Jimmy Carter

We went to church with Jimmy Carter this morning. I wasn't all that excited to go, but D'Linda was, so we went. I was really impressed. Before Rusty's head explodes, I haven't turned into a liberal democrat, but he impressed me on many levels. Another family that is staying here at Koinonia was going and offered to give us a ride so we took them up on it. Plains Georgia is about 10 miles from here, it is a very small town, the sign going into town boasts "Home town of the 39th President". The church he attends is called Maranatha Baptist Church. It is a brick building that is nice looking, but not very big. The Sundays that he is there they have Secret Service agents there, they examine all bags and purses and you get a wand waved over you. This time of year the crowds aren't big. In the summer they tell you to be there by 8:00 for the 10:00 Sunday school class that he teaches. We got there about 9:00 and got seated near the back of the auditorium. The auditorium seats about 300 and by the time class started it was full enough that they had to set up a few folding chairs. The regular members have some reserved seats near the center of one side of the auditorium. Then Miss Jan gets up and tells you the rules. She was Amy Carter's fourth grade teacher, she so impressed the Carter's that she was on their staff for quite a while. She laid down the law about what was and was not permissible, she did it with humor, but reminded us that she had some armed Secret Service agents at he disposal. She was a member of the church herself, she said they had 130 members on the role, but average attendance was about 40. When the Carters are present they always have more visitors than members. You can call ahead and they will tell you if he is going to be there. The bulletin for last week read members 26 visitors 138. We had a group of students from New York there today, and it is president's day weekend so the place was just about to capacity. They did allow pictures at times, and everyone that stayed for the whole service got the opportunity to get a picture with the Carters.When he came in he greeted the crowd and said "I see we have a few visitors" he was interested in hearing where everyone was from. He was friendly and seemed to enjoy the crowd. He addressed some of the issues in the news and informed us of some things that weren't in the news. He then led a bible class out of Numbers 12. He is the only President to ever teach a bible class while President, and the only one to do it on a regular basis after office. He comes across as very caring and sincere and uses humor with his lesson. I was impressed that he still attends a small church in his hometown, and that he will give his time to be photographed with all that want. I may differ with him politically, but I really respect his genuineness and humility. One of the ground rules was that we couldn't applaud him, or stand when he came in, Miss Jan said his applause would be if we took the lesson he taught to heart. Many people left after his Sunday school class, another of the rules was that if you left you wouldn't be allowed to come back at picture time. The Pastor gave a lesson that wasn't terrible, about what I would expect for a 40 person congregation. I was impressed with what such a small congregation had to go through to accommodate so many guests on a regular basis. They were very efficient in getting the pictures taken afterwards. The Carters we very gracious even when a few people didn't follow the rules. If you ever are near Plains Georgia I highly recommend you go to Church and see him for yourself. He seemed in good health and he had great command of his memory, but he is 86 so if you do put it on your "bucket list" I wouldn't put it very far down. He may be the only President you can get your picture with without donating a hundred thousand dollars.

Where am I?

We left the gulf coast of Florida and drove through the southeast corner of Alabama, then the back woods of western Georgia and ended up somewhere near Americus Georgia. I say near because we haven't actually seen it. We didn't have an address for the Koinonia Farm that our GPS would recognise, but we happened upon it as we were heading to Americus. It is not what I expected. There are a number of buildings and homes on the farm,most in need of repair, or demolition. The farm produces pecans, blueberries and grapes. They have a bakery here that makes a peach, date and some other fruits kind of cake. They also produce a chocolate pecan candy. They have a brisk mail order business for their products, especially before Christmas time.

I am hesitant to comment on the place because I've only been here 24 hours and I'm hoping that my opinion will change. The people are really friendly and hospitable, but I would characterise them as redneck hippies. There are about 30 full time residents. Some are interns that commit for 3 months first and if they still like it after that they commit for a year. Then if they still like the idea of living in this community they become an apprentice for a year, then a novice for a year, then they take a vow and become a steward. They have a few employees and there are some people who help out but don't live on the farm, they are called partners. They are a peace loving community that is trying to live as Jesus would.

They are getting heavily involved in the permaculture movement. It is a system of living that tries to minimise your "footprint" and restore natural symbiotic relationships, man, plant, animals and soil. I read the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" not long ago and it deals with the concept. I can appreciate their goals, but they don't throw away anything, "you never know when you might be able to use it". They love to recycle and re-purpose everything. So they have piles of junk everywhere. They have old farm equipment and vehicles and stuff all over. Their chief source of income is the 90 acres of pecans, but the pecan orchards don't fit with their permaculture plan. They require chemicals and machinery to harvest. So they will phase them out. They have some chicken tractors that they move around, pigs in a pen that has a fence made of all kinds of re-purposed material and cattle, some are some kind of endangered species. They have some large garden spaces that are pretty weedy. I can understand their goals, but it is all way to cluttered and messy for me. It is probably more of an indictment on me then them, they really pride them selves on living simply and being happy with much less than most of us "need".

One of the first things we saw when we pulled in was a half finished steel building. Just like the kind I built before I retired. The contractor they hired to erect it had been paid and now he won't come back to finish it. Rusty said it reminded him of Africa, I must admit there are some similarities. We spent some time today correcting some mistakes and started to put the siding on. We didn't have a stapler for the insulation so while the forman tried to find one, everyone else just picked everything up and quit early. The forman got sidetracked and I'm not sure if he'll get one tonight or just begin his search anew tomorrow. Calm down Jack, they are a community of peace, they just don't get excited about things. The building isn't very big, if I had Ric and Rusty here we could build the whole thing in about a week, but they don't think that way. They really only deal with today. They have some long range plans, but they don't set schedules and worry about stuff like that. It is really a hard concept for me to grasp, I see projects and they have to be done!

They start the day with meditation time then a short devotional. They have lunch and dinner communialy and ring a bell a couple times a day so that you stop what your doing and meditate and pray. It is almost like what I think a monistary would be like. Most of the Stewards are older women, kind and gentle souls. It will be an interesting week, I'm going to try and understand this lifestyle.

Getting Bored

Last time I updated you we were just leaving Houston. We did leave and spent a night just east of Baton Rouge, then on to Pensacola. We spent a couple days there with some friends we met last year in Israel. It was fun to see Roy and Tracy and their girls, their older daughter, Lea Hannah attends Alabama, but she was home for the weekend so we got to see her. The younger daughter, Mary Willis, said she was going to come and help me hay this summer. After I told her that I hirer high school boys to help me she said she was coming for sure. D'Linda and I really like the girls, they are just so much fun to be around.

We have been at a RV park just east of Pensacola for the last 3 days. The beaches here are white, when we were driving along it looked like it had snowed. The weather has been nice, mid 60's and clear. We went to a Valentines dinner here last night and they had an oldie weds game that we won. We went for a bike ride today, but the road in front of the resort is real busy and not really bike friendly. I am getting bored. We have one more stop before we head back, Koinonia Farm in Americus Georgia.

When I was in Houston I went to a book store with Gregg. I saw a book that's title caught my eye "True Religion". I read the jacket and the author grew up as a missionary kid in Liberia, where we visited Rusty last year, so I had to buy it. I liked the book, it goes along with the way I have been thinking lately. Palmer Chichen, the author leads groups overseas a couple of times a year. When he isn't overseas he pastors a church in Chandler AZ called "The Grove", I'm hoping that it will work out to visit there on the way back. This is just the latest in a series of books that have changed my thinking over the last couple of years. I read "Radical" by David Platt at the start of this trip. Just before we left I read "Resident Aliens" by Hauerwas and Willimon. Last year "Mere Discipleship" by Lee Camp turned me towards pacifism. Before that "Humanity: The Moral History of The Twentieth Century" by Jonathan Glover got me thinking about how stupid man really is. The modern world really hasn't done anything to turn people towards God. In fact it has turned people away, we think science can figure everything out. Here in the US we are more concerned with our comfort and possessions than people who are oppressed and starving. I write this from the comfort of my motorhome on the Gulf Coast in Florida. Maybe I can gain some insight at the Koinonia Farm, or on the drive back. I sure hope so, cause like I said I'm bored, just relaxing in the RV isn't for me.

Friends

Its Thursday morning and we are in Houston, we'll be leaving later today for Pensacola, after it warms up a little. It is below freezing here, but it is suppose to warm up later. We spent 3 nights in Liberty Hill in Alex and Nicole Dossey's driveway. The weather was real nice the first two days there, but it got cold, so we had to move on. We had a great time there, the Dosseys were wonderful hosts and made us feel at home. Their children, Olivia (6), Autumn (4) and Carter (11 mos) were fun to be around, the girls reminded us of Andrea's Naomi and Daphne, and Carter is just a happy little guy crawling all around. Nicole is a lot like Andrea and they are the same age, we had great time there with them and they let us use their vehicles to visit other friends in the area. We were able to visit Lloyd and Sue Hodges and see their ranch. I got to go have coffee with Wade and we solved a lot of the world's problems, now if they"ll just listen to us. Later we had dinner with the rest of Wades family, Heather, Caleb and Elijah and the Dosseys at what was supposed to be one of the best bar-b-cue joints in Austin. I don't know if it is the best, but I do know that if I lived closer I would weigh a lot more.

A couple of months ago when we were planning this trip D'Linda started trying to locate some old friends we had lost track of. Pam and Gregg Stewart were close friends when they lived in Bellingham in the 80's, they moved to the Dallas area in 1989. We had visited them there a couple of times and they had been back to Bellingham once, but we new they had moved and we hadn't been in touch for a few years. D'Linda had searched the web and hadn't had much luck. She even asked our son Scott who works for Google to look, but we couldn't find their trail. About a week or so ago she managed to find a Clayton Stewart, who she thought might be their youngest son, on Facebook. She sent him a message and a couple days later he responded and said he remembered us and that his folks would be glad to hear from us. We waited, but he didn't get back, so D'Linda sent him another message, but no response. The day before we were going to leave Liberty Hill D'Linda started to search more, she got on Clayton's page and found he had a Ryan and Gregg Stewart as friends and messaged both of them and they responded almost immediately with a phone number. She called and was able to talk to Pam. They were both so excited, and they lived in Spring Texas, just north of Huston. We would have driven within 20 miles of their home the next day. We have been at their house for the last two days and it has been great catching up. Their sons are all grown up and all men of character. Brandon (30) is a junior high history teacher and football coach. Ryan (26) is a personal trainer and shares an appartment in Allen Tx with Brandon. Clayton (22) is attending Abilene Christian U studying to be a youth minister. We saw a video of a sermon he gave last year and it was very good, he also plays guitar and sings songs he writes. We saw a video of him singing one of his songs, he has a very good voice. I was able to talk to Clayton on the phone and invited him to come to Bellingham and preach for us this summer, he has plans, but said he would love to come back and see his birthplace. I'll keep working on him, I figure if he does come then Pam and Gregg will have to come and visit. They are all very handsome, and to Pam's chagrin single. If anyone out there has daughters or nieces that are women of character give Pam a call, she would really like some grandchildren. I remember the boys as wild blurs, maybe Jamie can identify with that, but they have grown into real men of character. We heard some stories that prove that Pam and Gregg's pride in them is justified. They kept offering to show us the sights of Houston, and I'm sure Houston has some great sights, but we came to see them not the sights. This whole trip we haven't seen to many sights, but we have been able to visit with a lot of friends and I think that has been more fun. If you have someone you've lost track of I recommend hunting them down, it is great catching up, good friends are what makes life valuable.

We are off to visit friends in Pensacola we met last year in Israel, Tracy and Roy and their beautiful daughters. Their oldest daughter is at college in Alabama, she is smart along with being a woman of character. You know, Tracy and Pam are both southern girls, they speak the same language and Roy and Gregg would get along great, maybe I'll try to do a little matchmaking

The R V life

We are in Liberty Hill Texas. We spent three days in Tucson, it was pretty cold, but it was colder to the east so we were waiting out the weather. We probably would have stayed one more night there, but they had someone coming in for our space and didn't have anymore spaces available. We left there on Thursday and went as far as Las Cruses NM. We stopped there because it looked like it was going to be colder if we went on. The TV news said that they had just broken there all time coldest record by 15 degrees. We left there Friday morning and as we were going through El Paso we heard a loud bang and a side panel of the RV was loose and banging on the side of the motorhome. We got off of the Interstate and made it to a Lowe's. The fiberglass panel was one that covered the area around the rear wheels and was only held on by double back foam tape. I got some tape and put it back together, the panel had a couple of cracks in it and I didn't want it to happen again so I added some screws. While fixing it I realized that I had a flat tire on my inside rear dual. Luckily there was a tire store across the street, unluckily they couldn't service my size tire. They recommended a truck tire store up the road. It wasn't far, but without GPS I don't think we could have found it. They were very helpful, the tire had a big cut in the side wall so we had to buy a new one. The only model they had in the size we needed was a top of the line $390 one. That was only the latest of our RVing experiences. When we left home our backup camera quit working, and on the way down we had trouble with automatic step, and it quit altogether just before we got to Yuma. I'm long legged, so it didn't really bother me, but D'Linda was a different story. I waited until we got to Casa Grande to try and fix it. In the process of trying to fix it I broke a switch, and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't work. I had to call a professional. He determined that the step motor had burnt out, but he couldn't figure out why the camera didn't work. He suggested calling Winnebago. He had to order a new motor for the step and said it would be a couple of days. There was a RV store across town so I rode my bike there to get a replacement switch, they didn't have one in stock so it had to be ordered. In the mean time I was trying to figure out why the hot water heater wouldn't work on electric, only gas, I found a corroded wire that when I wiggled it, it broke, now the hot water heater wouldn't work on gas either. I rode back to the RV store and they had the part I needed, but it came as a larger assembly, $42 later I was riding back. The step motor came in and when that was replaced it was just under $500. I called Winnebago and got a very helpful man who told me I needed to replace the fuse for the step alarm, that was for the backup camera and a fan I didn't know I had, and as far as I know there is no step alarm. Anyway that worked and the camera is working fine, the man told me that if I switched the mystery fan on it would probably blow the fuse again. At least that didn't cost me much, just a 15 amp fuse. We were talking to our repairman and asked him what brand of motorhome was best and he said none of them. He said he would never own one, he just rents them and gives them back, and he doesn't tell them what he does fore a living. He might have a point, oh did I mention our windshield has developed a couple big cracks.