my life, and I had no defense. He began by ridiculing and mocking my role in the Graham River project, making it seem little and meaningless. He was very skillful at taking any word I attempted to use in my defense, twisting it back against me with even greater ridicule. Lloyd mocked me in every conceivable way. He mocked my upbringing and my dad. He mocked my Mennonite background. He belittled my role in the community and in construction. He made fun of my place as a husband and a father. 
I had no defense. Don did not come to help me.

After about forty-five minutes, he was finished. I don’t remember my stumbling walk home through the snow to our cabin. I do remember crawling into bed, and, even as I drew the covers over me, so I also drew darkness over me so that somehow I could hide my shame.

You see, Lloyd was speaking, not as the elders would ever have sanctioned, but, nonetheless, entirely out from their decision that I did not belong with my peers and that my years of pouring out my life for the needs of the community were not to be honored.

From that moment on, for the next ten years, the years of the birth and early lives of our four children, the bottom-line of my self-story would be one phrase, over and over, “I am so ashamed of myself.”
 
Do not ever imagine that calling people “flesh” is benign or that you do no harm. The death that you sow must be reaped, and how many will suffer before it comes back to you again?

A Word from God and Near Death
I stumbled through the next couple of weeks, mostly in the school, in a daze of hurt and confusion. I waited for Don to come and explain things to me, but he never did. 

Do not think, however, that I am so easily defeated or quenched. I had set my heart from age 22 to know God and to be part of a people who know God. I have never once thought to take my heart back ever since, regardless of all my searing inability.

I did not understand things then, but I had no need to be concerned about the new “order” for the community work. Creating a complete plan with all the details filled in before a job is started is unreal. Certainly, I made a detailed plan for the success of the Graham River project, but if we had followed my “plan,” it would have become an unmitigated disaster. We would have been nowhere near finishing, and all the men leaving would have counted it as a terrible experience.

The simple problem is that those who plan are not those who do. And the requirements of actual reality meant that I continued to be the source of all ongoing construction do-ing regardless. There would be sadness inside that experience for me, however, some of which I will share in the next chapter. Of truth, of all the men at Blueberry, only two could lead a large task on the spot as I did,. Bryan, of course, when he wanted to, and the other was Dani Maldonado, who did step very capably into my role after I left Blueberry and made me very proud to have been a teacher to him. 

I want to step aside from that particular diffculty, now, and bring in a much more important issue through these three months of October through December, and that would be the future and direction for Maureen and me and our family.

As I said, the press to “immigrate to Blueberry” was very strong. Don and I were busy planning what business we could start that would enable us to immigrate. For awhile we entertained the idea of the bandsaw mill and starting a wood business. When we dropped that idea, Alan Franklin from England asked if he could take it on as his way of immigrating. We freely gave that idea to him while Don and I looked at other ideas. I lighted upon the idea of starting a seedling and plant nursery using the greenhouses. None of us knew anything about making a production business successful, of course. We had no idea that the majority of any business is selling and if you’re not in the business of selling you’re not in business at all.

But none of that was the issue for me. The thing that disturbed me deeply was that I was becoming aware of a growing lack of witness towards immigrating to Blueberry. In saying that, I am not speaking of inward hurt, even though that was certainly a factor, but the growing realization in the Spirit that Maureen and I did not belong at Blueberry any longer. It was not God’s place for us. 

But I still wanted to immigrate to Canada. 

Meanwhile, talk had begun among the regional elderships about a restoration of the Shiloh community, but with a new name, named after the small creek that flowed through that valley – Blair Valley. Sometime in October, this hope of a new community starting was shared with everyone. 

I continued laboring intently before God, that He would show me the next step for us. I could not walk in my “prayer walk” area because it was covered with snow. So I walked the road across the Blueberry footbridge and up the hill, in intercession before God for His direction. I remember this as a burden of many weeks, and of much placing myself before God to know His ways. Some of those things I will share in the next letter however, since this season of God with me would overlap into the first five months of 1993. 

It might have been in October or November. I remember walking up to the phone in the bootroom of the Tabernacle, but before I could reach up, a word from God rose up out of my spirit. I had, just before, raised the question again to God about our immigration. I heard, “Immigrate to Blair Valley.” His words to me were in all singing joy and peace.

Such relief, such hope and direction. I shared it with Maureen and she witnessed to those words. Afterwards we shared it with the Blueberry Eldership, and they also witnessed. 
We had a new and exciting direction, filled with possibilities.

Nonetheless, life continued at Blueberry, and I remained crippled and grieved in my soul. I weakened physically as well. From the time that large wall fell on me, to this day, in fact, I have had a frequent pain in my right side, in the liver area, where the claw of my hammer had gouged, though it had not penetrated. I have never known what that pain meant, nor has any doctor been interested in or knowledgeable of such a thing.

I don’t remember when, through the course of these months, but at a certain point, with advice from others, I determined that maybe I had gall stones. I went through a gall stone cleanse, using large quantities of olive oil. It was horrendous, but I did pass quite a few greenish stones. That did not solve the problem, however.

Then, it was always difficult, if not impossible, for me to switch my mind from a teaching-school mind to a construction-work mind in the same day. Because I was no longer teaching full-time in the school, I experienced a lot more back and forth. Nonetheless, it was a switch I could no longer make. On a new morning, yes, but not halfway through a day. And so I began to know unproductive time, something new for me in my community experience. 

Finally, by December, the grief of my heart had become sickness in my body. I had shared what I had endured with Sister Charity, but other than assuring me that the elders were NOT behind Lloyd Green’s actions, she had no word of Christ for me. 

I became very sick – pneumonia. We were not against going to the hospital, but it was, for me, only a last resort. I wanted to believe God for healing. It became difficult to breathe, a weight pressed down on my lungs. I could hardly breathe at all lying flat in bed, so we constructed a plywood ramp against our little couch so that I could sleep in a sitting position.

This continued for a few days. I was not getting better. Claude and Roberta came by for a day, but they were experiencing some difficulty with each other and their contention in our little home increased the pressure against me.

Several of the sisters who were not elders, including Kay Smiley and Michelle Ebright, came to pray for me. They prayed with such joy and hope. I was greatly blessed and for a little while seemed to be doing much better.

Then several of the men elders came into our little home to pray for me, John Austin, Dave Smillie, Don Howat, Alvin Roes, and maybe Wes Shaw. These are all precious brethren and I honor and respect them. That afternoon, they were in the full regalia of “move elders,” something I would not come to understand until several years later.

They spent maybe twenty or thirty minutes praying “at” me. Their prayers included my deliverance from “what was wrong with me” that so obviously was the cause of this continued sickness. John Austin was pressing hard against my chest. I was afraid to ask him not to do that because I did not want him rebuking my words as a demon. But I had to because I could not breathe. God is always kind because he accepted my request and removed his hand.

When they finally left, there was only one thought in my mind, “Do they even think I am a Christian? Do they even think that I also love Jesus?”

Early the next morning, Brother Alvin drove me on icy roads to the hospital emergency room in Fort St. John. All the way in, I rejoiced in the Lord, that He was keeping me in all goodness. Dr. Watt, whom I had seen before, was there. His diagnosis was quick, and I was placed immediately on an IV with powerful antibiotics flowing into my system. I did not know that I was almost dead.

Don Howat had come into town that day with his family. In the late afternoon, he stopped by the hospital to see me. He did not stay long, but I learned later what happened after he left. Don went out to his car and told Martha and their children that I was near death. Together that little family prayed for me. All I knew of it then was that a few minutes after Don left my hospital room, a darkness lifted off of me, and life was now free slowly to return. 

Antibiotics are destructive to the health of the body, but they are always better than death. Dr. Watt had to use the most severe at his disposal to save my life at the last minute. I was three days in the hospital, and when I returned home on Christmas Eve, I continued in a weak state. 

Nonetheless, through these last weeks of 1992, I continued to seek the Lord concerning His direction for us. Part of my cry was the growing realization that we did not belong at Blueberry. Where did we belong? Where was there a place where Maureen and I could fit and be a part of family life in honor and respect? 

Inside that expectation of God, He spoke to me again, another word rising out from my heart in such overwhelming joy and wonder.

“Blair Valley will be your home.”

This was so good, except for one small problem. “Blair Valley” did not yet exist.

Placing Jesus within the Press 
One should never take on any sense of “responsibility” towards a psychopathic bully, for such false thinking will do nothing more than increase the power of the dark spirits behind it over you as the victim. Whatever Lloyd Green is or does, he belongs entirely to the Lord Jesus Christ and not to me. When his time of giving an account comes, I will receive him, without question, but not before. Rather, I place him entirely and only into my Savior. 

Deliverance from that experience did not begin for me until 2014, and only as the Lord led me, in my mind’s eye, to KICK Lloyd Green right out of my life, full stop, with both feet in the chest. This was the doing of God and the first time that I could consider any part of Blueberry without unquenchable pain.

At this time in my life, however, I know exactly what God was doing and why, for the issue is far bigger than I have known before. And in that knowing, I bow myself before Him in awe and worship. God is good and wise all the time.

The elders at Blueberry are a different matter, however. I must place the Lord Jesus Christ upon them regardless of their lack of understanding and theological perversity. It is right for me to do that with two in particular at this time, and that is Don Howat and John Austin. Others will come later. 

I know that they believed they were moving in the “wisdom and counsel of God.” I know that Jesus lives in their hearts and that they love Him and are committed to His glory. What they did not know was how contrary their theology was to the gospel of our Salvation or how devastating their words and actions could be in the lives of people they did not fully regard.

“Lord Jesus, I give You thanks for Your involvement in my life through Don Howat. You gave so much to me through this good man, so very much. I do not know what was in his mind when he did not come to help me. Nonetheless, I freely forgive him with all my heart. 

“Lord Jesus, I give You thanks for Your involvement in my life through John Austin. He has always been a faithful and devoted expression of Your love. I know that he did not know what he was doing. I know that You carry him all the way through the darkness and into life.

"Lord Jesus, I place You upon me all through these months. I know that You never intended the wrongful things, but that You always intended me in spite of them. And I know that You and I together turn whatever was harmful into unending goodness for others that many might also know Father with them. Lord Jesus, I know that Father’s purpose in my life passed through these difficult things to become great and precious treasure in my heart, for You have turned what was evil into Your keeping power in my present experience now and forever.

“Lord Jesus, You are so good. You have always been the only life I am. And You were there carrying me tenderly inside Yourself, even though I did not know what that meant.”

I complete this letter in great sorrow. I cannot yet give resolution. I know that peace will come in its time.

“Father, I know that my desire to cry right now is Your desire to cry, for the disrespect we sometimes show to one another hurts You even more. And You are so good, my Father, to cause us to share Your heart that we might be life and goodness to others just as You also are life and goodness to us.”