Norm’s Notes July 26, 2017
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Vacation Stories
While on vacation Linda and I did the lighthouse tour of the east side of Lake Michigan. The brightest “lighthouse” was a sweet little lady in downtown Holland, Michigan. I was sitting on a bench on the sidewalk and this elderly lady using a walker asked if she could join me on the bench. I said sure. I asked her to tell me her life story. She said she had walked on the Great Wall of China, been inside a pyramid in Egypt, toured the Bible lands, and been in a bunker built by Hitler in Switzerland that was now used by several Christian radio stations to broadcast Christian radio all over Europe. She and her husband, after his retirement, traveled the world representing the “Back to God” radio broadcast for the Christian Reformed Church. Her husband was the head person at Heinz, the ketchup people, in Holland, Michigan. He died in a strange bicycle accident where two bikes collided and he fell off the bike and hit his head on the pavement. She talked about her four children and nine grandchildren and said two of her children were retired. I said “retired?” with surprise then I had to ask how old she was. She said 98. She looked much younger.
Linda joined us on the bench while we talked. We had prayer with her right there. I thanked God for her ministry of building the Kingdom of God around the world and that she would have good health. She told me she had never had anyone pray for her in that way. She gave us her name – Caroline. Linda called her Sweet Caroline. I told her I would see her in heaven, without her walker. She glowed like a lighthouse. She was a very bright spot on the first day of vacation.
Another day Linda and I were sitting at a picnic table outside the McDonald’s in Reed City, Michigan (the inside was a madhouse of lots of people). While we sitting there, the employee who empties the trash came by. We struck up a conversation with him and quickly realized he had a southern accent in northern Michigan. I said, “You are not from these parts. What brought you up here?” He said he was from Detroit (although he sounded like he was from southern Alabama). He moved out of the city when he and his wife started having kids. He was not going to raise his kids in Detroit. I said, but up here you have to have a snowblower and a shovel. He had those things and he liked all the animals around the north too. We noticed the rubber wrist bands he had on. I asked him to show them to us. One said “God is love and He always loves me.” The other one was colors – red, black, yellow, white, green – of the plan of salvation. He goes to the Seventh Day Adventist Church. I told him, “God bless you.” He had the countenance of Christ about him. He liked his job and smiled – glowed – with happiness.
We went to the Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids. Beautiful. And with all the rain they have gotten everything is more beautiful than normal. In the natural lake / marsh area there was a huge area of green slime on the lake. In that slime there were about 100 croaking green frogs that I could see and count and probably many more in the weeds. They were all conversing with each other. One frog would croak and then another and another. This would go on for 20-30 seconds with just a few frogs. Then all of the sudden about half of the frogs would croak all at once. It was as though they were either agreeing with what was just said or all disagreeing. This cycle of croaking frogs when on for all the time we stood there. I’ve never heard anything like it.
Those are just a few of the people we saw and things we did on vacation. It’s good to be back home at church.
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See you Sunday!
Norm
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