Arriving in The Sand Storm
I could say we were leaving a great snow and ice blizzard to go dwell in the land of snakes and lizards. Southern California, here we come.
We purchased a travel trailer that we had no money or credit for. It perfectly met our needs and we left Indiana behind. We were also leaving behind our 17 year old daughter, Kelly, since she was enrolled in college at the University of Evansville and would not be traveling with us. This was perhaps the most heartbreaking part of the whole obedience thing! She was still at school when we had to pull out of that southern Indiana town and get on the road. We had a deadline to meet so the men would be there in time to start work. The most heartbreaking part for her was coming home to only a goodbye note that said, “We had to go.” She still has the note.
Desert Center, Eagle Mountain…whereever you are, whatever you are, here we come, ready or not. I was not ready.
We left in our old car with over 100,000 miles on it without even a spare tire! We had sold what furniture we had time to sell to afford the trip and donated everything else to my church for a sale. I found out later that they used the proceeds to help build Sunday school rooms with it.
We had a trailer hitch put on the car, sway bar and everything professionally and at least I knew we were totally in the hands of God so I had no fear. I just did not want to be doing this!
We rolled out with our oldest daughter Kim and her husband T.H. and their daughter Jennifer following in their new travel trailer and truck. Kim was driving her car into the western sun with out sun glasses and at times you could hardly see. The men were in such a hurry she went with out the needed glasses for a very long time.
We began very weary and I was too sick to care that it was against the law; I went to bed back in the trailer while my husband drove. The two teenagers that we took with us, Sharron and David, rode with their dad. Sharron's little dog Sassy went too, but we lost her somewhere along the way. I was in the sick bed with a mother dog and eight new pups in the bath tub, we just couldn’t abandon them…so there they were. It was the only place I could find to put them.
We drove into the sun for the longest time. We had never had any experience with a travel trailer before and when we ran out of water, I told my husband and he said he would replace it at the next gas station. We were on the road on Valentines Day in 1977. I remember because he bought me a card and a broom as a present! I would have liked to have swept out more than sand and dirt!
We filled up with water at a station. All the while he had water pumping into the trailer holding tank, he waited and waited and waited until he finally got really mad and opened the trailer door. Water gushed out all over the parking lot! I had left the faucet turned on not knowing or giving it a thought as to what would happen. It had run all over the new furniture, the beds we were to sleep on, down onto the floor and was filling up the trailer like a swimming pool. He was not too happy to say the least! He was not too happy either that the car kept breaking down every hour or so and every time he would get under the hood to work on it he would raise up and hit his poor head on the hood latch. Soon his head was just covered with broken places. At one point he just raised his fists towards God and cursed, like it was God’s fault that he didn’t learn not to raise up that way, but to avoid the latch.
This can be a comical story now, but it wasn’t at the time. We can look back after all these years and laugh about it, but there wasn’t anyone laughing then. We found out after many miles, on a Sunday, that the trailer hitch was about split in half and only God could have kept that trailer from coming loose. It could have come loose and careened off anywhere with me inside. Where were we to find a place to fix it on a Sunday? I can’t remember how we found these people that could weld it, but we did, and we visited at their home while it was being worked on. We had the best time! They were all playing instruments and singing and it was a good time in the midst of what could have been a tragedy. I believe we were some where around New Mexico.
My husband kept asking how I could be so “cool “when so much was going wrong. I only knew in my heart we were in the will of the Lord and that was enough for me.
I stayed in the bed and got out to use restrooms when they came to filling stations. Most of the time I would wake up to see the station lights and I would take care of my business and go back into the trailer bed. On one memorable occasion, I saw the lights and got out in my p.j.’s, robe and curlers to look for the restroom. He drove off and left me standing there on a toll island! It took me a few minutes to realize where I was and that he would never know I was missing. I was fortunate enough that the kids were driving some distance behind us and radioed him on the two-way radios we were using “You forgot something”. They picked me up and he waited for them to bring me and I transferred back to our trailer and the sick bed. We continued on our way.
With all the extra expenses of the car breaking down and the hitch repairs, we ran out of money short of our destination. Our son-in-law offered to loan us the money to get into Desert Center until my husband received a pay check, and we took him up on the offer.
We pulled into Desert Center, California sometime in February and went into a small RV park on credit. Because the men had jobs waiting, they allowed us that privilege. That was after we had tried to get into a nicer park and they wouldn’t allow us to park there. My husband opened the sewer lines of our trailer as he drove out.
The day after we arrived, we decide to drive the 16 miles up to Eagle Mountain to the mine where they would be working and have a look. We started up the hill and came about half way and I looked over to my left and saw a quonset hut with a big sign on the top that said "PENTECOSTAL CHRISTIAN CENTER". I have never jumped or shouted in my life, but I did then and hit my head on the roof of the car. I scared him half to death and my son-in-law asked my daughter as they drove behind us, “what is wrong with your mother?” She looked over and said, “I know what is wrong with my mom.”
I never missed a church service at that quonset hut! My husband had taken me all those miles, to the middle of nowhere, thinking he was going to get me out of church. I went to my first service on a Wednesday night and met the most wonderful people. The Pastor, Rev. Conrad Nava, or Brother Sonny to most, was driving from Coachella to come there to hold services. It was a good hour drive each way for him.
The next morning we heard a knock on our trailer door and there stood two women from that church with an envelope. They gave it to me and told me that the Lord had told them to bring me this money. There as enough money in the envelope to buy gas to cook on, groceries, and gasoline to get to work for two weeks until the men received their first pay checks! This was just one of the many miracles of provision that accompanied obedience.
Brother Sonny had some of his members from Coachella, (which means small shells) and among them was a young women named Bea. She was to become one of my lifetime best friends.
Later on, I began going into Coachella for regular church services. After the morning service I would go out to the Salton Sea, take a picnic lunch and something to read or do. I would spend that time until church services that evening. It would get about 120-130 degrees there in the summer months. Bea found out where I was going and invited me into her home. It became my home away from home for many years. I stayed with her on weekends and we had some wonderful prayer times where the glory for God would just fall and fill the room. It was indescribable!
Her family, the Chavez's, took me in and called me their daughter. God really blessed me with a family away from my own parents that lived in Maryland. Bea had two brothers that were called to the ministry, Gilbert and Bill. They have been a blessing in my life at many times. All of the family were very gifted in the gifts of the spirit and the Lord used them to minister to me in great times of need. I will tell of a few of those times later on in the story.
Gilbert and his wife Irene, as well as Brother Nava still have thriving churches and ministry in Indio, California to this day. I remember Gilbert and Irene sacrificing so much to begin to operate a Christian School for the safe and Christian education for children in the many years that preceeded the beginning of their pastoral ministry.
Brother Nava also sacrificed to do the will of the Lord. He began the present church in his home. It was used for many years until enough money was saved to buy land and begin building. All the donations went into this fund and he was not on salary. They built a beautiful Spanish church in Coachella. I so enjoyed helping them decorate it, when I would later visit. I loved to look for antiques and things to refinish to use in decorateing it to make it absolutley beautiful. It was a place of beauty, but it was most of all a house of worship and miracles and signs and wonders. In all of the churches I have had the privelege of visiting or attending , never have I seen God move in the power and the manifestation that he does in these two churches. His presence is awesome there and miracles were an often occuring thing, not a once in a " great moon" type of thing.
I watched one time when frightened parents brought a four year old little boy to the church. Church was still in the pastor's house. The parents were desperate for a miracle. The doctors wanted to do surgery. They were poor people. The child never had to go through the suffering and recovery of invasive surgery. God just laid him out on the carpeted floor when Pastor Nava prayed for him, and he laid there on that carpeted "surgical floor" for over an hour while God did the surgery himself. The boy was made whole before our very eyes !
I saw so many miracles there that I can never doubt the "want to" of our God to perform them and his ability to do so. I learned alot there as only one of two "Gringas," among all my Spamish friends. I learned about and witnessed firsthand many deliverances from demons and demonic oppresion etc. I had never had this hands-on training anywhere I had ever lived or have lived since. The church reads about it and knows God says we are to do it becasue there are those that are desperate for the hands of Jesus to set them free and we are his hands extended. He told us to go lay hands on the sick and they would recover. He told us to cast out demons in His name. I had read of it but had never heard it preached nor taught. I was now on good teaching ground.
I received really good, sound, basic teachng in the first Pentecostal church I had attended. I learned the Word there as I had never learned it before. I grew up as a child in a Presbyterian church. My childhood churches were wonderful and I learned about the Lord there. I loved going until I got into my teenage years and had a boy friend. We walked to church as we only lived a good "long block" from it. I was about 7 years old when they had the ground-breaking ceremony for it. My father was the electrician in the building of it, as well as many other things. It was considered a Community Church, even though it was Presbyterian. Mom and Dad both were deacons in the church; mom was in choir and dad did much of everything that needed to be done since we lived so close. He became the "keeper of the church keys." Many organizations like boy Scouts and Girl Scouts would use the facilities and they would come to our home to get and return the keys. We became known as "the keeper of the church keys."
This reminds me of a vision that God gave me after I had, out of obedience, moved to the desert and my marriage ended in divorce. I was sick and I cried out to him qsking him, " Why did you ever send me here?" I dreamt, seeing myself going about into dark places and gathering " keys" and saving them in my pockets. I knew they were important keys and woud unlock secrets or doors some day. The Word says the keys to the Kingdom are to be used to bind on earth what is bound in heaven and loose on earth what is loosed in heaven... God's will being done on the earth as in heaven. We are to be doers of the Word, not just hearers only.
I could never have stood in the place where I am today, having the firm confirmation in my heart and spirit that I have to stand against the enemy with all I have of Christ within me, if I had not been in that place in the desert at the particular time God sent me there... to learn ! Yet, I had NOT wanted to go there. I had wanted to stay in my comfort zone, my safe zone that I had only recently found. I felt like after all those years of living in fear and dread and just finding Jesus again, just finding peace and solace in the christian church family, that I deserved to enjoy it. God had His own timetable. My brothers and sisters, other people's lives and well, perhaps their eternal souls, depend on those that come to the place of being able to do all that Jesus said for us to do.
He said we would do all that he did and even greater things that he did. He could have been speaking of the volume of ministry. He was only able to minister three years in certain regions. We are to be an army, spreadng across the land, taking it, pulling down strongholds, setting the captives free. We will move as one man, not breaking rank, but marching in our position as he has given and willingly bring about His will on earth as in heaven. It's a mandate. If we love him and want to be a Son of God or a mother to Him, we will.
His will is that we set others free, to heal the eyes of the blind, to heal the sick, cast out demons, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, set them free, take care of the orphans and the widows, always take care of the poor. He told us to never forget the poor. They are prisoners of Hope (Zechariah 9:11-13) "As for you also, because of the blood of your covenant, I WILL SET YOUR PRISONERS FREE from the waterles pit. 12: Return to the stronghold, YOU PRISONERS OF HOPE. Even today I DECLARE that I WILL RESTORE DOUBLE TO YOU. 13: For I have bent Judah, My bow, fitted the bow with Ephraim, And RASIED UP YOUR SONS, O ZION, against your sons O Greece, And MADE YOU LIKE A SWORD OF A MIGHTY MAN."
THESE VERSES DESCRIBE A WARRING, VICTORIOUS PEOPLE WHOM THE LORD PRIZES LIKE JEWELS OF A CROWN. God can and will send sufficient power and blesings to enable a person to come into maturity, but we must not just assume it, we must ask for it.
I was not a fighter and God intended me to learn! The desert would be my training ground, much like the military uses it as a training and testing region today and has for years. God wll take everything that the devil means to do you harm and turn it into good. I came to despise him and what he does to people and their lives. I became one of his many enemies, now I had to learn how to war. The victim has become a victor, the one living in constant fear has become valiant and willing to fight. Awesome... and I would never have believed it, had I not lived it !
Setting people free, that could be IF we are to do what we are told to do in the scriptures. I was to be set free, liberated finally at last !!!! Then to take what I was blessed to recieve and use that knowlege and witness that God was more than able and wanted to do just that thing.
He said to set the captives free. To loose those in bondage. Most churches don't want those in bondage to even come into their churches. If they are demon possessed, forget it. They would have to go somewhere else. Our leadership has not been, for the most part, taught to do what Jesus said to do. They are unable to do it, because they don't know how, not that they don't want the people helped.
I often have found that those in the world were more loving and kind than the ones that fellowshiped with in churches, sad to say, but true! I will get into more of that later on.
